From my family to yours!

My family! Marty, Masey, Elijah, Maryanna and Eryn Faith.

Merry Christmas! We have had a wonderful day jut being around each other.  I hope and pray that you and your family have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New year!

Maryanna

Sunday is Maryanna's 7th birthday! We will be busy with things at church, so I thought I would go ahead and share about Sissy. 

She has one of the biggest personalities of anyone I know. She loves to play with her dolls and to doctor them back to health when they "don't feel good."  She does have a little stubborn streak, but I believe she comes by that honestly. (She got that from me!)

 Today I got to take Maryanna out to lunch and walk around town. We talked, laughed, and made silly faces. :)  She got to eat a big hamburger with french fries and an American 7up! We had lots of fun, here are a few pictures of our time together today.  

On our way out the door

Sissy and all her wonderful silliness

Her lunch!

The last stop, Tele-Post, to get a Christmas package from Mena!

Æbleskiver

Æbleskiver is a Danish dessert that we LOVE! They taste like a pancake, but they are round and are served with powdered sugar and marmalade. We asked someone what Æbleskiver means and they said it basically  means peeled apple. Just thought I would share a little bit of yumminess we enjoy here in Greenland. 

December...one busy month!

For us, and many others December is a busy month. This month in the Arnold household we have Marty and my wedding anniversary, Maryanna's Birthday and of course Christmas. You are probably thinking, well, that's not too bad. Well, it all happens within a week of each other! :)  Our Anniversary is the 21st, birthday on the 23rd, and then Christmas!

This year is a "big" anniversary for us. We have been married for 10 years!!  It is hard to believe that it has been that long. We have been blessed with a sweet marriage, I have to say that I do love him more now than when we first got married. We have been through a lot together, but I wouldn't choose anyone else to face life with! He means the world to me. I couldn't imagine growing old with anyone else! He knows me and all my little quirks. :) He doesn't seem to care when I wake up and look like the Bride of Frankenstein. :)  I truly am blessed to have someone who loves me for me~love ya babe!!   

Getting adjusted.

We are settling in nicely here in our new home. :)  The towns here in Greenland are similar in some ways, and can be totally different in others. One of the biggies for us is we do a whole lot more walking here in Ilulissat than we did in Sisimiut. We live a mile from church and the big grocery store. Thankfully we do have some smaller stores around us that we can run (walk) to if we need something we forgot.

Our new home!

I enjoy our walks to church, yes, they are cold, but it insures you are wide awake by the time we get there. :)

I have enjoyed getting to talk to Carole! It has been nice to have another lady to talk to.What makes it even better is that she understands what we got through on a daily basis.  I look forward to getting to know her better. :)

A dog sledge team. We see several of these each day! Very neat. :)

Thank you to all those who have prayed for us as we did our move. We have seen the Lord provide when we couldn't see any other way the needs would be met.

Our first Thanksgiving in Ilulissat

Loading up the plates. :)

Today we had a fabulous Thanksgiving meal at the Shulls. Carole out did herself!  We had a great time of fellowship. Most of the pictures below were taken by Anna. :)   I think she did a great job!

Maryanna and Emilia

Some of the decorations.  :) 

Mattie's favorite, the chocolate! :)

Doing some crafts

Marty and Chris talking.

Eryn's "I think I just ate too much"  look.  :)

What I am Thankful for!

I have so many things to be thankful for. The Lord has blessed me in my life with so many things. Here are just a few things that I am truly thankful for, they don't even begin to scratch the surface of what I am thankful for!

My family! I have a wonderful husband of almost 10 years and three beautiful children.

My Mom, Dad and Brother! I miss them terribly, and can't wait to see them again on furlough. 

My Sister-in-law, Amanda AKA Mena.  She has been one of our biggest blessings since arriving here in Greenland. We often refer to her as our lifeline to the States.

A place to serve and people to serve with!

In Ilulissat

It is hard to believe we have been here in Ilulissat for a week now! The time has flown by. Hopefully by next week our container will be here and we can get settled in all the way.  It has been a blessing to have another family to fellowship with!

Last week was our first week to get to work in the church. Marty is teaching a Sunday school for the English speaking kids. Basically right now it's just the Missionary kids. But it was fun! Here are a few pictures of the little class.

Marty teaching Sunday School

He taught on how The Bible equips us

Singing 12 men went to spy on Canaan

The Class

Takuss Sisimiut!

Takuss is a Greenlandic word meaning I will see you latter!

Tomorrow at 2:15 Greenland time we fly to Ilulissat to start a new phase of our ministry. We are really excited and nervous at the same time. We are excited to have a church, and people to serve in and with. We are nervous because we really desire to be a blessing to the Shulls and to the church in Ilulissat!  Our prayer is that the Lord will use us in any way we can be used. This has been a long journey for us and we are looking forward to seeing what The Lord has in store! 

We are sad to be leaving Sisimiut and the people we have been able to met and befriend. Thankfully, The Lord knows best! 

Please pray as we fly tomorrow and as we get settled into our new home!

Getting Crafty!

I am not a very crafty person. But I do love to sew. :)  I have been sewing some skirts and dresses for my girls. Then today I made a table runner! This will probably be my last sewing project until we get moved! It was really easy and took me 12 minuets to do! It is called a 10 min. table runner, I know I went 2 min. over,  but hey, it turned out really good! I had a Church in Missouri send me a little care package. In it was some material and some instructions on how to do the table runner. Me, being not all that great with written instructions, turned to YouTube. :)  We typed in 10 min. table runner and the first one that came up was the one I needed!   I thought I would share the link for all my crafty friends!    

 ~Here it is~ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfg8BMUakOc

 Even if you aren't crafty but have a sewing machine, you should give it a try!   Here is what mine looked like after it was all done. 

Happy Fall!

You can almost feel the excitement!

  As our moving date is getting closer, the more excited we become about it!  
 
 We are excited about being able to be used in Ilulissat. But on the other hand we are sad to be leaving what has been home for a year and a half now. We have made friends, and they will be hard to leave. Lord willing though we will be back here in Sisimiut one day!

  Eli has a birthday on the 17th. Marty kinda sprung an idea of having a Kaffemik for him. So in amongst all our packing we will be having a party as well. :)  This will be a good way for Eli to say bye to his friends. He has been taking the move a little hard, but he is excited to be able to talk to the other missionaries kids, and to be able to understand them! :) 

 Please continue to pray for us as we pack and start our new adventure farther North here in Greenland! I will probably not be posting a lot on here because of the move. But when I do there will lots of pictures of our new home!  

One month to go!

Marty bought our tickets for our flight to Ilulissat last night! It has been a long wait and an emotional one too.  We have the permission to move while the kids and my paperwork are pending. Marty's paperwork has been approved, so we can move with him, and just wait in Ilulissat to be approved. 

 We would appreciate your prayers as we still need some more money for a container! We are planning on loading the container on October 29th! So not too much longer. :)  We fly out November 2nd.  

Sweet-n-Sour sauce

Tonight for dinner we had sweet-n-sour sauce with pork and rice. I got the recipe from Carole Shull, when we went for a visit to Ilulissat in May. My family LOVED it! So I made it tonight, and it was great! You can also use chicken, if you don't like pork. Our grocery stores are out of tomatoes and bell peppers, so I just made mine without them and it still turned out great! Also, I doubled the recipe, but if you have older kids I would say to triple it. 

Yummy!

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup chicken broth or water

1/3 cup white vinegar

1 tsp oil

1 tsp soy sauce

1/4 tsp salt

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 tbs cornstartch

2 tbs cold water

1 med tomato, diced

1sm bell pepper, diced

1 can (8 oz) pineapple chunks in syrup, drained

1~Heat sugar, broth, vinegar, oil, soy sauce, salt, garlic, to a boil over med heat. 

 2~Mix cornstarch and water, stir into the sugar mix. Cook and stir it about 10 seconds or until it's thick

3~Stir in tomatoes, bell peppers, and pineapples. Heat until it is bubbling, and serve!

 

Proverbs 21:1

Proverbs 21:1  The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

This verse has been on my mind a lot the past few days. We have had ups and downs with our paperwork. Marty realized the other day that he was the only one that had received his approval papers! He called Danish Immigration on Tuesday. They told him that our paperwork was filed wrong, and that my paperwork hasn't even been looked at yet! He asked why they had not said anything since it has been pending for 7 months, and we have called several times.  Tuesday and Wednesday were some very rough days for us! We didn't tell anyone other than our close family, our Pastor and of course the Shulls.

Marty called again today to see if he could get some more information. The lady he talked to today gave us a lot more information, and couldn't understand why the other lady had told us that our paperwork was wrong. She told us that since Marty is the only one that works here in Greenland, that it should be okay to go ahead with our move. Even though the kids and my paperwork are still pending. We can just wait in Ilulissat and they can forward our approval papers on to us.  He asked them, if for some reason, we can't move until we are all approved, to email him and let him know soon.

Please keep on praying for us about our paperwork!! We are still planning on moving the 2nd of November! I have been a little bit of an emotional basket case lately!  But I am very thankful that The Lord has shown Himself mighty in our lives, and to know that Our God knows, and He cares!!   

A face lift!

So I thought I would give my blog a little bit of a face lift! Tell me what you think!   Thank you for following and remember you can get updates through email, and I am also on Pinterest! Then you won't miss any of our misadventures here in Greenland. :)  

Hmmm...

In case you have wondered what my family looks like in their "natural habitats", well here they are!  It is a cold rainy day and they were desperate for entertainment! :)  

Maryann made her a mask!

Eryn made her and Daddy a crown and braclets

ummmm...Not to sure what he's doing!  :) 

Our Paperwork!

Marty called again today to check on our paperwork. They said that it has been approved and that they sent it to us on the 10th. So we are really hoping to get it in hand by this week, or next! Our plans are to move the first of November to Ilulissat. We have a lot of things to do, and my mind is going in a hundred different directions right now!

We have been here in Greenland for a year and a half by ourselves. I'm not going to sugar coat it, It has been hard! The Shulls have been in Greenland for 5 1/2 years by themselves! We are so looking forward to working with them, and being able to get a handle on the languages, and customs. I am looking forward to have another lady to fellowship with. 

Elijah, our oldest, was in tears when we told them that we had been approved. We asked him what was wrong and he said that he was just happy, and that moving made his heart happy! I guess I had forgotten how much he missed his friends. This move will be a huge blessing to our children.

Our kids and the Shulls! When we all went out, we looked like we ran a daycare!

Our first snow of the winter!

As I am doing this post, it is snowing like crazy outside! Our kids are super excited. :)  Me,on the other hand, could have gone a few more weeks without the snow.  I was planning on getting out "winter" clothes out next week, but looks like that will be a this week project! :)  Here are a few pictures of our guys playing in our first snow!    

Captain Eli!

Waving at mommy in the house!

Tossing the first snowball of the year!

Coming down pretty good!

Run Eryn!

My beautiful snow princess!

Eryn very proud of her little snowball!

And she chunks it

Sissy and her snowball

Exciting news!!

We have been waiting 7 months to hear back on our residence permits. We filed in January of this year, then in May, we asked to be able to move to another town, Ilulissat, to work with the Shulls. Here in Greenland you can't just up and move to another town, you have to have permission from the government.

Well, today we are one step closer to moving!!  The Greenland government sent an email to Denmark saying that they are OK with our permits being renewed.  Marty has talked with Denmark several times already and they said that if they hear back an OK from Greenland, we shouldn't have any problems moving to Ilulissat.  Now we just wait until we get the actual permits in from Denmark, then we will be good to go!  Is it too soon to start packing? :)

My new sewing machine!

I got an awesome blessing in the mail today! I got a brand new sewing machine! I knew I was getting one, just not this soon. :) I am very thankful to the Bingham family who tracked me down one, and bought it! They have a great ministry of helps for Missionaries! I am so thankful that The Lord sent them our way!  I truly am blessed and very excited to have it. Clothes for Maryanna and Eryn are hard to find, so I will be making them some. I am looking forward to using the machine to be a blessing to my family and maybe,one day, to those around us.  :)   Now back to my housework so I can go figure out how to work my new blessing! 

 

My busy bees!

We have been hard at work doing school! It has been fun, but really interesting trying to get our schedule all down pat so we can go through our school day with all my hair still intact! :)  It has been fun seeing my guys finally understand things that we have been working on. They have all made great progress, even despite their teacher.  :) 

We have been praying for a bigger table, and the other day we got a "new to us" table.  Someone had thrown it out! Nothing is wrong with it. So we grabbed it up and have been enjoying the extra room!  :)

All smiles as we work!

Eli at work.

Eryn at her little desk

Happy girl!

Sissy at work

You can almost hear their little minds working.  :)

Our camping trip

Eli and his brush for a fire

 

 Here are a few pictures from our camping trip we went on yesterday. We had a lot of  fun, but it's one of those things I think I will only do once! I was very thankful for my bed and a shower when we got home this morning! We left early this morning because it was cold and raining when we got up. The memories we made were wonderful, and I don't think we will soon forget it.

Proud of his brush pile

Me by the ocean

Eryn being silly

A mini me soaking up some sun

Eli is always a sweetie about picking me some flowers

Marty and Maryanna

My blessings!

My best friend

Maryanna getting some brush

A mini hulk!

Chucking rocks

Trying to get a fire going for some coffee...

MMMMMM  COFFEE!

Our view!

Playing with a giant rope

Here are a few pictures from our camping trip we went on yesterday. It was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy a little look into our camping trip.