Marianne "sleeping."

Emily holding Lucy.  Lucy was born in my daughter Emily's apartment.  Long story, good ending!

Cora's First Easter Egg Hunt, March 2008

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Melody and Giosue enjoying bubbles!

Here's miss Lily! 

Isn't she just beautiful!

Here's the latest picture of Jeshua!  He's a cute poser, isn't he?  He was born on Labor Day Weekend, 2007.  "You must have been a beautiful baby..."

This is the latest picture of Annika Rose Sheldon.  She was born February, 2006, and is now officially walking!  She now lives in COLD North Dakota with her family -- that's her brother in the background.  Her Daddy is a Major with the United States Air Force.  Her mother says she's expecting number 3 in 2008!

I just returned from a trip to South Africa and Botswana!  I was there April 12-22, 2007.  I went with a group from my church, Cottonwood Baptist.

There's our group on the left. If you look real hard, you can see me in the middle front.  It was a lovely team of people, and I feel privileged to have worked with them!  My specific duties were to help with the music as the keyboardist/pianist, and also to hold the babies of the missionaries!

Yee-haw!  Right up my alley, I must say.

These are the two wonderful little missionary kids that I was privileged to cuddle with!  It was such a joy to hold and love these babies while their parents met for further missionary training.  That's Melody on the left, with Caden on the right. 

The flora and fauna of Africa were just slightly different from Texas!  I immensely enjoyed admiring the creation and the Creator as I journeyed through parts of South Africa and Botswana.

This giraffe we saw at Pilanesburg Game Reserve in South Africa.  We saw many other animals there, such as rhinos and elephants, and even a lion, and we were awed.  There were many blooming trees in Africa, as well as flowers.The monkeys and baboons hopped onto the roofs of our rooms and woke us in the mornings.  Who needs wakeup calls??

I loved my whole experience in Africa.  From ministering to the missionaries to prayer walking in Botswana, it was a wonderful experience!  I enjoyed also playing the piano for the times of praise and worship.  I can now pray more effectively for the missionaries in the southern part of the African continent by name and see them in my mind's eye.  After having met some believers from Botswana, I can also pray for them by name.  And one of my favorite parts of the trip was not only singing in a Botswanan church, but dancing as we sang!  I want to join in that tribe's worship around the throne of God in heaven! 

And even though our luggage was delayed on the way home -- it got left in Johannesburg while we came on -- it has now been found and is on its way home to me!  So all's right with the world!

The last thing I want to express is how precious my time with the teenage missionary kids (MKs) was to me.  I wasn't expressly assigned to help them, but I loved encouraging them and just getting to know them a little better.

I also am an MK, and as such know a little about their world, although my world was Mexico, not Africa.  These kids are just beautiful, and I am so privileged to have touched them in even a small way.