laceyswartz

I’ve always said I am not a blogger, but rather a consultant with a blog section of my site which I don’t use much.  Sorry to repeat myself for those who know me already, but for those who may be visiting my site for the first time… I just don’t have a lot of time for writing between caring for my family (6 kids, including a 4 month old at the time of this post), volunteering in my local community (my hubby and I moved from the States in 2015 to work with a small independent church in England with big vision), and serving my Miessence customers and team of reps around the world (which I love doing and which keeps me busy with messages and emails to answer every day).

Plus, there are so many voices ‘out there’ writing about natural health and wellness topics, that I just don’t feel the need to add my voice to the already massive pile of web articles at this time.  I do have a lot of thoughts on this broad topic of natural health from other angles (beyond the science of nutrition and bio-chemistry that most articles address) that someday I’d love to write about, but for now, I’ll just keep ‘pondering all these things in my heart’ until the time is right and I have time to write.  🙂  I still haven’t even had a chance to write up a report about David’s amazing home birth back in November…  Not sure when I’ll get that done, if ever…  🙂

That said, I got an email from a lovely lady named Charlotte back in October, just before the baby was born.  She owns the website HomeSafetyHub.org, and she asked me about possibly doing a guest post for my blog.  I told her I’d be happy to consider it, but couldn’t until some time in the new year, since I was about to go into hibernation for my babymoon.

When I finally emerged from babymoon and got a chance to read her article, I was impressed with less common info and the short “quick tips” style of writing – very easy to read.  Out there on the interwebs we tend to hear most about real food nutrition issues and natural nutritional supplement products and toxic chemicals in personal care or cleaning products and where to find non-toxic options.  But we don’t often think about other aspects of our homes that could be causing illness.

So with that, I’m happy to share with you Charlotte’s article, How to Tell if Your Home is Making You Sick…  Charlotte enjoys collecting resources and educational materials to share with people who wish to keep their homes safe – and her article below gives you quick insights into three common health assailants in your home that you may not have considered already.  Enjoy!

Disclosure statement – I have no official connection with Charlotte or financial interest in her website HomeSafetyHub.org and do not necessarily agree with everything on her site.  The only financial connections I have within this blog post are via the links back to my Miessence shop site – my customers pay the same prices and get the same discount rates as they would through the company directly, but the company sends me a thank you commission, on purchases made through my referral shop site, for recommending their products – which I also love and use personally in my own home, as a genuinely happy customer myself… especially their superfoods.  🙂

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HOW TO TELL IF YOUR HOME IS MAKING YOU SICK

If you or your family members suffer from headaches, eye, nose, or throat irritation, sneezing, or coughing several months out of the year, it might not be allergies that are the problem; it could be your home. It’s difficult to think about–especially if you already spend several hours a week making sure your home is a clean and comfortable environment for your loved ones–but it’s important to be aware of some of the issues that can cause illness and how to spot them.

While there are no true tests for some of these issues–for instance, an excess of dust or pet dander that causes breathing issues–you can generally tell if your home is the problem if you experience any of those symptoms within an hour of entering and notice that they go away when you leave. Being aware of these symptoms in your family members can help you narrow down the cause.

For some problems, there are tests, and it’s important to know what these are and have them done on any home that is older than twenty-five years, just to be on the safe side–especially if you’re buying a home. Inspections are key before the move-in date, especially where radon, asbestos, and lead paint are concerned, as these can cause cancers that lie dormant for years, undetected.

There are also common household items that could be causing trouble, but fortunately there are easy ways to change all that. Here are a few to look for.

Furnace/HVAC filters

It’s important to change your filters often–every month or so during the hottest and coldest months, when they get the most use–so they don’t accrue bacteria and become overloaded with dust, which can cause your heating and cooling systems to work harder.

Faucets

If you look carefully, you’ll see a little metal screen on the underside of the faucet in the bathroom and kitchen. You should be able to remove the screen and clean it in a hot water/bleach solution to keep it from gathering bacteria and mold, which can break off and fall into pots and pans, glasses of water, and food.

Carpets

Your carpets are likely a big cause of irritation, especially if someone in your home suffers from asthma. No matter how often you vacuum, there’s likely to be dust mites, pet dander, and even fecal matter in the fibers (unless you have a strict no-shoes rule in your home). To nip these issues in the bud, vacuum often and have your carpets steam-cleaned once every couple of months, or consider tearing it up and replacing it with laminate flooring.

I’ve been home for nearly two weeks, and I’m just not sure how to communicate everything on my heart from this 10 day window of October 16-25, going to Cambodia for the Miessence leadership retreat and then taking three extra days to visit the part of India where a dear friend used to live a few years back…

To be honest, it was a really deep trip on a lot of levels…

I’ve never blogged much, and do it even less these days, because I just don’t want to spend so much time on my computer…  I choose to keep my online time reserved for very intentional conversations and communications with like-minded (ie, interested in real food, natural health, creation care, strengthening of families, ethics and transparency in business, personal growth for God’s glory and societal contribution rather than material gain, etc etc etc) contacts, customers, and business partners around the globe, and for staying connected with family and friends back across the ocean in the States, while spending more time offline with my family and local community here in England.

So, here’s the deal.  I can’t possibly share everything on my heart from this trip.  And in reality, I know most of you wouldn’t want to read that novel anyway – I’m not offended, in fact, I think that’s a good thing…  Please just give this a quick read and then go spend time listening deeply to the hearts of those closest to you, whether in person offline where possible, or assisted by technology where separated geographically.  🙂

Here’s a quick factual summary of my trip…

• Day 1- Travel day catching up with a dear friend who I hadn’t seen since I moved to England.
• Day 2- Meeting with representatives of Remember Nhu, an organization that works to prevent child sex trafficking.
• Day 3- Worship with a local Cambodian fellowship.  Business heartstorming with other Miessence leaders.
• Day 4- Volunteering at New Hope Cambodia, a centre for children from one of the poorest villages near Siem Reap.
• Day 5- Visiting Angkor Wat and other temples in the surrounding area.
• Day 6- Visiting the Killing Caves in Battambang, from the Pol Pot regime.
• Day 7- Visiting a Floating Village, a Lotus Farm, and the War Museum.  Fly to India.
• Day 8- A bit of driving around Mumbai and visiting Elephanta Island.
• Day 9- An incredible behind-the-scenes tour of Pune, and dinner with my friend’s friend’s family.
• Day 10- Worship with an international fellowship in Pune, then flying home to England.

Oh side note: Sorry, but I don’t have pictures to share here unfortunately (lost them all, long story)… 🙁

Overall, the trip had me thinking a lot about…

• Friendships, old and new, including precious kids I may never see again in this life…
• Learning from the past, living in the present moment, and hoping in the future…
• Justice and injustice, war and slave trade horrors in history and current news…
• Poverty and wealth, purposes of business, greed and generosity…
• Genuine faith and rituals of any kind disconnected from the heart…
• Truth and relativism, truths and deceptions found in all the major world religions…
• The beauty of all nations and the difficult simplicity of Jesus’ message of love and healing offered for all people across the entire globe vs what is often portrayed, misrepresented, misunderstood, or practiced as ‘Christianity’ in today’s world…
• Challenges faced by people on big and small scales, and the precious hope of healing offered through the love of Christ, His forgiveness of our sin, and our commitment to study and follow His teaching and leading, that we might live humbly and compassionately, set free from the power of unhealthy competition, striving, materialism, anger, hate, self-righteousness, broken relationships, hurts, and death…

So yeah, what do you think about any or all of these things?

Feel free to comment below or message me if you want, but I do want to encourage you again to please spend time talking about deep stuff with your closest loved ones.  And for sure, talk directly to God about this stuff.  🙂

That said, I’m always open to genuine, respectful conversations about deep stuff with anyone God brings across my path, and I am always happy to connect with folks and meet new friends online or offline, even if we don’t agree 100% on everything.  🙂

Growing numbers of people today are concerned about potentially harmful synthetic ingredients in food, personal care products, and household cleaning products.  And rightly so.

There are over 12,000 synthetic chemical ingredients used in the personal care industry alone – many of which haven’t been fully studied over long periods of time to prove safety.  Some have, and a few may be fine, but many many more… not so much.  Some may have been deemed ‘safe for use’ in certain small concentrations in a given product formulation, but the fact that 1) these products are generally used in combination with many other daily routine products, and that 2) many of these synthetic chemicals can build up in your body systems over time, is never taken into consideration when the short term safety studies are conducted.

At the same time, obsessing and worrying about toxic ingredients in foods and products can create just as many issues with your body’s toxic burden through stress chemicals and such.

Personally, my choice to use truly organic personal care and household cleaning product options, and eat real, organically-grown food as much as possible (including our choices in nutritional supplement products), is about drawing nearer to my Creator’s heart and how He has provided for all humanity through nature – one byproduct of which is avoiding many toxic synthetic chemicals in our daily routines.

By making these choices for our household and regular routines, we can live without fear or worry about what foods we might eat or products we might use while out and about in community with others who may not be concerned with such ingredients, because we know that a) our bodies have been designed to handle a certain amount of toxic exposure anyway and that b) we are doing what we can to align ourselves with the natural designs in creation for nutrition, hygiene, and healing.  We also know that ultimately, God is sovereign and can both heal our diseases and/or carry us through any times of suffering, including those that might lead through death.  Death is just the gateway to more life for anyone who trusts in Jesus anyway, so we need not worry and obsess about things like daily toxic exposures.  We just seek to align ourselves more and more in our daily choices with His heart and creation and trust Him fully for whatever each new day will bring.

When it comes to personal care, household cleaning, and nutritional supplement type products, I am grateful for the freedom I have from reading labels now, since having met a formulator I can know personally and trust (having initially read all her labels and come to know her commitment to honesty, transparency, education, and the best possible ingredients).  While, as part of my general consulting work, I do still read a lot of labels for other people still exploring various other brands, using Narelle Chenery’s Miessence products in my own household has given me rest from the constant need to be label reading when shopping for my own family.  I can now just shop online for our needs, knowing that what we’ll get from Narelle will always be the best in terms of organic standards and purity of ingredients etc.   (This is my Miessence store link – while I am a rep for her products now and do receive commissions from my customers’ orders for which I am very grateful, it is only because I’m first and foremost her happy customer and feel 100% comfortable recommending her products to others as a rep too.)

For those who are still reading lots of labels when standing in the grocery aisles or shopping online, Narelle recently interviewed Bill Statham, author of The Chemical Maze.   And Bill has very generously offered me 10 iPhone apps or companion shopping guide books to giveaway to subscribers of my inbox magazine.  Yay!  🙂

I downloaded Bill’s app recently and it is truly fantastic.  Such a simple to use tool and great resource.  I highly recommend this resource, and if you don’t win in through my giveaway at the end of the month, you can purchase the app here or the book here.  (I earn nothing on the purchases of this app or book.)

Current subscribers will get the details on how to enter the giveaway in the August 25 issue of MiCommunity – so watch your inbox.  🙂  New subscribers can also enter through the details coming out in the August 25 issue, BUT will get one instant giveaway entry just for subscribing to MiCommunity, with the code #ChemMazeGiveaway in the ‘How you found me’ field, any time between now and August 24th.

Below is the interview Narelle conducted with Bill on July 31.  Please note – the giveaway mentioned in the interview has already passed, but you can subscribe to my inbox magazine here for an instant entry into the August 31st giveaway I’m running with Bill now (or, current subscribers, watch your inbox on August 25 for details).

We arrived here in the Black Country (just west of Birmingham in England) on 11 March.  After staying at the church’s community centre and cafe for 5 weeks, we moved into a rental house in mid April and our furniture arrived mid May – after 10 months of transition, it felt so good to have our beds again.  🙂  We love this house and are so very grateful to have found it.

As you can tell, I haven’t been able to keep up with any semblance of regular blog posts lately due to our trans-Atlantic move.  I have still been answering Miessence customer and business inquiries from around the world by email (mostly) and phone (as needed), but finding time to write longer posts for my blog about our broader experiences over here so far, and how they integrate into the various topics I would tend to address here on this blog site (sustainable living, natural and holistic health, life as a mompreneur, integration of faith in all of life…), so far has been next to impossible.  I have been able to keep up with e-newsletters and quick Facebook posts here and there, but my little blog roll here keeps taking a back seat.  🙁

In large part, that’s because it is often hard for me to write with concision just how interrelated the little daily life things are to the deeper matters.  And with five kids, household management, business, and ministry work, I usually just don’t have time to go beyond thinking lots of swirling thoughts to actually writing out those deeper thoughts into any sort of coherent post.

Take for example, the blessing of this house…

There are the surface level facts above about having moved in.  But then there are also the deeper joys of living out intentional downward mobility and simplification – of having a smaller house to manage (it’s probably 1/3 the size of our house in the States) and far fewer possessions to care for in our home…  It’s so much easier to clean (and fun to clean!  I’ve been reminded since getting into our own space again just how much I love the Miessence BioPure Probiotic Household Cleaner – for kitchen and bathroom surfaces, glass, table tops, air freshener, fabric deodorizer, everything…  Total side story, but when we unpacked our mason jars, one had some white fuzzy mold in it…  I sprayed the BioPure on it and it just fizzled away and rinsed right out.  So cool…), and all around, the blessing of this smaller house gives us more time to invest in relationships – with God, family, friends, and the community at large.

Or take some of the cultural differences we’ve encountered so far…

There are more surface level things like our surprise at learning that many local folks don’t rinse the soap off their dishes when handwashing items after a meal – they just put soapy dishes in the draining wrack then dry them with a towel.  (Who knew?!  🙂  It took me a while to get used to not rinsing my dishes (and I’m extra grateful for the Miessence non-toxic dish concentrate now), but I still do it out of habit sometimes.  🙂 )  But then there are the deeper issues surrounding major life transitions and knowing that I’m beginning to feel settled at least on a surface level because I’m beginning to read labels again (and am sad to see so much aspartame in things when I had had a naive view of food in England as being so much better than food in the States…  While it’s true that there is far less acceptance of GMOs here, there is still a lot of processed food complete with chemical preservatives, colours, and flavourings…  Like my English spelling there? 😉 ).

Or the deeper stuff that all this little stuff relates to at my core…

Real people living in a real world.  There is much beauty and brokenness here, as there is everywhere else in the world.  It may look slightly different from place to place, but ultimately people everywhere struggle in some way or another with their identities, relationships, health, jobs, finances, faith…  And Jesus speaks hope into all of it – every aspect of life.  We have not come here to force our beliefs on anyone, as unfortunately seems to be happening in so many other contexts around the world.  People can and will live as they choose and we can still love them even if we disagree (and even if ultimately we are completely misunderstood or even attacked).  Rather, we have moved across the pond to come alongside our brothers and sisters here who know that it’s not about being American, English, or any other nationality, ethnicity, or political persuasion, but rather about being equally imperfect humans in need of our Perfect Creator to lovingly clean us all up – remove our wrong thinking, attitudes, and actions, bind our wounds, heal our hearts…  And together, our hearts’ desire is to share His Way, Truth, Light, and Love – that is, the real and living person of Christ – with those who are asking deeper questions, looking for relevant answers, and turning to find His lasting joy for every aspect of life.

The daily small stuff is always connected to the deeper big stuff.  And once in a while, I even get some of the reflections typed up.  🙂

Wow.  I don’t know how it is that I never put up a post about the new Miessence Complete Protein powder when it came out back in December…  Well, I take that back, yes I do…  I wrote about it a great deal in my newsletter (which is quite consistent), but with our recent move to England from the States, my poor blog has been neglected.  🙁  (Insert friendly reminder that I’m really a consultant with an occasional blog post, not a professional blogger.)  At any rate, I was looking for the best ‘Fridays with Narelle’ webinar to share with a friend looking for general educational info on protein powders/shakes, and since Narelle (Miessence founder and formulator) has done so many different in-depth webinars over the past few months, I realized, her YouTube video (see below) is probably the best, most comprehensive place to start anyway.

As always with Narelle’s videos, this has lots of great, general educational info on protein powders/shakes, and some good insight into her protein product as well.  Oh!  And if you’re wondering how your favorite protein powder/shakes stacks up to the criteria she shares, check out this chart – I’m amazed how many of the popular ones out there on the market are full of sugar!  Bleh.  (OK, sadly, I’m not really surprised, but what does amaze me is that people keep falling for the marketing pitch that this stuff is healthy.)

If you know people who might be interested in the Miessence Complete Protein powder, please share this post and/or my store link with them, but if you share my store link, please make sure they also know about the customer (called Lifestyle Members) discounts (scroll down here).  😉  And of course, they can contact me with any questions.  🙂  Thanks in advance for your referrals.  🙂

Like many, you may have first come in contact with the Miessence Community by researching probiotics and discovering InLiven and/or Fast Tract – the certified organic, prebiotic, probiotic fermented superfoods formulated by Czerral Wheeler.  You also may have had the opportunity to hear Czerral speak on a recorded interview, or even had the chance to ask him your questions on a live teleseminar.  Czerral was always so generous with his knowledge and time, and he has surely assisted tens of thousands or more on their health journeys.  While his recordings, information, wisdom, and products will carry on his legacy, I regret to announce that Czerral is no longer with us to inspire and teach directly.

When I first heard the news of Czerral’s passing, I felt this incredible mix of emotions.  Great shock and sorrow at the loss of such an inspirational, knowledgeable, caring, generous, and visionary man, but also an odd sense of rejoicing for him that he’d lived such an healthy life right up to the sudden end.  I think that’s the way we all hope to go someday – peacefully and quickly.

Czerral had over 30 years experience in the health food industry and particularly in the field of good bacteria, or probiotics.  In 1979 he became well known for his exclusive role in introducing spirulina to the world market. In the 1980s, he became focused on holistic enterprises dealing with research and development of “super-foods” – a word he coined to describe any organic food source that carries a broad spectrum of nutrients.  He was a featured speaker for motivational and health seminars, radio talk shows, and television interviews around the world.

I count it among many highlights of my life to have been able to interview and co-host interviews with Czerral over the past couple years.  He was always such a joy to work with and every time I heard him speak, I felt I’d learned something new.  I know many of you felt similarly, as you often expressed your gratitude for his knowledge in your emails and social media comments.

Thank you, Czerral, for everything you gave us.  You will be missed but not forgotten.  And thank you to everyone who eats InLiven, drinks Fast Tract, and/or tells your friends about what you’ve learned and experienced thanks to Czerral and the Miessence Community – you are also helping carry on his legacy of health to a whole new generation.

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If you’re new to my ‘once-in-a-while’ blog, you might not know that my family and I are in the process of moving to England to work with a network of small churches in the Midlands (which is a big part of why my blog writing is so sporadic these days around my consulting work in organics and preparing for this move).  Below is the report I wrote for our ministry newsletter about our recent 6 weeks away for Prefield Orientation.  Side note – If you have any hang-ups around the word “missions,” like I once did, please check out this older post.

Thank you so much for your prayers during our 6 weeks away.  The 4-week prefield orientation course and time spent with a community of people going through similar life transitions was a huge blessing for our whole family.  And our 2-week post-PFO road trip to visit friends, family, and ministry partners around the South was also wonderful even in the bittersweet goodbyes.

It is hard to summarize the whole experience, but suffice it to say, we are ever increasingly awestruck by God.  Spending time with other singles, couples, and families also heading overseas – hearing what God has done and is doing, through the good and the bad, in their individual lives and in the cultures to which they’re heading – and then spending time with friends and family, with their own unique callings and challenges – drove home ever further how personally, intimately, and powerfully the Father is active in the world through His Son and Spirit.

A major theme in the devotional portion of our course was repenting from our good works.  That may sound odd, but it made so much sense.  We cannot earn God’s love.  He loves us already in and through Christ’s death and resurrection to rescue and restore us.  Whatever mistakes and bad choices we make are covered by His grace and love.  But also, whatever good works we are called to do can then flow out of joyful response to His unearned love for us, instead of trying to earn His love through works.  Any form of works-based rightness before God is just another form of ‘manianity’ and breeds insecurity and competition.  Being totally free to follow God’s unique call on one’s life, in love-fueled response to His great love for us, removes any need to compare or compete and enables us to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn’ (Romans 12:15).  Each one of us has a unique and beautiful role to play in His story, through our good times and our bad times.

These truths have been especially helpful to us the past couple months.  While things are overall positive in our immediate household at the moment, many people around us, including close friends and family, are grieving losses, facing trials, and experiencing deep heartaches.  It’s a weird emotional roller coaster to enter into others’ grief at various points and to varying depths, then be, sometimes moments later due to the internet age, connecting with currently-happy people and exciting circumstances in other areas of our work.  Through it all, we’re reminded of God’s sovereignty and faithfulness over all circumstances and the deeper meaning of the word joy.  Whenever times of deep sorrow and trouble come to our household in whatever forms (as we are certainly not immune to them), we will take inspiration from the deep joy in the sadness that we see some of our friends exhibiting now in their times of grief, and we are grateful for how they rejoice with us in this season of our lives despite their hurts.

As all this rejoicing and mourning goes on in and around us, God continues to prepare our way over to England.  Our next three “hurdles” (not a bad thing, just milestones to be cleared), now that we’re home from PFO, are…

1- Connecting with the people through whom God will provide the remaining 30ish% of financial partnerships…  If that’s you, please let us know.  🙂  We still have many people to call and are getting back to booking MPD (ministry partner development) appointments now.  🙂  

2- Getting our visas…  Andy Hodson (the pastor with whom we’ll be working over in the Midlands) is working on all that now.  There is not much we can or need to do on this at this time – just pray!  Please pray with us for our visas.

3- Completing our educational planning course…  A six-module course to guide us as we think and pray through all the educational options for the kiddos.  Please pray for focus and time to work through this course well amid business, homeschooling, MPD, and other responsibilities.

If there is any way we can pray with you presently – whether tough stuff of life or praises to rejoice over – please let us know.

I arrived home late last night from an amazing time in Australia for the 2014 Miessence leadership retreat.  I don’t think I could possibly do the trip justice in writing, without many hours to pour it all out…  And my family and I leave tomorrow for “PFO” (pre-field orientation) in North Carolina, in preparation for our move to England hopefully by the end of the year…  So, this is only going to be a quick overview with bullet points…

Activities from the week:

• Welcome reception, reconnecting with old friends from around the world and meeting new ones
• Sunrise tour of Uluru
• Bush Yarns demonstration of Anangu skin and hair care
• Two days of wonderful business meetings (not at all your average ‘stuffy, boring meetings’)
• Sounds of Silence dinner under the stars
• An Anangu herbal medicine making demonstration
• A special sound healing event and time of sharing
• An astronomy tour
• A sunrise camel trek
• Walking into one of the gorges at Kata Tjuta
• Biking all the way round Uluru
• Various meal times throughout the week with friends
• Additional 3 days trip extension to the Gold Coast
• Attending a worship service with friends Sunday morning
• Walking along Burleigh Beach picking out seashells for kids
• Touring the Miessence HQ and factory
• Visiting ‘Natural Bridge’ – a beautiful waterfall cave formation
• Many hours on airplanes, but oh so worth it  🙂

Most meaningful experiences:

• Learning more about the Anangu people and their history; experiencing deep sorrow over the atrocities committed against them in the name of Jesus, but thankful to hear one of their leaders acknowledge that he could clearly see the hypocrisy when reading the teachings of Jesus himself.
• Treasured conversations, connecting on deeper heart and soul levels with a number of my colleagues.
• Meeting Alice, her mom Carmen, and sister Willow.  7 year-old Alice was there to spend time with the Anangu mothers and grandmothers through the Make a Wish Foundation.  Such a precious and inspirational girl and family.
• Getting to meet all the wonderful people at Miessence HQ who work behind the scenes to make it possible for me to work flexibly from home with my family.  So grateful for them all and everything they do.
• Time with my dear friend, Rochelle, who came along on the trip as my guest since Fred had to stay home with kids this year.
• Time with my Creator, spent in awe and wonder of His creation.
• A week’s worth of uninterrupted nights’ sleep.  Love my little one, but love sleep too.  🙂

Exciting business developments:

• More details were given on Miessence’s new collaborations with Buy1Give1 (click here).
• *** A new, raw and vegan protein superfoods product was announced – should be out by the end of the year and superior to anything else on the market.  🙂
• The company has developed some neat new social media online business tools for Reps, coming out around November.
• The destination of the 2015 leadership retreat was revealed – Cambodia!  So exciting!  🙂

Below is a quick picture.  If you’d like to see more, check out my Facebook page – I’ve added a few more there and might post more if I have time while on the road to NC.  🙂

Wow, please forgive me?  I last posted on March 7th, well over three months ago, with intentions to post again the following week.  🙁

Where has the time gone?!  Here’s an overview…

As March unfolded, I felt a strong and growing need to get offline for an extended “e-fast” again.  I periodically take these breaks from the noise of the online world to just rest, or reflect, pray, and gain clarity for next steps in life.

After hosting the online telesummit in February for my general consulting work, and keeping up with the follow up after it, I found myself wanting more and more to focus on the offline ministry partner development (MPD) work for our move to the UK, which Fred had been doing almost exclusively up to that point.

So, I unplugged from April 1st through Resurrection Sunday to pray and seek direction.  I came out of that time with a clear sense of needing to reduce the number of hours spent in my overall business so that I could join Fred in the MPD work.

Going forward, at least for now, I will be doing little to no general consulting work, but I am still 100% committed to serving my Miessence customers and team of reps – both existing and new.  Exciting shifts are beginning to take place in my business that I have always dreamed of but never would have guessed would be happening so soon.  More on that in another post someday perhaps, but for now, I just want to be clear, because people have been asking me – Yes, I am still committed to serving new and existing customers and reps in my Miessence business.

From Resurrection Sunday (4/21) through Pentecost Sunday (6/8), Fred and I held over 75 appointments with potential ministry partners and investors.  It was a whirlwind 7 weeks, but what a blessing and joy it was!  Seeing God bring this ministry team together is so exciting, and seeing Him challenge and stretch people to invest in His restorative Kingdom work is just awesome.  We count it a great joy to be stretching right alongside our partners in this work.  We are roughly halfway to our financial goals in this work and will be continuing with appointments in July once we’re settled from our move…

Yes, move!

For the last couple weeks, on top of more MPD appointments, year-end school activities for kids, a celebration night for our ministry team, we have been tackling perhaps the biggest project of all… purging and packing up our house.  We’ve actually had to take this week and next pretty much completely off from appointments, and my email has a vacation reply set, to focus on the packing and moving.

This is the home I grew up in from the age of 6 months, so needless to say, there has been much to sort through on the tangible physical levels as well as the emotional spiritual levels.

We had a huge yard sale last weekend and this weekend we are moving out!  Yikes!  One morning this week, I just sat on my front step for a half hour or so crying, praying, and blowing bubbles – remembering being a three year old here myself, then inviting my three year old to come outside and chase the bubbles with me.  Happy tears and sad tears.  Normal grieving and processing, making me that much more thankful for the past and excited for the future.

Despite the massive purge, there is still so much more to purge – not to mention making all the arrangements with the utility bills etc, and trying to sell some of the more valuable things that we don’t want to just take to the local thrift store.  Busy busy.  I probably “shouldn’t be” taking time to write this post right now, but it’s sorta therapeutic so giving myself the permission.  🙂

The official move out date is Sunday since the kids start summer camp in my parents’ town on Monday, but next week will be a transition week, with us breaking down furniture and staging things in the garage that will ultimately go on the shipping container, while my sister and her husband are moving their things in to the house.  We’ll be with my folks for July, Fred’s mom for August, then Lord willing, traveling and taking a month-long cross-cultural family preparation course in North Carolina during September and early October.  We are hoping and praying to be on the plane to England by the end of October.

So yeah, I never did get on the ball with my “Faith Friday” posts.  Maybe someday, but at this moment I have no idea when.  I feel like there are so many thoughts I want to write about, but for this season, I can only manage the occasional, more tangible, ‘family happenings’ update post.  If you want more regular updates on our journey into full-time ministry work overseas, you can subscribe here for our monthly email updates.

I must get back to work, but thank you all for your love, prayers, and support.  To everyone who has prayed, helped in some tangible way, bought items from our massive moving sale, chosen to partner with us financially in this ministry work…  Thank you!  🙂  And many thanks again to my Miessence customers and reps for your continued business – my family and I greatly appreciate it.  I may be slow on email replies for the next couple weeks during the moving and transitions, but please know that I am, with God’s help, still 100% committed to serving you to the best of my ability.

Love to all!  🙂