Summer Part 1

It has been a long time since I have posted so there is a lot to catch up on. My last post was at the end of May. Since then we have been busy. We went to  Austin to see Andy’s brother DJ graduate from law school at the end of May. We were blessed to get to spend time with Andy’s family including his aunt and uncle from St. Louis! We came back to Dallas and worked a lot of shifts and watched a lot of basketball since the Mavericks went all the way this year. Then, our beautiful little baby girls turned two. I guess they are not really babies anymore. They are turning into these precious little people who say and do cuter things everyday. We had a Mickey Mouse cake with Duke, Nonni, Papa and Yaya in Lubbock and Uncle Ben and Aunt Naomi came from California! After that was the Lake. For the last 37 years, my mom and all her sisters and their kids have met at Lake Travis in Austin to spend a week together. It was a wonderful week of swimming and playing with cousins! We came home and said goodbye to Suzanne (my wonderful cousin who moved to Chicago on July 2nd). That was hard. I am really thankful that Aunt Judy, Jaclyn, and Kayland visited the next week.  They made it a fun week and helped us get through week 1 with no SuSu. Then our sweet big girl turned 4! It doesn’t seem possible that she is 4. Papa, Yaya, Duke, Nonni, Uncle Ben and Uncle DJ came to help us celebrate. Now we are getting back into the swing of life in Vickery.

Family Picture at Lake Travis

Betty and Lucy are 2!

Some of the kids from our complex help us celebrate Ruth's birthday!

Life continues to be full and sweet. We love our new home. It has not been an easy couple of months, but it has been good. God is teaching me lots of things. I am being changed and molded by this time in a way that will hopefully make me more of the woman God desires for me to be. Most of the time, I feel like we thought we were moving in to help refugees and God is showing me that there is more for me to learn than there is for me to help with. We are incredible blessed to have our small group walking this road with us and helping us grow. 

Playing with our friends Julia and Thim Ding (who knew 5 kids in a pack and play was so much fun)

Jaclyn cutting purses with Indira

Jaclyn with our 11 year old girls (just sewing for fun)

Fun with friends

Vickery Threads is growing with more and more women who want to join us. What a blessing. We are now in the process of becoming a non-profit (something I have no idea how to do, but God has blessed us with an awesome lawyer named Hanna who is volunteering her time to set it up). We are also in the process of trying to get more volunteers and yesterday the new womens minister at Northwest Bible Church came over to see and brainstorm ways to get more ladies involved. We have the sweetest ladies and kids that come sew with us. We even got to sew with a group of 11 year olds for fun last week!

We are growing. We have 4 machines now! This is Dawt Ying, Sa Ron, San Dahtwe, and Evinna working on bags together. This was a sweet sweet day. We had 5 women/ 9 kids join us for morning sewing and then 6 women/5 kids join us for afternoon sewing.

Htwe Nyo with her first zippered tote. She is a sweet mama of two kids, Lisa and Carason.

Evinna shows her new tote. She has one little boy who is sweet as can be.

This is Sa Ron. She is an amazing lady who is a mother of 5. Her oldest is in middle school and her youngest is baby Julia (in the picture - she is not quite 1). Sa Ron and her children are such a joy to be around.

Andy is enjoying playing soccer with the kids and adults at Vickery. We have neighbors from Honduras that he is getting to be good friends with. They watch soccer together in the evenings. Yesterday they taught him that if you rear end a standard transmission vehicle that won’t start and push it really fast through the parking lot it will start (I sat in our car with the girls trying to explain why daddy was drivng one of our neighbor’s cars into the other one and pushing it around). They also let him play on the Honduran team for friendly soccer matches against the team from Mexico at the local park. He is playing guitar for worship at Celebration (the tuesday night VBS in Vickery) and co-leading the youth bible study on Friday nights. Our girls are starting to enjoy kicking the soccer ball with the neighbors in the evenings (when it cools down from 105 to 101 - come on October!)

Andy leading worship

Our girls get more fun everyday. In the last few months, it has been fun to watch them play together more and more. The three of them are becoming great friends. They love to sit around together and say silly words like eyeball and then all laugh hysterically over and over. Ruth is a great big sister. She is patient with her little sisters (most of the time) and is a great help when all the refugee kids come over. She has a big imagination and loves to put on plays and make up songs (and the great thing about having little sisters is that when you make up a song, they will sing it with you). Lucy is exuberant about life. She bounces when she walks and it is fun to watch her excitement. She is also passionate about being upset and has the best lower lip sad face of the 3. Betty is still tiny (but she is getting closer to being on the growth curve). She loves to check things out in detail and she works really hard to do things by herself. She is also starting to love to sing and it is fun to walk in and hear her tiny singing loud!

So, summer has been fun and we are looking forward to one more month of summer in Vickery before all the refugee kids head back to school. We are excited that the Newby’s will be home this weekend, happy Shelley is back from Bolivia, and looking forward to Valerie’s return from Afghanistan. It will be fun to have the whole crew in Vickery again. 

Life is Good!

We have been in Vickery for 3.5 weeks and it gets better everyday. There are so many things about the neighborhood that we love! I am not sure how many places in the world a person could have the opportunity to live in an apartment complex that is so diverse with people from so many different nations. We are so blessed to be here!!

One of the best things about Towne Center (our complex) is that we are never alone. People there live in community. Kids play outside (often in the parking lot which is a little scary) together. Adults sit outside and chat. We have people over everyday. We live with some of the most wonderful people from Northwest Bible Church. It is sheer joy to spend time with them and we are learning so much.  We live with wonderful refugee kids and families that are teaching us all about community and love and brokenness. We have been blessed by family, friends, and small group coming over to be with us.

So here is a bit of what we have been up to. Andy has been spending lots of time with the youth boys and young men. Between basketball, soccer, and bible study, he is busy and sore. He has enjoyed teaching basketball to the Nepali boys and learning soccer from Latin, African, Nepali, and Burmese players. He loves going out the soccer fields at Conrad to play with skilled players from 4 different continents (it is cool to see people of all races united by a game and maybe a glimpse of what heaven will be like when people from all nations are united in Christ). The girls and I spend most of our time sewing and hanging out with the Vickery Threads ladies and their children.

Ruth woke up at 2:30 last night and came out to the living room to find me. I picked her up and started to go lay down with her. She said, “I don’t want to sleep, I just want to sew.” I am so thankful that God has provided an opportunity for us to do ministry with our kids that they are enjoying too.

I also want to share a little more about Vickery Threads. There are now 2 Nepali and 10 Burmese women that sew with us. They are amazing. I want to share a little about a few of them. Jamuna is one of the Nepali refugees. She is a beautiful sophomore at Conrad High School. She is a blast to be around and we love having her at our house. I am so proud (and humbled by her). Last week she was given an award for being the most outstanding girl in the 10^th grade at Conrad (remember she has only been in the US for a few years and English is not her first language).  Way to go Jamuna! She works hard and it shows in her school work and in her life. She makes really cute bags and wants to use the money to help her parents. She is dreaming of attending a University when she graduates.

I am going to tell you a little about the Burmese women as a group and will share more individual stories later. I am most impressed with the way they live in community and support each other. For example, 6 women will come to my apartment with anywhere from 6-12 kids depending on the day. They will then manage to each complete atleast one purse. Most of the time, I feel like I can not accomplish much when I am with a group of kids. It is awesome the way the work together to take care of everyone’s kids, thread needles or sew buttons for one another, and accomplish amazing things as a group. I am having so much fun watching, learning, and hanging out. (if you want to see some of the stuff they make it is at facebook.com/vickerythreads)

This week has been amazing for us. The Newby’s moved in! My Mom and Dad came to visit and Mom got to stay all week. That was so wonderful I can’t describe it. We had a fun Vickery girls night, lots of fun sewing time, and several Mavs watching nights! Now we are headed to Austin to see Andy’s brother DJ graduate from law school and be with Andy’s family. Life doesn’t get any better than this!

THis is Jamuna!

At the zoo with Nonni!

Soccer!

Today is 2 Weeks

Today makes two weeks in our new home. More and more it feels like home. We are getting to know our neighbors and are blessed by the people God has already brought into our lives.

Vickery is a cool place. Our next door neighbors are from Honduras, but their good friends with a guy from Egypt so Andy gets to sit outside some evenings and talk with all of them. I get to spend time almost daily with ladies from Burma and Nepal. Andy played soccer last night with guys from all over the world.

Here is a quick update on our family. The girls are doing well and liking the new apartment more and more. What Ruth says keeps me aware of what I talk about. Several days ago, she wanted to pretend that we were on an airplane and she was the captain. I had to go to the bathroom, so I asked her if her airplane had a bathroom. She replied, "We have two. One here (points) and one here (points), but they both have mold. You can pick." I realized I needed to talk a little more about the good parts of our new home and a little less about the mold (which seems to be gone - the apartment office was great about getting the leak fixed and the mold killed). Ruth is also enjoying all the kids that come to play/sew with us. Here is a picture of her and a couple of the Burmese girls.

Life is crazy busy and fun here. I am amazed at how quickly I forget to trust God for things. I find myself getting very overwhelmed by all the need/opportunities there are here. I try to take control and come up with ways to solve things and this leads to stress. I am trying to remember that GOD put us here and is giving us opportunities and has a plan far better than anything I will ever come up with. God created and has been sustaining this whole world including all of Vickery Meadows without my help for a long time. I am just blessed to be participating is His plan. (I will probably forget this again tomorrow and need to be reminded again).

Better head to bed. Tomorrow is dentist day for all 3 girls...

Update on Life at the Kahn Home

I have never written a blog before, but the last couple of months have been crazy and I want to share what has been going on. In February, we were living life as normal. Andy was offered a promotion (that would have required a move) and we started praying about what we should do. At the same time, we decided to read "Radical," a book my dad had recommended over the holidays and that one of our friends had also recommended. To make a long story short, we decided to sell our house and move into an apartment in Vickery Meadows.

Vickery Meadows is an area of Dallas that has a lot of apartments and lots of people. It is where most of the refugees in Dallas come initially when they arrive in the US. It is definitely not the nicest or safest area in Dallas, but this D magazine article has a great perspective on what a cool place it can be (How Vickery Meadow became Dallas' own United Nations).

We moved into our new apartment on April 26th. The first week was hard for me. I think moving with 3 small kids is always hard, so I guess I should not have been surprised. It was hard to find places for our stuff (the apartment is much smaller than our house), I miss our neighbors, I miss the space in our kitchen, and I really miss living with Suzanne (my cousin who is more like a sister who is living with us until she moves to Chicago in July).

We have now lived here for one week and one day. It is getting really cool. Today, for example, we ate dinner at home and a little boy from Congo joined us. Then 6 Burmese women, who do not speak english, and 5 of their children came over to sew (more on this later). Then some of the other people from our church who live in Vickery, some fun friends, and a new Nepali friend joined us to watch the Mavs game tonight.

I will write more details later. I want to quickly mention the sewing project as an explanation for the pictures on facebook. Emily, one of the Northwest Bible girls who has lived here for 8 months, started sewing with a couple of girls from Nepal. The goal was to fellowship with them and give them a way to make a little bit of money for thier families. This week, 6 Burmese ladies joined the mix. We now have bags that are up for sale. All of the money goes to the refugees (on a $20 bag, they will take $18 home and save $2 for supplies. We are really blessed in that we are getting lots of donations to help cover the cost). Tonight was really fun. It was amazing that although we don't speak the same language, we were able to communicate well enough to have a great time and each lady was able to complete 1 bag. I am so excited to get to be a part of this.

Here are a few pics of this week.

Ruth in front of our new apartment

Some of the bags sewn by the Burmese and Nepali ladies

Burmese sewing group on Saturday

Our awesome new bedroom! The movers were a bit surprised that you could fit 3 beds into the bedroom. A sweet reminder that GOD is in control and has a plan for us... the width of all of our beds is 90 inches, the width of the bedroom is 94 inches!

We are blessed beyond measure and really excited to see what God has in store for us.