hefley

For a while now I’ve had on my heart to start sharing stories of how God’s has been and is providing in our own personal lives. Maybe it’s not so much for your sake as it is for my own… to recognize and remind myself of what God’s doing is invaluable for our future.

Just because there's not really any photos that go well with this story I'll just give you some of our family instead...just to remind you; "this is us, and we love having you in our lives!"

So here is my first little story, a fresh one as of this week:

Just the other day I came across this bible verse:

Luke 12:33 “Sell your possessions and give to the poor…”

As we’re preparing to move to Norway we’re in a unique position where we are getting rid of things anyways. Not everything will make it across the ocean. In fact as little as possible will make it across the ocean due to shipping cost. But there has been the struggle in our minds and hearts about what to do with the things we leave behind. Should we sell them and make as much money as possible to have a start up fund when we get to Norway and need to start purchasing new things? Or should we just give our things away and bless others, trusting that God will somehow work it out so we get what we need when we need them over there too?

Not until just the other day when I read that verse did this matter get settled in my mind. We are not going to sell our things for our own profit. What we sell will be sold to provide for the poor, and items that can be donated directly to the poor will be. When I spoke with Daniel about this he agreed, and what a joy it was to have this matter settled, knowing that we’re doing the thing God wants our family to do.

It’s fun to partner with God when it’s clear what His directives are. That gives us grounds for trusting that He also will work things out so we’re provided for as well.

A fresh photo of our family, from last weekends trip to Grand Junction. Goal for our trip: seeking wisdom from pastor frinends of ours about this next stage of our lives.

The fun thing is that just last night a friend happened to ask me if I possibly could make a list of needs; things we needed to get still that would be shipped to Norway. WOW! I don’t know if anything will come from that list thing, and really that’s not the important thing about this either. The thing with real value here is how God clearly sent me an encouragement to show me He has it all under control. Isn’t God cool?! Really, with real possibilities to get labeled a freak, I still have to just “shout it out”; I LOVE MY LIFE! It is such fun to get to be part of what God is doing, to see Him actively at work in the lives of people around me and in myself, challenging us to mature and live out the lives He planned for us all along. So cool!

So I thought I’d let you all in on how our day in the village was today. We’re helping a family of 5 get their well repaired, and today was the last day of the project.

Down this lane live the Murati family that from today on will have a safe water source.

1st part of the project, completed yesterday: a trench dug from the well to the house, where electric cord for the pump will be burried as well as a pipe leading the water into a plastic storage tank we've installed in their attic.

Mikayla and Daniel surveying the almost finished trench... =)

The next part of the project was getting the pump installed. A local plumber “master” as he’s called here put the pump together while Daniel and the rest of the team tried to pay as close attention as possible so they could learn the master’s tricks. =) The trench then got back filled, and we got a good nights sleep before we started tackling the rebar and the cement this morning.

The rebar needed to make a skirt around the well was layed down this morning. The purpose of the skirt is to hinder rain water from seeping into the well along with any kind of dirt it brings along from the surface. With a big cement skirt around the well we hinder new contamination of the water after we've got it shocked (with bleach) and the germs killed.

The local cement "master" at work on the cement skirt around the well.

The finished product! All we're waiting on now is for the lid we ordered to be delivered this afternoon. Then we'll shock the water with bleach and the family is good to go! Imagine safe water being pumped directly into their house for the very first time!

The Albanian housewives! =) They've started calling me Albanian because of the fact that I've already got 3 kids, and well, after having spent as much time as I have dealing with water related issues, or rather LACK of water issues the last week, I feel like I'm starting to relate. Regardless, sweet Mrs. Murati will forever more NOT have to go haul unsafe water out of her well for their daily day needs.

Sweet Mrs. Murati and her daugther made us a tasty lunch as a thank you today. YUM!

In the process of making lunch the Murati daugther let Emma Joy try her hand at baking with an old, outdoor wood stove.

What a feast!! Mikayla absolutely loved the Albanian dish we got served!

As always; thank you for following our journey and supporting us as we try to help one family at the time getting both a safe water source and the news of how to get the springs of living water the Bible talks about.

Love, the Hefleys

We’ve now been in the country of Kosovo for one whole week, and it is time to update you all and let you in on our first impressions of this beautiful country and it’s lovely people.

Our welcome to Kosovo last Wednesday.

As we arrived Skenderaj, our team of three interns from the States welcomed us into our new home that we’ll be sharing for the weeks to come. We have a two bedroom apartment on the 6th floor of a new apartment building, about 15 min drive from the village we work in. The Hefley’s get one bedroom, the two girl interns one, and our male student get to camp out in the living room at night together with our male translator. So far it’s working out great. We’re learning to live with limited access to water and electricity as they both get turned off at odd hours, and there is no telling when it gets turned back on. We’ve already experience having to buy bottled water just to wash our hands, but definitely see ourselves blessed that have the finances to be able to do just that. I don’t doubt a minute that the people in the village would not be able to afford such luxurity, and wouldn’t have that possibility anyways as they live too far away from the stores. They do have their own personal wells that as far as I understand was dug by some aid organization that came to help them right after the war. The only problem is that the wells were never completely finished and thus the water is unsafe, and also some of the wells run dry 3 months of the year which leaves the people at a place where their only water source left is the polluted stream running through the village. This stream I’ve now seen with my own eyes, and my kids have been strictly forbidden to go anywhere near it. It’s the dumping place for the villages trash, and also where a lot of their sewage is piped to.

All the bottles and buckets we had filled with tap water before the water got shut off. Now empty, and we're on to using store bought water to wash in. =)

We’ve had a few days in the village this past week, though most of this week has been more of a prep time for the coming month, and a time of settling in for me and the kids. Our team of students had a long weekend off to go see Greece, thus we only yesterday started getting a full days work in at the village (since our arrival). Calem got to help repair a well today, and I’m so bummed I didn’t have my camera so I could have taken a picture to show you how cute he was smoothing out the cement apron/skirt they were making around the well so the rain wouldn’t wash more contamination into the water. I’m saying “they” when sharing about who does the actual cement work and such, referring to the men. Women in this culture are not doing such physical labor, and thus I get to hang out with the women and the kids, drink tea and try to communicate as best as I can while the men suffer under the burning sun outside trying to secure a safe water source for the families.

Just to give you a visual of how things look like here. This is the view from our apartment in the big town.

Well, I think that’s going to have to be all for now, our you’ll get so tired of reading you won’t even want to open my next blog entries…

As always; we’d love to hear from you! Let us know you’re following our journey, and share yours so we can be a part of your lives too!

Much love from Signy Margrete and the rest of the Hefley crew.

Alright. We’re now on our way on to Kosovo. Denmark was a blast! That is, the Vineyard Nordic Leadership Conference was! It turned out that they had excellent facilities that made it possible for me to attend quite a bit of the meetings while either me or Daniel watched the kids in a nursery room with view of the auditorium and loudspeakers so we could hear. An extra special blessing was that a group of Vineyard Copenhagen young adults had programs for the kids all day Friday! What a blessing for a mom that thought I’d miss out on all the opportunities to network with the Vineyard family in this part of the world!

We definitely seem to get our fair share of complications trying to steal away our focus, so keep praying for us. As we’ve tried to be involved at this conference as much as possible one kid after the other has gotten sick, there was a huge mix up with our room at the hostel (read; lots of frustration), and conflicts in Kosovo that Daniel had to deal with.

The conference is now in the past and we’ve already had one night in a beautiful little town in Germany, and are now at a little hotel in Austria getting ready for our second night on the road. Tomorrow we’ll conquer another 3 countries; Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia and 656 km of driving…whatever that is in miles (just divide it by 1.6 and you’ve got your answer). We’ll have our last overnight stay in Serbia, and then we’ll be in Kosovo with our students that are waiting for us there the day after tomorrow, what ever day that is. I’ve totally lost track of days and time, so yes, I actually don’t know what day it is today…hehe

NOW SOME OF MY “TRAVELING WITH KIDS” OBSERVATIONS:

1: ALWAYS take the bus/metro if you can, especially when you don’t have a stroller. Don’t walk even if it’s only ½ km (1/3 of a mile). Believe me, it’s worth the money!

2: Be prepared to answer some interesting questions traveling in this part of the world. Thankfully I don’t think the kids noticed the kissing men we passed the other day, but I guess it’s only a matter of time until they do.

3: Bribing kids with candy is not a bad thing! Neither is letting the kids see movies in the car. It helps us all stay sane!

4: Don’t even for a moment think that you’ll make it through a road trip without needing to deep clean the car afterward.

5: Oh yeah…Hostel rooms without an attached bathroom is not a good idea. Especially when the kids are too young to wander the hallways of the hostel on their own and you’ve got two other kids you need to watch besides the one you have to follow to the bathroom. Of course they always decide they have to use the loo right when Daniel has left the room and I’ve got three kids on my own. What’s up with that?!

I apologize for not having any photos in this post, making it more interesting for visual people (like myself). My computer has a full “start up disc” (can anyone tell me what that means?) that makes it impossible to download more photos from my camera. Sorry! =(

Lots of love from Signy Margrete and the crew

What an honor God bestowed upon Mary as He chose her to be the mom of His salvation plan! Yes, I’ve experienced enough pregnancies, labors and years of trying to rear little kids to know that it can not have been all glorious, but still; to be picked to be the ONE to carry Jesus into the world is quite something!

For some reason I’ve always had this picture of Mary being the perfect young girl. I’ve always had tucked in my mind the thought that she must have lived a sin free life, always been pleasing both to her parents and to God for her to be picked for such an important job. I don’t know if I’ve ever put words to those thoughts before, but that’s definitely the picture of Mary I’ve been carrying around all these years.

Doesn't she just look perfect? No wonder I thought she was sin free!

Today as I started delving into the story of what happened around Jesus’ birth one word hit me; GRACE. My Norwegian Bible actually tells of how Gabriel was sent to Mary to say “Rejoice, you who have been shown such great grace by God…” (Luke 1:28)  and “Do not be afraid, Mary, for God has found that He will show you great grace.” (Luke 1:30).

The American Bible translations I checked all refer to Gabriel’s message to Mary as “favored one” instead of “the one God has shown great grace” as my Norwegain Bible reads. I looked up the original Greek word, and it does in fact refer to the act of freely being shown grace or kindness to.

By definition grace means that we get good things we don’t deserve. That implies that Mary didn’t deserve the great gift God was about to give her. She wasn’t a perfect person. Neither am I. Mary and I are in the same boat. We are both sinful people, yet God decided He wanted to bring the world freedom through her. Realizing the enormity of what God did through a sinful person, a person that simply did not deserve it gives such hope to the rest of us. Despite the fact that God knows our past, and being outside time as He is he also sees the many mistakes and the pile of sin we will commit in the future, still He chooses to let us be part of His amazing plans! Thank you, God, for not counting us out, but letting us still get a chance at being part of the game.

Me - still part of the game...not "because of", but "despite of"

I was reading my Bible a little while back when a small word – IT  – popped out at me and reminded me of my own story

1 Samuel 4:

Now the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines. The Israelites camped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed their forces to meet Israel, and as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about four thousand of them on the battlefield. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the LORD bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the LORD’s covenant from Shiloh, so that IT may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.”

The Israelites put their trust in the ark instead of in God, with fatal consequences…that day 30,000 foot soldiers got killed and the ark was captured by the Philistines.

How often don’t we place our trust in something else than God?

This spring when I was struggling with anxiety and fear I actually thought my focus was on God. I could tell as much as that my struggles were of a supernatural nature more than a pure physical one, therefore I spent much time talking to God begging him to show me the way to freedom. “God, You can set me free!” was on my mind a lot.

Well, freedom did come, but only after God challenged me on my focus. Early June God spoke clearly to me and said “Lift your eyes to me!” Seriously?! I was really surprised when God spoke those words to me…I hadn’t done anything but praying and clinging to him all spring!

The beauty I was looking at when God gave me the challenge: "Lift your eyes to me!"

I was surprised, but it didn’t take me more than a minute to see how right God was. My focus had become what God could do for me, instead of me lifting my eyes to Him, looking at Him for who He is. My eyes had slid down to the circumstances I was in and to all the yuck that’s in the world – and it scared me. Freaked me out is actually a better description.

...and He kept reminding me night after night; "Keep your eyes lifted - look at Me!"

The time since God gave me this challenge has been used to train myself to not let myself get caught up in what’s going on around me, but rather resting my eyes on God. It’s difficult at times, and I can feel the anxiety trying to rear it’s ugly head when I’m not faithful at keeping my eyes on God. But oh how freeing it is when I obey God and get to reap the great freedom that comes with it!!

My prayer is that I will never again get caught up focusing on the wrong thing, but to only put my trust in God! He is the only one that can bring complete FREEDOM!!

As I was sitting on the toilet I grabbed one of Mikayla’s little books from her to-read-while-I-practice-going-potty-basket. The book was about Eeyore’s missing tail, and how Tigger helped him find it. The last picture shows Eeyore with his tail back where it belongs, and Eeyore smiling because of it, but honestly it’s kind of a sad smile. As I kept looking at the picture it dawned on me; Eeyore is depressed!

Ever since I was little it always bothered me that Eeyore always was so sad. Much because of Eeyore, I didn’t really care much to read books about the 100 acre wood creatures. It simply bothered me to see Eeyore!

Now I’m a grown up, and I’ve experienced a year of depression myself. Looking at the picture of Eeyore, I have to say it almost amused me to realize that I now can sympathize with the sad donkey.

Lately I’ve been working my way through a book study called “The friendships of women” by Dee Brestin. Today I was asked to answer the following question: “In what ways has suffering caused you to be more empathetic and less judgmental?” Well, I haven’t experienced the kind of suffering the author was describing in her book; loss of a spouse, but I have experienced hardships of other kinds and with God’s help made my way to the other side of them; depression, panic and anxiety, guilt and condemnation, and feeling that you are at the end of what you can handle because of exhaustion.

God has seen me through these things. I am thankful and blessed to be able to say that I am free! Have these hardships shaped me? Definitely! Am I more empathetic and less judgmental then before? I think so. My heart hurts for the ones that are going through these things that I now have firsthand knowledge of. I pray that God will always that pain to be fresh in my mind so that I will never stop empathizing with the ones going through such horrors!

After this last bout of mine; a year of anxiety on and off, I’ve been surprised to find how many deal with the same thing. My eyes were never open to people suffering this way before I experienced it firsthand. Now I realize that it isn’t only Eeyore and me that have been bound by depression and/or anxiety. It’s actually pretty common.

My prayer is; God, would you show us how to help see each one suffering be set free?!

When I started blogging a while back I had every intention of being more faithful at writing, but by now I’ve had quite a break from thehefleys.com…

I started a blog series on “finding simplicity”. Since then my quest has taken quite a different form from what I envisioned. I envisioned being able to find great storage solutions, getting our home organized, and finding simple solutions that would make the household run more smoothly.

Over the last few months I’ve been dealing quite a bit with anxiety and fear attacks, and although I do believe some of that is part of the spiritual war we as Christians constantly find ourselves in, I’m also learning how much our physical well being, or lack thereof, plays into this.

By now it’s 5 ½ years since I’ve had a full nights sleep. My body has endured 4 pregnancies (we’ve got one little one in Heaven and three here), and the entire time I’ve not been pregnant, I’ve been nursing a baby. In fact I’m still nursing, and at times the nursing and pregnancies have overlapped for months. When we moved from Hawaii 1 ½ years ago my time outdoors got drastically reduces, and getting a proper work-out or even a proper walk outdoors where I don’t have to stop every 3rd step to wait on a toddler, hasn’t really happened since before Calem was old enough to walk on his own…which by the way happened when he was 10 months old! I’ve not been the greatest to ensure that I eat enough fruits and veggies and get the nutrition my body needs, and I am still struggling to get my 8 cups of water down each day. On top of that we can add the daily dealings with 3 kids under 5, a major move in 2008, quite a bit of traveling over the years and few breaks as we don’t live close to family who can take the kids for us now and then.

Back in 2007, just weeks before Emma was born.

Now I’m not writing this to complain. My only reason for listing these facts are to show how my body now has come to a point where changes really need to happen. Thus “finding simplicity” has gotten a new meaning to me over the last few weeks. Lately my focus has been on finding ways I can get outdoors, even at times get a chance at going for a walk on my own. I’ve actually read 3 relaxing, fiction books lately which truly happen very seldom (and when it does happen it’s normally mixed with feelings of guilt from all I’m neglecting), and I have tried not to stress over the amount of work that’s piling up before me. There are so many things I need to focus on, but for now I’ve realized that I need to relearn how to take care of my own body (and mind).

So today my plan is to spend as much time as possible outside with the kids. I’ve got loads of laundry that has to be done, but in between the loads I want to spend my time in the yard planting strawberry plants with the kids. It might be a little early for strawberries, but still I’ll give it a try.

Calem and Emma in our backyard when we first moved here 1 1/2 year ago. If you look closely you can spot a squirrel over by the fence.

The weather is beautiful: the sun is warm, there is no wind and we’ve got three squirrels racing each other in our backyard.

I need to get out there!

This afternoon I got an email from my good friend, Maribel. Maribel is one of those people that  have the amazing ability to connect people, and personally I think she must know a ton of people in all spheres of society.

Well, one of her friends, who lives in Denver, has gotten connected with a family that has just been moved here from the refugee camps in Congo. The details are still a bit vague as I’m receiving 2nd or 3rd hand information at this point, but I will share the story as I understand it.

An organization called Family Lutheran Services moved a widow, Muhasi, and her 8 children here 2 weeks ago. Her children range in age from 2 to 18 years of age. Family Lutheran Services do the job of getting them here, providing a temporary apartment, get them food, mattresses and 1 sweatshirt. All the rest of their needs are being put in the hands of churches that are willing to “adopt” them.

As far as I understand the family is here on temporary work visas which means they have to learn English fast, find jobs and get established in a hurry. I feel for this single mom that has so many children to care for, stranded in a culture so different from her own, and with such a pressure to get going so she can take care of them all. According to my friend this family arrived with only the clothes they were wearing, flip flops and two small suitcases between the nine of them.

With all that said; as soon as I got the email I got new motivation to go through our home and see what we could give away. There is something different about going through your possessions to see if there is something you could give up when you know it is for the sake of helping someone that doesn’t have anything. I regularly give away clothes the kids have grown out of and other things we no longer need or want either to people I know that would like them or to the Resource Center at our church, where they later will be handed out to the under-resourced people living here in Fort Collins. But these are always things I am 100% sure we will never need again, and I leave items I’m not sure about in our home to collect dust until I’ve reached my verdict.

When you hear of someone with such urgent needs as this family the story changes. As soon as I read the email I thought with regret that I’d just recently been giving away another batch of clothes that the kids have grown out of…but with new determination I started going through our closets again. This refugee family have a four year old boy and a two year old daughter. Anything more perfect than that is simply impossible to get. Calem is 4 ½ and Emma 2 ½. I’m guessing their clothes will fit perfectly, or maybe even be a little big now on the children from Congo, but at least then they will last longer for them.

Calem helped me go through his own clothes, choosing some to give away. Emma had piles and piles of clothes she’s been blessed with from her older girlfriends, much of which made it’s way into trash bags ready to be taken to Denver.

Some of what is behind these door are going!

Getting an opportunity to help someone in such dire needs really gets you to examine your own life and your own possessions better. Does Emma really need 30 shirts? No! Of course she doesn’t and I’ve known that all along, I just haven’t known which ones to give away and since I didn’t have anyone in particular to give them to they just kept sitting there on her shelf.

Does Calem need 10 pairs of shorts this summer? No! In fact I’m not even sure I want to bring more than half that amount with me to Norway this summer….As I was going through the kids summer clothes I started realizing that I shouldn’t hold on to more than I would be willing to cram in our suitcases and haul around half of Norway. Very logical…I just hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking and planning earlier.

After an hour or two of sorting clothes and such I’ve already gotten three trash bags full of clothes, blankets, towels and such ready for Maribel to bring to Muhasi and her children on Saturday. That is three trash bags full of things that I otherwise would have kept holding on to, probably without really needing. Yes, we would have used the different items a few times, but really we can do without!

I’m hoping that by tomorrow night the amount to give away will have been doubled. The children wants to go through their toys to select some they can give away. I have my own closet to go through still, and I’m sure I can find a bunch of other things around our home that would be a blessing to those that came here with next to nothing.

What an exciting thing to be able to use some of our things to bless a family in need! Daniel is excited too, though for another reason. As he was looking at the growing pile of things that would de-clutter our home he smilingly exclaimed: “This is great! I wish more refugees would move here!”

For a while now I’ve been thinking it’d be fun to keep a blog of organizational tips that I test around my own home. Anyone that has visited my home could readily agree that some organization would be needed. It’s not that I don’t know HOW to organize; I love organizing! It could be my past time hobby!  The challenge is just to find the time to do it and to find the space needed for doing organization projects. Now I guess that is an oxymoron…obviously it would be better when living in smaller quarters to actually have things properly organized, but oh how hard it is to organize properly in small spaces!

Now I don’t really consider our place small. It is way bigger than the room + loft we had in Kona, but somehow I never seem to find a great way of doing things so this household can run smoothly… So, yes, writing this blog makes me feel a little like the hypocrite in the Bible that wanted to remove the speck from his friends’ eye when he had a log in his own. So please, bear with me; don’t take this as me lecturing to any of you, but rather as my attempt at getting our own home situation figured out, and maybe, just maybe the tips I find useful can help someone else along the way too.

Calem and Emma being silly in our never-ending messy home

By the way, there is an extra challenge involved…I don’t like spending money on buying all those fancy organizational tools that are out there. If you had unlimited resources (and an IKEA nearby) getting a home to function and run smoothly wouldn’t be so hard. Although that would be nice, it’s just not the reality for many. So here is the deal; I want to spend the money I’ve been blessed with on more important things (like saving up for us all to be able to go to Norway this summer), therefore my challenge to myself and us all is to only use things we already have around the house in our quest for simplicity. My promise is that if I do find that there is something I’d like to buy to make things easier I will only use money I get from selling something else that we don’t need anymore. Now isn’t that a thought; selling something that is really just gathering dust so that I can get something beneficial?! Amazing how logical that thought is, but still so often overlooked, and hard to do! It is hard to give up our things, isn’t it? My thoughts often linger on the following questions; What if we would need it again in the future? We’re for sure not going to get the real value of it if we sell it, right? There are so many reasons why we keep holding onto things, but I am learning and re-learning that things are just things, and not really that important.

The goal right now is to get us organized and for this household to run smoothly; SIMPLICITY!