Chapter:low point

Before the new year got here, I spent some time evaluating where our family was and how we could get to where we wanted to be.  I love my family and while I know it isn't perfect, I think it is important to keep improving our chances of successful survival in this world.  By that, I mean not letting the environments around us change our values and morals.  And they currently are.  I have watched my children change this last year in ways I am not entirely happy about.  Some of that comes with the ages and some comes with the environment.  I want my children to have a stronger connection with their family, so Skype will be utilized a little bit more.  I need my children to learn the basic gospel, so we will have lessons at home again.  We did this in the Netherlands as well.  It is tiring, but necessary.  It would be nice to focus on family lessons, but this year they will once again focus on the scriptures, songs and principals they are supposed to be receiving in primary.  This is one of the problems with living in a country where the language isn't English.  Luckily, the children are receiving their Sunday school lessons in English because my husband is their teacher, so now we just have to work on the meaning of songs and scriptures and sharing time lessons.  I think this is a big gap in our lives right now...and the only place to change that is here.  We are going to work on steady scripture study and character building.

It is always easy to pretend like living overseas is easy.  This is one of the harder things.  It seems that having the church either makes things easier or harder.  When it is good, things are great and so much easier.  There are times, due to different traditions and things lost in translation, that it is extremely difficult.  This is just where we are at the moment.  It is not a good place, but we are taking control as we should as parents.  We have been really blessed in the past to trust that our children will be lead and guided by people who have integrity and strength.  I'm sure they are getting that now, it is just difficult to see or recognize because of the language issues.

I will probably erase this post because it isn't exactly uplifting.  It is a chapter in our life.  I hope that our children grow to be strong, courageous, full of integrity and able to be independently awesome.  There are just a few things at church and school that are teaching them the opposite right now and it is at times like this that I no longer scoff at the idea that 'it takes a village' because it becomes increasingly obvious to me that the village has a lot of influence on my children's lives...and if the village is bad that influences the children.  If the village is good, that does too!  I hate admitting it...