Merry Christmas and an Update!

Merry Christmas from the Stephensons!

Wow, what a year this has been! January found us in the highlands of Papua New Guinea wrapping up our last few months of service as volunteer missionaries there at the hospital mission station. Danielle had the privilege of teaching the highschool-aged missionary kids and offering them specific insights on preparation for the transition to college in America. Morgan used his incredible ability to fix almost anything to impact the day-to-day workings of the mission station, and his love for the people around him to impact the lives of the men he worked alongside. Theron and Lula won friends and hearts at every turn. We are so thankful that God allowed us that wonderful experience during the last year and a half, and that He has continued to lead us forward this year as we have explored what He has in store for us next. Thank you, our friends and family, for your ongoing support and encouragement as we have followed God’s calling to the ends of the earth and back again!

In March, we returned to the States to serve for the summer at Golden Bell Nazarene Camp in Divide, Colorado, where we had spent some time before leaving for Papua New Guinea. My (Danielle’s) brother and his wife served there with us as summer staff, as well as some other close friends of ours, so congratulations to Golden Bell for surviving that whole crowd of adult Missionary Kids serving this summer!

Our summer at Golden Bell confirmed our deep love for and desire to continue in Camping Ministry. In an increasingly fast-paced world, Christian Camps provide a much-needed place of retreat with God and life-changing experiences for the kids, teens, and adults who come through our doors. A series of connections that could only have come from God led us this fall to LifeChange Camp in Clinton, Missouri, where we moved at the beginning of November. What an amazing place! We are so thankful to God for leading us to “the desires of our hearts” here in this beautiful little camp in the Ozark woods, where we are close to family, we can serve as a family together at the camp, and we get to be a part of an amazing ministry team.

LifeChange Camp began 11 years ago with the dream of founders (and current directors) Bill and Carol Anderson, to provide a Christian Camp with an atmosphere of care and attention to detail. Guests feel as though we, the staff, have invited them into our home to take care of them.  It now is a gem of adorable cabins, a tiny lake (with, to Theron’s delight, BOATS), meeting areas, camp sites, an RV park, and hiking trails. We provide an intentional place to slow down, breathe deeply, and meet with God and others. Morgan is serving primarily as the Facilities Director, while Danielle fills the position of Guest Services Coordinator. As is always true with Camp Ministry, though, we all do everything! The kids have even been “helping” with cleaning, cooking, and (mostly) taste-testing any and all snack materials. Come visit us!

LifeChange is a Partner-Supported Ministry, in which all staff members are committed to helping raise awareness and support as we work together toward our vision: to proclaim the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ to children, youth, and adults, raising up the next generation of spiritual leaders through Christian Camping.  We do this by inviting partners to join us - the Spiritual support of the vast Christian community is essential to what God is doing here. Your financial partnership goes directly toward our salary/support package, making it possible for Life Change Camp to keep costs low, offering Christian Camping experiences to kids and ministry workers at a price they can afford.

Our current target support goal is $500 a month, or 20 partners at $25/month. We are asking you, our family and friends, to prayerfully consider what God might be asking you to contribute towards this goal.

How to give:

1. Send a check with our name in the memo line to:

Life Change Camp

351 NE 831 Rd

Clinton, MO 64735

    2) Donate online at http://www.lifechangecamp.org/get-involved/giving

LifeChange is a 501(c)3 organization, which makes all donations tax-deductable.

Also extremely important, and a big part of the reason we are asked to raise support, is prayer support. However, prayer support goes both ways: we don’t need it any more than you do! So, we would like to pledge to you that if you pray for us, we also will pray for you. Please keep us updated as to the things we can be praying specifically for you, and we will pledge to do the same for you! If you would like to be involved in this way, write and let us know.

We are so thankful for the incredible support system God has given us in all of you. Thank you for partnering with us as we move forward into this ministry. We hope to be here a very long time!

Serving Him with you,

Morgan, Danielle, Theron, and Lula Stephenson

Culture Shock

It's like sitting down at the piano to play a brand new song. I stare at the sheet of symbols in front of me, knowing that they should mean something which means something to my brain and my fingers, but I can't quite make it out. The music stumbles down my fingers and what emerges sounds like a drunk chicken dancing the macarena on the keyboard. So discouraging. I think, I will never be able to play this song. 

It is like that moment when the staircase runs out of stairs before my brain does and for one heart-stopping instant, the ground is not where I knew it would be. 

It is as if I step out of the door one day, and the sky is a striking shade of green, and I can't figure out why no one else is commenting on it or noticing it until I wonder if maybe I am the one who is crazy and the sky has been green all along. 

Sometimes it is obvious, when I go to bow and run into the other person's outstreched handshake. 

Or when I take off my shoes at the door and then my poor bare feet are embarrassingly naked all by themselves in an entire house full of well-clothed feet. 

Sometimes it is subtle and confusing, when I can't figure out why grocery shopping leaves me exhausted and stressed. 

Or when I go to say goodbye and everyone is gone before I thought we were half-way through the goodbying. 

It is as if I am dancing with the world around me and seem to be just half a step off from everyone else, just out of sync, just wrong, and everyone whose toes I step on and whose arms I run into look at me as if they cannot figure out what manner of thing is wrong with me. 

Sometimes, for no obvious reason, I am so tired and so confused and so overhwelmed and I can't even put my finger on the reason why. It is as though gravity was increased just a notch or two while I slept and now every task takes just a little bit more effort than I expect it to. (Of course, that may be courtesy of moving to 9200 feet altitude)

It is as though, as I look around, I begin to despair of anything ever being what I expect it to be again. As though I will forever be living off-balance. Out of sync. Out of touch. Alone. Both painfully invisible and embarrasingly obnoxious. Never knowing what to say or what to do or when to do or say or it, and always, always guessing wrong. 

But then, one day, I step out of my door and my foot lands sure upon the step.

And the sky looks lovely today, with it's familiar, exotic green, and although I still think skies are pretty when they are blue, green seems to be a nice alternative. 

And I realize when I reach the top of the hill, the end of the day, that I am not so very worn out. I realize that I can walk faster, jog, even run. 

One day I sit down and the song seems more familiar, and I know what these symbols are trying to tell and the music trickles down my fingers and slowly, haltingly tiptoes across the keyboard in shy harmony. 

One day I meet their outstretched hand with a firm, confident shake and enjoy the boldness and up-frontness of this culture.

One day I take my shoes off at the door and laugh at everyone's looks of knowledge that this is just who I am, that I am a little different and that is ok. 

One day I step forward into the dance and I am still a little different of rhythm, but it works, and I weave my way between the dancers and greet their smiles with one of my own as we acknowledge the spice of life and dance together. 

I sit down at the piano and settle into the familiar sight of this song and the music flows eagerly down my fingers and dances strong and sure and free across the keyboard and echoes in my soul and I realize that this song will forever be a piece of me, no matter what other songs I sing. 

And when I next sit down in front of a new sheet of music, I step out slowly but confident that it will someday sing like the song before. I know that as awkward and odd as it seems now, I will one day dance with these people like I have with those before. One day, this place will be familiar too. And my life will be richer for the addition of this song within my soul.

And so I play. 

Judging Her

I looked at her with her slightly baggy jeans that had given up on life a while back and yet she just kept wearing as if she did not realize that they were barely hanging on. 

Her tummy pooched a little, the pooch of a woman who had gotten pregnant again before quite regaining her former shape after the first baby. The pooch of a woman who now realizes she probably won't ever be quite exactly the same again.

I looked at her hair... Not quite short, not quite long, not quite brown, not quite blonde, not quite straight, not quite curly. It was scooped up in little twists and bobby pinned into submission far from reaching grabbing baby hands. 

I looked at her, like I had looked at so many others like her, and to my surprise, I found that I had no judgment for her this time. I did not mentally criticize her clothing, or her lack of makeup, or her obvious unenthusiasm for sit ups. 

I thought abought the dishes that piled dirty in her sink, and the tupperware and pans piled haphazardly in her cupboards, and felt only kinship, and even pride in her for choosing to play with her kids or kiss her husband or even just be without worrying that for this moment in time, the dishes remained unwashed.

I noticed the toys scattered about the floor, the spilled juice from her toddler's breakfast, her kids state of undress as they were all still in pajamas at this hour of the morning, and I did not feel condemnation. I did not compare her to all the other moms who surely had it all together this morning. I only smiled at her in the knowledge that sometimes... Life is just chaos, and that is just fine.

I thought about how I sometimes disagreed with her choice of sleep training methods, about how I had so many times in the past secretly blamed her children's misbehavior on her inability to stick with cry-it-out for more than two minutes, or her tendency to feed the baby every time she cried in the night because it was just easier and she was so tired. 

I thought about how I had passed quick judgment on the times she used too sharp of a tone of voice in scolding her son, or the times she let things go she really shouldn't have because it was just too much work to correct this time. I had looked down on her for her lack of that holiest of grails of parenting: Consistency.

But this time, to my surprise, I found that the judgments had, somewhere along the way, faded, leaving me with a sense of understanding. A sense of the faultiness and brokenness of all of us. A sense of grace. 

I stood there, contemplating this turn of events, and wondered when I had stopped criticizing her so sharply. 

When I had stopped judging her and all of her fellow women who did not have it all together. 

When I had stopped mentally comparing her to the ideal which we all surely strove for. 

I wondered when I had decided to just let her be. 

To appreciate her.

To smile at her, with no underlying castigation.

I wondered when I had started extending grace to her. 

I wasn't sure. 

I felt perhaps it had to do with a day when I realized that judgment is contagious. 

It does not stay neatly confined to the one I would like to be judging, but spills over until I am judging everything I see.

Perhaps at some point I had come to realize that I could not contain judgment. 

That in allowing it to flow through me to others, I had deal with it flowing back to me. 

That judgment is not picky.

It sticks to everything in its path, washing away the colors of joy and peace and thanksgiving.

At some point, I had started choosing grace instead. 

I had taken the judgmental thoughts, one at a time examining them and choosing to cast them aside like refuse and choosing instead to clothe myself in grace. 

To extend grace to every one I met, adorning them, too, in priceless pearls of acceptance and love that saw their faults and made them beautiful.

 The grace which flows around all of us, pulling us in closer instead of separating and pitting us against each other. 

The grace which forces me to see the humanity of the women around me, how we are all in this together, how I am not above or below any of them.

The same grace which I found myself extending to the one in front of me now. 

I smiled at her, a smile full of grace and joy and knowledge that she is beautiful and loved and an amazing mom and wonderful wife and that the dishes and tummy pooches and spills and baggy jeans just are the trappings of chaotic, joyful life right now, and are made beautiful by grace. 

She smiled the same smile back at me,

And I turned from the mirror to face the next moment of life with grace. 

Parenting RPG

I have aquired so many incredible, mind-blowing skills in the last two years.

I am amazing at so MANY things, you guys. 

So many.

And yet, the things which I am amazing at, there are no prizes for.

No awards.

No ribbons.

No recognition.

No self-esteem-boosting, compare-myself-to-others way to be the BEST at any of these newly aquired skills of incredibleness.

And so I would like to propose: the Parent RPG Scoring System.

It's perfect, really. 

Power-ups designed to showcase our awesomeness, and prove to the world that we moms and dads are in actual fact super-human. 

To highlight the impossible feats we accomplish on a daily basis. 

What on earth could be involved in such a scoring system, you ask? 

What more is there to parenting than patting a couple little curly heads, kissing a couple dimpled chubby cheeks, and happily cooking up some pancakes in whimsical shapes while humming and kissing our husbands goodbye for work? 

Allow me to enlighten.

Staff Of Memory

+2 child-soothing power

While the rest of the world enthusiastically devotes time to memorizing such character-building passages as Bible verses, The Song of Hiawatha, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Shakespeare, the memory event in the Parent Olympics would showcase our ability to quotes hours upon end of Dr Seuss, Bernstein Bears, and Veggie Tales. We can sing all the songs from Thomas the Tank Engine, and at least ten verses of Wheels on the Bus. 

Everyday phrases accidentally set off the memorized passages, and all to often we find ourselves mentally twelve pages into One Fish Two Fish with no idea of how we got here or how to escape. 

When you can recite an entire Dr Seuss book from memory enthusiastically and with pizzazz, you have aquired the Staff of Memory. 

Sleeping Baby Ninja Skill

+5 peacefulness (used to combat the forces of chaos)

+2 strength

To aquire this power-up, the parent would start sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding a sleeping baby because this is where we finally both collapsed from exhaustion. For extra points, beginning position is flat on the parent's back with sleeping baby sprawled out over parent's chest. The goal of this activity is to rise from your position on the floor, bringing the sleeping baby with you, moving to the crib, and depositing the sleeping baby in the crib, removing arm supports, and walking out of the room.

This requires smoothness and muscle control, as any jarring movement will wake the baby. The baby must not drastically change postition, and must remain completely supported at all times as you rise from the floor. Any flopping appendage will result in screams from the now-wide-awake baby, and you go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $100. Both hands probably will be required to cradle the sleeping child, leaving you to hoist yourself, and your arms and legs which have fallen asleep, up smoothly using nothing but the power of your mind. 

Your nose will start itching when you have the baby hovering over the crib, but do NOT give in! Speeding the process up too much at this point will wake the baby. Sneezing will also wake the baby.

When the door to the nursery is closed behind you with the sleeping baby deposited in the crib, you may engage in a quiet happy dance. You have aquired the Sleeping Baby Ninja Skill, which you may use in 10 minutes when the baby wakes up again. 

Toddler Robe

+3 patience

+5 agility

Lack of this power-up is why so many toddlers are dressed so often in nothing but a diaper. Putting pants on a small creature who wants nothing to do with said article of clothing is similar to threading a needle in a haystack which is currently being fed to cows. 

We parents are adept at putting pants on someone who is running away. Or hiding under a blanket. Or flopping repeatedly on the floor. Or hitting, kicking, biting, and screaming.

Or at putting a diaper on a tiny creature who seems intent on throwing themselves off of the changing table. Many points penalized if they succeed in their escape mission.  

My daughter has is nifty back-arching-scooting-flopping-twisting trick that effectively removes her bottom from the diaper just as I get it under her, every time. Climbing up on the changing table with them and holding them down with your knees is frowned upon. 

When both children are fully dressed, with all of their appendages in the correct appendage-holes, you receive the Toddler Robe. Use it when you have to start all over at the next diaper change. 

Airplane Spoon

+5 agility

+2 child-soothing power

You would think that self-preservation would work such that the small creatures would eat, wouldn't you? Wrong. Getting food into a baby or toddler is a Herculean feat. 

You must feed a reasonable amount of mush to a tiny person who is simultaneously shaking their head, sticking out their tongue, clenching their teeth (or gums), yelling, screaming, waving their arms, kicking their legs, trying to climb out of their highchair, telling you a story, banging their spoon, fork, plate and cup on the table, smearing mush in their hair, dodging your spoon with the skill of a ninja, spitting the food out, and crying because they are hungry.

The airplane spoon should help. A little. 

Carseat Skill

+2 child-soothing power

+4 agility

+1 strength

+10 patience

+5 creativity

Really, this is just an extention of previous exersises and skills. The idea is that you are able to accomplish daily task with small people who are actively resisting your efforts in infinitely creative ways, with enthusiasm and a seemingly infinite number of limbs. Loudly. 

I would also add powerups that allow you must to do the laundry quickly so that the toddler does not have a chance to sit on the baby, sweep the house with a broom that the toddler is currently using as a stick horse, do the dishes while the toddler uses the spoons to shoot water across the kitchen, cook dinner while holding a squirming, reaching baby and hauling a toddler-barnacle on your leg, and fold the laundry while the baby chews on it and the toddler uses it to build a fort. Also, to make sure you make time and save energy for romance with your spouse! 

What power-ups would you add to the Parent RPG Scoring System? 

Next time you are engaged in these activities, mentally score yourself and congratulate yourself on your incredible super powers! 

Dr Seuss Knew My Son

That son of mine, that son of mine.

I hear a crash from time to time. 

Look mom, I found this toy so fine!

Oh, do not touch that toy so fine!

Do not touch it, son of mine!

Can I poke it here or there?

You may not poke it here or there.

You may not poke it anywhere.

You may not touch that toy so fine.

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Can I touch it with my nose?

Can I touch it with my toes?

You may not touch it with your nose.

You may not touch it with your toes.

You may not poke it here or there,

You may not poke it anywhere.

You may not touch that toy so fine, 

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Can I touch it with my hand?

Can I hit it with a pan?

Not with your hand.

Not with a pan.

Not with your nose.

Not with your toes.

You may not poke it here or there.

You may not poke it anywhere.

You may not touch that toy so fine,

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Can I? Could I? In five seconds?

Please mommy! Please mommy!

Look, it beckons!

You may not, can not, in five seconds.

You might relent, you will see.

What if I ask you from this tree?

You may not, may not from the tree.

Not in five seconds! Let me be!

You may not touch it with your hand.

You may not hit it with a pan.

You may not touch it with your nose.

You may not touch it with your toes.

You may not poke it here or there.

You may not poke it anywhere.

You may not touch that toy so fine.

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Today! Today! Today! Today! Today,

Can I, may I on THIS day?

Not today! Not from a tree!

Not in five seconds! Let me be!

You may not, can not with your hand.

You can not, may not with a pan.

You MAY NOT touch it with your nose.

You WILL NOT touch it with your toes.

Do not poke it here or there,

Son, do not poke it anywhere.

You may. Not. Touch. That toy so fine.

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Say! In the dark?

Here in the dark?

Can I touch it in the dark?

You may not touch it in the dark.

Mommy, mommy, how it beckons!

You may not touch it, though it beckons.

Not in the dark. Not in five seconds. 

Not today. Not from a tree.

You may not touch it, son, you see.

Not with your hand. Not with a pan.

Not with your nose. Not with your toes.

You may not touch it with here or there.

You may not touch it anywhere.

You may not touch that toy so fine.

You may not touch it, son of mine.

Can I touch it if I'm sad?

You may not touch it of you're sad.

Can I touch it if I'm mad?

You may not, can not if you're mad.

You will not, will not if you're sad.

You may not touch it though it beckons. 

You may not touch it in five seconds.

Not in the dark! Not from a tree!

Not today! You let me be!

You may not touch it with your nose.

You may not touch it with your toes.

You may not touch it with your hand.

You may not hit it with a pan.

You may not poke it here or there.

You may not poke it ANYWHERE!

You may not touch that toy so fine!

You may not touch it, son of mine!

I may not touch it, so you say.

Look away mom! And I may.

Don't look and I may, I say.

Son! If you will let me be,

I'll give you another toy.

You will see.

Here! Please take THIS toy so fine.

Forget the other, son of mine.

But... I don't want THIS toy so fine. 

I do not want it, mommy-mine. 

Cuz I can touch if I'm mad.

And I can touch it if I'm sad. 

It just sits there, doesn't beckon.

I could touch it in five seconds. 

And in the dark. And from a tree.

It's just not as fun, mommy, you see!

Cuz I could touch it with my nose.

And I could touch it with my toes.

And I could touch it with my hand.

And I could hit it with a pan.

I could poke it here or there.

Say, I could poke it ANYWHERE!

It's not an awesome toy so fine.

Well, that's tough luck, oh son of mine.