Hey folks, sorry for the silence this week. I would say we are 90% done getting everything reading for shipping but I am trying so hard to have things totally organized so that when we arrive in VA unpacking can run smoothly!  I don’t naively think unpacking will be easy in VA but I have learned along the way that the more I do on this end gradually the less I have to do all at once there.  Here is a bit of our exciting (okay, not so exciting) week!

junk drawer sorting….done, whew.

and don’t worry, I didn’t drink all of these in one sitting, actually I found these bottled in a box in our storage room. They are from special occasions like my grad school graduation, Seth’s foreign service acceptance, our engagement, and others I can’t even remember.  Not sure why we didn’t just save corks but at the time it seemed fun.  I decided to take a picture for the memory and recycled these guys!   Reminders of lots of special times! I haven’t decided if the sorting every couple of years is therapeutic or will land me in therapy someday the jury is still out!

blueberry yogurt while nodding off before nap…(oops)

lots and lots of veggies and salads!  (although I am not sure it is making much difference!)

hedge hog bread…copied from this billboard. So cute, huh?! Ours were more a consistency of biscuits (American style..not cookies) but they were cute and Jackson was awfully proud.  Eating them with strawberry jam was a bit reminiscent of the armadillo cake on Steel Magnolias.

ohhhh, and I almost forgot. We tried a knock off recipe for a certain chicken nugget place back home which may or may not be Chickfila. I need to tweek it a bit and try a couple of more times before I share it. when I served them to Owen he immediately asked if he could have a “spwite pweez”.  He’s had sprite maybe 4 times in his life and of course it is a treat if he gets fast food so the fact that it is imprinted on his brain with chicken nuggets is scary.

So not too much to report here! If you took me up on the challenge to make a meal and deliver it to a friend write to me in the comments! I hope it was an encouragement to all involved!

Have a great week, y’all.   I’ll be back here soon with some yummy leek recipes in honor of Swiss cooking! Don’t be scared, if you have never had them they are really tasty!

This afternoon we went downtown in Bern for ‘Up To Faith” which is a global dance movement that got sparked by Second Baptist’s “Dance your Shoes Off”. It was a celebration of the resurrection of Christ and a call to rise up. I had seen the original video back when it went viral and it was very powerful. I don’t know if Second ever knew it would go global but apparently it has.  A friend told us about it and we decided to go one down to see.

I don’t think I have ever gone into detail about the religious climate here in Bern here on the blog but we have found Bern to be a very spiritually dark place. We sometimes find it very hard to be Christians here. In general I feel that most people are very anti-God and religion, or maybe if they do have a relationship with God it is very private. When we arrived at the big square in front of the parliament building and saw the crowd of people lined up waiting for the music to begin I literally got chills. It was like there was a light in the middle of  darkness. That’s really the only way to describe it.  It was like we were in a place that had never heard the name of Jesus and it was heard. I know it sounds dramatic but it really felt that way. I looked around at one point and the bystanders appeared to be mostly straight-faced and just staring.   At one side of the square there were people holding flags representing the regions of Switzerland. There is evidently an organization that  assigns groups of people to pray specifically for each area. What was also crazy to me is that this crowd was comprised of Christians from all over Switzerland whereas the Second baptist group was likely just from one single city (Houston!!!, sorry, just a quick shout out for our dear Texas!). In American we take our communities of faith so for granted. And if you don’t think you do, let me tell you as someone who has now spent 4 years away. What you have is amazing!

here is the video I got! Sorry if you get dizzy. If you missed the original video we attached that as well.

“He’s alive He’s alive within us and we will rise up”