Birthdays & Christmas

Today is Maryanna's 6th birthday!  She is such a sweet girl and she loves to play mommy with her dollies.

According to the doctors, she was born about 4 weeks early, but she has been a healthy, happy child.
And we are very thankful for that!

As she has grown, we have seen that she has such a girly & tender side.  She loves pink, poofy dresses, dollies, flowers, and animals (except bugs!).

She has done well in adapting to life here in Greenland.  She has made friends and loves to play with them.

Also we want to wish everyone that reads this a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!  I pray that your service for the Lord will be even more faithful & fruitful than it was in 2011!  God bless ya'll!

Our first visitor

I had met the man two weeks ago, spoke with him a while, and he had promised to come to our services on December 4th.  I was nervous for those two weeks and wondering if he would come or not, wondering if he would understand us, wondering if he would think we are just crazy!

He showed up right on time at 11, we had prayer time, sang a few songs, and had the preaching time.  I have been preaching through the book of John and had just began chapter 7.  I was able to preach on "Having a Real Relationship with God."  He would nod his head occasionally and was teary eyed.

After services we invited him to stay for our Sunday lunch and he really enjoyed it (Masey is an excellent cook, a ministry and area of service that most women seem to neglect).  While Masey was finishing lunch preparations, he invited us over to his house for tea and cookies after the meal.  We had a great time of fellowship at his house talking, watching Animal Planet, and playing on his flight simulator.

We would love to move into a building because our living room & dining room just doesn't have much room for visitors.  Please pray for us about this.  I am looking into several places.  Also pray for us about the languages.  Our visitor spoke English well but there are so many more that could be reached if we were able to hold services in Danish or Greenland.

It was a blessing having a visitor and seeing him participate in the services.  He didn't know the songs we sang but tried to sing along.  We are happy to have made a new friend and we pray that he will return to our services again.  I told him he was welcome anytime that he wished to come.

Language Study

I have ordered a new DVD to help with our Greenlandic study.  It is called "Greenlandic for Foreigners" and I am eagerly awaiting it's arrival!  You can see their site here.  I tried to order it about a month ago from our local book store to no avail.  It was almost humorous when they told me that I would get it quicker it I ordered it myself rather than waiting on them to order it.

One thing that I really like is that this uses English to teach Greenlandic.  Most of the resources that I have come across use Danish.  Since I am still in the beginning stages of learning Danish, this makes it most difficult to understand what is being taught.

Greenlandic is different than English in that it is a poly-synthetic language.  They take a main word, then add affixes and suffixes to form other words or even sentences.  They have about 420 affixes, so no worries about running out of things to say.

The grammar appears almost backwards from English.  Some of the Greenlaners here tried to explain how the language works and said that instead of just making statements, their language is like looking at a picture or paints a picture.

One example that I showed churches of Greenlandic was an example given in the back of the book "Greenlandic for Travellers."

Atuarfimmukarniaraluapunga means "I had otherwise planned to go to the school."

The word is broken down as such:
 atuar-       school
 -fim         (from 'fik') building (literally 'the place where')
 -mukar-   go to
 -niar-       plan to
 -aluar-     otherwise
 -punga     (present/past tense) I (had)

You might be wondering, did I break this sentence down on my own.  Not at all, I just copied it from the back of the book!  My Greenlandic has a long way to go to understand words like this.  I can recognize a few root words in Greenlandic writings, but only a very few.

Please continue to pray for me, Masey, and our kids as we are working towards fluency with Greenlandic & Danish.

If you would like to read more, you can check out these link:

Greenland Guide - Gives a brief overview of the language and a few example words.

Greenland Guide Audio Phrase Book - You can listen to some Greenlanic here.

Wikipedia article - This gives more technical aspect of the language.

Thank you so much to those who gave extra to help us with the needs that we had. We were able to get our fuel tank filled up, the kids homeschool books ordered, and a washer! The Lord blessed us and we were even able to get several smaller needs too!

It is humbling when the Lord touches the hearts of churches and even individuals to help us here in Greenland. Thank you so much to everyone who has faithfully supported us, prayed for us, and given extra for the needs that we have here! We have been blessed!

 

I am still progressing with the language.  We recently had a woman over for supper that Elijah and I met a few weeks ago. She spoke some English and we had a good meal and

a good time. She taught us some new Greenlandic words and helped us with the pronunciation of others we were having trouble with. We have been using the new words when we can to see if folks can understand us and so far so good!

I also met a Danish man the other day and we got to talking about languages.  He said that he would take me out dog sledding and help me some with my Danish soon! I am looking forward to both, especially since I haven’t gotten to go sledding yet.

We have gotten a good amount of snow the past few weeks and have enjoyed temperatures in the teens and 20’s. The kids have LOVED getting out in the snow and making snowballs, snow men, snow angels, and such things.

The kids have made several friends since we have been here. Most of their friends don’t speak English but they still have a great time playing together. When we see the kids in the stores they will wave really big and say hello to us and our kids. We look forward to when we can speak Greenlandic with these kids and have a Greenlandic Sunday school for them.

We have had Sunday services in our living room ever since we first got here six months ago. We are still a ways off from establishing a church here, but we are beginning to look for places where we could meet at. Please pray for us about this. I don’t believe we would

start renting something until at least after the first of the year, but we are pricing different places where we could rent for Sunday services.

 

 

Elijah celebrated his 7th birthday just a couple weeks ago. He has grown to be such a big young man. He is a good helper and loves to read. We had a great time. He wanted his special "Birthday Meal" to be reindeer soup with curly fries!

 

 

 

Reindeer soup & curly fries

 

Shopping



Outside our front door!



Here in Greenland we do not have a Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or a Target.  But we do have places to do some shopping.  For guys, this is not a very big deal.  But for girls, this is essential. :)

 



Tikilluarit = Welcome!




Our town has two big grocery stores, Brugsen & Pisiffik, along with some smaller convenience stores, Brugseneeraq (2 of them) and Spar (3 of them).  We live right next door to the large Brugsen in our town.  Which Masey thinks is "AWESOME!" and it will be a big help in the winter.  Having two big groceries stores helps us keep our costs down becuase we can get the best deals from both.
 



Looking down form the 2nd story



We have a good selection of meats here, but not much when it comes to fresh fruits or veggies.  They are mainly canned or frozen.  We can get some things like apples and oranges, but sometimes they are rotten.  :(



Toy Dept!




Brugsen's small toy department - our kids love to looke here!


Escalator ride!!





Our kids like Brugsen's becuase of the closeness to our house and they have an escalator in the store!
 


Seal skins - Wal-Mart never had these!



We have have some other stores like Stark (building supplies), Jysk (home decor and furniture), Torrak Fashions (clothing store), and a few kiosks and other smaller stores.



60 kroner = about $12! And they were on sale!



You can browse the stores ad papers on their websites:

Brugsen - http://www.brugsen.gl/

Pisiffik - http://www.pisifik.gl/

To see the cost difference in things just divide the price by 5 and that roughly equals its price in US dollars.



Catching up

I want to apologize for my posting being infrequent.  I have tried several times to load pictures to the blog but for some reason I cannot get them to load.  We are doing good right now.  Masey is recovering from an infection, which means we got to experience a Greenland hospital for the first time!

Masey enjoying Greenland!

After 6 trips to the hospital we were finally able to get Masey seen and get her some meds.  They never did tell us exactly what she had but we suspect that it was an intense kidney infection.

Eryn, Elijah, & Maryanna

The children continue to grow fast as ever.  Elijah will be turning 7 real soon and he recently lost another tooth, which means he has 5 missing altogether.  Maryanna is progressing in her reading and she is looking forward to school.  She was quite upset when she finished up a couple weeks ago (they were delayed finishing because the school books were in the container).  Eryn is learning to write her name and is enjoying learining.

Lake and mountain

Night time has started here and I'm enjoying it.  It still stays light late into the evening but the sun does set now.  We are seeing a few stars at night and look forward to seeing the Northern Lights soon.

Kayak racers starting

We recently got to see kayak races. Kayakers came form all around Greenland to compete.  It was impressive watching them race.  They have more skill and endurance than I do!

Kayak race

Please continue ot pray for us concerning our support.  It continues to come in less that what has been committed.  Thank you for all the prayers that have been said regarding our family.

Thank you for praying for us concerning our taxes.  After speaking with the folks at the tax office again they reworked our taxes.  Now our taxes will be back down to the "normal" range of about $600 a month.  They told me to just ignore the $2,200 tax bill and pay the one that comes in August.

Please continue to pray for us concerning support, it is still not coming in like it was committed to.  And keep us in prayer about the languages here.  We are studying both Danish and Greenlandic but right now we are focusing on Danish.

We have certainly been enjoying summer here in the Arctic.  We have seen temps around 40 - 50 degrees and we love it!  We are from Arkansas and they have been around 100 for a while already.  While we do still have times of home sickness, the heat and humidity of Arkansas is not something that we miss at all!



Container being unloaded!


We have gotten the container unloaded, unpacked, and settled in.  We had gotten so used to our empty house and sitting on the floor that our routine has changed again.  Now we have beds, a table to eat at, furnitre to sit on.  It's great!


Our unpacked living room



Please continue to pray for us.  It seems like since our belongings have come the devil has really started to fight us.  We are dealing with a few issues right now that need prayer.



One is our taxes.  A few days ago we got in our first tax bill.  It was for $2,200!  I was shocked.  I checked with our local Tax Department and they said that everything is correct.  I will be calling down to the main tax office in Nuuk this week, trying to get it straightened out.  Please pray that this is a mistake that can be quickly fixed.  The taxes aren't due for a few weeks but it would sure lift a burden off of us!

Another prayer request is for our support.  It hasn't been coming in like it should and we don't know why.

Thank you for your prayers for us and for keeping up with our life as we are Freezin' For A Reason!

The Container!

Our container was delivered yesterday!  We are so excited.  Now begins the unpacking and resettling in!  Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us aobut this.  God was worked wonderously in allowing us to get this!

Container Money!

Praise the Lord, He has provided all of our container money!  God has moved in ways that we felt were impossible and we are so grateful!  Our container is listed to be here on June 18th.  All of the money finally came in yesterday.  To say that we are excited and praising God is an understatement!  To God be the glory, He has done things that we never could!

Our Container...

Our Container will be in Iceland tomorrow.  From there the company said it should be here by June 15th!  We are excited about having our belongings for several reasons.

1 - Comfort of familiar things and not having to sit around on the floor!

2 - We will be able to have folks over for coffee, tea, or even supper!  We have een able to meet several folks in town that said they would love to come by once we get our things.  This will give us great opportunities not only to practice our langauage skills but also to witness to them of Jesus Christ and His saving power!

Please continue to pray that all goes well with the transport of the container.  Also please continue to pray for the funds.  We still need about $1,500 to be able to pay the costs in full when the container arrives.  Thank you for your faithfullness in prayer for us!

A Few Pics

Our empty living room

Outside our window

Our local mountain

We made it safely to Greenland! We are quite tired but glad to be here. We have had snow everyday so far and though the sun does go down it stays light for a while here. I'll upload more pictures soon. Please kepp on praying for us.

Moving & Goodbye's

We are well on our way to moving to Greenland.  The moving truck is packed, the house is empty, and we are in Mississippi saying "goodbye's" to family.  We should be loading the container on Monday, April 25th.  Pray that it all goes smoothly as I am still trying to make sure we can get it loaded then. 

Also please keep on praying that the money can come in for the container.  We have enough to pay the   port costs on this end and a little of the $4,000 we will need to pay once the container finally arrives.  We are trusting the Lord to supply the rest of the money in His time.  It will take about 2 months for the container to get to us in Greenland.

We thank you for your prayers as we transition into Greenland.  We had a wonderful final service at our sending church Victory Baptist Church and said some tearful goodbye's there too.  We want to thank everyone for all of their prayers and support as we strive to take the Gospel to Greenland!

If you would like to get these updates in your email, just sign up for them on the side bar. ===>

Blog updates

I have added a few things to the blog.  You can now sign up to receive blog updates in your email.  We also now have a Donate button so that if you would like to give towards the needs we have you can through Paypal.  I have done some updating the the a Freezin? section and the What Reason? section.

Eryn seems to be healing up real good from her surgery.  Elijah is over the strep throat that he had and we are happy that it didn't spread through the rest of us.  Thank you for keeping us in your prayers.  Please continue to pray for us.

Answered prayers

Elijah is doing a lot better with his strep throat.  Also Eryn had her dental surgery today and everything went very well.  Eryn will have some healing to do but the dentist said that she did great and everything went great.  We want to thank everyone for their prayers.

Prayer Requests

Just wanted to mention a couple of prayer requests for our kids.  Elijah has got strep throat, pray that he gets over it quick and that it doesn't spread through the family.

Also Eryn is having some dental work done on Friday.  It will be done at a hospital in Little Rock, AR.  The plan is to sedate her and get all the work done at once that she needs.  We have been waiting for insurance to approve this for a few months now.  Please pray that Eryn doesn't get strep because she couldn't have the dental work done that she needs before we leave.

This past month has flown by in a blur and we find ourselves with only a few weeks left until we fly out.  Please keep on praying for us.  Thanks so much.

House update

We have got the house lease signed and the first payments made!  We are excited as we only have a matter of weeks left before we fly out at the end of April.  Please continue praying for us about the container costs.  We have had some money that has been promised or already in hand but we still are needing a little more.  Right now between what has come in and what is promised we have about $2,200!  The good thing about shipping the container is we will only need about $4,000 up front and the rest once it is delivered.

I have emailed the shipping company to make sure that the prices haven't gone up.  They told me when they quoted them in Feb. that the prices would change but they didn't say which way.

I am trying to get our DVD presentation on this site but have been having some problems.  Some are technical and I've been sick lately.  As soon as I get that uploaded I'll be sure to let you know.

Thank you for your prayers for us.  Please keep them up because we greatly need them.  Lord bless you...

Tickets

Praise God we just bought our tickets!  We will be departing from Boston on April 26th!  We are excited but still have much to do.  Please keep on praying for us, we definitely need them and appreciate them so much.  Lord bless ya'll...

Our House

The Lord has worked it out for us to get a house in Sisimiut!  It is a cozy little 800 sq ft house right next to one of the local grocerie stores.  I will be signing the lease next week and making the first months rent and deposit.

We still have to get a container of goods shipped over there.  Please keep praying for this.  I am wanting to ship the container at the end of March.  Thank you so much for everyone's prayers.  Please keep on praying for us!

Blog Progress

I have updated some of the Praises & Prayer Requests and added a newer picture of my family.  I hope by this weekend to have our DVD presentation of Greenland on here for all to view.  I am still working on a way to link to our prayer letters so that you can also keep up to date with them.

On prayer request that I don't think is on there is pray for Eryn, she is currently gumpy and sick with the flu.  We are hoping it doesn't spread through all of us.  Thank you so much for your prayers for us.

Marty & Family

New Page

We have added a new Praise, Prayer Request, & Needs page.  This will be updated as things arise.   Thanks

Introduction

Hello We are missionaries to Greenland