The Copeland Ramblings » Family

Moving Day Eve

Norm — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:08:02 +0000

As my siblings and I used to say as children, “one more sleep!”. Tomorrow we move out of our apartment and into the NTM guesthouse. We have our apartment until the end of the month but we wanted time to do some repairs not to mention that there are rumors of demonstrations around town at the end of the week so we really wanted to move before the action starts. It feels good to not have to do all this work at the last minute, but at the moment it’s still a lot to deal with. We look forward to getting this out of the way so that we can spend time with friends saying goodbye before we leave. Pray for us as we say goodbye to our home in Senegal!

32 days!

Debra — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:46:27 +0000

Thirty two! 32! Trente-deux! XXXII! Yep thats right! 32 days until we board a plane to Canada. I am having a little bit of writers block even trying to describe how we feel about that. Pretty much every possible thing! Stressed, too much to do, excited, relieved, sad, happy, scared, thrilled, and “Is this really happening?”

There really is no way to describe such a huge life change. We have never really even considered a life in North America. We never even processed what it would be life to raise our boys in North America. Its such a huge change. Well like it or not! Its happening! And we leave Africa for… maybe forever (hopefully not!).

The next thirty two days will be intensely crazy! We have a lot to do. A lot of people to say goodbye to, a lot of suitcases to pack, weigh, repack, weigh, repack again… A lot of little details to take care of, a lot of things still that need to be sold, a lot of emotional processing, preparing for our “new life” in Canada.

Please pray for us as we go through this time. Its one that is not easy to describe. We are starting to get anxious… just wanting to get it all over with.

We read a pretty neat verse in Proverbs today. It really meant a lot to me.

Proverbs 20:24 The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?

This is something that we have truly been coming to learn and understand. God is so amazing and has everything so perfectly under control. Why do we waste so much time trying to figure every little thing out instead of just trusting and being at peace! When we can just lean back and trust God we can truly come to have a peaceful life!

Thank you everyone for your prayers and love! We are so excited to join the New Tribes Mission of Canada headquarters team. We can truly see God preparing the way for us. We are getting very excited!

Please be patient if we lack in posts over the next little while. We are super busy trying to get things done and process everything. We do however tend to keep our Facebooks, Twitter accounts, and instagram accounts buzzing with new photos and day to day stuff. So keep up with us there. We hope to keep up here too… but I can’t promise anything… We have not posted since Christmas Day! TERRIBLE!

Have a wonderful day trusting in our Savior and having PEACE!

PS We posted all of our Christmas trip photos to flickr. Please check them out! We had a great time! Check them out HERE!

A Strange Christmas

Debra — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:01:34 +0000

This year things are a bit different for us. We are preparing to move out of our apartment and even more than that we are preparing to move back to Canada. Its been a true emotional roller coaster for us and we decided that this year we would celebrate a little differently than a typical traditional Christmas… since we just don’t feel “normal” this year. We sold our Christmas tree and all of our decorations, except for a few special ones we kept.

This year we are taking off to the beach! Yep! Tomorrow we are headed to a nice little rental house on the beach and we are going to take a few needed days of solitude! (Thanks to a sweet Christmas gift donation and wonderfully low Senegalese prices!!) We are so so so excited. We are so ready for a bit of a breather and for things to slow down for a couple of days.

This year we will be:

-Reading about Jesus’ birth
-Decorating shortbread Christmas cookies
-Opening presents that our families sent us in the mail
-Introducing the boys to the classic “Little Drummer Boy” claymation movie.
-Watching movies
-Playing on the beach, swimming in the pool
-Flying kites
-Listening to Christmas music
-Reading books
-Drinking yummy homemade peppermint hot chocolates and peppermint mochas!

We are pretty excited about taking it easy this year. We have had a long few months and have been super busy and really worn out. So this is the best Christmas present we could get! TIME AWAY! =)

Here are a few photos of our Christmas celebrations so far:

Our fake, fake Christmas tree!

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas, whether it be a busy crazy one or a calm relaxed one! Enjoy and PLEASE do not forget Jesus is the reason for the season. Without Him we are lost and nothing!

Decorating contest

Debra — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:00:43 +0000

A few days ago we were invited to be a part of a jury to judge the kids classrooms at school. They had a Christmas decorating contest. They all worked very hard to decorate their classrooms as well as they could. We were very honored to be asked to come be a part of the jury. There were about 15 of us, including the local mayor and some other parents. It was fun touring around the school and checking out the classrooms. I think the judging and jury part of it was really just to get the kids excited about decorating. I don’t know if they even chose a winning class. We did not get too many pictures the kids did great. Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy.

Emmaus’ class singing songs to us.

At the end they brought us, the “jury,” into one of the back rooms and had a very nice spread of Senegalese appetizers. They thanked us for coming and the mayor spoke and thanked us as well. Very official and Senegalese like. We had a great time. Merry Christmas!

Vente!

Debra — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:50:36 +0000

So sorry the posts have been few and far between lately! But we have been kinda busy… apparently preparing for a huge life change takes a lot of time. Haha. We have been preparing ourselves mentally as well as physically. We have a lot of things to do before we leave Senegal. We have started out “Senegal Bucket List” of all the things we want to do before we head back to Canada. One thing this bucket list takes is a lot of time. So in order to do all that we have planned we need to start selling our stuff and packing up as early as possible. Thats what has been keeping us busy this year. We participated in a big garage sale. Around here every now and then someone decides its time for a garage sale. Someone picks a place, advertise to all the missionaries, and a bunch of missionaries participate. The one we just participated in was public right out on a road. Which means a lot of Senegalese people will come buy a lot of stuff to sell. They can really be very pushy… but at least a lot of stuff gets sold! It was extremely physically challenging and very emotionally challenging as well. I am so glad its over… for now.

Take a look at some of our pictures. We also did a pre-sale at our house for our fellow NTM co-workers. It really helps to have less to haul around town!

Canaan helping me sort out the toys. We ended up keeping about 10% of our toys. Not including legos and k’nex. No way we will give those up!

Before organizing and pricing.

Thanks to several of my friends, Sharon, Andi and Chantal for helping me organize and mark the prices! It would have been impossible without them! And of course Norm who has been my backbone and shoulder to cry on through the whole thing!

Nicely displayed!

This is everything compacted after the pre-sale. This is what we took to the garage sale. It ended up being 2 car loads and a van load. We sold about 75% of it or more. We ended up having only 6 boxes or so of stuff left over. Praise God! Looks like we have a nice amount of stuff left for one more garage sale and it will be done.
The garage sale was so hectic I didn’t end up getting any pictures. We were strung along the sidewalk… our spot was very long. We had a lot to sell! I had moments where it was ok and other moments where it took every fiber in me to not just start bawling my eyes out. Its very hard to sell your precious belongings to people who are being very rude to you. But either way God sold what he wanted to sell and he helped us make what he wanted us to make from it. All that to say… I am so glad its over! And I am so thankful to have such an empty house now. Its going to make our bucket list adventuring much easier!

Happy 3rd Birthday Emmaus!

Debra — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:47:32 +0000

Happy birthday to our sweet energizer bunny who always wants to snuggle! You entertain us every day! You wear your heart on your sleeve… or maybe your many wacky face expressions. We have truly loved the last three years with you and so look forward to the many more ahead. We love you so much Charles Emmaus!

Outings

Debra — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:20:24 +0000

During the kids school break I had planned a whole bunch of fun outings. I was really looking forward to doing a lot of stuff with the kids. But unfortunately I was quite sick during the kids break. So we only got to do a few of the planned outings. Here are a couple pictures from the ones we were able to do!

Dakar Zoo
Its costs the kids 15 cents each to get in! But I think they should raise the prices so they can actually feed their animals!

Hann Parc

There is a new park in town. Its super awesome. Its about $2 for 30 min of fun! We tried it out with our friends the McMartins.

Mom! Can we do a project?!?!

Debra — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:47:17 +0000

My computer is up and running again! Thank the Lord! And thanks to Norm! I have many many fun things to post about! So hopefully over the next week I can catch up. I really want to post about our week and a half school break and all the fun things we did. So for now I will start with the fun (not so professional) crafts we did. I tend to be a bit more of a perfectionist. But I found that when doing crafts with the kids I would want to make sure all the colors matched, went well together, was symmetrical… etc. And over the years I realized that my kids want to show their creativity in different ways than me and its so much more gratifying to see a not so perfect craft done the way the kids want them done! =)

So here are some pictures of the kids creations! Mom holds the glue gun and the kids do the rest! Enjoy!

We did a few other crafts… mostly painting and coloring. But I didn’t end up with pictures of those. We did one that Canaan really liked. We opened up a whole bunch of different tea bags used the tea to “draw” with. Kinda of like I did as a kid with glitter. This was the yummiest smelling craft to date! =) I hope if you have kids you take the time to do some fun crafts with them. Its the greatest! Do you have any fun, low cost, low supply craft ideas? If so please feel free to comment and share! I am always looking for fun crafts to do with the boys.

Emmaus’ black eye

Debra — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:06:12 +0000

Poor little guy came home from school today with a nasty black eye. They didn’t really tell me what happened when he was dropped off from school today, but Canaan said he slipped off of the slide. It looks painful but he hasn’t complained one bit.

Dust mites! Be gone!

Debra — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:17:51 +0000

Many of you know about my severe allergies here in Senegal, and that we have been wanting to get a dryer to help with these terrible allergies. I have very bad allergies to dust mites. And we live in a VERY dusty part of the world… very dirty dust none the less! We have been searching and praying for a dryer. A dryer would really help rid the dust mites from our clothes, sheets, pillows, towels, etc. After a long search we finally found a used dryer. Here dryers run nearly $800 new, for a small run of the mill dryer. And they are not easy to find either. But this one was only about $170. Praise God! When we got it we found out it was really full of lint all through it… almost like they had not been using the lint filter.

So that evening we tore the whole thing apart, trying to get to the place that was full of lint. After a few hours of trying to figure things out… we were able to vacuum it out… a bit. It was rather complicated. Then we had to figure out why it was tripping the circuit breaker. So after messing with the amperage to our apartment (changed it from 20 amps to about 22 amps) and the dryer runs great! We quickly realized that with the extreme heat and humidity here in Senegal, running the dryer in the house was not really a good idea. So we put it out on our balcony and plugged it in. Ran a load or two… and the rain came. We covered it with a tarp. But we realized we needed a better way to protect it… not only from the rain but the massive amounts of dust. So Norm quickly drew up some fantastic plans for a nice little dyer tent/hut/shed thing.

Then one Saturday afternoon, Norm, the boys and I built ourselves a nice dryer tent. We are really quite happy with it.

I really feel like the dryer is helping a lot with my allergies. God is so good to provide that for us! It has been so fun to dry stuff in the dryer that had been hung dry for the last few years… all that yucky dust and stuff that had built up. It felt so good killing all those dust mites! =) I have a new love for laundry!