Moving stuff...

One of the groups we partner with in a big way is Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.  One of their many tasks is providing housing for incoming refugees... over 300 Nepalis alone will be arriving in 2012!

Serve Burlington partners by providing volunteers to help schlep donated furniture out of storage and into the apartments before the new residents arrive.  We rarely get to meet the new residents... Tuesday last week was an exception! We were moving some furniture into a unit when people from an apartment we previously furnished came down to help... it turns out that they are related to the incoming family and invited us upstairs for tea.  Have you ever had Nepali tea?  Yum!... black tea, milk, sugar, and black pepper are an incredible combination.  When we left, they invited us to stop back anytime... which Caryn, Hudson, and I did yesterday.

We brought by some donated clothes, as well as some things Hudson picked out from his toybox for their 2 year old boy, and then they proceeded to get very busy cooking rice, goat, chicken, and a traditional bean dish.  What a meal!  The VT Bazemores thoroughly enjoyed themselves and our new friends.  Proof that relationships matter was made clear when our host said that we were the first people to stop by and talk with them since they moved here a few months ago...you could see the longing in her face for relationship.  One of the women speaks very good English because she was an English teacher in Nepal... she will be a bridge to many in the Nepali community as the refugees seek to assimilate.  Please pray for them, and the other refugees, as they begin new lives in a strange place.

One cultural quirk that really stands out to our new friend is the fact that people in Vermont do not say "Hello" when passing each other on the sidewalk... sad... I fail to do that sometimes too.

Two pics:

Hudson sings a few of his favorite songs...

Learning old things in a new way...

I(Mike) have been reading The Holy Wild by Mark Buchanan...and wow. I highly recommend it. It could just be my stage of life or an awakening in my own life to the person of God, or just the book, but it has been hitting home with me. Today I was reading chapter 5, A Burned Patch of Ground, talking about God's Wrath...yikes. I will let you make the connections (Romans 1:18-21 ), but Thankfulness came up and I wanted to share a snippet from the chapter with you...

Mark Buchanan shares:

I was in Uganda, Africa, about a dozen years ago, in a little township called Wairaka. Every Sunday evening, about one hundred Christians from the neighboring area would gather to worship. They met at the edge of a cornfield, under a lean-to with a rusty tin roof that cracked like gunfire when it rained. They sat – when they did sit – on rough wood benches. The floor was dirt. The band’s instruments were old or handmade – bruised, scratched guitars with corroded strings and necks that had warped in the humidity; a plinky electric piano plugged into a crackling speaker; shakers made of tin cans and stones. All of it kept straying out of tune.

One Sunday evening, I was too sour to join in. The music sounded squawky. I was miffed at someone on our missions team. I found the food bland, tasteless. I was feeling deprived and misunderstood. I found the joy of others hollow, mustered-up. I was miserable, and I wanted to wallow in it.

The pastor asked if anyone had anything to share. Many people wanted to, but a tall, willowy woman in the back row danced and shouted loudest, so he called her forward. She came twirling her long limbs, trilling out praise.

“Oh, brothers and sisters, I love Jesus so much,” she said.

“Tell us, sister! Tell us!” the Ugandans shouted back.

“Oh, I love Him so much, I don’t know where to begin. He is so good to me. Where do I begin to tell you how good He is to me?”

“Begin there, sister! Begin right there!”

“Oh,” she said, “He is so good. I praise Him all the time for how good He is. For three months, I prayed to Him for shoes. And look!” And with that the woman cocked up her leg so that we could see one foot. One very ordinary shoe covered it. “He gave me shoes.”

The Ugandans went wild. They clapped, they cheered, they whistled, they yelled.

But not me. I was devastated. I sat there broken and grieving. In an instant, God snapped me out of my self-pity and plunged me into repentance. In all my life, I had not once prayed for shoes. It never even crossed my mind. And in all my life, I had not even once thanked God for the many, many shoes I had.

What have you NOT thanked God for today that He has provided? How about your shoes?

The training wheels come off!

It has been a big couple of weeks. Hudson began asking for us to take the training wheels off his bike again. See what happened after about 30 minutes in the backyard!

I love this one!

Hudson figures out wheelies!

Mike has always loved John Deere tractors...so Hudson got one from his grandparents. Last year we "enabled" second gear letting him pick up some speed. Last week he figured out how to rock his body back while pushing on the pedal resulting in the front wheels coming off the ground! He was getting pretty good till he managed to flip it completely over and onto himself...Mike was there to laugh with him. He is a bit more timid but did one for the camera.

Hudson's Most Waited for Gift

THE CONCRETE MIXER from Momee & Pappy

(probably not terribly interesting for viewing by the general public, except to see how "big" Hudson has gotten :).

"I have been wanting one of these for FOUR years."

-Hudson Michael Bazemore

The first video is long... skip to the last for the prize.

old friends...

This Fall we did a number of rock-climbing trips. These are great opportunities to talk about Trust, Faith, Hope, Fear, Perseverance, Character, etc. It can be hard and scary...great recipe for a learning experience. It is also really fun which is why people do it. Enjoy some pics.

Family Climbing!

Over the summer Mike was certified to lead and manage rock climbing trips. So we decided to get some practice as a family. Everyone loved it!

Catch up!

If we said that life has been busy...would that make up for almost a YEAR of not blogging? :) Since we last blogged we finished out the '09-'10 schoolyear at UVM...our first since leaving FL... we spent the summer in Maine for work, bought a house, tore our a kitchen and bathroom and put them back together, tore off wallpaper, painted, refinished some floors, and started getting organised. Then we started our second year with Lifelines(lifelinesuvm.com) at the University of Vermont.

My hope in the coming weeks is to catch you up to date on the Fall with some pics...stop back.

Winter hike with Momee

God provides a van!!!

Wow...I cannot even tell you what a blessing this will be for our team at the University of Vermont. Currently we drive our personal vehicles to take students on Lifelines trips...sometimes it requires 3 cars! So last year we began praying that God would provide a large van for us to use. While Mike was in New Hampshire for his wilderness medical training, someone donated their 12 passenger van. We are rejoicing...this will greatly increase our capacity to take students on trips with us. Mike is especially excited because he gets to do the maintenance on it! Praise God!

what handsome guys...

Watch Hudson wash his bike!

Guatemala Update!

Caryn is back from Guatemala! The staff and students had a great time and God did some amazing things.

Four Lifelines staff from UVM and 10 students left March 6th and returned on the 14th. They were working with and thru a ministry to orphans & the poor in Guatemala called Forever Changed International.

In our desire to bring hope & love to people, we received so much more in return....

We loved on orphans at the orphanage where we stayed, many of whom have no chance for adoption... they loved us back with abandon & changed our lives & hearts with their smiles. We painted a bedroom for the two oldest girls (pictured sitting on their new bedding). The girl on the right in Ingrid... Click here to read the story of how she & her 3 siblings were rescued from an abusive & neglectful situation & taken to the orphanage just last month.

We hiked up to mountain villages where we brought food, toys & medical supplies to some of the most beautiful people on the planet.

We also brought food, clothes & gifts to a women's prison where children are allowed to stay with their mothers for the first 4 years of their lives... we cried & prayed with one mother as she described her fears of the day when her daughter, now 2 years old, would have to leave. This particular woman entered the prison 2 months pregnant, and wrongly serves a 40-year sentence for a crime committed while her entire church watched her singing in her church choir in the ghetto.

We spent a few days in what used to be considered an extremely dangerous and gang-ridden ghetto bringing in gifts, listening to stories of faith, praying, and attending church with the people of God there. We were all greatly moved by how the faithfulness of a few people has transformed this center of poverty into a still-poor, but spiritually growing & much safer place for families to live & love together.

Our last day in Guatemala, we brought food, clothes, & a few toys into the city dump where many Guatemalans actually make their home, literally living off the garbage there. I was humbled by the chance to give just a little to these people - even the youngest of whom uttered "gracias" with each loaf of bread we gave out.

The most exciting part of our trip was how God worked in the lives of the students in our group... all were greatly impacted & many made decisions for the first time to seek after Jesus & allow Him to work in their lives. Pray the Holy Spirit would continue to be at work in our lives & show us how to bring the great & wonderful things we learned back to "real life."