My works of art!

Okay...so as most of you know...I'm not an artist. Not when it comes to writing, not when it comes to drawing, and definitely not when it comes to painting. The closest I've ever gotten to art is slapping a flyswatter with paint on it on a piece of paper hung up on a fence (and it's tons of fun, too!). Thank goodness my passion is with children, and not anything that involves serious contemplation. :)

Anyway...one of the projects the church gave me to work on this summer was to paint a mural on each of the classroom walls. The idea made me laugh. Apparently these people did not know what they were about to get themselves into. Despite my inability to create even a drawing of a human look-a-like, I began brainstorming appropriate scenes out of the bible for each age group. We (Mellisa and I) decided on Noah's Ark for the 4-6 year olds (which Mellisa did), a scene of the shepherd's looking up at an angel in the 7-10 year old room, and a scene of Jesus being baptized in the 12 year old classroom. And so we began.

Now, 2 months and 3 murals later, the church has asked me to do another mural on the kitchen wall. This work is currently in progress...and will be shown later. I thought I would go ahead and show you the two I have done myself at this point. I'm pretty happy with the results...and surprised, as well!! This first one is my absolute favorite...the mural in the 4-6 year old room. The one one the left is the mural in its entirety, and the one on the right is just more of a close-up of it. I had difficulty figuring out how to paint the angel (my selection of paint was limited)...but it turned out better than I expected. The sheep are my favorite, though. They make shepherding look like fun!!

And the second one I did will not upload on here!!! In general, I like it...I just prefer more simplified paintings like the one above. This mural is in the 12-year old room and represents the Holy Spirit descending down on Jesus in the form of a dove after His baptism. I will keep trying to add the pictures to the blog...but I will also add them to my shutterfly account under "church family and activities". And here's a test. Check out the picture of Jesus being baptized and find what's wrong in the picture. I made a relatively funny mistake and am curious how obvious it is!!! Just go to www.travelingwoodenshoes.shutterfly.com and check it out!

Aside from all this, my sister Charity and her husband John came to visit me a week and a half ago! I was so excited! They only got to stay for the weekend, but it was great getting to see her pregnant, feel the baby...I mean, "Eric", kick...and see John after almost a year and a half!! They got here on Friday, and we spent the night touring the city of Eindhoven. Then we left early (for me!) on Saturday to drive to Amsterdam. I have also added an album of pictures from that day, as well. Thankfully, the two days they were here, we were blessed with warm weather. And the second they decided to leave, it started raining! But we were glad to do our touring without the burden of carrying umbrellas around all day!

Since then, I've had to start teaching myself Dutch (taking a class didn't work out), the number of readers has picked up (I got 3 new ones last week!) and I should begin my au pairing sometime next week. Things are getting much busier!! But so far, so good. I've been organizing a "Newcomer's Dinner" for this Friday night...and I'm pretty excitement about the people who have committed to coming. I think it will be a great time of fellowship together. And options already seem to be opening up for me for when I return. So I've relieved at that, as well. The less stress, the better!!!

Well...that's it for now. And how are you?