Life in The Family International

Joni writes: Having five children is definitely teaching me a lot! I have to be honest that sometimes I’m overwhelmed and feel frustrated that I can’t get to some of the things I need to do. I guess sometimes they’re just things I’d like to do, but not always. I’m very ambitious and always have a few projects I’m working on. There’re a few things I’m thinking and seeing about this scenario:

1. I’m just going to have to choose what I get involved with and my projects wisely and ask the Lord! The other day, no sooner had we finished breakfast and our daily devotional reading and life started comin’ at me. The kids wanted attention, there were home decisions that were timely and needed to be sorted out, my room needed cleaning, beds made etc. I started to feel overwhelmed but remembered what I’ve been trying to teach myself for so long—ask the Lord! So, I did. I just asked him for each step and then did what I heard Him telling me, “first go talk to that person to get more details about what needs to be done for such and such,” “OK, now you have a few minutes before you need to make a phone call to so and so, so it’s a good time to clean the room and make the beds” “now get your girls a snack.” It worked!! A morning that I felt was shaping up to be craaaaazy, just came together and everything that I thought was going to be so hard to work out, just flowed. Before I knew it, everything I had to do, was done!

2. It’s helping me to become more efficient, to really learn about efficiency and organization and consistency. I’ve come to realize that I’m not that efficient, I’m a procrastinator, I run on inspiration a lot of the time and get excited about a lot of different things, but I can’t always do them all and so I end up doing many things half way. I mean, I really feel quite challenged to change this part of my life and I’m excited with the fact that I can make this a strong point, and my life will probably change quite drastically and I’ll be getting more done (I REALLY like the sound of that!)

3. But then I have to remember not to become so accomplishment oriented that I go too fast and miss the beautiful things in life—spending time just talking with my children, playing with them, talking with my friends. And having patience when I can’t seem to get “anything” done and realizing that the most important thing I have to do each day is caring for and loving my children. They and our memories together are forever! These are the happiest days of my life!

Here are a few recent pictures of my wonderful kids!

Vas and Joni are members of The Family International and are fulltime missionaries in Mexico. Vas helps to organize outreach, writes, records and produces music, plays in a band, performs and does shows, counsels young people and engages in evangelism. Joni teaches her four children, evangelises, performs and does shows, sings and records and assists The Family childcare board. More about Vas and Joni

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.