Hello! It has been a wonderful first quarter of the year for the McClelland kiddos with great breakthroughs and fun victories we would like to share! Thank you for loving and praying for our family, especially these two nations, Olive Brave and Valor Knight, that God has given us to steward here on earth. It is such a joy! Enjoy this blog update about the McClelland Kids in Jamaica.
Olive Brave's Victories
First of all, February 19th, this beautiful girl turned 9 years old! She was so excited to celebrate her birthday and had so many amazing expressions throughout the day. She has matured so much this year, grown in kindness (to her "enemies" that have become friends at school), increased her sacrificial love for her brother and improved her self-control. This year she has made honor roll for all her terms and memorizes her Bible verse monthly. In addition, Olive has had many new personal encounters with Jesus and grown in her confidence in communication with God. She is and always has been full of JOY, LIFE and HOPE. I rejoice as I watch her grow, and am so blessed to be her Mom!
A few gifts from family and friends!
For her birthday she wanted a "class party" as we call it here in Jamaica. At a class party which the parents host during school time, the student gets to celebrate their birthday with their class. Olive also invited her brother to join in the fun. On that day, Olive shared her birthday celebration with another classmate, Bolin. She was so sweet and even made sure he had a gift from her as she knew that her parents had sponsored her class party but she wanted to honor Bolin too.
I made a quick visit to Target when I was in Chicago, after my sister and sister-in-law (Tiffany and Nicole) helped me come up with party bag ideas. Valor loved helping his sister make them for her class!
Olive 1st Swim Meet in Kingston
Olive has been working really hard at swimming and her coach said she was ready for her first swim meet in the capital of Jamaica, Kingston! She and I drove down the night before and spent the night with a good friend and fellow missionary here in Jamaica, Leah Gregg. She is a teacher at Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf (CCCD) Kingston and opened her home for us. Olive is now always asking if we can go visit Kingston again (just to visit Leah).
Above is a picture of Olive and Valor's amazing swim coach! He is a strong Christian and, seriously, how he coaches challenges me as a mother. He is so patient and kind and goes at the child's pace. He encourages and speaks life. Her swim coach has actually become a good friend here in Jamaica.
3 friends from her swim class
Olive swam so well in all three of her races, the freestyle, the backstroke and the breaststroke. All three were 50 meters in distance, and Olive even placed 8th in the backstroke out of 38 swimmers. But more importantly, she had a lot of FUN! It was also fun for Mommy to go with her as it brought up so many good memories from my childhood as I was a competitive swimmer growing up.
Valor Knight's Breakthroughs
God gifted us with two amazing kiddos; each designed very, very differently! Valor is a boy that is a generous giver. He naturally considers others above himself and is willing to sacrifice for them. He loves one- on- one time and drawing pictures of our family (as pictured above on a one- on- one date with Mommy for a Mango smoothie). Our Valor is one that wisely considers the cost of decisions before doing them, and one who is growing and learning how to recognize and face his fears. He is an Overcomer!
One of these areas where he had to face some fears is swimming. Valor has been so afraid of swimming as he has voiced, "The water is deep and I don't want to drown." Step by Step he has been trusting his coach, doing more and more brave things in the pool, and has finally gotten the breakthrough of swimming without support in our YWAM pool!!! He is still learning how to transfer his breakthrough from our YWAM pool with more shallow water to the lessons' swimming pool that is deep, but he is getting there little- by -little. As a family, we love celebrating his breakthrough! I often have to show him a previous video of him swimming in the deep water before his swim class to remind him that he has done it and can do it again. He is one that faces his fears!
A few other areas that Valor is enjoying breakthrough in is reading and learning sign language. Valor is opposite of Olive who loves to interact with; he enjoys one- on- one time. So this year, Valor expressed his desire to have one- on- one lessons in ASL with Mommy. He said," Daddy knows sign language, Mommy knows sign Language and Olive knows sign language. I also want to learn sign language." He was so precious. Valor actually does know sign language and understand it very well but has a harder time expressing it. So I found Lingvano, an app to learn ASL, and we have been doing this everyday for 10 mins. He is on 113 day streak right now and his confidence has grown in using what he knows! He is learning to read also. We have started a reading a book everyday and recording the books for a special date with Daddy.
So thankful for Anna, one of the leaders here, who blessed Valor with this cool bookshelf chart to keep him motivated to read!
Easter Holiday
Olive's dance studio hosted an Easter party and both of the kiddos were able to attend. They had dancing, face painting, games and more!
While Olive and Valor were having fun, Daddy and Mommy were able to take a LONG 4 hour date! With the extra time, we decided to go to one of our old date spots, a restaurant close to the Deaf school where we used to live for 2 years. We LOVE this Jamaican restaurant and the waitresses all were happy to see us. It is also our favorite place for a date because it has a long country road that is not busy for us to just walk and talk.
Other fun activities: art projects, visiting friends houses, and playing and exploring with Legos!
Easter Holiday Trip
We LOVE Eve a (yes it is spelled Eve a)! She is a missionary at CCCD (Carribean Christian Centre for the Deaf) in Knockpatrick, and she is amazing with children! She welcomed us to come visit her on the Easter break, and it was so much fun. We love her warm hospitality, popcorn and all her games and good ideas of activities to do when we are there. Mommy also gets some friend time when we visit, too.
We also got to visit one of our favorite places in Jamaica which is full of some of our favorite people: Jamaican Deaf Village (JDV). We were so honored to see the McKenize family. Simone just had a beautiful baby boy named Ethan, and Olive got to see her Jamaican sister, Ashley, who now is an actual big sister to Ethan. We also saw many other friends that live at JDV. We love visiting this place!
Thank you Eve a and JDV for the amazing visit!!! We love you!!!
Spontaneous Second Visit to the Jamaican Zoo
The kiddos always love when Daddy greets us at the gate when we come home from a trip!
A few other special activities happened recently when we released Daddy for his mission trip. (And this is actually something we do. We involve our kiddos by sharing about our trips so they understand why Mommy or Daddy are going and they can be praying. ) “YWAM affirms that importance of families serving God together in missions, not just the father and/or mother.” We LOVE that God calls families into missions and confidently believe our children have a special call to serve Him together: sharing the call and contributing their gifts for the mission. So for Daddy's recent trip, we prayed for two things: 1. that Daddy would be able to share about Deaf World and spread awareness of the Deaf community, our friends who we love working with as we see the gospel spread through them. 2. Meet all of our Caribbean neighbors as well as our new East Coast neighbors to make friends so we can visit later! Olive, Valor, and I celebrated when Daddy shared these two things happened! We love being a family in missions and involving our kiddos in our calling!
Glow Stick Hallelujah Parties with Mommy
Fun with our Deaf friends
Swimming with Tycen and Veledise Soza
Art with Emily: They colored salt and made salt pictures!
Olive has been loving taking care of her lima bean plant and seeing fruit. She was able to take care of Caleb's two lemongrass plants when he was away and loved it!
Since Valor has started to enjoy reading and listening to audiobooks, we love our family reading time on Sabbaths days. When Daddy was gone, it was so nice for Mommy to sit and read in the middle of the day.
Going out for Frozen Yogurt is always a MUST when Daddy is away!
