Miracles in Action

Why I Need Your Help

Four years ago I went to Kenya for a month to work with infants at a local orphanage. While out adventuring, I came upon a large slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. The children I met were full of love and happiness, but they were living and learning in utter squalor.

This was near the front of Grace Junior.
This was the extent of their school supplies.
With the help and prayers of friends and family, my friend Sally and I were able to build and stock a new school for their small community. It was a true miracle.
Here was the new and improved Grace Junior.

New uniforms and desks.

This is Mary, their head teacher.

This is Sally. She's getting vaccinated with the children at one of the orphanages they sponsor.

Sally returned to LA and founded Stepwise, a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit to benefit orphans in East Africa. They quickly sponsored our school (Gracie Junior) and were able to take over all the financial and supplemental needs of the school for the past four years.

Stepwise has a series of schools and orphanages that they sponsor all over Kenya. Unfortunately, it has come to their attention that some of the children attending one of their sponsored schools were being abused at their orphanage (not run by Stepwise). Through a series of tender mercies those girls are currently being transferred to a safe house by a partner NGO which Stepwise has agreed to fund. This has been an extremely delicate and costly – but absolutely necessary – endeavor for them.

After hearing about this saddening situation I wanted to do anything I could to help, so I have volunteered to help alleviate some of the financial stress by fundraising and begging for donations to help support Gracie Junior School this year. This will help Stepwise focus all their time and energy on getting the needed help for the rescued children.

The financial breakdown is as follows:

Financial Breakdown -- $233 a month ($2,800 a year)

Rent – This covers two classrooms and a kitchen

Salaries – This covers the head teacher’s salary, one teaching assistant, one sustainability assistant and a cook. They are able to receive yearly raises by completing classes at a local educational center.

Supplemental Fees– Fixing or replacing uniforms, school supplies, books, teaching tools, extra desks, etc

The Food Program – This covers one meal/snack a day for each child. This is an incentive program to keep the children attending on a regular basis and for some is the only meal they’ll eat that day.

Sustainability Program – This instructor teaches the children/parents life skills: growing/tending a garden, nutrition, basic health and sanitation, crafts, etc.

How to Help

If any of you feel it in your heart to make a donation to this very effective and efficient organization, all donations are to be made directly through Stepwise on their website: http://stepwise.org/. Just click on the PayPal button to use your credit card or PayPal account. They area a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit in the US, and all donations are tax deductible. Any questions you may have about their organization can be made to the US Director at sallyh@stepwise.org.

Please email me at denisemrobertson@yahoo.com If you choose to make a donation. I need to keep track of how much money I still need to raise, and make sure that your donation is set aside specifically for Grace Junior and not applied to any of their other East African initiatives.

I am so thankful for the love and support from each and every one of you. Please keep these children in your prayers as they find safe and loving homes to help them heal.

Pioneer Children

I love this hand-me-down dress Abby got from her friend. It reminds me of something a pioneer would wear. She left me put this adorable flower in her hair for 15 seconds, so I had to get a picture.

Abby loves to squint her eyes when I tell her to smile. It's a happier version of the stank eye.

This is how Abby gets the ribbon out of her hair -- she shrugs her shoulders and pushes the ribbon off the back of her head.

She is so pleased with herself.

Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked!

Congrats, Sadie!

I'm going to go ahead and guess that many of you missed this season's Westminster Dog Show. I had to follow the action online because three of the nine English channels I get to watch here were all things Olympics, which kind of bends me a little. Seriously, the Olympics are great but the real competition went unnoticed.

Here are some reasons why dog show dogs deserve to get some love:

Dogs have to hone their skills by 12, because after that they are usually dead. Could you imagine how awesome the half pipe would be if Shawn White had to hammer out his moves by the age of six. I'm going to go ahead and guess that the speed skating wouldn't be so speedy.

Dogs have to look good after running around the ring a few times. That's like asking the downhill skiers to walk the runway after a few bunny hills in the helmet. I don't think any of them would make it into the Olympic calendar. Don't even get me started on how bad they might smell.

Dogs have to rely on a human counterpart to "lead" them in a circle. They get no say in how uppity that person runs or how they choose to color coordinate their lame pant suit. No one asks the Olympic competitors what their coaches wore to the competition.

This year's best in show winner had shaggy hair, so he did that run with hair in his eyes. Let's see if you can make it to the bathroom with super long bangs.

Olympians shouldn't feel the urge to bite the other competitors. I can't get my dog from the house to the lawn without busting out some ninja restraint moves to save the little critters that live around us. Gracie just couldn't handle that kind of pressure.

Little Bo Peep

Abby loves to play hide and go seek, but she doesn't really get the rules. First she yells, "Abby's hiding." Then I yell, "where is Abby?" After about five seconds of giggling she yells, "Abby's hiding under the sheep." Mystery solved. I'm better than Sherlock Holmes.

Here are some shots of her "hiding."

Notice her big girl panties. I can't get enough of them. I can't believe how fast she's growing and changing.

You can't hide that smile!


Sneaky eyes

She's so much harder to find when she's deep in thought.

Game's over! Time for nighty night.

Baby Annabelle

Today we have the shower for baby Annabelle. It was so much fun to see the girls, chit chat and eat super yummy food. I was the only one with a camera, so I posted tons of photos for everyone to see. Enjoy!

This cake was delicious. I wish I could steal it for Abby's birthday this week.

Jill has an eye for flowers. These were beautiful.

Jill and Allison doing the signature Japanese photo pose.

Guess who's having a baby shower next?

Two Lions and a Doggie

Abby and I have been having a standoff over this photo of Daniel in the Lion's Den. She is convinced that the picture has two lions and a doggie in it. She's also convinced that the "doggie" is a Beth dog. I'm pretty certain it is three lions. She gets super MAD when I try to correct her, so I'm probably going to have to change the lion's den to lioggie's den in all our scriptures. If we're going to have scriptures then they might as well be accurate.

Speaking of scriptures, we're using the money Grandma Robertson sent for Abby's birthday to buy these awesome posters for her room:

Speaking of all things spiritually, we've decided to bend Lent a little this year and add something instead of take something away. This year we're determined to eat a healthy, hearty round of vegetables with dinner for the next 40 days. Now that I think about it, I'm sacrificing the room I would have saved for dessert so it should really count. Sweet justice.

Today we studied 1st Samuel 25 in our PWOC class. It is the story of Abigail. I loved it so much I thought I would share it below. I had no idea this story existed when we named her Abby. We love the West Wing and there is a main character named Abigail – we heard it on the show and could both agree we liked it. I went on a pilgrimage to Israel when I was six months pregnant with Abby and I thought it was cool she was getting a Hebrew name to celebrate that. We also loved the meaning: father’s joy, which is exactly what she has been.

We’ve decided not to talk about names until we find out what sex the baby is next week. We’ll have a throw down at that point. I’m also interested in seeing what my sister names my niece or nephew who is coming a month earlier than our bundle of joy. We’ll have to work around her leftovers J. Any suggestions?

1st Samuel 25 – In My Own Words

Abigail was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance. She was married to a rich man named Nabal who was churlish and evil in his doings. He had many sheep and goats.
David spent time with Nabal’s sheep shears and watched over his flocks while he was near Carmel. Even though David had many troops with him, they never once took any sheep from Nabal.

David sent some of his men to ask Nabal for some food and supplies since they were short. David had about 4000 men with him. Nabal basically said, “who is this David kid and why should I bother?”

So David told his men to get all their gear; they were going to teach Nabal a lesson and kill all the male members of his household.

One of the servants off Nabal came to alert Abigail of her husband’s wrongdoing. He told her that David came to Nabal out of respect and that Nabal shunned him without good reason. David was very good unto them, didn’t hurt them, and provided a wall of safety day and night while the shepherds watched the fields. David was asking for so little in return.

Without her husband knowing, Abigail quickly went to David with 200 loaves, two bottles of wine, five sheep already dressed, five measures of parched corn and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs. With this token of respect at his feet, she pleaded for the males in her family.

She was courageous in disobeying her husband’s wishes, and valiant in honoring good. David was so impressed with Abigail that he married her after her husband died (a week later he was struck down by the Lord.)

Love it. Totally love it.

Things She's Learned

Here are four additional things Abby has learned about potty training:

Number One: After you wash out the potty tray, it makes a nice cup for sweet and sour flavored water.

Number Two: Toots rumble much louder without the diaper padding to quiet them.

Number Three: Mom and Dad won't yell at you if you leave the time out mat to sit on the potty; although, if you do that too often they will put the potty on the time out mat.

Number Four: If you pee a little, get a treat, and then pee out the rest you can double the treat load.

WHAT A STINKER!

We Like to Potty!

Jeremy and I have been wrestling with the idea of potty training Abby. She's showing all the signs of being ready: an obsession with watching people potty, telling us she's peeing or pooing as it's happening, ripping off her diaper, etc. Most of her close friends just got trained (they're all the same age) and she's realizing they are wearing panties and she's not. She's got panty fever and there is only one cure...

The downside is that we're going to have a lot of upcoming transitions in the next few months, which will probably mean some setbacks. That being said, I think you need to strike when the iron is hot and the kinks can be worked out over time. There is always going to be a million reasons to put things off, but I'd much rather just dive in then sit around dreading it forever. I'm so thankful to whoever invented pull ups! She's going to be wearing one on the plane ride to Germany :)

So I asked a million different moms what worked for them and have settled on the book: Toilet Training in One Day. Clearly they believe in miracles.

Here are the supplies we got:

The premise of the book is to focus on rewarding them for keeping their pants dry, so you have repeated "dry pants checks" at scheduled times throughout each hour. She gets one candy for every successful check. We also got lots of fun drinks for her to chug so she gets a lot of practice time on the potty. Tons of panties are obviously a given.

No baby should be bored on the potty. Once she has it down I will send in the entertainment!

There is also a huge focus on role playing with a doll that wets when you press its tummy. We need to train the doll until Abby gets the concept.

Abby wouldn't let the doll out of her sight, even when we were finished with it.

Update: It's day three and things are going pretty well. She had quite a few accidents on day one, but only one accident yesterday. We put her in pull ups for her time at church today, but she immediately ripped it off and peed in the potty when we returned home.

She trains much better for daddy than mommy. Jeremy was thrilled to help out and did most of the work. I'm so happy he has a four-day weekend. He is a lifesaver.

We still haven't left the house in panties yet, which will be a challenge I'm sure. We're just focusing on getting her to recognize the urge to pee and be proactive about it. As long as she's enjoying the process we'll stick with it.

Love to hear your tips!

Always

Every day I am thankful for such a loving husband. Not only are you my best friend and eternal companion, but you are also my greatest blessing. Thank you for being such a fun and involved father to Abby. I am so pleased we are on this adventure together. As engraved in my wedding band: to the ends of the earth. Always and forever.

D

Elder Robertson

Jeremy's brother, Douglas, just got his mission call to Utica, New York. We are super thrilled for him. Not only is it beautiful, but it is relatively near my home in Canada. He's so close to where the church began and will get to see so much of the early church history. What an amazing adventure!

I've never had the experience of having a sibling be called on a mission before. I can't wait to make care packages and send letters. I am certain our family's testimony will grow as we loving support Douglas in his new calling. Blessings all around.

Thanks for being such a great example. WE LOVE YOU! Congrats.