A big change around here!

Well, we have recently taken the plunge, we have tried out a new church. It was hard since we love our old church, but it had it's problems, and we have been feeling disconnected for a while from it and the congregation in general. Jon and I have each been praying about it and thinking on it, knowing God would find the right path for us if we were open to it. Last Tuesday we were waling up to our voting station and saw a friend we had not seen in a while from church. She mentioned that she was looking for a new church too, and mentioned the same church we had been considering. For the rest of our walk to vote we mulled this info, and talked about it extensively. I had not realized that Jon had been thinking nearly the same things and had the same concerns about our kids and church as I had. We often think things out fully before we bring up the topic to the other, I prefer not to sway Jon my way before he has fully thought out an idea and come to his own conclusions. We had both been thinking about the lack of inclusiveness in our church, and the lack of social and learning activities in our church. We both would like to be involved in our church more, but are not capable of running any programs due to time constraints and kids/school. Jon and I knew that we might as some point have to change churches and the time has come, J and A have both noticed the lack of brown kids in our church, and I don't really like the fact that there are only a few kids in the church, so the kids cannot choose friends based on personality or interests, they don't have any choices. This new church has a huge kids Sunday School, with 150 or so kids, and they have overnight camps and retreats for older teens, sports groups for the kids, AWANA, and lots of other activities too, oh yeas and they have a HUGE racial diversity too, very important!!!. These are ideal for our homeschool, and I am excited about the prospects before us, and our potential for growth in this church. They are a very vibrant church, with a very driven and inspiring Pastor, and a large goal for a new and very involved church. The plans are exciting, and the congregation is very invested in reaching the goals set forth and seeing this new church come about. Jon and I were favorably impressed, but it is still hard to leave the church we really do like a lot, we love the Pastor and will miss the other parishioners, but need to do this for our entire family. So that is where we are right now.
I will leave you with this little comment over heard before breakfast this morning,
Julianna "Mia, I would say your Minty (a my little pony coloring picture) is very brown like you, she looks pretty too, I really like it!!!" Amelia responded with a big thank you and went on to detail the other coloring effects she had done on "Minty". It was just so sweetly funny, and so very typical of J to say something like this. Yesterday she had out some Barbies and showed me that she had adopted all of her babies, there were two peach and one brown baby, and she was homeschooling them so that they could all grow up to be president!! Julianna's casual acceptance of the kids racial difference blows me away some times, and since she brings it up often in normal conversation, AB is very understanding of our differences, she sees them and is okay with them. Julianna tells her that mommy likes mocha best anyway, and wishes she had pretty curls so that she could wear hair bobs and braid clips too!!!! For her part AB is very comfortable with her "brownness", it has not suddenly hit her that we are different, Julianna has always pointed out their differentness and their sameness. At first this did not seem to be a good thing, but MB was not bothered by it once she found out that daddy is tan, and mommy and J are peach, and MB was just a shade darker than daddy, then it was okay, and she is completely comfortable with her skin tone. Even when she noticed that there were no other brown kids in our church she was not bothered by it, it was just an observation, so before it becomes something she is more uncomfortable with we will make some changes.
Okay now that I have gone on way too long I will sign off, love to all, Jamie