Our Prayer Card

Our friend Jeff (check out the link to his site in the right) made this for us. If you are on our usual mailing list you will be getting one in the near future. If we have met you on this blog and you would like to start recieving our updates, e-mail me your address, and we would love to start sending them to you.

What Will Tomorrow Bring?

Always a question that we are asking ourselves here at the Phlaum house.
Well, after about two months of us trying to figure out what we are going to be doing for the next while, it looks like we might have somewhat of a heading.
I want to write full-time and I want to mesh my writing abilities with the desire that Jen and I have to reach the lost for Christ. So what I would like to do is write missions articles. I'm not too sure what that is going to look like in the long run, but I have a few ideas.
I contacted the "Communications Dept." of NTM and asked how much more schooling I would need in order to write with them. I received a very excited response that said they have a place they would love for me to fit in...right now!
So that is the goal we are heading for right now. This Tuesday we will start filling out paperwork to be official members of NTM. We have been involved with New Tribes for almost six years now, so this is kind of exciting to finally be the "real deal"!!
If everything else goes as planned, we hope to be heading down to the New Tribes HQ for an interview within the next few weeks. We don't have a date set for that, so when we have the exact plans we'll let you know.
"Head Quarters" is where we will be working and that is located in Sanford, FL. We've never been to Florida, we don't know anyone in Florida, so moving there for long term will be different!
Nothing is definite yet, so we are trying not to get too excited, but I think that I would love to write for New Tribes. We know how fast God can change our plans though, so we will see what he has in store for us...
Please keep us in your prayers about this...

Recent Picture

Here we are, just being a family.

We had our Graduation...it turned out really nice. We just found out a couple weeks ago that we were actually going to be able to graduate, so we didn't have time to invite anyone, soooo we didn't get any pictures of ourselves. I know...I know...everyone wanted to see what a tie looks like on me. Maybe someother day.
Now we are going to hang out here in Missouri for about a month, then Lord willing we will get to go visit the people in Florida that we will be working with. The summer plans are really up in the air still, so we will see what happens.

We're Graduating!

Well, our training with New Tribes Mission is coming to an end.
Tomorrow (today, by the time many of you read this...) Jen and I will be walking the aisle and recieving our diplomas. I will be getting my B.A. and Jen her A.A. in "Intercultural Communication". Sounds pretty cool, huh? Alot of time and work went into these, so we are proud to get them!
Within the next 3 days the majority of the people on campus will be leaving, and it is going to be quite empty around here.
Jen and I are going to start packing next week. Always fun. It would be nice to settle down for awhile in the same place, but that isn't going to happen for quite some time. Maybe one day...
But tomorrow we are going to enjoy our graduation with our friends, and we'll post some pictures so you can see us all dressed up! (I have to wear a tie and everything!)

For some bizarre reason...

...I started reading though the month of December on my blog this morning. I don't know what possesed me to do it. I don't think that I have really read through that since I wrote it several months ago. It was probably a good thing to re-visit. Life gets so very busy that it is easy, for me as a guy, to just "bury" what has happened and move on with life, without total healing. It has been less then 6 months that she has been gone...so it isn't like we are "over" it by a long shot.
It is good for me to remember this when I see Jen having a hard day. She is still living right in the middle of the pain. She is doing well, but we live on a very small campus, fewer then 100 students, and more then half of the married ladies are either carrying around infants or are pregnant.
(Hey multiply and replenish right? :-)
Since I don't hang out with the ladies as much, I am not inundated with conversation that goes along with pregnency and babies, so I tend not to notice our "empty arms" as much as she does.
So it was good this morning to "re-live" a little of what we went through, feel the emotions again, and just remember...

Seminar

The beginning of April, Jen and I went to an infant death seminar up in Wisconsin. When we were invited to go to this seminar I thought that it was going to be "professionals" in the field of grief and/or people who had lost infants, and I thought that they would be able to "logically" explain the things that we are feeling/going through......
It wasn't quite as we expected. The key-note speaker had lost a child in 1984 and it was good to see that you can still cry after so many years, but that you do get out of the despair that, so soon after Anarazell's death, we so often feel. You never get "over" it, but life still goes on, and we will go on with it.
It was good in the sense that we got to share with people who "know" what we are going through and feeling. We didn't know anyone personally that had lived through this same experience in order to talk about things with them. (In this past month we have meet a few people, but not in the beginning). So it was a "safe place to share" and in that aspect it was good.
When you are at something like this, there is a lot of crying going on, and Jen and I did my share as well, but the thing that broke my heart the most was the complete lack of hope that so many people had. That was the hardest thing for Jen and me.

*Back-flash*
Dec 9th, the morning that Jen and I said good-bye to our Anarazell, the doctors said that there was no rush for us to leave the room after she was gone. We could take as many hours as we wanted. They said that alot of people take pictures with their baby, give them baths and just "visit" with them for a while.
After Jen and I removed life support, Anarazell never breathed once, so "she" was only with us for a few minutes. After that we had her body, but she was, "Absent from the body...and present with the Lord".
I think we shocked the nurses because we laid her on her bed, covered her up with her blanket and walked out.
As heart-breaking as it was to leave the room we knew that we would see "her" once more...

At the seminar that hope was lacking, and was not offered. That broke our hearts. We would love to be involved in a seminar that was Christian focused.
Something that has the basis of..."You are in pain, you are hurting...let us lead you to the One who can truly comfort you, and give you the hope of seeing you little one again".
I don't even know how to go about finding out how to get involved in something like that. Maybe I'll do some researching. Something like that would be hard, but such a huge blessing.
Anyway...we are glad we went...

We're Baaackk!

We made it...We are back in Missouri. The trip from Wisconsin down to here was, thankfully, totally uneventful.
As a "kid" I used to long for adventure, and then I was taught by a very wise man, "Never pray for adventure...adventure means that you are probably cold, and wet and scared!" (my paraphrase)
So now we are here and really have nothing much to do for the next couple weeks. We found out that we have enough credits to graduate so that is really cool. Graduation day is May 20th so we are just kinda hanging out until then. I am going to try to keep up with this blog and writing a news letter and all that good stuff.
Also we will be figuring out what our plans will be for the next several years.
At the beginning of April, right before we started our trip, we were told by the leadership here at L.I. that we should probably take some time off and get re-focused as a family. Since it has been only 5 months since the death of Anarazell we realize that it would be good for our family to take some time and heal a bit more and see where in ministry God wants us. It was a bit hard to hear that we should take some time off because we have been with New Tribes Mission since Jen and I got married almost 6 years ago. NTM has been our life and the focus of our plans for all these years, so to have it suddenly...gone...
We have been doing alot of praying, as well as many other people for us, and it looks like our life might be taking a completely different turn in direction from where we have been heading.
More on that later...
We are just happy to be in one place for a little while.

Traveling Family

I know...I know...I told everyone that I would update while we were on our long trip. I'm sorry I lied!
On April 7th our family left Missouri to travel for about a month. Well it is now May 4th and our trip is almost over.
Talk about a whirlwind trip!
We have driven over 2,500 miles and we are still in Wisconsin for a few more days! Add a round-trip flight from here to Idaho via Phoenix, AZ and the total for the month is going to be huge!
I am not going to write all about our trip right now because it would be a stink'n long post, but for the next few posts I am going to highlight different parts and adventures that we had!
So you all can start coming back and checking our blog because I am going to update it more regularly for a while!