Chandler Renee - 11 months

11 months. 11 MONTHS. ELEVEN. Are you kidding me?! Seriously, she's 11 months today. This past month has been a blast with her. It was like all of the sudden she decided to do a bazillion new "tricks." She hasn't perfected them yet, but she's working on them. She's started trying to dance. Any time she hears music she will bend her little knees or shake her little bum. Seriously, so cute. We have a dance party every morning. She's also working on clapping. Her right hand does better than her left hand, so it's not perfect yet either. But if you say, "Yayyyyyyy," you better believe she'll be hitting her little hands together. She continues to pretend like everything is a cell phone and you must say hello if she puts something to her ear. She does a great job walking all around our living room from couch to table to chair, etc. And sometimes she gets the courage to walk from the couch all the way to the dining room table... and for her little legs, that's a good distance! Some times she tries to repeat what you say. Really, she's probably just making random noises, but it happens to sound like "bye-bye" or "tout à l'heure." Or we really do have an overachieving bilingual child and I'm ok with that.

This month she got settled back into her home and bedroom in Benin. She loves to play with the toys in her bedroom! I think she knows it's her space. We spent a week alone without Trey. It was like a slumber party every night - even the night we didn't have power for 5+ hours and had to help the guard refill the generator with gas at 2 a.m. :) She hasn't done much world traveling this month, but did make a trip to the Togo border. It should have only taken 4 hours total and took over 6 hours! She did great on the trip. She's started to wear shoes! I know, they aren't supposed to wear shoes while learning to walk, and most days she doesn't put a pair on. But when we're going out and she might walk in a dirty place, she wears shoes. She's getting better at walking in them.

I'm going to do my best to cherish this next month before we have a 1 YEAR OLD child! I'm sad that this month is so short. It will fly by faster than usual. But alas, here's to the last month of Chandler's first year!

the perfect sacrifice

Today we made our monthly trip to the Benin-Togo border. We go once a month to get a "laisser passer" (let pass) for our Togo truck to be driven in Benin. The drive on the main road is pretty horrible due to construction. We thought about driving the beach road there, but it's pretty bumpy. We usually take the beach road back just to give us a change of scenery (and the scenery is much more pretty than red clay & construction). Nothing of this has anything to do with what I really want to write about, but I'm just letting you know that this drive is pretty normal for us. Like I said, we do it monthly.

On our trip back, we're driving the beach route. The entire way we pass fishing villages. It really puts things in perspective. These people work hard just to survive. They also work as a community to support themselves. We passed a small community repairing their nets and another pulling in their net, which is really an incredible site to see. As we drove by them I rolled down the window to listen to their song. A little boy noticed us and yelled out, "Yo-vo, yo-vo," which means white person. Several others looked our way and we waved and told them good work!

We continued to drive and passed some sheep. This is not out of the ordinary. We pass lots of animals while driving on a daily basis, even in our "urban" city. As I watch sheep, I am humbled when God compares us to them. They are the dumbest animals, but that's a different post. Today, it dawned on me, I've never seen a spotless lamb. Seriously, not one without blemish. Often when we drive this beach route along the fishing villages, I think about some of the first disciples who were fishermen. I think about how before Jesus, these people, who didn't have much, would have to provide spotless lambs as a sacrifice. I mean, I wasn't there during that time, and maybe I'm taking too much literary freedom here, but I would think these people would be a good comparison. Those sheep we passed, filled with blemishes and spots, would have been owned by these fisherman. When the time came for that sacrifice, they would have needed to find the money to buy a new sheep, a perfect sheep.

I think we often take Jesus dying on the cross for granted. You see, these fishermen are the working class here. Yes, there are people that make more money than them, but for the most part, it's them. Most of us could be considered in that working class. And if we were alive before Jesus' death, we too would have had to find the money or the way to buy that perfect spotless lamb. But, thankfully, we've had a perfect, spotless - no blemishes, no scraggly hair, no spots, or gross looking fur - lamb take the place of those sacrifices - the place that we deserved.

I hope that daily I'm reminded of the sacrifice He made. More specifically, every time we have to stop the car to let a lamb walk down the middle of cross the road, I hope I am thankful for the place He took. My place.