Owning Her Trip & Rainbow Utensils

We leave for Africa in like 2 full days.  I wish I could explain how excited we are, but especially Harper.  She CANNOT wait.  Our bags are packed and we’re slowly adding to our carry-ons as we think of new things.

I’ve been talking to Harper about how I’ve been praying for her heart as she meets these amazing kids and people and as her eyes take in beautiful and hard things.  She has been a part of this carepoint for a long time…just as long and Josh Kelley and myself.  I still remember her small body sitting on stacks of photo frames full of precious Ngungwane kid’s faces as we prepared to launch the carepoint at our then church in 2011.  For months upon months after the launch Josh and I would stand in the lobby with the kids running around our feet talking to people about how they could become a sponsor and be apart of Ngungwane.

Swaziland and Africa have never been foreign to her…they’ve always been apart of her life.  She has prayed for our Swazi friends and helped raise money for projects and given her own money and helped bake goods for bake sales and helped organize fundraising yard sales and waited patiently for Josh to return home from Swaziland and Facetimed with me while I was in Swaziland and helped pack supply bags and written letters/drawn pictures to our sponsor kiddos and listened to our stories and seen pictures and videos and shopped for supplies and hugged my neck so hard when we hit the playground goal.  Harper’s not just any kid going to Africa…she has been looking forward to this day for years.  She has been hoping to go to Ngungwane and meet our friends for a long time and her time has come.  Her excitement is contagious and makes me even more excited than I already am.  This will be her second trip to Africa and I foresee many more in her future.

I’ve been encouraging her to listen to God while she’s there.  I hope He speaks so clearly to her little heart.  I hope she soaks up every last bit of this trip and more.  I hope she sees the joy and the beauty at every turn.  I hope she makes new friends she can visit for years to come.  I hope she sees God’s goodness everywhere.

We wanted her to take great responsibility and ownership of this adventure.  She brainstormed ways to raise money for her trip and then set to work raising all her funds.  She helped pick out supplies and craft items and new outfits for our sweet go-go.  She helped me pack our personal bags.  She’s learned new hand rhythms to do with the kids.  She got her travel shot like a champ and even paid for her updated passport.  She’s sending thank you notes to all her donors with a little Swazi goody she picks up while in country.  She has her list all made out of who to buy souvenirs for…to which she said “I’m not going to buy you something since you’ll be with me.”  And then this past weekend we set to work on one last item.

Each year we get the honor of going and visiting community members homes.  With each home visit we take a big bucket of goods to thank the family for letting us visit.  This year I wanted something a little more personal to add to the buckets from Harper and myself.  After pursuing Pinterest for forever we finally decided on painted wooden utensils.

Our team is going on 6 home visits this year so I ordered 6 sets of THESE on Amazon and then read 5 bajillion tutorials on how to paint and treat wood utensils so they would last.  Seriously, there are a ton of tutorials on this.  After reading I decided to do a mix of lots of them.  Ha.  Here’s how we did ours:

*Taped off the handles.

*Painted however many coats of acrylic paint until the handle looked good.  Darker colors we only needed one coat.  Lighter colors needed 2-3.

*Once the paint dried I sprayed the handles with Rust-Oleum’s all-natural, non-toxic Clear Shellac Spray.

*Then we used Butcher Block Conditioner Food Grade Mineral Oil and Natural Waxes to treat the unpainted area of the utensil. (Heated the wax, rubbed it on the unpainted wood area, let sit for 20 minutes and then wiped off excess.)

I read several tutorials that mentioned baking the utensils to further help set everything, but after reading through comments and seeing some people had trouble with the heat making their painted handles bubble, I opted out on the baking.

In the end, Harper and I we’re super pleased with them.  I also loved after talking about what colors we should use she chose rainbow.  Be still my heart.

So our final project/supply/gift is complete and packed safely in a suitcase.  About 2 full days left and we will be in route for Africa.  We really cannot wait to see what all God has in store!!

Happy Thursday!

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