LifeLight Music Festival

John is nearly in full swing at The Refuge. Last weekend he, along with Sarah, Hannah, and Audra Wilson, went to represent the station at LifeLight music festival in Sioux Falls, SD. (Not sure if the girls were that helpful, but they thoroughly enjoyed themselves) He will head up to MN in a couple of weeks to do some work and get ready for a Share-a-thon. We will all join him in Duluth for that event in early October. I say all of us but I'm sure Rachel and Zach won't be able to go due to their school and work schedules. There's much work to be done at this point for John. Besides raising funds for the station, they have to get all their translators up and running at full capacity, build relationships with communities, and a zillion other things.
We will keep things updated here, all prayers appreciated. It seems a bit overwhelming at times.

We have heard some feedback about our last newsletter, some thought it was too vague. That's because it is. We have no clear plan as far as when to move, if to move, or where to move to. We trust the Lord knows and when the time is right He will direct our path. When that time comes we don't think it will be difficult to sell our house. It's a great house in a prime location.

For now, we will try to carry out a somewhat normal schedule. It's crazy. This morning we had kids in 4 different directions all needing rides. I thought homeschooling was going to cut down on our busy schedule. In a few weeks it'll be running more smoothly, at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Here We Go Around the World Again

Once again we are traveling around the world in our homeschool study, Children Around The World. This week we found ourselves in Alaska eating Bannock, a fried bread. The meal wasn't much, so we had clam chowder. Hey Alaskans eat clam chowder, don't they? The best part was playing the Inuit games.....Leg Wrestling, Knee Walking, Owl Hop, and Toe Jump.


Dad explaining the games.


Sophie and Chloe doing the Seal Crawl.


Hannah getting ready to do the knee jump. I posted a couple of videos on Facebook so you can see the graceful beauty of these games. Just click on the picture to play.

Homeschool Tools

I've finally figured out the secret to a calm, peaceful day of homeschooling. In my imagination homeschooling is a delightful time filled with eager to learn kids with happy smiles and kind words spoken to each other. Any homeschooling mom knows the reality of the situation. This year has been the best year we've ever had. The secret.......I have the prayer room on the entire time. They tend to be quieter, more focused, and even sing along at times. It works for me.

Children from Around the World

We are into week 5 in our homeschooling. It's been very enjoyable spending time with our 4 youngest and having them work at their pace. Besides the regular A Beka curriculum we are studying Children Around the World. This is a curriculum by Winter Promise. We did a study of the middle ages published by this company 2 years ago and we loved it. It is a very well thought out and thorough study, and fun too with lots of meaningful activities. Since our emphasis here at IHOP is prayer and prayer for other nations we thought studying children around the world would be perfect. So far it is. The way our schedule works we can do this study as a family on Thursdays and have special celebrations on Sundays as we make our way around the world with different meals. We started in America with Tator Tot Hotdish on the menu. A Minnesota classic. Since IHOP is the INTERNATIONAL house of prayer we will be able to invite people we know from different cultures to our celebrations. It's going to be a fun year!

School Days

School is now in session for all the Nielsen children. Zach is at FMA and doing 2 very early morning sets at the Justice Prayer Room. Rachel and Sarah are attending The Daniel Academy for a second year. Hannah, Josiah, Chloe, and Sophie are being homeschooled. Next week Dance classes start for the girls and Acting class for Rachel. On top of all that, John & I will be hosting a small group of new Call Institute young men every other week and hosting Media Apprenticeship teams to get to know the new groups. We're still trying to work out the kinks in the schedule but so far it's looking good.