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Official Invite to Cameroon

This afternoon Leah and I received some great news, that we are officially invited to Cameroon. The site at Cameroon has had our resumes for the last week or so and have been going over the positions that we applied for. Both our positions in Cameroon are through Wycliffe Associates, but specifically with the Rain Forest International School (school for missionary kids). I was seeking the Network Manager position and Leah was seeking to be a librarian or a tutor. I have claimed the Network Manager position and Leah was invited to be a librarian. We have been praying for God to grant us an invite from Cameroon and it is encouraging to see that the door has been fully opened!

Next for the both of us is to begin the process of putting together our initial prayer and support letter in which we will be sending out to friends and family. We also are looking to pull together a distribution list of email addresses for those that want to follow our blog postings and have a more updated way to pray for specific needs and as we are over in Africa to keep all of our friends, family, and supporters up-to-date as to our daily lives in Cameroon.

We hope that those interested will begin to send their email addresses to thejanowiaks@gmail.com

Peace and Love in Christ

Mark J

Whirlwind of Life

Honestly, I cannot get over the fact- Jesus said trust me, I am going to do great things, follow me. Ok yes I will follow you, not understand your ways, not get what I am doing or why. But my struggle is that you weren't joking around when you said great things.

Our dream is to follow God, to share the good news with people who don't have the good news. Our is to go to Africa, now its starting.

Wycliffe has accepted us or approved if you would like. Sent our information to Cameroon to place us in jobs. WOW. More info to come on that. Time frame is however long it takes to fund raise for a 2 year trip. 6 to 10 months is what I am estimating, but as of right now we are just taking one day at a time.

I am in the midst of this I am applying for a preschool teacher job at a Christian daycare. Oh my goodness, I am feeling like I am having fun just thinking about all the ideas I have to do with the kids! Working interview on thur, we will see from there. I will be working a lot more and doing like 40 hours a week with them!!

the Lord has been so gracious with us, may it be poured out onto others in our lives.

update

So I haven't been in writing mode, even though lots to talk about and now I have ten minutes to write.

My husband and myself, recently obtained netflix. Which I love with an ungodly amount. So with some major decisions and life changes we want to make, I felt it appropriate to fast from netflix (and my husband video games) and to try creative ways to fast in our life. Fasting is something I have been doing more and more this last year. I have grown into it, slowing seeing the benefits of it, I feel like its one of the last spiritual disciplines people try to implement into their lives. Don't be like me, experience it sooner. Well I am loving it some much, I might try to use netflix much less, simply because it has inspired working out. Now I am sore but feel great to be honest, I think I am picking it up as a hobby now to exercise to kill board-um instead of T.V.

So just be praying for major life choices! To be announced later!

LJ

Inside the Mind of Mark...

So, it has been a few years since I have last blogged. I am not sure why I ever stopped, but I did. Lately I have been posting my environmental, political, and food thoughts on twitter, but all that gives me is 140 characters. So here I go...

Haiti

Lots have been said in the last week about Haiti. I have heard soo much about the countries past, the current situation, and the road blocks. It is really sad to see the current status of the country, the pain of so many people that have lost soo much! So much that I cannot even come close to understanding. My mind drifts to what we can do to help pull Haiti out of this disaster and to a sustainable place. The big need after people receiving food and medical attention is rebuilding the infrastructure: roads and housing. I look at how we can train individuals to re-start their environment. So much of Haiti has been laid bare due to deforestation. Why not begin large scale efforts to bring back the vegetation that is native to the land. The other big issue to help the land is to begin large scale composting to refresh the soil with the nutrients that it once had and to then begin planting produce to help feed the people of Haiti. Now I could go on further, but I will spare everyone from that. I know that so many people have lost what little they had and are in a most difficult position, but I feel that organizations need to help enable the people of Haiti to rebuild the country themselves. They don't need more debt, they don't need handouts in a year from now. What they need is housing, food, and jobs. The problem has been the destruction of the environment in Haiti which has in turn taken away their food and jobs. We need to enable the people to restore these things.

Food

Many things lately have centered around food in my life. Leah and I started a raw milk share and we just watched the movie "Food Matters". What I can say we have found is that our current system of human health and how we treat our body is really screwed up. We as individuals as Leah and I have found have to take the way we eat into our own hands. We can't listen to what the culture claims as healthy... we can't look at food labels and simply count fat and calories. We have to dig deeper. We need to find local natural alternatives to the way we eat. We need to change our eating habits and we need to no longer look to the drug industry to find cures. Chemicals do not cure our body, natural fruits and vegetables help our bodies to not get sick in the first place. So many times we pasteurize and clean our food, but what we end up doing is removing nutrients and destroy the enzyme structure of what makes the foods good for our body. How do we safely intake foods if they are not pasteurized? Well, buy straight from a trusted local farmer. Get in a CSA for local milk, produce, and meat. The great resource we have in our area are the Amish. No better spot to get organic products because they use no artificial chemicals on anything. They do it the natural way. I could go on and on and on, but I need to go make dinner. What's for dinner? Well, broccoli cheddar soup of course!

Take Care Everyone

where to get started if you want to eat organic and/ or local.

Firstly would love comments on ANY good additional info on this topic!

This is how the convo usually goes like:

You work for a CSA? what is that? how do I get involved with one? where can I get: milk, cheese, veggies, pasta, flour, ect?

CSA is a Community Shared Agriculture a great link explaining what that means and why their great:

http://www.prairielandcsa.org/whatisacsa.html

A great Link that we have found for all sorts of CSA is:

http://www.localharvest.org

We have found a number of CSA near us on this very web page! LISTEN UP this is the mother of all web pages for CSA.

here I hope to give someone a great local Jackson resource and to be added to:

MEAT

I work for a great CSA, and as far as I know one of a kinda for Michigan.

An Organic/ natural Meat CSA!!! so crazy I know. You can also purchase quarter/half or whole beef/ pork/ or lamb.

She is located in Manchester (25 min away from Jackson) where you can pick up or in Ann Arbor on delivery days.

http://oldpinefarm.biz/

You want a great contact with local and organic products its her! She makes available eggs, and chicken for share holders along with periodically local fish, cheese (and raw cheese) also we do buffalo, emu, duck and turkeys.

Something to be noted is some veggie CSA sell chicken and eggs to their share holders

VEGGIES

Mark and I use Two Creeks Organic who also do eggs, chickens, and other poultry periodically.

Also in Manchester they do delivery once a week in Ann Arbor at Zingermans at the farmers Market, which is wonderful because you can purchase additional produce and local items there too.

http://www.twocreeksorganics.com/home

Another Veggie share whom I haven't tried but is very successful is Tantre Farms, I mention them, because I believe they might offer raw milk as a part of being a share holder. That might be rumor though.

http://www.tantrefarm.com/

FLOUR/ PASTA/ EVERYTHING DRY GOODS!

Country Life Natural Foods. Period that its. We have ordered organic whole wheat pasta, flour, Quinoa and rice

http://www.clnf.org/

The beauty of this is that its Cheaper than any store for a lot of items. but yes there is fine print on this one you either have to order like $400 (or more) in product or ORDER with OTHER PEOPLE!!!

The Person who we do ordering with Mary Lynne Miller in Jackson. You can contact me and I will give you her email address (since I probably shouldn't put it up without permission)

MILK

no good answer for this, we just joined up with a raw milk CSA share through Amish, if you are looking for answers on this you can also ask me for contact info.

Thats all for now!

EGGS
A lot of CSA will provide you with them or sell them on the side. Ask around their might be a farm that sells them cheaply near you.
We have found on Blackman rd/ country farm (which is north Jackson) we buy local organic eggs for $2. If you go down country farm road you will see signs for Brown Eggs along the road. Its a little stand in someones driveway, but we love it and its great.

CHEESE
Grassfieds Cheese
We have ordered Gouda and a few other cheeses from here. They are mailed delivered (they are near Grand Rapids area). Grassfields will not disappoint, we order around 90 dollors worth(we got a half wheel or 6.5 pounds of Gouda along with several other types for that much) to make it cheaper by group ordering or selling it away afterwords. They sells other food items, so check out web page. They sell specifally Raw Milk Cheese, there are other cheese farms that just sell artisans local cheese, such as; gray stone creamery, and grassy meadow.


http://www.grassfieldscheese.com/cheese.html