Quick Update from Anita

Natalie and Dave enjoying banana cream pie in Lake Geneva, WI

Luke, Emily, Alise, and Natalie at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Ostercamp and Bailey Cousins

The Family

Ostercamp, Lenz, and Bergmeier Cousins with the Grandparents

Yes, it's Anita again. Please continue to bug Dave to make more posts! I'll keep putting pictures on to keep the blog as current as possible, but Dave is the real writer! Anyway, here are a few pictures from the past months. We hope your summer has been great! Enjoy this last month before fall!

Picture Summary of our Past Month

In reverse order from May 28 to June 12, here is our summary. I tried to compact it all, but you can click on the pictures to see them better.

We had to say good-bye to Oscar and Lina. They went back to Sweden and will finish their studies there. We are so blessed to have had these friends here during our first two years at North Park. We will miss them greatly. (June 12)

Blackhawks Fever (June 11)

For our Marklund good-bye party, we went to play Whirlyball. So much fun! (June 9)

Dori and Sylvia came to visit us. We took them to the Shedd Aquarium and enjoyed having them hang around Chicago with us for a few days. Natalie and Sylvia even fell down outside the Shedd and scraped their knees up at the same time. True friends. (June 7)

Grandpa and Grandma O came for a weekend visit and we went to Lake Michigan. The kids are always up for a swim even in cloudy and cold weather! (June 5)

Alise ran a 5K run with her Girls on the Run group. She and I ran together and Alise was great! (June 5)

We enjoyed some Willmar fun in the sun over the Memorial weekend. Emily got to hang out with her friend, Kayla, all weekend. We also had a nice visit with my family, but I was a poor picture taker in Bloomington. (May 30)

Ahhh, the Twins! We enjoyed a game at the new Target Field. The Carlson's and William's joined us in Minneaoplis to watch the Twins. Our night was super fun!! (May 28)

The Pains of Losing a Tooth!

Look at this loose tooth! For weeks, no, months! - we couldn't look at Luke's smart face without seeing this dangling tooth that lived in his mouth. We tried to bribe Luke with extra money if he'd let us pull the tooth out. Even people outside of our family tried to convince Luke to let them pull his tooth. One night, Dave tried to yank out the tooth while Luke was sleeping! (Probably not a good parent moment, but Luke doesn't know because he never woke up.)

I got so desperate to get the tooth out of Luke's mouth and convinced him to tie a string around it so that he could easily yank it out of there (I took some tugs too). As you can see, that didn't totally go over well and it didn't even work!

Finally! On Sunday morning, Luke bit into a donut and out came the tooth. Who would have thought that a trip to Dunkin' Donuts would do the trick!

Posted by: Anita O.

The Perks of Living in Chicago

Recently, I have witnessed 4 perks of living in Chicago. I have pictures to prove it! The first 2 pictures show off the first perk: when the Twins are in town, we can easily head to the Cellular field to cheer them on. Someone in our family actually enjoyed attending all three of the games that the Twins played. (Picture 1: Lonnie Moore was here checking out NPU.)

My dear friend, Marybeth, whom I've known since high school, contacted me as she was on her way to Ethiopia and would have 5 hours in Chicago. So I picked her up at the airport and we enjoyed Chicago pizza together. I was so glad to connect with Marybeth again - another perk of living in the city of Chicago.

Dave was handed four free tickets to the Cubs game last Thursday. So, we cleared our afternoon schedule, made a plan for the kids, called a couple of friends to join us, and headed to Wrigley field for a beautiful afternoon of baseball! Yes, the third perk is a baseball thing again, but that's our family for ya.

The fourth perk is FAMILY! Dave's sister and family came down to Chicago for Saturday as she lives a short distance away in Milwaukee. So we went to the Aquarium together and it was a very fun day! Dave's brother and wife live two miles away (Matt went with us to the Twins game last week but I don't have picture proof), and it's just so fun to have the siblings close! Becky and Krista - you are close to us in our hearts. :)

So there you have it, Chicago does have it's perks!

Fun Friday

The kids and I went downtown for a Dairy Queen treat today as they had today off of school. I had gotten some coupons for blizzard treats so we took the L train to the Thompson Center. These are a few pictures to show off our day. Natalie is showing her grumpy face when she discovered all of the icecream was gone. But, then the next picture shows how quickly she can get over her sadness.

Sleep

I like to think of myself as a fairly optimistic person. The only time my optimism seems to fail me on a consistent basis is the first hour of every day. If you are one of those people who wakes up with ‘Folgers in your cup’ excited for all the possibilities of the day, I have a hard time relating to you. My seven year old son Luke, however, you could be best friends with him. For him each day is an adventure to embark upon. This means that he and I often do better in different rooms in the morning, as I’m not always ready for his level of optimism. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want him to lose his enthusiasm for life, I just want to make sure that he keeps it to socially acceptable levels. Ultimately my goal is to learn from Luke and to eventually be able to meet him in the middle. Although at times I enjoy my less than enthusiastic approach to the morning (and lets be honest you kind of enjoy it as well, right?); however, I do not believe it is a good thing. Thankfully I think I may have stumbled on a solution that doesn’t involve coffee.

Recently I was struck by how Jesus and his disciples use the word for sleep in the Bible. By my count the words for sleep are used 40 times in the New Testament. 21 times they are used to mean sleep like you and I do every night, well for some of you I should say most every night. However, 19 times the New Testament writers use the words for sleep where the words for death would be much more appropriate. Of course this was as strange back then as it would be now. Imagine if someone close to you died and you tell a friend who responds with the line, “they are not dead they are only sleeping”. (Matthew 9:23-26) One could see how some sarcastic laughter might be in order at such an occasion, which is exactly what happened to Jesus. They laughed at Him for his choice of words because everyone knew that the person wasn’t sleeping. That person had died (Matthew 9:23-25). Only a child would confuse a dead person for a person who was sleeping.

There are some similarities to sleeping and death is there not? As a parent I love to watch my kids sleep, they are so comfortable, beautiful, and peaceful when they sleep. They do not seem to have a care in the world, which is just how a parent wants their child. Plus it is super fun to mess with them when they are asleep by lightly tickling their face, giving them a kiss, moving their arms and legs, or pouring just a small amount of water on their forehead. Try it on someone you live with if you haven’t already, they will love you for it.

If you think about it, it is pretty crazy to lay down each night and allow yourself to slip into an unconscious state where you are totally vulnerable and oblivious to the world. Also amazing is the ability to maintain confidence that each morning you will awake to life. It really is like a miracle! And that is exactly the point the New Testament writers were trying to make. As we approach Easter this spring may you be reminded that each day you wake up and smell that “Folgers in your cup”, remember that death is not the final answer. The miracle of the resurrection is true (John 14:1-3; John 3:16, etc.)! If this reminder each morning of my future does not help cure my morning blues, well, I just might have to start drinking that lousy coffee. Sleep, for Christ followers, is in fact a better word than death. For just as you arise each morning, you will arise again to eternal life. Only a child would mistake a dead person for a person sleeping. May you have the faith of a child.

Olympics

At North Park I have a new job in which I oversee the athletic chaplaincy program for University Ministries. Our goal is to support coaches and athletes by providing a chaplain for every sports team. In an effort to provide spiritual support to this important group of people I am writing frequent e-mails to encourage and challenge our athletes and coaches. Here is the first installment.

My family and I have been swept up in the Olympic Spirit this past week. There have been some great stories. Lindsey Vonn won gold in the downhill despite battling a serious injury to her shin. Chicago native, Shani Davis, became the first man to ever win back-to-back gold medals in the 1000-meter speed skating race, and another Chicagoan, Evan Lysacek, upset the favored Russian figure skater, Plushenko, to claim Gold for the USA.

What has been really interesting to me has been the post-event interviews of the athletes. A tearful Lindsey Vonn stated, “I’ve worked so hard for this. It means everything to me that’s why I work hard, that’s why I’m in the gym.” When Shani Davis was asked what the win meant he said, “Shows that hard work pays off.” Now, I do not doubt that these athletes worked hard. I am not arguing that their gold medals show hard work paying off. I believe they are right. Paul says in Galatians 6 that a man “reaps what he sows.” I grew up in Nebraska and Iowa so I know without a doubt that if in the spring you plant one seed of corn then in the fall you will not harvest wheat, or soy beams, but in fact you will harvest corn. That is simply just how God has set up the world because God has set the world up to run by set principles. For example, if you jump out the window, you will fall. If you stick your hand on a hot stove, your body will immediately let you know that that was not a good idea. If you are the hardest working athlete in the world or on your team, you will experience success. You reap what you sow. In fact the principle of reaping and sowing tells us that in this world we reap what we sow, we reap later than we sow, and we reap much more than we originally sow. I’ve been involved in athletics my whole life and experienced a lot of good things because I sowed such things into my career as hard work and maximum effort. This is what Lindsey Vonn and Shani Davis experienced and referenced in their interview, and it is what many of you have experienced in one way or another in your life.

What struck me though as I watched the interviews was this thought, “What would have the losers said if they had pulled out a win?” There was a gal from Sweden who was one jump away from a coveted silver medal in the down-hill; however, she experienced a crazy wipe-out going over 60 miles per hour. Instead of a gold medal, she received a knee brace. In the same race another gal from France tore a ligament in her knee no more than 10 feet into the race of her life. A Japanese figure skater broke a shoelace in the middle of his Olympic routine. Are you kidding me, a shoelace ruins a life long dream? Did these athletes lose because they spent one less day in the gym than the winners? I don’t think so. I think that if things had worked out differently, these athletes who lost would have rightly cited their hard work and maximum effort as the reason they won a medal. I think everyone in athletics knows stories of a freak injury, a bad call by an official, an unlucky bounce, or frayed shoelace that derailed dreams. Unfortunately, this is all true in life as well because athletics mirrors life. Sometimes the righteous suffers, and it doesn’t make sense to us because that is not the way the world is supposed to work. In those instances we reap what we have not sown, and it is confusing and disheartening. I believe that this happens because this world is a broken place. There is sin in our world and things do not always happen as they should. Now I don’t want to be a complete “Debbie Downer”. There is good news. The good news is that the principle of reaping and sowing holds true. We do in fact reap what we sow even in this sinful world. We know that there is so much joy and reward in working and sacrificing for a goal that in the end we achieve. The other good news is that God is the one thing in the world that we can completely trust and count on. Jesus has defeated sin (John 16:33). God has assured us that he will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5) and that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:31-39). God has promised us that one day sin will finally be done away with forever and we will live with Him in a new heaven and new earth (Rev 21).

The question that we all must face is one of trust. Since I have already fessed up to my farming heritage, I’ll make reference to one more saying that is heard on the farm. The saying is “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Of course this isn’t a good idea because if you slip on something the cow left behind and drop the basket, all of your profits and breakfast is gone. I am thankful that in this world where “not putting all your eggs in one basket” is good advice, we have a God who can be completely trusted with everything we have. The question is what or who are you trusting for your joy, your purpose, your self-esteem, and your salvation?