Hi! I'm Lauren, and my heart is in Southeast Asia. We've been living there about two years, but my family has been on a bit of a journey this year. We spent four months in Uganda bringing our newest daughter into our home, and are now based in the United States while we finalize her adoption! So for the next few months, the U.S. is our home. While I'm eager to get back to our normal life across the ocean, I'm figuring out how to navigate my passport culture again. There's some good, some bad, and some ugly here for you to enjoy.

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Our homecoming was so special! There's something magical about touching down on familiar soil and running into your mother's arms. It feels like all your stresses can be fixed with fast food and your favorite convenient stores. It wasn't long, however, before I was craving sticky rice, bowls of pho, and a community that understood my world view. 

So many of us have gotten used to having some house help while overseas, and I really enjoy sharing my home with another woman that keeps our family running! Now I'm the sole housekeeper, and while a washer and dryer surely are making my life easier, I miss my friend Paet and the conversations we have over dirty dishes and folded laundry.

Since we are Stateside August-Decemeber, we were able to put our girls in school for our home assignment. It is going to rip my heart out to have to pull them from their incredible learning environments. Their classrooms are full of perfect stimuli, their teachers are pouring so much into them, and they are enjoying a learning community that I will never be able to offer them in our host country. What a blessing to have this school experience!

If I'm able to be completely honest, church is the hardest thing to do. We really like BEING the church, and I'm doing my very best to remember all the rules of American church so that we are still able to interact with the culture as we bring a message of what Christianity looks like in other parts of the world. The Lord's church is powerful, and I have to believe that means it is powerful in every culture, no matter where we find ourselves planted.

I think it was God's grace that brought us home during football season. It has been so much fun to watch my husband burst with joy every time he hears football pads crunch on the field Friday night or on the Saturday TV screen.

I want to cry for good internet. Literal tears. My life is forever changed by Netflix streaming and rapid-pace email firing.

Some days I really struggle to fit in around here. Some days I honestly don't know what to say or what to do that won't make me stick out in a country where I look like everyone else. But the beauty of being home? Celebrating family vacations with the people I love most...and watching my kids roll around in beach sand with all of its glory.