Introducing Jakob Ethan Duester

It is with great joy that Elisha and I announce the birth of our firstborn son. Jakob Ethan Duester was born at 5:42pm on April 25th. He weighed 3.22kg (7lbs) and was 52cm (20.5″) long.

Just the previous day, on Tuesday, Elisha had gone to the Doctor and had been told that the baby would likely be late. This was not something she wanted to hear. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but at 1:00am that morning, she woke up and realized that the Dr. was mistaken. We arrived at the birthing clinic thirteen hours later at 2:00pm.  3 hours and 42 minutes later, Jakob Duester entered the world!

Jakob shares his name with 2 of his great-grandpas. His complete namesake, Jakob Duester, was the father my dad never really got to know. He was taken away to prison while still in Russia by the communists when my father was 2 years old. He died in prison a short time later. The other great-grandpa Jakob is Elisha’s grandpa on the Rempel side. He lives in Virden, MB.   Either way you look at it, this latest Jakob has some mighty strong Mennonite heritage to look up to!  Well, enough of all that, here’s what you really want….PICTURES!!

Here’s Jakob in the ring of roses that the professional photographer used in our rooom.

Here’s the happy family right after the birth.

Mother and Son

Jakob showing off his lungs and voice in the birthing room.

At home, yawning in Daddy’s arms. And below, sleeping soundly.

Here’s a picture of two people who were invaluable in the delivery room as coaches and helpers. Kathleen Nelson is on the left, and she was just so relaxed and helped Elisha focus on her breathing. Youngsoon is on the right, and she was very, very valuable because she was able to translate what the nurses were saying, and I could ask her questions and then she’d relay them to the nurse, or Doctor. She also made a terrific coach. Really, having these ladies with Elisha really lightened the burden on me, and I’m very grateful.

If you are interested in more photos, click on any of the photos in the Flickr sidebar to the right. If you are interested in printing out these pictures, you can download a pretty good size file from Flickr for free. Just click on the photo you want, then, you’ll see an option above it that says ‘All Sizes” – click on that, then it will open a new page and you can choose the size you want to see, then click “download original size”, and voila, you can save a copy of the picture and print it from your printer. Of course, you can order prints from Flickr too, if you want.

Please, feel free to leave a comment on our blog by clicking on the comments word below – if you do, it gets sent to our email address too. Or, if you’d rather, just email us directly.

Bye Bye, for now.

Birthday Bash at the Park

This weekend marked Owen Steuernagel’s 1st birthday, and what better way to celebrate it than to go to the park on a beautiful, Spring day. The weather was definitely in our favour as it felt legitimately hot and reached a high of 25C. We had a great time hanging out and impressing the passing Korean college students with our Korean rendition of Happy Birthday. Until I brought up the fact that we only had another 7 weeks left of hanging out together….so sad.  Alas, such is the life of an international teacher. The best thing you can do is to just soak up all the great moments you can with the time you’ve got together.  Life’s a bit like that, eh? Needless to say, we are going to really miss the great friends we’ve made here in Korea and hope that at some point down the road we’ll be able to reunite for some more good times.

Hey, who’s the star of the show?

 

“Hey Mom! I think I’m getting the hang of this!”

A Shower of Blessings

Since everyone is so interested in my baby shower, I thought I would write an eloquent and extensive essay describing every moment of the grand occasion . . . in one hundred words or less. By now you have figured out that this is not Chris; the writing will be far too succinct. Friday the 13th marked my first baby shower. The evening was full of gifts, laughter, and of course, food. Being the recipient of such a shower brings home how blessed we are to have our first child in this community. We have come to value the support of our friends here, and will dearly miss that when we leave in 8 short weeks. If you’re of the female persuasion, and most likely related to me, you can enjoy pictures of the occasion in Flicker (to your right). Cheers!

Communion from a Clown…

This past Easter weekend, Elisha and I were involved in probably the best thing we’ve ever done together here at TCIS. We lead the worship music at the Dorm program’s spiritual retreat. It was awesome, even though my fingers were ready to fall off by the end of it! The retreat is a 3 day event where dorm students are asked to attend by invitation. The weekend is held on campus and is staffed by dorm staff, some teaching staff, and a host of previous campers who do a ton of behind the scenes work as camp “angels.” The campers are just loved on throughout the entire weekend. They have so many opportunities to meet with God through sessions that work through the fundamentals of the Christian life, and through personal times, worship, and prayer. There’s even a foot washing service that is quite a stretch for some of the kids, and yet it’s so meaningful. The campers all came away from the weekend having been challenged where they’re at in their faith. It’s hard to explain all the things that the campers did, but the long and short of it is that God showed up and worked in the life of each camper. Angels also were really impacted by doing anonymous service for people that would never get a chance to personally thank them. Elisha and I came away feeling refueled by God’s Spirit and feeling like we were involved in something meaningful and powerful.

One of the interesting parts of the retreat was a mime performed by two clowns in costume. The message of the mime spoke about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and ended with the breaking of the bread and sharing of the wine in a communion service. It was a little strange to receive the sacraments from a person dressed up as a clown, but in the context of the presentation it was somber and meaningful. I would imagine that some would even consider it sacreligious. I later learned that both the costumed clowns are, in fact, ordained ministers and are authorized, in that sense, to perform communion.

Foot Washing Service

We had a great time getting to know the Dorm Staff.

Mmmm…a side benefit to being involved was the great food!

 

Besides being involved in leading a lot of worship singing, I also managed to get out on a road ride with some friends on my brand new bike.  It’s pretty sweet.

It’s April. Gulp.

This is it. It’s April. We are due to have a baby this month. Whoa. One of the stranger moments of this last week was when we were finishing up our shopping at Costco and Elisha turns to me and goes, “Oh shoot, I wonder if we should have bought diapers.”  Talk about a strange, new reality hitting me in the forehead.

We are just coming off of our Spring Break and, other than fighting a really tough cold/flu virus, our holidays were filled with relaxing, watching movies and bike riding. My friend John and I did a 114km ride around a national park north of here on a ride that included some very serious climbing. One stretch of road had 11 tight switchbacks over a 2.3km climb. Needless to say, it was grueling in a good way. We picked the warmest day of the week (high of 20C), and had a great time.

Korea is warming up, and many of the trees are in full bloom. Oh yeah, Elisha and I also rearranged our apartment and got the baby room ready.