Family Photo Time

This past week, it was family photo time again. Every year, we take a family picture sometime in the fall. Being missionaries, we send out family pictures every year in our Christmas cards to a lot of people...so, every Christmas, we need a new family photo. This usually results in my husband and me experiencing full-on panic sometime in late October, when we realize we STILL haven't gotten around to taking that crummy family picture.

You see, we can't go to a photo studio anywhere on our island to do anything professional, and we always find ourselves trying to take a photo that somehow looks "cultural". We also feel this odd pressure to top whatever photo we took the year before - we want to look better, with happier, more contented children.

However, that's where the fly enters the ointment of this whole enterprise: children. God has blessed us with 4 amazing daughters, and we are indeed very grateful for them...most days. But not always on family picture day. There's nothing like sitting out on plastic chairs in the middle of a random rice paddy while 1 of your local friends dances around like she's got ants in her pants, trying to get your kids' attention. Meanwhile, another long-suffering friend stands by your trusty, tripod-mounted camera and just keeps hitting the button. Meanwhile, my husband and I paste on our, "What a fabulous day in the rice paddy!" smiles and pray the kids don't look too unholy.

Not a chance.

It's a good thing my Photoshop skills have improved over the years. This year, I couldn't find a single photo where all the kids even looked pleasant, much less happy. Thank goodness for the ability to swap out heads between photos.

In the photo I'm sharing with you today (I can't share this year's pic, because that would spoil the surprise for our Christmas cards), I believe we finally settled on using take #76. Yup. Apparently the first 75 were none too great, and I believe the total count of takes was well above 100. Also, after the photo was taken, I realized that it looked like a tree was sprouting out of my head. I had to "erase" it in Photoshop.

Here's one of our less successful takes. (Note the tree & the "happy" children.)

It takes a miracle to get 4 kids to smile at the same time while actually making eye contact with the camera. And sometimes, those are the miracles I need to get through my day. Not every day can have 14 baptisms or 8 new decisions for Christ or even 1 new Bible study. But each day we experience out here does have its own miracles: a better day for one of our daughters who is struggling in the local language at school, an unexpected jar of salsa for sale at the grocery store in the capital city (yum!), or a decent looking family photo that turned out despite stress, grumpiness, insects, & heat.

God has been faithful to us every step of this journey - to Him be the glory for the big things, but also for the little things, like another family photo successfully behind us.