At the Vanderweide's

We’ve been so fortunate to have lots of friends and family host us for dinnertime over the past few days! !!! WOW, have we gotten some great food and great conversation! On Friday night the Vanderweide family planned a big BBQ for all of us. The Vanderweide’s live in West Des Moines, and they will be Prince’s host family whenever we can get his visa. You can click here to read more about Prince. I can tell you one thing, Prince’s story is not over, and this family is working so hard to continue efforts to bring him here. The Vanderweide’s had some great time to talk with Esi and Nana about figuring out a way to help Prince while he continues to wait for his visa in Ghana. I kind of picture this awesome day when both Samuel and Prince can walk into the Des Moines airport and come down the escalator to a crowd cheering and shouting their names! Oh that would be awesome! Jake and I certainly know all too well the Vanderweide’s pain and frustration over all of this. They too have a bedroom all set for Prince, clothes bought, and all preparations ready for him to enter their lives. They continually speak in wonderment whenever his name comes up. Sitting at that BBQ it was amazing to just look around and notice how all of our lives have become intertwined together - and we know it is not by coincidence….God is really trying to get some work done and He is asking us to be part of it. Well, needless to say, we had a wonderful time at the Vanderweide’s house…..enjoy the pictures!

At the Vanderweide’s we played the game ‘A Minute to Win It’. Have you seen the game show? Well, basically we were separated into teams and we had a series of fun and crazy games that we did to get points! Oh man, we were all laughing so hard!!!!!!!

For the first game, you had a partner and one partner had to throw a ping pong into the cup strapped to the other partner’s head. You had to get 2 balls into the cup in 1 minute to get the points. Here is Yaw teamed up with his brother, Peprah.

JJ gives the game a shot with Daddy.

Even Esi tried it out!!!!!!!!!!!

The next game you had to stack 7 ding dongs on your head and balance them for 3 seconds to get the points! That is Sam's friend Tyran in the tank top, competing against Peprah.


Daddy was the first to get it done!

I didn’t even know this next game was possible! You had to stack 2 golf balls on top of each other and get them to balance on their own for 3 seconds!

And this last game, was hands down the most hilarious of them all! 1 person from each team had a pedometer strapped to their head, and they had to shake their head as much as they could in 1 minute to get the most ‘steps’ logged on the pedometer! The goal was 125 in a minute and most of the guys surpassed that! This video is hilarious! This is Jake, Yaw and Sam competing!



Of course Jayla had to try on Daddy's hat after he was done!

By the end of the night the guys struck up a hot game of ping pong. Apparently Nana was quite the ping pong player back in his day! He challenged Ezekiel to a game!



One of the Vanderweide’s daughters competes in dance and so she has a trunk full of old dance costumes that double as dress up clothes! I think Jayla tried them all on!

Snugglin with Auntie Stacy.

And you know what Jake and I did most of the night? This......

And it felt good!