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Through lots of sickness and lots of safe traveling by the grace of God we have made it to California! We left Florida March 3rd and started our way across the country.

We got to stay a little over a week with different family members  in Houston and Huntsville Texas.  TJ’s grandma Marilyn was turning 80, so family traveled from all over to be together for her birthday.

It has come to our realization that often we are less intentional with letting family know what God is doing in our lives and how he is leading us.  We think because they are family they should “just know” …. but they don’t, so on this trip we took the time to share more about our ministry, and how he is leading us on this journey.  As we came away from our time with the big ‘fam’, we were encouraged to say the least.  It is so fun to be in such a massive family where most everyone loves and desires to serve the Lord, he is good to use us in each other’s lives!

 

I also learned TJ’s Aunt Mindy teaches a parenting class AND raised a very strong-willed child.  I got a  lot of encouragement from her as well as some really good advice on how to raise my little fire cracker God has blessed me with  ;).  Thanks Mindy!

We spent about a week and a half In Pheonix Arizona with my very good friend Valerie and her husband Ryan who we don’t usually get to see.  It was fun to have the opportunity to be with them for a bit, and build yet a stronger relationship than we already have.  Do you ever find that Satan tries to get between even the strongest relationships with the best of friends, to tear them down?  Well I love it even more when the enemy is conquered and we can see the love of Christ shown clearly, when the enemy could have won, but God prevails.  I thank God for Valerie and for what an amazing friend she is!  At the drop of a hat she flew to Missouri to comfort me in the middle of loosing my baby, she cries with me, mourns with me, laughs with me.  She loves me, challenges me, encourages me, spurs me on to better things.  She is a friend people dream of and wish they had, I am so thankful for her! I love you Val!

God has been good to burden a few family’s in Phoenix for our ministry, so we got the opportunity to connect with them more and become better partners together.  We’re thankful for the time we got to do that, and for the people God has put in our lives.  In the month of March, 7 different families committed to supporting us monthly and 2 other’s who committed to annually give. We are excited to have these people on board with us.

 

We also got to see some of our good friends in Southern California, including this couple that we stayed with… apparently I haven’t seen them since I was a  baby, roughly 26 years ago.  They were an amazing and super encouraging couple!

We arrived in Fresno at the end of March, and have been in Fresno/Auberry for about 2 weeks.

We have moved to another place yet once again.  It is beginning to feel normal to move so much.  I am having to be careful not to come here and feel like it would be a crime to invest in people… Because we are just going to leave again.  That would totally defeat the purpose of coming.  This probably brings you to the question;  “Why are you guys in California?!”

Yes well, I grew up here in Auberry California.  In the 5 years since we have been married we have only spent about a month a year here, give or take a little.  Auberry Community Church is one of  our sending churches, and our desire is to invest time here in serving and getting to know the people better.  Because we have two home bases; California and Florida, we are hoping to build a support team in both places, since we will have roots in both these places and have the ability to spend time in both places on furloughs.

It has been hard for us to just jump in with meeting with people and sharing our ministry because… well…  Transition  is not always easy.  Even moving to a familiar place, it’s a place I’ve never lived with my little family before, I have to shop for our food, I have to find deals, remember where I’m driving, what the rules are here.  We are also finding ourselves in the midst of building relationships with people we don’t know, people I’ve known my whole life, but haven’t taken the time to get to know as an adult, and people we know well, and want to see more of.  Besides all this, we are LOVING being here with “Nonni” and “Pop’s”.  My girls are soaking up their time with my parent’s and with their baby cousin Caleb.

We look forward to spending more time with cousins in Sacramento, as Ava and Bella are becoming little cousin friends.  🙂

We are praying God blesses our time here.

And within all these people we are praying that God will burden those specific people for the work we’ll be doing and for us personally as we seek God on this journey.  We pray that he will raise up a team of people that want to be  a part of something bigger, a part of serving him, following him to Africa with us, and seeing people of Africa come to Christ because God used us as a team to reach them.

You can pray for us as we are here transitioning.  Seeing what every day looks like for us, how we will invest, how we will spend this time here.  Pray that God will burden his people for us and for our ministry.

Some things we are looking forward to:  TJ will be attending a men’s retreat coming up in May.  TJ and I are planning on going to Mexico with our church in August for a week. 

We are living in an apartment attached to my parent’s house in Fresno.  On Sunday’s we drive 45 minutes up to Auberry for church, and then will stay with friends of ours Sunday night through Tuesday night and will come back to Fresno Wednesday through Saturday night.  Our desire is to connect with people both in Auberry and Fresno as well as possibly getting involved and connected to some churches in the area.  We are praying God will make the opportunities clear.

 

Thank you for faithfully checking up on us and praying for us, and we cannot do this without our faithful partners in prayer.