the view from our campsite
our campsite
Went camping with this cool family, Matt and Natalie, and their 2 girls.
Looking at a scorpion on our camping trip
Penny didn’t hold back from the dirt at all
Ava pretending to be a bride
my Tuesday morning ladies Bible Study group
Got to visit with my precious friends Aubrey and Brittany
I turned 27 May 29th and TJ turned 30 on the 27th… hehehe
MaryBeth got Ava and Penny some sand for the turtle our friend Sally got them. We are loving staying with the Mortons!
Jumping on the trampoline
Taytum, Ava and Penny’s friend they see every Tuesday
Ava making a tea party for her sister
One of Ava’s birthday cakes I made
All of my parent’s Grandkids
Ava’s first set of birthday cakes 🙂 (She had 2 birthday parties)
Did you know I love to have my calendar filled? It doesn’t even need to happen just as it says, I just like seeing that something is going to happen! Well…. things are happening and I am thriving off that! Our calendar is full, full of spending time with precious people, full of parenting, full of calling people, writing thank you notes, emailing, texting, full of traveling, and full of sharing our God story with people.
Why is it a God story? It’s a God story, because it’s basically a list of miracles God has done in our lives. He is growing us in this process of sharing our lives and hearts with people. It’s hard for us to understand that as such weak and frail people, he is choosing to send us to Africa and he’s raising up our team, he’s burdening people for this. We are daily in awe of what he is doing, I’m not just saying that…. We are DAILY IN AWE of what GOD is doing!!!! Did you know he is absolutely incredible???? We went camping with our friends Matt and Natalie last weekend, and we spent some time just starring up into the sky at all of the stars… it’s absolutely amazing that the God who created all of this, you know what I mean by all of this??? This HUMUNGUS universe!!! That God loves me, and I have a personal relationship with him! My very own relationship with him! I am dumbfounded that God… Jesus, died for me, he paid my debt of death so that I could live with him and be restored to him. You know what he’s growing my heart towards? That God has people in West Africa that he wants us to share this message with. It is so key to me that we pray that God would prepare this people for us to come, that they would be willing and ready to hear from a great God and that He would ready the harvest, that they would be ripe for picking.
That felt like a tangent… a good one at that! 🙂 We started homeschooling Ava, working on letters and numbers and such, she loves it! TJ has been the one schooling her, mostly because the people we are contacting here and getting in touch with are people I know, so I’m the one doing that work, while TJ is graciously schooling Ava. I am also the one who writes the thank you notes and updates our blog and newsletters amongst other things, so I am grateful for Him to be flexible in what our jobs are right now.
We are loving spending time with Del and Arielle, Ezra, Silas and baby Abel, who’s birth I got to attend! We are loving spending time with my mom, and dad (on the weekends) We got to go see my brother Barry and Helen last weekend, and our first night there, Barry came out with his green crumpled paper… he had a list of questions! I was so excited that he was interested in us, and what God has been doing in our lives! It is exciting for me when people, come with questions because they are excited about God’s work in our lives. We Loved spending the weekend (2 weeks ago) with them, and getting to know them even better. When you spend time with your siblings as adults, sometimes we forget that we each have a way we communicate best, and we find things out about our own siblings we never knew. Because God does a lot in our lives as we grow into adults, there’s a lot we don’t even realize about our own family. I love that each of my family members are serving the Lord, and as I’m specifically talking about Barry here, I love that he’s passionate about ministering to people in the business world. God has given him a desire to share the Lord through his business, and in tern every area of his life, and I think that is really exciting! I hope people don’t look at us as missionaries and say, they are amazing I could never do that! Because what we’re doing is following Jesus, what Barry is doing is following Jesus. Anyone can do what we’re doing, if we’re just following the Lord for his plan for our lives.
Doing the will of the father is what we’re called to!
Ephesians 6:5-8
5 Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; 6 not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, 7 with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, 8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.
Thanks for reading my random thoughts
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