New Blog

This is the official start for this blog. I started it a while back, but was not really keeping it up-to-date. I'll do my best to add posts on here regularly. For those of you who support us through prayer and financial giving, we appreciate you very much and want to make sure you know what we're up to (so you can effectively pray for us!).

My brother, Ron, came by for a quick visit (not the best picture of us!)

We have had a summer full of visitors. Our most recent visitor stayed the longest and just left on Tuesday. Dani was here for a month, July 21-August 19. We are so incredibly grateful that she would want to come stay with us for such a long time. And, we are honored that her parents trust us with their precious daughter for 1/12 of a year!

We all had fun while she was here. She was a great help with Rylee, Jenna, and Asa. Joel and I went on two dates and didn't have to arrange childcare for several meetings we had at GFA or church. We tried not to take advantage of Dani's care for our kids, but it sure made life easier. Dani loves our kids with such a pure heart. While I'm not her (duh!), I understand her affection for them. I babysat for a few very special families when I was a teen/young adult and those children are attached to my heart with strings of love and affection. In fact, one of them was one of the flowergirls in our wedding.

Dani, we all miss her!

We are not necessarily looking forward to the end of summer, but are excited about fall nonetheless. Rylee will be starting preschool Sept. 2. Our church is starting a new preschool and Rylee was asked to participate. We were blessed to utilize a scholarship for part of her tuition, which was an incredible answer to prayer. Rylee is such a social butterfly (like her mom) and loves to be around people. We would appreciate prayer as she begins this new journey (for me, too!).

While Rylee is at preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am hoping my two-on-one time with Jenna and Asa will be fruitful. I feel like I don't do the "fun" stuff with them nearly as much as I did with Rylee because there are three of them (to paint, do play-doh, help me cook, etc). In fact, I'm even trying to develop some ideas for spending time with each of them one-on-one every few weeks. We'll see if it works out.

Also new and upcoming is Joel's assignment to work on the development of youth curriculum. Several staff at GFA have compiled some information to create a program for youth pastors to tell about native missionaries, our Bridge of Hope (BOH) program, and the massive need for evangelism on the Indian subcontinent. The project was handed to Joel last week. He is very excited about this new opportunity. And, he'll be working on it alongside his current job of advertising.

That's all for now. We're off to GFA for a special speaker and then a dinner with some other "newer" families. We look forward to hearing from you. Shoot us an email!