Full Steam Ahead: Looking at the Months to Come

Since the husband and kiddos are currently napping, I figured it might be a good time to attempt a blog update. We'll see how far I get before someone wakes up...

Snow Days...

Today was a snow day; church was cancelled. We woke up to about 5 inches of snow this morning, and it just kept coming all morning long! I'll be the first to admit I'm not a big fan of the cold - but sitting inside my warm house looking outside, I DO appreciate the beauty of Midwest winters!

Snow day!

...And Sick Days

The last couple of weeks in our house have been like a game of tag as sickness has taken down one person after another: First Josiah, then Charis, me, Chris, back to Josiah, and now back to Charis. We pray that soon we will ALL be well (at the same time!) once again! 

My sick, cuddly girl

Sick boy - laying on the living room floor

Chris Preaching

Allen and Diane were on vacation last week, so Chris was up to preach on Sunday. Allen had assigned him to preach a biographical sermon (I believe the criteria was pretty loose and that it mostly meant that Chris was to base it off of the life of a person in the Bible). Since in his free time Chris has been studying Genesis and trying to prepare some sermon material in order to start out ahead once we are placed, he decided to use Adam. His sermon can be found at http://libchapel.sermon.net/main/main/20326300 if you're interested in listening; here are the sermon notes. :)

Busy Schedules

Looking at the months ahead, we can only imagine how quickly they're going to pass. Can you believe it's the beginning of March already?! We expect our internship to end at the end of June, which means we have a mere four more full months here in Crawfordsville. That sure puts things in perspective! We expected that this year would pass quickly, but it never ceases to surprise us just HOW quickly it's passing. This month Diane and I and the other volunteers will have our third and last round of PEERS presentations. At the end of April, Chris and I (and maybe Charis) will be going to Candidate School for a week at Village Missions' headquarters in Dallas, Oregon, while Josiah (and maybe Charis!) stays with grandparents in Fort Wayne (April 27 - May 2). Towards the end of May, the District Representatives will make another round of visits and will be staying with us for a night. (I believe Chris will be preaching that Sunday so they can hear him... No pressure ;) haha). We are hoping to be able to visit once more with the churches that help regularly support us during our last couple of months here. It would be nice if by the time we knew where we would be going so that we could give them that update, but at this point we're not totally sure when that decision will be made. Regardless of when we know for sure, we are confident that God holds the decision in His hands and is already at work preparing a field for us and us for that field. At the beginning of July, we will spend another Sunday at Living Gospel Church in Nappanee, IN, as Chris was invited to preach during one of the Sundays that their pastor is on his Sabbatical. As far as we know, we will probably be moving to our new field sometime in July. So bittersweet! - It will be so exciting to finally know where God is sending us and be able to get started there, but at the same time, it will be hard and sad to leave the people in C-ville who have been so kind to us and who have become mentors and friends. We are, however, incredibly thankful to live in such a technologically advanced time where we have countless options for keeping in touch with the people we love. :)

Dominican Republic Missions Trip

In a previous blog post, I had mentioned a missions trip to the Dominican Republic that Liberty Chapel was in the process of planning. We are excited to be sending five people from the church! We would have loved to have been able to join them, but ultimately felt that we should stay behind; especially with Charis still being so young, we didn't feel that we could in good conscience either leave her behind or take her with us. While I have struggled with wishing the circumstances had been different so that we could have gone, I am finding contentment in knowing that the Lord knew the timing and the circumstances, and everything that has happened has been under His orchestration. It always goes back to God's perfect sovereignty! And so our hearts will go with the group to the DR while we ourselves stay behind and continue the Lord's work in Crawfordsville.
I am excited that Diane will have an opportunity while they are there to present some of the PEERS material; even better, the things we cannot say in the schools (about God's design for sexuality, His love, His purposes, etc) she will have the freedom to say there! I was able to help her put together some materials to take and just finished translating them into Spanish, which was fun and great practice for me as I seek every opportunity to practice and keep the language I have learned!

Please be in prayer this week as the group leaves on Tuesday (3/3) and will return next Tuesday (3/10). We pray for safety, but also that the missionaries that are currently there will be encouraged and refreshed, that Diane's presentation will be helpful and clear and culturally relevant, that local believers there will be encouraged by brothers and sisters bringing love from a distant country, and that other locals who do not know Christ will come to know Him through Jared and Stephanie's faithful work.

Well, everyone is officially done napping, so I think that's my cue to sign off.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for praying!