Winter Ice

The winter storm that came across the mid west last week left us out of commission for a whole week!! We lost power for about a day and a half, the kids were off school for an entire week. No cable or internet! We felt a bit out of the loop. It was a good time for bonding and good lessons were learned... like there can be one too many rounds of yahtzee, and yes we love eachother but it is good to have alone time:)

Actually we where really lucky, because we were able to use our gas fireplace for heat and our water heater was also gas so we enjoyed nice hot showers. Many people in our church and community had to go to family, friends, hotels, and shelters. Many did not get their power back until the middle of this week. The ER was a crazy and amuzing place to be during all of this. We saw a lot of carbon-monoxide poisoning. We had one family that had been heating their house with a charcoal grill... inside the house. Very sad, if EMS would not of been called when they were we might of lost them. Thanks be to God our family was safe and warm with just minor discomforts. Times like these are hard, but it always brings out the best in people.

Anybody need firewood?

Happy New Year!

It has been awhile and I apologize. I don't want to start rattling off a gizzillion excuses mainly because there aren't any... I've been lazy!! There you have it... good old couch potatoe got the best of me. I thought of you often and how I need to get back and plug in, but it was like a gym membership... a few days turned into a few weeks...into a few months and before you know it what membership? And then how embarassing after so long trying to show up with your typepad! Go home and sit on the couch! Oh not me I picked myself up from the couch and here I am! Wala. Lucky for you?

Anyways, Happy New year and hope you had a great Christmas. Any crazy stories out there? I bet I can beat a few. We were all sick except for Brady so he pretty much opened his gifts and everyone else's by himself. Thank goodness we had the rest of the week to recover. We celebrated New Years with some friends, very fun and then went to Memphis, Tn. New Years day. We have some friends we had not seen in a long while, so we visited and caught them up to speed on our new adventure. It's always nice to see old friends. This break we also met up with old college buds from Clearwater. They are married with kids same age as our kids, he is a chaplin for the Tampa Bay baseball team and had some ministry ideas for baseball in the Dominican Republic (D.R.) which is where I'm from, which is the place we are praying about for ministry. Funny how God works?

Speaking of which, all I can say is "God is Good!" Andy finished his first semester of grad school! 12 credits and all A's. I don't mean to brag, but can I get a Wup, Wup, Amen! This leads up to our testimony. At the end of the semester we still owed about $1000. We started to scrimp here and scramp there and still uh... no thousand dollars! But where God calls he provides and all I can say is we are starting another semester of school debt free! The money came in waves, a check here from a friend we hadn't heard from in awile, a huge check there from a family member we did not even know knew about what God had called us to do. This was a true witness and blessing for God's provision and love for our family.

There are christians who sit and sit and sit waiting for God to move a mountain while they sit and sit. And then there are people who don't sit or wait for a miniute, they do and do and don't let God do anything! I think I fall into the latter category, but both are extreme and are wrong. I learned I need to wait and see because God will help me do what he has called me to do! What a revelation. For those of you that lean on the Lord through out the years and are reading this thinkin' yep... that's exactly how it is... thanks for your support and encouragement, I can't say that enough. It means so much.