40th Birthday

Growing up as the second child I always wanted to be as old as my brother, Jeremy.  He got to do all the cool stuff first.   And a few days ago, he got to turn forty.  We celebrated his "over the hill" day in Flagstaff with lots of family and friends.  

If you can't tell this is my family.  I am blessed.

Rachel and Katie sang two beautiful songs for Jeremy.

I had the honor of sharing a few memories of growing up with my brother.  He was always good at watching out for me.

Hiking

We are currently spending some time in AZ with Holly's family before we head back to KY.  One of our favorite things to do while we are here is to go hiking.

The first picture below has Samuel in it and the second picture has Rebekah in it, if you can find them.  (Homemade "Where's Waldo")  At the end of this post each of the pictures are zoomed in.

This picture is called "Mixed Messages"

I wonder where my kids went.

Road Trip

We have finished up with language school and we are now headed to Arizona to spend some time with Holly's family before we head back to Kentucky.  Our first leg today was all in Texas.  We are spending the night at a KOA campground about two hours from El Paso.  We have found that their camping cabins are nice.  Much cheaper than a hotel room and much easier than a tent.  And they have A/C, which is nice when it is 100 degrees outside.

What We Really Did At Language School

In my last post I shared pictures depicting a typical day, but I felt that I needed to show another side of language school.  So here are the behind the scenes shots.  One must be an expert at this to survive language school.  

We will miss the wonderful company and great food we have enjoyed these last months. 

The Salvation Braclet For the Next Generation

The rubber-band bracelets have become a big trend and I thought they could be used to share the gospel.  Here's how we put it all together.

The kids and I created these cards that had the verses to match the colors in the bracelets in Spanish and English.

This is how they turned out.

The black represents sin.  Every man is a sinner, separated from God, without the ability to save himself from that sin.

The red represents Jesus' blood.  He was the perfect and complete sacrifice for our our sins and it is through the shedding of his blood that we are justified.

The white represents forgiveness.  When we believe in Jesus as the Son of God, His sacrifice on the cross for our sins, and we confess our sins to God, we receive forgiveness of our sins. We are washed white as snow.

The yellow represents heaven.  At the moment of believing in Jesus we are given eternal life through Him and the hope of heaven.

The green represents growth.  The Christian life isn't just about eternity, there is also growth that takes place after salvation.  Reading the Bible, attending church, praying, meeting with other believers all help us grow in our knowledge of God and our love for others.

This was the class.  A great group of missionary kids.

Chapel

This past Tuesday morning, the students in the Missionary Language School organized chapel for the Bible School.  We all handled different parts of the service and it was a good chance to push ourselves with our Spanish speaking abilities.  I had the opportunity to speak on Satan using distraction to keep us from fulfilling His purpose for our lives.  So many times we fill our lives so full of things that don't really matter and have no eternal significance and then God's purpose for our lives falls by the wayside.  This is an issue which I feel I can truly speak from the heart about.  I feel as though I am constantly busy and distracted with "stuff," and all of a sudden my day has gone and I end up asking myself if I dedicated any time to anything of eternal value.

Despedida

This past weekend, some of our friends held a despedida (farewell) dinner for us.  It was very tasty.  One of the things that I will definitely miss about being here in the Rio Grande Valley is the Mexican food.  I could possibly live on carne asada and tortillas.  We are very thankful for our friends here who care enough about us to put together this meal, pray for us, and correct our mistakes in Spanish.  (sometimes all at the same time.)  They are definitely a blessing to our lives.

SPI

 This weekend we decided to make a trip to the beach.  We hadn't gone yet and we figured we couldn't spend 5 months living just an hour from the beach and not go at all.  We had fun with our friends and got to play in the surf.  I had never seen so much seaweed on a beach.  In places it was 12-24 inches deep along the shore.  There were some places where they had cleared paths through the seaweed just to get to the water.  A little ways up from us, there was a man using a backhoe to clear the seaweed off the beach.
I also saw my first jellyfish.  It was pink and about the size of a dinner plate, pulsing through the water.  Needless to say, that ended my time in the water.
It was a fun day, but I don't think we will make it a vacation destination.  (We forgot to get any pictures of the actual beach.)