Convicted!?

  "The maggots of too much are an insidious ugly way to lose your life."

I found this line in my favorite blog today.  It spoke to me and I wanted to share it with you.  
Then, further on I found these lines:

 I want your first fruits, Church. I want the first fruits of your harvest.

Because if you end up waiting to give when you know how much you have in the bank account, in the budget, in the back pocket --you can end up giving God your left overs, not your first fruits.

When you give God your leftovers, you give God what you can afford to give and not what changes how you live. 

Please click below when you are ready to read a challenge today - leave yourself enough time to read it all the way through:

                           A Holy Experience - Blog post October 1st

If you’ve tasted His grace, if you’ve adored His face, if you’ve felt His embrace — then you can’t help but find yourself living in a giving place.  

*** sign up to receive her blogs to your mailbox - she is always uplifting and I really enjoy her "Multi-vitamins for your weekend." It is my weekend splurge. 

Road Trip Review

   We recently had the great opportunity to spend 15 days and 1600+ miles traveling to visit friends and family. This post will share some of the photos we collected and a few notes about highlights - it is long, but I invite you to read all the way to the end -  there is a bit of thoughtfulness about what can be learned on a road trip. One that revisits places and people you have known and loved for many years and created life-long memories with.

Our trip began with the drive to Brevard, North Carolina,

   Back and forth, up and down, back and forth, up and down - through many beautiful hills and valleys...we were a bit sick after traveling on the mostly 2 lane road for 4.5 hours.
 

   We arrived at our first destination, Ridge Haven conference center and camp - it was beautiful and we had a great time meeting new friends who are also going into missions with Mission to the World.

   
   After a week of digging deep into what God's word has to say about Grace, we headed north to Indiana to celebrate with our niece at her wedding celebration.

  We had a great time visiting with family and seeing Howard's brother Ron's cool get-a-way-to-the-lake home.

  After a couple of nights in South Bend, Indiana, we drove up to Zeeland, Hudsonville, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Our eldest daughter Becky was born there - we showed her photos, but she doesn't remember.  We took a great photo in front of the house we lived in for the 4 years we were there and photos of friends, college room-mates and neighbors (sorry Tom and Laurie for forgetting to take a photo!)

 

  Leaving Grand Rapids in the rain (it always was rainy and cloudy when we lived there too) we drove to Hammond, Indiana and visited with Howard's sister Arla and family - it was a good down time between driving - thanks Angela for letting us crash your room!

   We moved on to Illinois in the middle of our 2nd week on the road - I'm sure many of you saw our miles and miles of corn photos and cool windmills - but just in case...

 
   We stayed with long time friend Deb Van Dyke at her home right next to more corn fields in Stillman Valley, IL - it was so quiet and peaceful.  We spent a day driving around to see the house we lived while in Machesney Park, Il. and the places we spent time at when our kids were in elementary school.

  We visited with some great friends for meals while we were there (once again I don't have photos of some people - but that doesn't mean we don't have great memories of good fellowship)

       and enjoyed a wonderful reunion dinner at the church we were members of when we lived there - Hope Reformed Church.

  We were able to share our mission calling with many of our friends and family and we are very thankful for the support many of you have pledged to us.  We also shared at Kishwaukee Community Church while we were there on Sunday, it was a great day of worship.

 Sunday found us on the road again driving back through Indiana to visit Mark and Kristen Elliott, our Favorite Youth Pastor and his family - why didn't I take a picture of their kids - who knows... But thanks for having us overnight - it was so good to share memories and see where you live and work now.

 
 And then it was home again - to do laundry, make my own dinners, take out the garbage...reality check-but with beautiful mountains to enjoy.

   When we returned home we reviewed the materials that we had studied at our Living in Grace conference.  One of the questions we were asked to review and "muse" on was "What do you rely on or comfort yourself with when things go bad or get difficult?"  I immediately thought of all the memories that had come flooding back to me as we had visited places we had lived over 30 years ago.  There were many, many good memories, but also memories of struggles and challenges our family and we each personally had dealt with. What was the constant as I looked back?

God and his faithfulness and grace to us!  

  God has been with our family in all 17 of our different homes, 2 different continents, and 5 different states. I am amazed, awed, humbled and grateful for all God has taught us.
  Your challenge - take out those photo albums if you can't do a physical road trip, and see where God has taken you and how He has upheld you and yours through your life so far.
 
  Howard and I know we can rely on God to continue to show His grace on us as we continue to follow Him where he leads us.

Amazing Kids Fall 2014

......NEWS............NEWS..................NEWS..............NEWS..............NEWS............NEWS..........

Amazing Kids Program begins 2014-2015 program year!

Dear Friends and Family - Please add to your prayers today - right now - the first day of the 2014 Amazing Kids after-school program.  Rohan, Rebecca, Emily, Elsa, Lorinda, Ellis, and many others who work with these children and their families in Lethbridge.  The excitement of a new year with new goals and plans is ahead of them and we want to pray that our strong and powerful God will be with them as they share Jesus' love with these children.

Enjoy this video from the current year and years past:

In Praise of Amazing Kids:

“The Amazing Kids Program is important to our school community because it targets school age children in need of mentorship. It promotes healthy attitudes and gives our children opportunities to be part of a sense of community outside school hours.… I believe supporting children in a spirit of community is crucial for their social, emotional and physical development”

 Nancy Brown       

Principal of Westminster Elementary School

Time line Tuesday!

New information for you!

So just how did we end up getting called to Lethbridge, Alberta?

    How did we end up getting to Nigeria, West Africa 29 years ago?

        How did we meet?

              How did we end up living in 17 different houses through the 33 years of our marriage?


These and other "timely" questions will be answered and revealed to inquiring minds - On Tuesdays!

  -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -

  Spring of 2013 - it's time to acquire a new group of calves for the farm - they are so cute when you first get them - but to keep a calf alive when it has been separated from it's mother and bottle feed them grow them to grass-fed beef status is quite a job.  Last spring we lost 5 of the 9 we purchased. It was a hard time for Howard.  You expend a lot of time and effort and yes, love, into raising them.  After a rough couple of months, Howard started wondering if the part-time farmer might not be where God wanted him.

  March of 2013 - Sandy puts in her resignation to the law firm she worked at - she and Howard had been working opposite schedules and missed spending time with each other - we really do like to spend time together and there had not been enough days off at the same time to go for motorcycle rides. In addition - and Uncle Sam had taken too much of their money that year.  We did not need to have 2 incomes at this time in our lives.  Sandy had also started wondering what else to do  -  a nagging sensation that there was more to life than sewing, reading, enjoying the grandkids (which we do very much), and working in our local church.



  June 2013 - Howard starts exploring other Counseling jobs available with different mission organizations and finds that there are many places in many parts of the world that need 50+ year old people with our skills.  We feel that God is giving us a restlessness about staying in Tennessee at this time. We had always kept in our future plans the possibility of returning to mission work after we returned to the states 26 years ago from a term of service in Nigeria and see this as a good time to explore that opportunity.

  We started praying and put the farm up for sale!  



The next Time Line Tuesday post will give you more information -                                                             Stay tuned!

 

Amazing Grace Community Church is 4 yrs. old today!

Amazing Grace Community Church website

Check them out on Facebook: 

Amazing Grace Community Church - Lethbridge

We are planning to spend birthday 

#5 

with them next year!!

Muppet's Happy Birthday.

Living in Grace

This past week found Howard and I at Ridge Haven camp in Brevard, North Carolina.

We came to attend the Living in Grace conference held for all short-term and long-term missionaries serving with Mission to the World.

It was a great time of learning about ourselves and how to prepare ourselves for the work in Lethbridge. A whole week of studying God's grace shown to all of us.





What is the Gospel? the message of Grace
 The Love of God - the foundation of Grace
  Surrender - the response of Grace
   Humility - the reflection of Grace
    Repentance - the posture of Grace
     The Holy Spirit - the agent of Grace
      The Love of Others - the sign of Grace
       Living the Resurrected Life - the way of Grace
        Prayer - the language of Grace
         Good Works - the life of Grace




We spent 5 days on this outline - obviously we cannot share with you everything we learned - but just reading through the heading of our lectures, you can see what the emphasis was on

GRACE

What a marvelous gift. We look forward to sharing it with those we go to work with in Lethbridge.

We would like to leave you with these thoughts -

 "We must lose ourselves in order to see His Grace in us - flowing through us - 

showing His power through our weakness"

"The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble" John Calvin

Pray for us as we continue to prepare in this way for our service in Alberta.