God is SO GOOD!!!

Spring is here, rejoice!  With the melting of the snow and an abundance of sunshine we have continued to be very blessed, just look at the beautiful flower we found growing in someone's yard!

We have been slacking a bit on writing about what we have been up to personally so I thought I would share some pictures.  We have been keeping busy!

We went to Dinner and a Chef at Artisan of Grand Haven and enjoyed a wonderful meal with Dad and Julie Essenburg.  The chef there makes all the food right in front of the guests so it is really fun!  We enjoy learning new techniques and tasting the really delicious food!

We had a Thai meal with our friends Iain and Jay, I made Massaman Curry which is my favorite!  We enjoy getting together with Iain and Jay to pray for each other and our respective ministries.

We have been enjoying getting to know new friends like Andrew, Lindsay, and Elim.  We have started working with them at church, Lindsay is our worship leader and Andrew is the Director of Community Connections.  We have so much in common as we are both going through similar transition in our lives.  We are so glad that God has brought them into our lives.

I was driving around one evening and saw this beautiful evening view of the city of Grand Rapids, our future home...

Yes, speaking of our future home... God has provided yet again in his perfect timing!  We are in the process of buying a home!

God has revealed his plan to us once again by leading us to this wonderful old house on the West Side of Grand Rapids, which is only a five minute drive from church.  We were planning on going through the homesteading process with Westown Jubilee Housing, but as we went through the process we found out that we were able to get a normal mortgage so we started also looking for houses that were move in ready.  We looked at this house right away when we started three weeks ago and liked it, but we thought it might need too much fixing up...

After looking at several more houses we still felt drawn to this one, so we went to look at it again with Jeff from Westown.  He helped us to get a good idea of what repairs are needed and how much they might cost.  We were happy to hear that there are no major issues and we could move in and tackle projects as we go.

There is a lot of nice wood work and craftsman details in this 1919 home.  Not to mention that it has five bedrooms so we will be able to have a guest room which was something we really wanted.  Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!  We are so excited!  Would you please pray that the buying process goes well and that we can close without a hitch?  Please pray for the current owners to be able to find a place and that God would bless them.  We are thankful for their willingness to negotiate with us and that we were able to buy it for an affordable price.

There is so much more going on which we will talk about more in future posts.  For now, here are some prayer points:

We are in Romania right now, please pray for the rest of our trip to be safe and blessed.

Pray for Marius to be strengthened in his faith as he is baptised Sunday.

Pray for God's leading and our discerning in next steps in ministry.

Pray for wisdom as we will most likely begin adopting through foster care once we have this house.

Thanks as always for keeping us in your prayers, we know that prayer makes a difference, God listens to and answers our prayers!

More Children's Worship

God is so good!  He continues to bless our Children's Worship at church.

As we have been going through the Bible we have been having fun incorporating activities that go along with the stories.

We had a tower building contest when we talked about the tower of Babel.

Here are some of the wonderful drawings of the story.  We ask the kids what they God is telling them about the story and how they can apply it to themselves and others.  We also ask them what they can do about it, because we don't want this to be just head knowledge.  Our desire is that their lives will be impacted and they will experience a loving relationship with Jesus.

We also model praying for others to the kids and are thankful that many of them are starting to join in and pray for their peers.  

Of course the kids love to sing too, we enjoy singing songs that make it easy for them worship God and to remember the songs.  On Easter the kids sang the song 10000 Reasons for the congregation.  They were pretty nervous at first but they got the hang of it and did a wonderful job.  You can watch a portion of the performance by following the link below.

Kids Easter Song

Would you please continue to pray for all of the kids who participate in our Children's Worship?  Ask God to make himself real to them so that they have strong faith that will only continue to be strengthened as they get older.  We long for them to be a generation who is on fire for Jesus!

Please also pray for all of our volunteers who teach and model what it looks like to love Jesus.  We are so thankful for all of them and are glad that God laid it on their hearts to minister to these kids.