Shedd Aquarium

Since Mark has been unemployed, we have had lots of extra time to do different things. The only problem is that many fun activities cost money. When we looked on-line and found out that the Shedd Aquarium has community days in which the general admission is free (instead of $25), we decided to go on a day road trip. We happened to know a little boy who loves fishing and pretending to fish so we thought this would be a great time for him and his family. On Tuesday the 16th of June we headed out to Chicago with some of the Jasperse family. When we arrived at the aquarium the parking garage said it would be a two hour wait. We decided to go ahead with our plans even though it was lightly sprinkling. Once got to the line we were told they had a separate stroller line and the wait there was only around 30 mins! The inside was packed with people but we still had a good time and saw lots of big fish.

Mark and Rebecca in front of the Caribbean Reef

Kayleen with Sam and Lexi (Scott had to work)

Tim and Terri (Grandparents) and Sam

Rebecca and Lexi-bug

Caribbean Reef with diver feeding fish

Nickel the sea turtle - she got run over by a boat

Hello

Nemo and friends

Sea horses

Lobster

Frog

The Shedd also has a shark reef, dolphins and whales, but that costs extra so we didn't see those exhibits. It was a fun trip and worked out well since Mark is back to work on contract this week. He will be working for about a month. Our Romania plans are progressing and we will probably be there in the beginning of September.

More Great News And A Quick Update

God is continuing to move and is answering lots of prayers lately. This week Mark got a call from Extol where he was working until being laid off this spring. They said that a big order that they've been waiting for has finally come in. That means that Mark will be able to work on contract there for about a month. This will greatly help our finances as we prepare to go to Romania. This is definitely an answer to prayer and will be such a huge blessing.

Things are moving along on the sale of our house as well. We will have the inspection tomorrow which we figure will go well since our house is so young. We don't yet know when our closing will be but the offer we accepted said it would be no later than July 11. Our for sale sign looks a lot better now that it says sold instead of for sale.

Once we have a closing date we will probably also pick a departure date for Romania. The last major thing that needs to happen before we go is to complete our support raising. We are doing very well in this area and are hoping that some new monthly supporters will rise up so that we can begin our ministry. We'll have more details on this in another post once we figure out exactly where we're at.

We would appreciate if you would pray that our house sale goes smoothly, our support will be completed soon, and all the preparation and moving will go well. Thanks so much for praying with us!

We Just Accepted An Offer On Our House!!!

Today is the day we've been waiting for for so long! This morning Mark was outside watering some flowers when our realtor pulled up in our driveway. We were waiting for word on our showing last night and usually we hear by phone or e-mail so seeing him in the driveway was a good sign. He got out and asked if we'd like to discuss the offer we had! The offer was great except that they included their closing costs for us to pay. It sounds like our house is toward the high end of what they were looking at, so we decided to accept the offer even though we will have to bring money in to pay off our mortgage. The money isn't even important to us at this point, we just want to sell this house and we don't want to take the chance of losing this buyer. By accepting the offer as is we have a done deal.

The best thing is that this buyer doesn't have a house of their own so there is no contingency on the offer. We will close within a month from now and they will move in two weeks after close. That means we have six weeks or less left of living here. Wow, it's hard to believe but it's so great!

We know that this is God's answer to our prayers!!! This is such an awesome feeling, God has rewarded us for waiting patiently on Him. We want to give Him all the glory for this, He is our provider! Please pray for these things with us:

- First let's thank and praise Him for sending these buyers to our house.

- Pray that the paperwork and closing will all go smoothly.

- Pray for our transition and all the packing and moving we'll be doing.

Thank you so much for praying with us! Your prayers have been heard and answered on this one! We are so appreciative of your prayer support. We'll keep everyone posted on how things go, lots of changes are in store for us soon!

Great Weekend Update

Sunday was a big day for us. We started out by driving up to Kent City to visit Red Pine Bible Church to present about our ministry. After some singing pastor Rick introduced us and gave us the floor. Rebecca opened by talking about how we came to this point; our previous trips and our call from God to go to Romania as full time missionaries. Mark then gave a bit of background on Romania and how it has been ravaged by communism and corruption. We then showed the H2H ministry video (which you can watch too, it is the "Orphans of Romania" video on the right sidebar of the blog). Then Mark explained what we will be doing once we're there and talked about some of the relationships we formed at summer camp last year. He read Elena's first letter to us after camp, where she thanked us for everything we did, like sitting with her for dinner, taking pictures with her, and letting her carry our backpack.

After church we talked with people and felt very warmly welcomed by many friendly people. Lots of people were interested and wanted to hear more about what we're doing. It was a great experience to be able to share our passion with them and it was great to see that they were excited about it too.

We then went to Mark's aunt's house for dinner and had a great time of fellowship with family. They prepared a great meal and had lots of snacks afterwards. We talked more about what we will be doing and showed more pictures of our previous trips. It was a lot of fun and we are very grateful for their hospitality.

Later that night after we had gone home the deacons along with Pastor Rick met to talk about what we had shared with them. They were very excited about our ministry and decided that they would like to partner in supporting us! They will be recommending this to the church and they will decide for sure by the end of the month. God is definitely at work here and this is an answer to prayers! Let's continue to pray that the recommendation goes through and that we can form a great partnership with the body of Christ at Red Pine Bible Church.

We had an open house while all this was going on and one couple came to look through our house. They said they really liked it and liked the lot and the country feel that we have here. They are just starting looking and are trying to decide if they want to invest this much into a house. Please pray with us that God will speak powerfully and clearly into their lives to lead them to buy our house. What a wonderful thing that would be!

Thanks so much for praying for and with us in these things. Your prayers are making a huge difference and we are so appreciative for your prayer partnership.

Church Partnership & Open House Prayer Requests

This weekend we have a couple of things going on that we would like to ask you to pray for with us.  On Sunday we will be sharing about our ministry at Red Pine Bible Church in Kent City. Mark's cousin Rick is the pastor there and we have been talking with him about partnering with his church.  We will have 25 minutes of the church service to share our vision with the congregation, what an honor!  We will first show a video of what H2H does and then we'll talk about our previous trips and what we'll be doing in our ministry.  We are very excited about this opportunity and are eagerly waiting to see how God will use it.  Would you please pray that:

-The Holy Spirit will anoint us and speak powerfully through us.

-God will speak to the hearts of the people there, firing up their passion for advancing His kingdom.

-For a close partnership to develop with this church body.

-For God to raise up people to be prayer and support partners.

Also this weekend we will be having an open house.  Would you please pray that God will send a buyer soon?

As we pray these things I would like to encourage you to meditate on one of my favorite Bible passages.  It is very reassuring for us since so many things are up in the air in our lives right now.  I hope that it will be an encouragement to you as well.

Phillipians 4:6-7  Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done.  Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

1st Stages of Garden Growth

Our garden has been growing for two weeks now.  The beans, zucchini, and flowers have sprouted and the first leaves are up.  It is exciting to see the plants coming alive.

The flower of the rhubarb plant has continued to grow taller and is about done blossoming.  We have heard that the flower may make the rhubarb more bitter, but others say it does not.  We haven't harvested any yet, even though it is ready.  We have been waiting for the strawberries to be ripe so we can make strawberry rhubarb pie.  Yummy!

Here are the bean plants in different stages of sprouting.  We planted more beans than normal this year so hopefully this variety tastes really good.  

The first tomato!  It helps when you buy plants that are already blossoming :)

The bud of a pepper plant.  These are bell peppers and will be used to make red pepper hummus and other tasty things.

These are some flowers.  Not really sure what we planted, they were leftover seeds from a previous year.

Strawberry!  We have two different varieties of strawberries and the earlier variety is done blossoming and starting to bear fruit.  It won't be too much longer before we'll have to get out the row covers to protect the berries from the birds.  

There is nothing better than homegrown produce straight from the garden. The taste is amazing and you don't have to worry about e-coli or what toxins are on the produce. Gardening is also a chance to remind us about what is important.  In our own life we too need the proper nutrients, sunlight, water and to be free of weeds that threaten to choke us out.  It is a joy to see the wonder of God's amazing creation and stand in awe of His mighty works.

A Few Goodbyes

Today is the end of an era for us.  We just said goodbye to our two kitties, Smokey and Chewy. Since we are planning on moving to Romania we knew we needed to find a home for them so we've been asking around for quite a while.  Some people said we should put an ad on Craigslist, so we did yesterday thinking that it might take a few weeks to get a response.  Lo and behold we received an e-mail about 20 minutes after posting the ad.  Today we talked to the people who wanted to give our cats a loving home, and then they came to pick up our boys. We took some pictures before we said goodbye.

They definitely knew something was up, they were both slinking around and acting scared.

We'll miss you guys.

Awww!

Smokey says: I'm so cute, how can you get rid of me?

Chewy says: I don't want to go!  I'm hiding in the couch so you can't get me!

We also said goodbye to our nice car, the Camry.  We had promised Mark's brother Kevin that we would sell it to him before we left.  Kevin's car broke down and was having some serious issues so we decided to sell it to him now.  It was a great car and we really enjoyed having it.

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend has always been a special weekend for us and our families.  Usually we go camping with Rebecca's family and friends at Yankee Springs Campground.  We have camped there almost every year since we first met but this year was a lot different.  We instead filled the weekend with several different activities, all of which were very fun.  Friday we hung out with our friends Scott & Kayleen.  We played games, went to some garage sales, and watched Ocean's 11.  We had some awesome egg-rolls for dinner and brownies for dessert, mmm.

Saturday we headed up to Great Aunt Phil's cottage on Lake Michigan.  It was a little overcast but overall it was a nice day.  Rebecca's parents brought their camper and Mark helped set up.  We enjoyed some good food, usually on weekends like this there are lots of goodies and this was no exception.  We had a hamburger fry for dinner, and one of the dogs ate part of Grandma's hamburger right off her plate she was holding.  Fun times.

We went for a walk along the beach and Rebecca spotted this, a Bald Eagle.  It isn't every day that you get to see one of these so it was pretty exciting.

The cottage sits atop of the sand dune, so there are quite a few steps down to the beach.

We always enjoy seeing rays of sunshine.

There was lots of extra sand on the beach piled up because the water level is so high.  We saw many cool erosion patterns in the sand.

Sunday we took a walk, the weather was beautiful.  We relaxed the rest of the day and played some games.

Monday we went to the Essenburg get-together which happens every Memorial Day at Mark's late grandma's house.  We had a hotdog roast with potluck side dishes and enjoyed seeing lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins.  It was another beautiful day and a nice ending to the Memorial Day weekend.