Heritage

Part 1: The conference

A couple weeks ago we attended our last Dunamis conference in Holland.  This one was focused on listening evangelism and was taught mostly by our friend Jay.  We enjoyed learning about how Jesus did his ministry as he was led by God the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit.  As children of God we have a unique heritage and calling on our lives.  We have the joy and privilege of sharing Jesus' love with those around us and we are thankful that he doesn't leave us to do it all on our own.  We have the Holy Spirit who guides us and leads us to where he is already working, and as we learned at the conference, our job is to follow in obedience.

We had many wonderful prayer times and even a time to go out into Holland and practice.  We felt that God was working in mighty ways in our lives and in the lives of others.

Our friend Stephanie came from Florida to attend the conference.  After it was done we got a chance to hang out with some other friends too: Victoria, Brynn, Jay and Dustin.  We went out for sushi and boy was it delicious!

Now that's a boatload of sushi! Plus a lifeboat up by the front!

After we ate we quickly went over to the beach to see the sunset, even though the wind was blowing cold we really enjoyed the natural beauty that God has created for us!

Part 2: The Hill

One day we went with Stephanie and Victoria to visit Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids.  We had never walked around there and it was a beautiful day so we figured we'd go for it.  This is one of the largest historical districts in the country with over 1300 houses registered there.  It is sad to think that in the 60's city planners wanted to demolish 75% of it to make way for "modern" urban structures. Thankfully the neighborhood banded together and became one of the first protected historic neighborhood associations in America.

We started off by going through this old mansion, it is for sale and we went to the open house, it was nice!

This house was built with stone imported from Scotland.  It is aptly named "The Castle." I could probably write about each house we saw but that would make for a pretty long post, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Part 3: The House

Our house is also almost 100 years old and has gone through a lot in its life.  We have enjoyed restoring it to it's former glory, though we aren't completely done with everything.  We have had much help over this long process and we have appreciated every bit of it.  It is so nice for us to finally have a place to call our own!

These pictures represent a lot of work, as practically every surface you see has been redone!  It seems like the transformation of our house is a metaphor for how God works to transform our lives.  He works ever so diligently on our inside, cleaning out and remaking us step by step.  The outside then naturally reflects the newfound beauty within and we shine with joy that he now lives inside of us! We praise him for giving us this home and also giving us the ability to fix it up so nicely for a small cost.  It helps to have so many people in our lives who are willing to give of their time and help!

Romania Trip

When we returned to America over a year and a half ago we left part of our hearts in Romania with our kids and friends there.  We just had the privilege of paying them a visit and it was a very blessed time.  We packed a lot into one week, traveling all around the Bucuresti area and even going down to Rosiori where we used to live and work.

For many of the kids it was a surprise when we arrived so we were met with lots of hugs and kisses.  We got to see many of these kids several times and it really felt like we hadn't skipped a beat in our relationships, even though a year has gone by since the last time we were there.  Time sure flies.  We noticed how much many of our kids had grown, but overall not that much changed.

We spent a day in the forest with this group of teenagers.  It was supposed to be the warmest day, but it turned out that it was actually chilly because of the wind.  The rest of the week we had warmer weather in the upper 70's!

We got to spend some recreational time together too, like when we went to the botanical gardens and walked around enjoying the flowers and sunshine.

We enjoyed worshiping in Romanian at Alfa Omega church.  It was nice to hear the songs in Romanian and to hear the language spoken again.  We didn't feel too rusty which was nice!

We were able to see many of our kids who are now adults and to be able to catch up a bit.

We are thankful that God gave us this trip so we could reconnect and rekindle relationships.  While it was hard to say good bye again, we know that God continues to work in Romania even as we are away.  Thank you to everyone who prayed for us while we were there and who continue to pray with us for our kids over there!

Heading out to Romania!

If you normally read our blog you may have noticed an absence of any new posts over the last two months.  It's not that we haven't been doing anything, quite the opposite, so much has been going on.  Perhaps that has contributed to the lack of posting, it is hard to get blogging when time is in short supply.  We would like to get back into blogging more often, and we have a lot of catching up to do.  We'll start that right after this post because there is a more pressing thing to write about: our upcoming trip to Romania!

Being in Romania for five years gave us the opportunity to make many deep relationships with the kids we worked with over there.  Since we left, we miss them a lot.  If you have ever been close to someone who moved away, or you were the one that moved, you probably can identify with how it feels to miss someone so much.  It is like having half of your heart be in another place and having a deep yearning to be reconnected.  Thankfully God has blessed us with being able to go and visit for a little over a week.  

We found the cheapest airfare we have ever seen; we will drive to Chicago and go from there. We fly out tomorrow evening, Wed April 30, and will return Friday April 8.  At first, it was a bit stressful when it didn't seem like details were falling into place.  We have grown to really rely on God and trust His leading and things have started to come together in the last week or two.  We will first be able to see our kids in Rosiori de Vede where we lived and worked most of the time.  Then we will see many of the ones in Bucuresti at the various orphanages there.  We are really excited to see not only our kids but also some friends there.  

We feel really blessed to be able to go back to Romania, but it is also a bittersweet feeling.  Since we will be involved in foster care in not too long, we aren't sure when we will be able to go back to Romania.  It is a distressing thought and the time leading up to this trip has been emotional.  We have to trust that God has a good plan for us and that he will help us as we strive to live our lives following him.  We ask for your prayers in this area especially, and we have listed below some ways that you can pray for us during and after this trip.  We trust that God will honor prayers offered up to him in expectant faith, so thanks for praying!

Prayer Requests:

-For blessed interactions with our friends and kids

-For opportunities to minister to our kids

-For God to be present with us and to work in our hearts

-For God to reveal himself to our kids and work in their hearts

-For safe and uneventful travels

-For good health

Us with Marius at his baptism last year

Answers to Prayer and Fun at the Beach in Winter

Every day we praise God for what he is doing!  There are so many things to be thankful for: blessings in ministry, his provision for us, his working at our church, our wonderful leadership team, and many more. God has been very active and we are trying to hang on for the ride!

One thing that we are especially thankful for is the provision that we received at the end of the year.  We started out in December looking at a deficit of over $2700 of support for the year.  We sent out a Christmas letter which was a summary of the year with just a short mention of that need.  The response was wonderful, and we ended the year with over $1400 surplus!  Thank you all for your generosity!  We praise God for this provision and trust that he will continue this year.

Thankfully the surplus from last year rolls into this year's budget, so we will have enough to make it through the first few months of this year.  We have monthly commitments for nearly 70% of our budget this year, which is an awesome start!  That leaves about $14000 to raise for the rest of the year. We would love it if many more people and churches would decide to make commitments to support us and our ministry!   Would you please join us in praying for this?  Might God be calling you to be one of our regular supporters?  You can get more info on how to do this by clicking here.  Through the church we currently can accept cash, checks, Chase Quickpay which links to a bank account, and we are working on our website and having a PayPal option.

January has been a busy month in other ways, including the launch of our church's newest ministry: Prayer Partners.  Here Rebecca and Anne are being commissioned for their leadership roles.  This ministry consists of teams that pray for people after each church service.  Up until now the pastors were doing this by themselves and so many people wanted prayer that they were very swamped!  Praise God that people want to be prayed for and to pray with others! 

We have also been busy being small group leaders at an interim class at Calvin College.  The class is called Spiritual Strength Training and is about how the Holy Spirit works.  At the end of each class we form small groups and answer questions and dive deeper into the material.  We have seen lots of growth in our students even though this is a very short course.  It is a large time commitment but the potential for fruit in these student's lives is limitless!

We took an afternoon recently to visit Grand Haven with our friend Victoria from church and a new friend Stephanie from Florida.  Stephanie is in Michigan helping with the class at Calvin, so we get to see her a lot.  She had never seen anything like the ice build up on the pier so it was pretty fun!

Michigan: frigid but beautiful!

We have continued to work on our house also, to the point of exhaustion sometimes!  The above room is our multipurpose room on the main level, it will be an office/guest-room/workout room, etc.  A lot was done in here: widening the door so we could get the washer and dryer in and out of the laundry room, scraping the sharp texture off the wall and filling in the remaining gaps with plaster, sanding down and finishing the floors, and painting, whew!

The laundry room got completely overhauled too, with a new tile floors, lots of work patching walls and the ceiling, and fresh paint.

We continue to feel awesomely blessed by having this house, and we are so excited with how it is turning out.  Thanks to all those who have helped us so far, and who will help in the future (we will need it come spring time!).

GoldRush Christmas Party!

Our middle school ministry is aptly named - GoldRush - because it really is a rush! We had a really fun Christmas party with our youth group this week. 

We started with pizza for dinner and had an extended hang out time.

We had pie and ice cream for dessert, it was a great dinner!

We then moved up to the sanctuary and played a game - the winter clothes relay.

The youth had to put on a really large set of outdoor clothing and then run down the aisle and back, it was a lot of fun.

Next we watched Charlie Brown's Christmas on the big screen.

Many of the kids related to Charlie Brown when he was getting teased by the other kids, we heard our youth sticking up for him and yelling at those mean cartoon kids!

All of the leaders then performed a skit of the nativity, it was pretty epic!

Here the angel is bringing the good news to the shepherd and sheep...

...and then they went to see baby Jesus in the manger.

Here sinister King Herod tries to persuade the wise man to return to him and reveal the location of Jesus.

In the middle of the skit, right after the angel's announcement of Jesus' birth, we broke out into song and led the singing of "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World."

This was arguably my favorite part of the night as I hadn't played my sax for nearly 15 years!

At the end we gave each youth a present and a Bible.  We let them chose which bible they wanted.  Banner of Christ Community Church where my cousins Ed, Barb and family go donated a box of  Action Bibles, which are very cool illustrated Bibles.  Victoria (on the right), a member of our team, got us Teen Study Bibles using her discount from work.  It was so good to see these kids get to pick out their own Bibles, for many of them it might be the only one they have ever received.

We all had a really fun time at our GoldRush Christmas party!  It was a wonderful time of fellowship with our youth and we were able to remind them of the true meaning of Christmas.  Thank you all for praying for them and for this ministry!

Merry Christmas!