August & September Highlights - We Are Still Here!

Ever since we got the keys to our house we have been really busy.  It seems like all we have been doing is working on ministry at church and then working on the house to get it ready to move into.  This has led to our lack of updates and for that we apologize!  In reality, we have actually done some fun things along the way, it's just been a couple of months since our last post.  So here is a mega recap of what we've been up to!

In early August we traveled to Denver, Colorado, to visit our friend Dorothy.  Dorothy was an intern with us in Romania and we have been able to stay in touch.

We walked around the city a lot, averaging nearly 10 miles each day!  

We toured the state capital building...

...went to a really beautiful botanical garden...

...and enjoyed many nice meals as we explored.  One night we ate a five course meal at this jazz club.

Here we are with Dorothy's husband Andy.  

We ventured out of town on Sunday to go visit the Garden of the Gods.

We love being out in nature and I love a great macro shot, especially of a bee on a flower!

We enjoyed wonderful weather for our hike and couldn't get enough of the stunning views.

On our last night in Denver, we went out for ice cream, waited in line for 30 min in the express line, and then walked back to our overlook for a cool night shot.

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend, we traveled up to Leelenau State Park for some tent camping.

  Love camp food, here I took Rebecca's knife so she used the massive one out of the grill kit!

We enjoyed more beautiful weather and being on the beach and watching sunsets.

Here is the old lighthouse.

We enjoyed hiking and sight seeing while we were there and also went to the beach a couple times.  

We didn't expect to find this many Petoskey Stones, and these are just the ones we found the first day.  

An anchor from a shipwreck in the bay.

In mid September came our move in day - finally!  Nearly one full year after returning from Romania, we now have a place to call our own.  We were thankful for all the help we had moving.  You can see that our dads love their toys!

Part of the moving crew helping unload things from Rebecca's parents place...

...and picking up a gorgeous china hutch from church.  We were able to do the whole move in one day thanks to all of our helpers.  We even started to unpack a bit, and have been working on that since.  There are still many projects to be completed but we got enough done that we could comfortably move in, and we are thankful for that!

We hosted our small group from church in our house, this time with actual furniture!

Then a couple of weekends ago we babysat our friends' kids for the weekend while they were gone for their anniversary.  One of the highlights of the weekend was going to the zoo!

Everyone especially loved the petting zoo!

Hey, they actually like to have their hair brushed!

Here Sam seems to be contemplating something with his flock.

We even got to pet the stingrays!

It was a fun weekend, except for the part where we accidentally went to the Pagan Pride festival, but that's a whole other story! (ask if you want to hear it)  Now we are settling in to our house and hoping that things return to a more normal level of busyness.

We praise God for his faithfulness and for his provision of our family and friends, and for our beautiful old house.  Would you please pray for us as we transition to living on the West Side and continue working on our house?  Please also pray for God's leading, wisdom and empowering in leading ministries at church, we recognize that we can't do this on our own and rely on Him!

Middle School Ministry

God is so great!  He deserves all the glory!  When God called us to minister at Gold Avenue Church we really didn't know what he had in store for us and what ministries would be started.  After much prayer and searching for where God was leading, it became apparent that there was one group of kids in the neighborhood who really didn't have anything going on for them - middle schoolers.  They are at a critical time when they are forming views and opinions that will affect how they live the rest of their lives, yet no local organizations had a specific ministry for them.  We felt like God was really leading us to focus on them for our newest ministry.

First we were able to partner with The Bridge Street House Of Prayer to host an arts camp at our church.  This was specifically for middle school youth since many of the other VBS programs of the summer were only for elementary kids.

We started with a group teaching, speaking about how God created each one of us with a purpose, with unique gifts, talents, and abilities.

Then we broke into smaller groups - the most sought after one was cooking.

There was also an "Art Around the World" class, where we got to learn about other culture's art and make some of it.

One day we made Ukrainian dyed eggs.  It was a fun process and it was neat to see how these are made, especially because we found them in Romania each year around Easter.

Another project was painting Henna, an art form from India.

There was a dance class too where they got to learn multiple types of dancing.  Arts Camp was really fun and we hope to do it again next year.  We are praying that more youth will come as it is a great entry point into other ministries.

Two weeks ago we had the privilege to start a middle school youth group.  Our first meeting we had 13 kids and last week we had 16, with more potentially signing up in the weeks leading up to school starting.  With a great team of volunteers we planned what it would look like to really focus in on creating a safe place for the kids to grow in their relationships with Jesus.

We first pick the kids up from around the neighborhood.  Only a small number of them go to our church, some others have been referred to us by The Other Way Ministries or BSHOP, and a few others from Arts Camp.

We play some games, then transition to worship.  After that we have dinner and then the lesson.  After the lesson we split up into small groups to discuss the lesson and share prayer requests.

We are so blessed to be able to minister to these kids at such a critical time for in their lives.  Many of them come from broken homes and live in situations that are hard to imagine.  Some of them shared about the racism that they face on a daily basis.  They are being bombarded with messages everyday that tell them to live for themselves and that God doesn't exist.  We are inviting our Lord Jesus to come and intervene in their lives, to heal their hurts and to be their comforter.  We can't do any of that on our own, but we can point them to the one who can.

In order for this ministry to be successful we need a lot of prayer.  We would like to form a prayer team that covers the youth, their families, the volunteers, and this neighborhood in prayer.  If you are feeling a tug to do this on a regular basis please let us know.  We appreciate your prayers and your support and are excited about how God will work in this ministry!

FairHaven Project and Fireworks

It has been almost a month since our last post, and there is a reason... we have been spending all of our free time working on our 96 year old home!  The day after the last post we took possession and immediately started working; getting it ready for us to move in.  This has kept us busy and it seems like time has evaporated.  We will post more about our work there in a later post, since there have been some other cool things going on that we wanted to share about.

We had a group come and help us with landscaping from FairHaven Ministries in Hudsonville.  FairHaven is one of our supporting churches and they offered to send a work crew and the supplies to help us beautify our church grounds.  The group consisted of middle and high school youth who were participating at a camp at FairHaven called Youth Week.

We had a few areas where there were supposed to be flowers but they got overrun with weeds, so the group transformed them...

...into beautiful flower beds.  What an amazing difference!

Here you can see the weeds, they were growing very well there!

This looks a lot better!

Even though our time was short, we were able to share a bit about what God is doing here on the West Side of Grand Rapids.  They also joined us for our weekly prayer meeting where they were challenged to pray for God to work here.  We ate local food for lunch and everyone was amazed by these enormous pizzas from Fratelli's. We enjoyed working with them a lot and our whole church is thankful for their help!

Another thing that we were able to do was go sailing with our friends John and Karen for the fourth of July!

It was a beautiful day and evening!  Since we returned home we had been looking forward to getting out on the boat with John and Karen, it is always a nice relaxing time.

At dusk many boats anchored to see the fireworks.

We had a great view!

It was a very nice time and we are grateful to John and Karen for sharing their holiday with us!

This picture of a moth doesn't really go with anything, but i thought it was so cool!

Lots of things are still going on, many of which we will be writing more about soon.  Would you please continue to pray for the middle school ministry we are gearing up to launch in the beginning of August?  Pray not only for the planning but for God to call many youth to come and to be blessed! Also, please pray for wisdom and discernment about prioritizing house projects and getting them done in a timely manner. Thanks for your prayers!