May Happenings

The month of May has really flown by!  As usual it has been a full month with lots of excitement and lots of projects.  We'll walk through the journey with pictures...

We joined many other people at Rosa Parks Circle for National Day of Prayer.  It was a wonderful time of crying out to the Lord on behalf of our city and nation.

We made it out to Tulip Time in Holland.  It was the first time that we went on one of the weekends, and we found out why: because it's so busy then!  We went and had a picnic lunch at Window on the Waterfront, the park where the test plantings of tulips are.  It was a gorgeous day but we decided not to drive down tulip lane because it was so busy!

We finally had nice weather to work outside of the house, so we did some landscaping and gardening.

We worked on the back yard a bit too, a friend came over and trimmed some branches off of our neighbors huge Maple tree.  This might have been the first time for sunlight to reach this area in quite a long time!  It also really opened up our yard, since some of the branches were hanging almost all the way to the ground!

I found that our local neighborhood park is a very nice place to spend a morning in prayer.  You wouldn't even know you are in the city!

Rebecca enjoys holding our friend's daughter Ember at church and when we visit them.  Ember is almost always smiling and being cute!

We were able to take our middle school youth group on a reward trip to Sky Zone.  This was a smaller group than normal because some of the kids had school camp and others a concert.

We all had a lot of fun jumping around on the trampolines...

...dunking basketballs...

...jumping in the foam pits...

...and playing dodge ball.  The youth really wasted the leaders, we were heavily outnumbered and we couldn't match their ninja-like moves!

This is how we felt after about about 15 minutes there! 

We did make it to the end of the hour alive though!

Things are going well with our youth group.  We are in need of some more volunteers though.   Rose (on the left) and Ben (in the red) have been faithful volunteers since we started.  This fall Rose will be going to grad school out of state.  Ben will be studying abroad in the Netherlands this fall.  It has been a pleasure having these two on our team, and we will pray for them in their new endeavors.  We are praying for more workers!

Oh, one more thing, starting this Sunday, Evergreen Ministries will be supporting our ministry through their Corners Offering.  This will go on for four Sundays: May 29 - June 19.  We will be there to share about our ministry on June 12 at both the 9:15 and 11:00 services.  We are very thankful for this opportunity and are looking forward to seeing many familiar faces there!  https://egm.org

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!