Spring 2017 Update

How is it that May is here already?  It is so nice now that flowers are in full bloom and we can see that the sun still does exist.  Like always life has been full in these last few months, and we invite you to read on as we tell about some of the highlights.

Baby R has been growing fast and is very healthy.  She started eating solid food in mid-April and really enjoyed it!  We joke that she is on a seafood diet, she sees food and she eats it!  For a while she really protested drinking her bottles because all she wanted was baby food, but now she enjoys both.  She is very strong, she can stand up with help balancing, and she can plank when held up in the air, which she loves to do.  She screams for joy and talks and babbles a lot.  She also knows what she wants and when she doesn't get it she screams, she has some great lungs.  She still struggles with reflux but not as much as she did in December and January.  She is also finally beginning to sleep for a good chunk of the night, and now we are just waiting for teeth to pop through to undo all of this sleep progress.  She also got the go ahead to be in public so she has been able to come to church and other get togethers.  This has made things a lot easier on us; she loves being with people and being the center of attention.  We love her lots and she is a joy to everyone she meets as she smiles and squeals and looks super cute.

There have been and will continue to be lots of emotional ups and downs too as we deal with the realities and unknowns of foster care.  It can be very difficult and gut wrenching to think of all of the possible outcomes for R, but we have to rely on God to protect her above all.

We enjoyed dinner with some friends who just recently moved to our neighborhood.  We love spending time with our friends and family, and we especially enjoy playing games.

Rebecca loves to make desserts, and here she was eating some fresh cookies with our friend Rachel.

We enjoy eating good food.  Here you can see a plate of Chinese food from PF Changs.  They are one of the few places that has gluten free Chinese food.  We also ate Thai, Indian and sushi a few times and had many great meals with family and friends.

We went to Grand Haven to see the ice buildup by the pier and to go for a walk on a nice day in February.

We enjoyed the walk and the sunshine and afterwards we went an got some gluten free cupcakes from a bakery in Muskegon.  It was a nice date, thanks to Oma and Opa for babysitting!  We have been very blessed with many people who are willing to babysit for us, for the price of getting to spend time with cute little R! 

Each time we had a nice day we tried to make the most of it by going outside.  Too bad you can't see R all bundled up in her fleece jacket that looks like a lamb, complete with little ears on the hood!

We were excited to find out that my (Mark's) sister is pregnant with twins!  We went to her gender reveal party and I was the first one to guess that they are both girls!  This is so awesome, we'll be an uncle and aunt for the first and second time!

We enjoyed a nice plate of sushi before I left for half a week to go to North Carolina for more prayer training.

The one on the top is my favorite - spicy tuna!  Yum!  We really like Sushi Yama right in downtown GR, because as unassuming of a place it is, the sushi is top notch, well priced, and they are very gluten conscious.  

I went to Black Mountain, North Carolina for the second of three prayer trainings that are part of a class I am taking.  There are around 10 people from our church and another 5 from the area.  We are learning how to pray for inner healing and deliverance, and have already started doing this in teams at church.  It is exciting to see how God is working already!

The setting here is beautiful!  September will be graduation weekend.

We got together with many of our good friends for Scott's birthday.  We went to Downtown Market and were able to try a sampling of the food there.  We really enjoyed the company and afterwards we went downtown to get fro-yo.  Like I said earlier, we loving being here, even though we miss the sun in the winter, but being near to so many friends and family is awesome!

These were some of the first flowers we saw this spring!

I had the awesome privilege of preaching my first English sermon at the end of April.  Since one of our pastors is on sabbatical, I was asked if I would be willing to preach two sermons, to help others but also to work on growing my own giftings.  I was mentored by Pastor Gina and our intern Pastor Jaleesa as I wrote the sermon, I practiced in front of them and they reviewed my transcript.  It was a lot of work but I am thankful for the message that God gave me to give to the church.  You can listen to it here: The Great Commission - Modeling Jesus' Love to the World

With the return of good weather we got busy working outside.  The tulips we planted last fall came up beautifully!  We have lots of outdoor projects, including reseeding the back yard and doing something so that the rain doesn't leak into the basement

We enjoyed participating in a few baby showers for Sandi, Rebecca won a game at each one of them.  The guys and I all came at the end with R to hang out a bit and to let everyone meet R.  She hammed it up at both of them, it seems that no matter how sleepy she is she can wake up to wow a crowd. 

We had a busy spring at church too, with Pastor Dave going on sabbatical and us ramping up prayer ministry.  Our middle school youth group started really going well and we experienced lots of fruit - one youth accepted Jesus, another wants to be baptized, and another was healed of an addiction.  As we have continued to pray for God to send more workers to Gold Ave Church, he as answered and we have seen exciting growth in our church family, ministries and our capability to spread the love of Jesus to others.  Now we are planning for the summer - Arts and Sports camp is in June and in July our youth group will go to camp.  In the fall we are hoping to start a high school youth group so we continue to pray for God to place calls in hearts.  

We are very thankful for all of the prayer and support that we receive, both personally and in our ministries at church.  Please continue to pray for us and those we minister to!  We love you all!

December 2016

December began with us trying to figure out and survive having two babies of slightly different ages at once.  They were on different schedules, had different needs, and were a handful and a half.  They were also super cute, which I think is a baby's most valuable asset when trying to have their needs met by super tired sleep deprived parents.

D slept pretty well at night and smiled a lot during the day, but he struggled with a gassy tummy.  R woke up constantly at night but slept most of the day.  I was able to stay at home and spend time helping while getting any work done which was absolutely necessary.  We had cared for lots of babies but never had them live with us at night, that's a game changer!  D ended up going home after about a week and a half.  We had still had lots going on, doctors appointments, foster care paperwork, not much sleep, not much sleep, not much... oh I said that already :-)  Amidst all of this, we did find time to put up Christmas decorations and have many a holiday celebration.

Rebecca decorated the tree with baby R.

Rebecca made ornaments for our family of R's footprint, so tiny!

Around Christmas we had lots of get togethers... this one with Rebecca's family.

Next one at my Dad & Julie's place...

And our last one with my Mom & Herb at our place.

The whole month I worked on directing the children at church in a play of the nativity story.  Talk about cute, these kids excel at that and did a great job in the play!

Baaaaahhhh!

Our angels all ready to jump up and say "Glory to God in the Highest!"

Lastly, for Christmas I received a new stunt kite.  It happened to be not too freezing on Christmas day so us guys went to the park to fly it.

Kevin tried it out - his first time flying a dual line stunt kite.  It was a lot of fun!  I now am always checking the weather and wind forecast, looking for more opportunities to fly this and to start to learn new tricks with it.

It seems like December just "flew" by!

Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support during these last months!  We really appreciate all of you!

November 2016

Last November was a big month for us!  After finally getting our foster care license in October, we had a couple close calls where we said we would take a child but then they never came.  Those nights were a rollercoaster of emotions.  At the end of the month was when it became real.  We got a call about a baby girl who needed a place but was currently in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).  We were told that we would get more info the next day but it didn't come, then it was Thanksgiving, then the weekend, so we weren't sure what to think.  Then we got another call asking if we would be able to take a baby boy, and since our license was for up to two children and we hadn't heard back about the girl, we said yes.  A few hours later, D was in our arms, a super sweet three month old boy.  

What a change of life, but that was just the beginning - it was about to get crazy.  The next day, we got a call about R who was about ready to be discharged from the NICU.  They asked if we still wanted her, and we thought about it - we had already said we would - so we said yes.  We went and got her from the hospital and thus we were thrown right in to parenting!  That was the end of the month so stay tuned to hear what it was like in December.

We continued to have some beautiful weather in November.  We took a nice long walk at Riverside Park.

We had an early frost and we caught some of it on our still blooming mums.

We got to talk on the computer with Marius and Florin for a while, it is always good to catch up and it is a good reminder to continue praying for all of our kids in Romania.

I enjoyed a beautiful fall day by flying my kite with my friend Neil.  We went to the beach in Grand Haven, where it was really windy.  This kite would pull both of us down the beach, it was powerful!

Here is Neil flying the kite.  Toward the end I crashed and broke a small part on the kite - again.  This probably happens every other time I fly it, since it is very old.  Thankfully I found a generous kite shop that sent me some new parts!

We celebrated Thanksgiving not only with our family but with GoldRush - our middle school youth group.

We enjoyed a meal brought in by one of our church partners...

...then we talked about gratitude and how to be thankful in every situation.

I was able to make it to a couple of GVSU football games with my Dad and Brother, and one with my sister and brother-in-law.  We saw some great playoff games and it was a nice end to a very nice month.