Whoa! A Spare Minute!!

I know, shocking, isn't it? What is more shocking is that we are actually going to [attempt] sleep in tommorrow!! Taking the weekend off!!! I would say that I won't know what to do with myself, BUT, I think I will finish "moving in" (read: unpacking and putting stuff away) to our "new" house. We have met a wonderful Christian couple down here and they have offered us their four bedroom house RENT FREE to live in until it sells. Works for me. I think D and E are liking this arrangement as well. We will be doing a few minor repairs (fixing a flood light, a window, paint) instead of paying rent. I'll take it! We moved a number of things in Wednesday night and the kids and I did some unpacking and arranging. Oh yeah, and I saw my fist cockroack ever... EWWW.

Things have been AMAZING down here. Very busy, but good. It has been so cool to meet so many people from so many different places who have just come down here to help clean up and rebuild. And the "natives" as some of them like to be referred to are wonderful, too. I am so amazed at the thankfulness I see in them. And what a good lesson for us to be learning... It is just stuff. Stuff is not where the importance lies..... Wow.... It is hard to put much else into words...

Last night we had one AMAZING and powerful service.... It was SOOO good!! It felt like being back at our home chuch worshipping with everyone there and throwing about 300 more people in the mix. There was such an excitement there! And even though it was a little hard to be away from family on Thanksgiving, I can honestly say that I would LOVE to have another Thanksgiving like that! Whew!!!!!

I am putting together TONS of pictures... You will be able to view them if you click my picture link on the side of the page. It is definitely true, though, that pictures do not do any of this justice.....

My Full Page Life

I got this article in my email today. I thought it was good and I know you don't have to be a mom to feel this way. :)

God In The Margins

Certain people groups feel "marginalized," in our society. Do you ever put God in the Margins?

"I remember writing papers in high school," writes author Keri Wyatt Kent in her new book Breathe. "I love to write, but if I wasn't very enthused about an assigned topic, I would try to fill the requisite number of pages by double-spacing and leaving very generous margins. Of course, this allowed my teachers plenty of white space along the edges to write 'you didn't fully develop this point!' in red ink."

"Remember airmail letters? In the days before e-mail, you would send a letter overseas via airmail. You could buy special stationery for it at the post office. It was a one-page, tissue-thin blue paper that folded into an envelope. In order to get as much information as possible onto one page (and avoid extra postage charges), you would write small and fill every available space on the stationery.

"Sometimes my life gets so full - even with good things like family, work, and church activities - that the margins become exceedingly narrow. God gets the tiny leftover spaces, or he gets gently shoved off the page entirely. A hurried life is not just stressful, it pushes God out from the center of my life and puts him in the margins, which are airmail thin.

"Think of your life as a page, Mom. Is every inch covered? What would you have to do to increase the margin in your life allowing God to take the center?

~ from MOMSense Radio

We are Here!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we have made it to Mississippi! It is warmer and sunnier than home, but a whole lot messier!!

How It All Began

The short version:My brother and his wife are stationed in Gulfport, MS, so we told them that if anything needed to be fixed with their church after Hurricane Katrina hit, we would take a couple weeks off of work and come down and fix it. Well, through talking with them, we found out that there was MUCH work to be done, and they were letting people know that we were coming. Jobs started lining up before we went down. So we decided to take a six month leave of absence and go down for teh winter and part of the spring. Then we met with missionary friends of ours the weekend before we left New York and they shared their vision with us. They want to send down teams of high school and college kids and needed a couple to lay the groundwork down South and to run the teams when they get there. We agreed to do that and that developement took us from six months to maybe coming back in September.... We are relying on God for His direction and we will head back to New York when He says it is time. We left jobs, pulled the kids out of school, packed up and went down. This has been a step of faith and a life changing opportunity. The blogs that will follow will give you a glimpse of what is going on in our life and down South. Also feel free to contact us if you feel that you should come down to help with the clean up and rebuilding. May God bless you.