Meet Gracie Marie!

Sometime last year I was overburden with a desire to help this young family in our church with their childcare situation. Gracie was already here and she was pregnant with Faith. Faith, as much as it broke our hearts, never made it to this world, but landed right in the arms of Jesus. Many months later, Chuck and Reena tried again and they are expecting once again. And once again this burden became so heavy that I finally shared it with Mike. We both started praying and asking the Lord what is it He wanted me to do. So as I was praying, I finally shared with Reena my burden to help them out, but told her I was still waiting on confirmation from the Lord and wanted her and Chuck to pray as well and to see if they were even interested in their children in my home. Lo and behold the Lord had already been working on them (I shouldn't be surprised, I know, but I was) and they kept having the same conversation saying they really wanted someone to take care of their babies at home and my name kept coming up. However in all of this, I said and they said, "Your too busy!" so they and I always dropped it. As the Lord always does He continued to work in my life and finally showed them and I beyond a shadow of a doubt that He thought I could do this. Sooooooo, Meet Gracie Marie! She has been in our home as of 2 weeks now and I'm so head over heals in love with this little 2 year old. She is so cute and so two! I'm in between a parent and a grandparent. Having lots of fun and yet disciplining as well. She turned 2 Friday and we were able to make a cake with her (Isabella made it!) and give her a present! She is very shy around new people, so it took her a good week to warm up to us, but she did and we are having a great time! Thanks, Lord! for allowing me to open up my heart and arms to this little girl and another one on the way!

Summer is here!

Well since school has stopped and summer has started, this is all that we have been up to! I'll get the bad news out of the way first trying not to spoil your fun. School is still happening to some degree at our house! Sarah is finishing up 11 more lessons of Algebra and 5 more units of Science. Sarah, Zech, and Isabella are all finishing up reading a few more books of US History and we are watching movies such as "Gone With the Wind, Sergeant York, & Glory" to enhance our US History knowledge. Zech and Isabella have to do "some" math this summer because they both seem to loose that knowledge over the summer. And we are working on Math Word Problems and Consumer Math this summer. Just trying to cover all the bases that I don't get in during the regular school year. I know, "Yuck! and Double Yuck!" comes to your mind, but it cannot be helped.

Now onto the fun and busy work of Summer! Sleeping in everyday (well the kids are anyway), staying up late, going to sleepovers, and checking emails, computer time, and lots more fun. The Youth Group included a Summer missions event the first week of June and Sarah busily scraped a whole 2 story house along with 20 some odd other youth from our church. The couple living in the house are not wealthy by the world's means, but rich in love. The wife is blind and the gentlemen is elderly and just trying to keep up. Their house needs painting desperately. We saw a need and God provided as usual. Plenty of youth to work and the house was completely scraped in 2 days. Now they are setting up a time to paint (I think a sprayer is in the works). We've also had VBS happening around our church. We have had record number of kids this year and wow they are excited about Jesus! I'm helping in the 4 year olds, Sarah in the 2nd grade, and Zech and Isabella are participating in their grades (6th & 4th). We've had 5 children accept Christ as their Savior already! Another evening we spent playing Capture the Flag with the Homeschoolers and I believe there were over 50 kids attend the event. Isabella captured the other teams flag and was able to win for her team! Go Isabella (You'll have to ask her how she did it, she loves retelling the story!).

For the rest of the summer will be much of the same, games, vacations, fireworks, watermelon, kicking back and watching movies with popcorn to go along! We have camps ahead and water parks to play and swim and much much more!

Last Children's Choir Performance

After the rousing Thursday and Friday and Saturday, there was still yet two more "end of the year" projects to finish. Sunday morning the Children's Choir sang their rendition of Joshua and the Wall. Enjoy the video!