Thursday, February 26, 2009

Company came


This past week we had Paul, Damaris and Jeremy Johnson at our house. It was a very good time and we really enjoyed them. Paul preached in his very unique style on Sunday and it was a blessing. You can hear it on podcast.

Paul has been in Panama and said that the work there is like working in the Sahara Dessert and expecting a beautiful garden. All of God.
Jeremy reminds has smiling eyes like Martin, and is in a private school where they are required to learn English and French.
Damaris is very sweet and friendly. We call each other "hermana" like they do in South America, and it really made me feel at home.

I wrote a long blog yesterday and accidentally erased it. I can hear "Mom!!" from my kids right now, but they have come to expect these things from their high tech mother, so I don't worry.
More, hopefully, in the future, Daddy calls. :)


Old Picture

JJ and I at Bentley Feb. 96.










Erica being a frog

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Welcome to Natalie's island birthday party
















Natalie turned 7 today. I can't believe it. Yesterday, we had an "island birthday party." Natalie decided it was time to exclude her friends that were boys "because they are too wild." So, we just invited two sets of sisters that are Abriana and Natalie's ages. We did invite another little girl that is her best friend in 1st grade. She wasn't able to come. It was a perfect day for an island party because it was snowing and 33 degrees. :) We played musical chairs, what's missing, and had a treasure hunt. I think she had fun.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

My first post

So this is my first post...Hope everyone is doing well and had a good Valentines Day. I spent mine with my best girl that I love very dearly...my beautiful mother. I was feeling under the weather this weekwnd with a cold, but besides the ticket I got on the way home it was a really good visit! We had a romantic dinner at home...well it was romantic till Daddy burped haha just kidding... it was a very nice time and I enjoyed myself. It was a little different this time being home without any siblings there. I got some good quality time with Mom and Daddy and I got to sleep on the bottom bunk of Stephen's bed for a change (don't worry Bro I know you are busy at college, I made the bed for you this time). We are blessed to have such good parents and I'm very thankful for them.

This year has been very busy for me at my job. This last year, we were in the process of centralizing out IT for the entire company to the Kansas City office. Its a very large process because we have offices out east and on the west coast that have had their own IT setups with their own IT people. So we have to go in and change all their systems to match ours and network them to us. In the process of doing this we found that these other offices have a newer email system than we have running in our Kansas City office. So instead of converting these offices to an older system we decided to change our email system to match theirs. It was a tough decision for management because its a million dollar investment to do this. They decided to go ahead and do this and it has become a huge under taking. I have to work overtime everyday and am pretty much on call at all times. We finish this project by the end of April and will barely have time to catch our breath before we start into the next project of getting moved into our new headquarters. So it will be a very busy year for me, but I'm thankful to have a job where I am in high demand.

Anyway..thats my post for now. I hope everyone is doing well and I will try and post more later.
Love you all

Monday, February 16, 2009

Bentley





















Hello family, this will be short because I'm trying to catch up on work after having been gone for several days. I just wanted to give a brief report about the weekend though and share some pictures. :)

Bethany, Ryan and I left Kirksville at 4am on Thursday, stopped in Columbia and picked up Colin and the Skinner's SUV (very nice!), then stopped around 7am in Rolla at Hardee's and ate breakfast with Stephen. It was nice to get to see him briefly. The rest of the trip went pretty well, we only went crazy a few times and made it just in time for the first message. The whole weekend was very refreshing, just to be around so many Christians and it seemed like the Lord was really present. The messages were all really encouraging, and full of truth. I think I got the most out of Charles' messages, haha. Yes I drove 15 hours to hear Charles preach! He spoke about Abraham and how His covenant with Abraham is our covenant too, and the Mosaic covenant is old! The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how God didn't see something good in Isaac (and not in Ishmael)so as to merit God's blessing, but Isaac wasn't even in the picture at all and God brought him forth even though it seemed impossible. Charles just brought out that's how it is for us Christians. There's nothing good in us that merits eternal blessing, but God brings us forth from death to life. I don't know if that made sense but it was really a blessing to me.

I got to spend some time with the LaCour girls and was really encouraged by them. Lauren (26) is a speech-language pathologist in a school in Baton Rouge and she speaks Spanish, so we had lots and lots to talk about! Megan (24)and I had been fairly close at the Bentley camps in the past , so it was fun to catch up with her too. I'm hoping they'll come up and visit soon. There were lots of other highlights but those are the main things.

The trip home was good, but almost unbearable towards the end (We all went a little crazy...Mostly Colin). We stopped for about an hour in Rolla and ate at Pizza Hut with Stephen, Nick and Grant. It was nice to get to spend some time with them. Anyway, here are a couple pictures, love you all! Thanks for praying for the time. :)



Saturday, February 7, 2009

Clean up in Record time

This is what we did today. We worked for 4 hours cleaning up. Daniel and our friend Michael and the kids worked 3 hours on Sat. Then Daniel and I worked separately a total of 4 hours during the week. It looks much better but their are piles everywhere. We did find out there was some damage to gutters and a little part of the garage roof. Also, the camper has a few little things that were damaged. Not too bad for such a bad storm. We are thankful.
P.S. The picture of Abriana on the roof was from Thurs. I had to add it just to scare Mom. :)















Thursday, February 5, 2009

Just wondering about the zodiac.

I was wondering since some of you posted your zodiac signs on your profiles what your thoughts were on that subject.

Open to all, even if you did not put up your profile.

Love you all.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

On the home front

Today it was 2 degrees F., but it is sunny and beautiful. It has been a long two weeks of cold, cloudy weather, minus a couple of days which gave us a taste of what is to come...in about three months...spring. I can see why people move south in the winter. Our bones are starting to complain even when we are inside.

Since Daddy has not been able to work for a while, he did some repairs in our house, for which I am very happy. He did some work in our bathroom, connected the vents in the study and living room and fixed the drywall upstairs in the hall and bathroom. I am in the process of painting it now. He is using his new older-than-the-last-truck-by-10-years truck, but I admire his desire and commitment to paying cash for purchases.

We have started to have home meetings every other week and our group meets at our house. We are studying the Sermon on the Mount by Lloyd Jones. It was a blessing and we stayed talking till about 9:45pm. It was great to have everyone. Mason leads it, and Charles is in it, so we have good resources. The Noes are in it, and Russell shares a cowboy poem once in a while. We also have Tracy Christman, Reece and Reb and her friend Michaela, a real sweetie.

Charles book Justification and Regeneration is back in my court, which means that I need to proofread it again. It is amazing how easy it is to miss little mistakes in spelling, accents, etc. Sometimes there are things I did not see in the previous times and at others it is stuff that gets messed up when they are correcting other things or laying it out. Anyway, I need prayer that I will be able to get it all done and if possible all the mistakes corrected. When Charles had it done in English he had about 10 people proofreading it and they still found mistakes in the book. Ay ay ay! Is there hope for lonely me?

Grandma Lola sends greetings, I spoke to her last night. She had a fall at the store, but did not get hurt, though she hit her head. I told her it was plain to see she had a hard head, and she said it was true. I wonder how I turned out so easy to get along with :) Wish there were some smiley faces to place here!!!

Dany also sends his love, he and family took a trip to Chile on a new road that goes from Purmamarca (remember the cerros de siete colores?) all the way accross the Andes. Very interesting . It went up to over 5000 meters (the cuesta that we took to Cafayate was around 3000 at the highest point), and the kids all threw up. Besides that they really enjoyed it. They swam in the Pacific Ocean which they said was freezing.

I am teaching two classes now. I started today to teach Introduction to Spanish. I have 8 students among whom are Melissa Yakes and Rhonda Noe. Interesting. The adults are so attentive. The kids are too, but some of them looked terribly scared. I thought the Askew girl was going to pass out today. My, I guess I look scary. These homeschoolers...

Well, I wanted to put a picture, but Rebs has the camera. She is supposed to document a whole day for one of her classes.

Milton sends his love. He is out in the cold enjoying the sun. He thinks this weather is a blast.

The Records are back home with electricity and heat. Wish we were closer and could help them cut brush. I look forward to reading a blog of their experiences and seeing pictures.

A thought from Lloyd Jones: "If you want to have power in your life and to be blessed, go straight to the Sermon on the Mount, live and practice it and give yourself to it, and as you do so the promised blessings will come."

State of Emergency in Kentucky





















Well, we made it through. Praise the Lord! On Monday night of January 26, 2009, we had an ice storm so severe that the whole region here in Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois, North Tennessee, and the Boot heel of Missouri was left devastated. We were declared in the State of Emergency. The whole city and surrounding areas lost power on Tues. We did not regain power from Tuesday at noon until Monday of the next week at noon. We have no alternative for heat. We lost so many limbs of trees, they were hitting the roof constantly all of Tuesday and Tuesday night. It sounded like a constant 4 of July without the celebration.



We spent the first night at home bundled up. Then we went across the street to stay with our elderly neighbors who have a gas log. Some of Paducah regained their power on Wednesday. The mail didn't run for two days. The banks stayed closed and the gas stations were unable to pump gas, so there was a gas shortage. We had many from Daniel's work come to check on us and bring us a generator. It was a small one and allowed us to run a few things like our freezer for a short time and charge phones. That was a huge blessing.



On Thursday day, we were able to go to Daniel's work all day and enjoy heat and electricity. That night, we moved to our friends' the Sandlins. They had heat, power, Internet, and phone. It was such a blessing to be warm. Everybody was such a good sport about bathroom lines, crowded tables, and lots of kids. Total there were 8 kids under 11 years old! We ended up staying there until the power came back on Monday.

In conclusion, we are so thankful to the Lord for so many things. It could have been so much worse. No one was hurt. When we were so cold, at the right time we found places to warm up and stay. When we were really desiring a hot meal, the Lord provided restaurants that were open. Even though the banks were closed, we had decided to set aside $60 in cash the week before, in case of emergency. When we were running low on cash, the Lord opened up the banks. We had enough gas to run the generator for several hours. Our cars were full of gas. What a blessing! We are so thankful for our house, heat, warmth, Internet, phone, and most of all, that God is always in control

Monday, February 2, 2009

The real new look

So this is actually the real new look. Just wanted to scare mom. Hope you like it.