Be Thankful

I am thankful:


I am forgiven.

My God saved me.

I have three healthy kids.

My husband loves me.

I get to join God on His mission.

...that there was leftover meatloaf for lunch!

That I can feed my kids at least 3 times a day.


That we have a house to live in...that has walls, a floor AND a roof.

 That we are warm.

Thank you God for all of your provision.  Every day.

My greatest desire....

Right now my greatest desire is to just pour my heart out on here about so many things.  It'll have to wait. :) Just a while longer. Right now there are 9 papers waiting for my tutoring input in my inbox. *sigh*
I also need to post photos and info from our family mission trip to Nicaragua.



In all my exhaustion I am trying to remember:


God is good all the time!
All the time, God is good!

Travel Itinerary = Prayer list

The following is where we will be and what we will be doing during our upcoming trip to Nicaragua.  Please join us in God's work by praying with us as we go:

Nicaragua Mission Trip August 2011

Friday

• Arrive in Managua, Nicaragua  12:07pm
• Gather bags in Airport
• Get Car Rental at Budget
• Stop in Chinadega to buy groceries

Saturday

• Go to buy School Uniforms/Book bags
• Sort Items from Container: Clothes & Shoes: Mens, Womens, Girls, Boys, Toys, School Supplies, Etc

Sunday

• Visit village of Nuevo Jicarito – Approx 25 Families and approximately 60 children in village
• Update all children profiles for the school aged children and take pictures of all school children
• Distribute coloring book and crayons to each child, have child color picture for sponsor (name & # on pic)
• Bible Lesson on Ten commandments
• Games
• Distribute Clothes, Shoes, Hygiene Packs and Bible to each family (Photo of Family) Food if possible.
• Cookies, Juice, Candy

• Visit Village of Las Mesitas
• VBS/Bible Lesson with approximately 150 Children

• Games

• Distribute Clothes & Shoes
• Cookies, Juice and Candy

Monday

• Visit Village of Flor de Azalia
• Get Profiles on approximately 110 Children
• Distribute Uniforms/School Supplies and Take Photos
• Distribute Book bags and School Supplies to 4 Teachers
• Cookies, Juice and Candy
• Visit Village of  Becerro - 40 Families and approximately 100 children
• Get Profiles on approximately? School-Aged Children & Take Pictures of Children
• VBS/ Bible Lesson
• Games
• Distribute Clothes & Shoes & Toy Packs
• Possibly Distribute Food, Bibles, Hygiene
• Cookies, Juice and Candy

Tuesday

• Visit Village of San Manglito – Approximately 155 Children in Schools
• Distribute Coloring Books & Crayons
• Have Children Color Pictures for Sponsor/New Photo?
• Take Pictures Village & Land where church will be
• Visit Village of Los Laredos
• Bible Lesson/VBS with approximately 150 Children
• Games
• Distribute Clothes & Shoes
• Cookies, Juice and Candy

Wednesday

• Wedding

Thursday

• Pastors Conference/Training in Somotillo Church with 9 Pastors
• Books, Bags, Notebook/Pens
• Lunch with Pastors/Wives

• Movie night at the Church in Somotillo 5:00pm
• Watch VeggieTales movie
• Quiz on movie with prizes to winners
• Cookies, juice and candy

 Friday

• Visit Village of Cinco Pinos
• 9am meeting with Ladies in Village for Basket program
• Visit church in Cinco Pinos Approximately 150 Children
• Cookies, Juice and Candy
• Bible Story/VBS
• Games

Saturday

• Travel to Managua

• Return truck to Budget
• Flight leaves at 1:07 pm Nicaragua Time

 Very excited kids with new backpacks full of supplies and new uniforms.

 Kids we saw on the side of the road, so we stopped and gave them flipflops and candy. oh, and that's Franklin our translator. :)

 Very sweet little girl who was VERY taken with my camera.

 Kids getting candy.

 Guys riding on the top of the bus with their bags of rice, etc.

 Jennifer and Franklin in a house waiting to meet a girl with pine needle baskets.

I believe her name is Helen.  She is maybe 11 yrs old and makes baskets every afternoon to sell and help her grandmother make money.  She was abandoned by both parents.

More pictures from Nicaragua

 Yes, that's a pig sleeping under the "kitchen counter"

 Kids coming from the school to see us and get uniforms and supplies.

So sweet, so beautiful, so well behaved.

it's getting close!!

Hard to believe we leave so soon for Nicaragua! We are SO excited!  I forgot this is the rainy season...so that's not to exciting :) but it will be fine.  I am a worrier.  I know I'm not supposed to be, and I'm working on that, but....well...as of this morning I still am!   One less worry:  we have all 5 passports. Praise the Lord!

One more worry gone:   We have plane tickets!!! yay! Now I just have to get boarding the dogs straight!  They will not be thrilled...but...hey, they're dogs! :)  

SO here's what I read in my Bible study this morning:

Because God is love, His will is always best.
Because God is all-knowing, His directives are always right.
Because God is all-powerful, he can enable me to do His will.

Thank you God, for all of the above.  He is enabling me.


"We know that we have come to knowhim if we obey his commands. The man who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a lianr, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete i him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did."  1 John 2:3-6


1. Obedience is costly to me and to those around me.
2. I cannot know and do the will of God without paying the price of adjustment and obedience.
3. I must adjust my plans and program to what God is doing.
4.You can trust God with your family.


All of this is from Henry Blackaby's Bible study called "Experiencing God." If you've not done it, I highly recommend it.

More pictures from Nicaragua

As we landed in Managua.

"Downtown" Somotillo

Bike taxi's waiting for a fare

Somotillo's answer to Walmart ;)

The road to a tiny village.

oops...there's cows in the road...but that's normal

Tiny road...big pickup, even bigger cows...with HUGE horns!

Hey Look! More cows!

Kids hanging on the fence at the school. They were so excited to see us!

Little boy eating the Nicaraguan equivalent of a pop-cicle

My favorite trouble maker!!

A sweet little boy rode his horse to school. He MAY have been 6 yrs old.

The backpacks and uniforms we gave out at one town.

Sweet kids waiting patiently for us to start distributing the stuff.

AUGUST 6th

We are leaving for Nicaragua on August 6th.  Prayerfully consider helping us fulfill God's call on our lives by donating. Thanks to all who will.

"The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern." Proverbs 29:7

Photos from Nicaragua Missions in March 2011

These are some of the beautiful people of Nicaragua we saw or met while there in March.  This trip was life changing for me.  Going to a country where parents are forced to choose between feeding their child and most anything else, seeing people living in houses made from sticks and plastic bags....it will change you. Children walking the streets unsupervised and half naked....it will break your heart and certainly help you realize how spoiled we all are here in the United States.

MISSIONS TO NICARAGUA

You may notice on the right side of my blog a new "donate" button. Well, I am asking for donations to help send me and my husband and our three kids to Nicaragua. We are to be leaving on August 6th for a week. Airline tickets are expensive. Renting a big vehicle is expensive. Gas is expensive. Feeding lots of needy people is expensive. Buying scholarly resources for Nicaraguan pastors is expensive. We are so excited about this opportunity that God has put in front of us. Please prayerfully consider making a donation to help us go on this trip.

While we are there we will be distributing school uniforms/school supplies so children will be allowed to go to school.

We will be distributing a set of 5 scholarly resources to pastors and having training meetings for them on how to use them.

We will be feeding meals to hungry kids and their parents.

We will be distributing hundreds of hygiene packs full of soap, shampoo, washcloths, lotion, toothbrushes and toothpaste to people who have little or no access to these things.

Thank you for helping those less fortunate than you. Watch for pictures to come from my trip in March to Nicaragua.

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothes me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me....Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers you did it to me." Matthew 25: 35-41

Not so amazing

As it turns out, it wasn't that amazing to post from my phone. The next three things I posted from my phone posted as a garbled mess of symbols!!! LOL! Hope it wasn't important! ;)

This is amazing. I can post to this blog from my phone. I was trying to post a picture but it doesn't seem to work. :(

This is a test. It is only a test.

Weight Loss

So I've lost 54.5 lbs in about a year and a half. About 50 of it in the first year and the rest i the last couple weeks. I will never say it's been easy, but it's certainly been worth it. I feel SO much better. I can do things I had had to stop doing or just couldn't do a year ago. It had gotten hard to trudge up and down steps. I got tired walking very far. My knees hurt. You name it. UGH! Now, my husband and I walk briskly for an hour and I'm still good to go. I run up and down the basement stairs doing laundry. My knees haven't bothered me in ages (well, the one I broke will twinge if I do too much...but not for long). I can do whatever! It's wonderful. I never did get my cholesterol checked, but I can pretty much guarantee it was bad and it wouldn't be now. The change is awesome. I don't hate looking in the mirror or passing a reflective window. I don't hate every outfit I put on. I don't want to cry when I see a photo of myself from the back. It's nice. I'm not vain, I'm really not. But there is something to be said for a healthy body and healthy self-image. I mean really, our self-image should be based on the fact that we are created in the image of God and mine is. but hey, we are given these earthly bodies for a while and we ARE supposed to take care of them. Why is it so popular to jump all over smokers, heavy drinkers and drug abusers for screwing up their health and then we ignore the gluttons, cup-cake addicted and gorgers? I WAS one. I used to love to sit there at night and eat like an entire bag of chips....or a bag of movietheater popcorn made to share all by myself....or like half a carton of icecream smothered in chocolate syrup. What about those who say, "oh I don't eat sweets...it's my glands". Right...not the 5 rolls you had with dinner? Not the triple whopper you got? Not the supersized fries? ok....if you say so.
I'm not trying to pick on anybody here. Just saying that the last year and a half has really been a wake-up call for me and I hope some others will start to appreciate the body given them by their creator and realize that it's no more of a sin to be addicted to tobacco or alcohol than it is to be unable to put down the fork and step aWAY from the cake...or steak. ;)
Ya'll have a wonderful day!

Waiting.........

I believe waiting is the absolutely most difficult thing God asks of us. Whether it's waiting on an answer to a prayer, waiting for healing...physical, spiritual, emotional.....waiting on change, waiting on peace...just waiting. Does anyone else have trouble with this? Maybe I'm impatient. I often want to pray..."Gimme patience God and I want it NOW!!" no, I don't really pray that, but have you ever thought it? We are in a season of waiting. There is much to be learned in that kind of season even beyond patience.

You learn selflessness. Why you are stuck may not be about you.

You learn introspection. Why am I here? What am I supposed to be learning?

You learn to depend on God. He'll tell you when it's time to move on.

You learn patience. It's hard not too....when you have to wait on God's timing.

You learn about the big picture. You may not have ever realized there was one. But the world and God's ultimate plan for it does not actually revolve around you....you are part of it, He has an ultimate plan for you personally...it may involve waiting on something or someone else or just until you know it's not about you.

So, while I wait....I'll praise Him.

Sponsorship Link

This is pretty cool. As a child ambassador, my main job is to find people who are willing to sponsor a child and encourage them to do so. The hardest part of this, is that I have to carry these sweet little faces around and show them to people to see if they 'd like to sponsor a child. The one problem with that, is that sometimes a person has a heart for a particular age child, birthdate...country...something like that, and I cannot keep but so many "kids" with me at one time. WELL! World Vision has upped their game. As a Child Ambassador, I now have my own sponsorship link that I can share with people and they can go on the WV website thru this link and search children according to age, birthday, country, gender etc. and pick the exact child they would like to help. My link is here. Hopefully that will work. Please prayerfully consider sposoring a child. It is only $35 a month and it gives these kids a fighting chance to live to adulthood and become productive adults. Bonus? They also have the chance to get to know our Savior. :)
Peace & Love!

World Vision

I am a newly official Child Ambassador for World Vision. It is a volunteer position. I get to set up parties, speaking engagements etc for churches, small groups, bible studies, or in homes to talk about Child Sponsorship, World Visiona and why we need to be involved in this. If you live nearish to me in Central VA...I'll come speak if you like. I'm pretty excited. I've have helped two kids get sponsored so far and it makes me want to cry to see the four little faces I have sitting here on my desk waiting for sponsors. I pray for them.