It's begining to look a lot like Christmas

Well, things sure have been busy around here! John got the chicken pox as most of you know, and that really messed things up! He has spent the last 3 weeks catching up on his work. Now that he has recovered we are finally getting a minute to update the blog.
This was day 8

this was a gift from the guys down the hall




This was the kids table at John's brother's house
where we had Thanksgiving. His parents were
there too, and then they came back to visit us
before they went back home.




We had a great time and the kids have loved getting to know their cousins better.



The kids decorated their own tree












We have 12 hours before we are suposed to leave for NY.
I guess I had better go pack!!!

PartyTime

Ellie and Derek's birthday parties!!


John's brother Matt and his family came for Ellie's party.
Derek had friends from school come to his.


Tori is playing soccer on her school team- GO DEFENSE!!!!
This is her 1st year being able to play on a school team and she is doing great and is having a blast.

Don't forget to take our poll! ----->

Here is a great video to watch!

Here Am I, Send Me - MercyMe

[via FoxyTunes / Mercy Me]

Le tour de le dormatory

Becki took a couple of pictures and I thought maybe we should share them.

This is the kitchen and dining room.

This is the living room.

Hallway from livingroom to bedrooms.

That was the short and the long tour. :)

A couple of weekends ago we had a chance to get together with John's brother Matt and his family, who now live near Grand Rapids, MI. We took the kids to a fun park and spent most of the day there.

The Lord has given us a lot of opportunities to enjoy things that if we were not here in Michigan we would never had been able to enjoy. So we praise God for providing for us.

We thank you for praying for us. Our classes have been really awesome as we see all that God has done for us through His Son. Oh, that the world would know Him.

Please let us know how we could pray for you.

Trust God. He is faithful.

First test of the semester!!!

We just got back from our first test this semester. It was for Romans class, from chapter 1 - 3:20, where Paul argues that ALL mankind is condemned whether "heathen", moralist or Jew, we are all condemned.



Praise God that Jesus has paid all that we could never have paid!!!



Today in Chapel, our speaker shared from Matthew 11:27-30. What a privelege it is to be a Christian and to be conformed to the image of His Son through getting to know Him. The context of this section is on getting to know God and Jesus says that we will learn from Him. When we take His yoke upon us He will teach us, just as a mature oxen teaches the young oxen as they plow a field. The mature oxen leads and does all the work until the young one learns. Isn't it GREAT that we can and do learn from Jesus, through His Word!!!!



We thank every for thinking of us and praying for us as we, by faith, follow God's plan for using us in this fallen world.



We can't wait to hear from you and to hear what God is doing in your life.



Please continue to pray for our kids as they have started school again and will have a busy schedule again. Tori is planning on play soccer with her school and we are hoping to get Chloe and Ellie back into Saturday morning gymnastics class.

Back to school!!!!!

Obviously summer was too busy to BLOG, so now that we are back and life has calmed down again... here we go again!

School started on Wednesday, and God is again showing us that He is the one who initiates world evangelization.

Romans 10:14-15, 17


"How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How timely is the arrival of those who proclaim the good news." "Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ."



God has given the message (the Gospel) to be preached and He has commanded us to "go into all the world".


A qoute from our Romans class notes:


"It is His gospel that He promised beforehand in His scriptures that He inspired through His prophets that He had chosen to speak His message - it is the gospel of His Son. And it is God who is reaching out to the world with His gospel."



We are so glad to be able to spend so much time in studying God's word. A special thanks to all who have helped us to get here and to all who are continually praying for and supporting us while we are here.


Our home church, North Baptist Church, treated us so well this past summer, what a blessing it was to be able to go home and feel so loved and be so blessed.

On another note... as most of you know we moved from our "white house" (as Derek likes to call it) off campus, to an apartment in the school building. We are LOVING being so close to all the students and the "action". We had the awesome opportunity to get to know some of them better while we attended 10 days of intense training mixed with some down time at the beach, learning a new way to play ping pong, and star gazing. Derek has made some friends with the men in the dorms, he was spotted helping someone buff the hallway yesterday! The girls are getting to know the women here as well, they love going to visit and came home with some treasures from some of them. The students here are great and we are privileged to be learning along side them!!

here are some pics of the last couple weeks!!

Sleeping Bear Dune, Lake Michigan




At leadership training the Little country church we met in

Back in Corning, NY

We arrived back in our hometown of Corning on June 14th and got settled into our house for the summer months. We thank all of North Baptist Church for allowing us to stay in, and for wonderfully preparing, the green house across the street from the church.

The kids have enjoyed staying the night at friends houses and getting to know each other again.

Becki and I have been blessed by so many people already. We have had the opportunity to have dinner and fellowship time with friends and our "small group" buddies, along with seeing our families again.

Derek capturing his cousin Josh.

We got to celebrate Josh's birthday!!

I have been working with the youth group for 2 weeks now and have been able to get together with some of them individually to talk. They are a great bunch of youth people! We have TEEN WEEK starting July 23rd, please pray for the teens as they participate in evangelism and outreach, as well as some serious fun.

We are looking forward to having time to meet with many other people over the next 5 weeks or so. We want to share our hearts with as many people as we can while we are home.

Thank you for praying for us as we continue to seek God and His will for our lives.

Movin'...movin'...movin'...

It seems that we do this a little too much lately. We will be doing it again next year too! Saying good bye to our "white house" as Derek calls it, and hello to apartment living has been a challenge to say the least. We moved into a 3 bedroom apartment last Thursday. We have all of our stuff at the school, some of it is in the hallway, some in a classroom, we've realized that it won't all fit. Now it's just a matter of what to do with it!?! The living room is bigger, but the dining room is smaller, the bedrooms are much smaller! We do have a 1/2 bath in our bedroom tho'! YEAH! Over all we have gained a few hundred thousand square feet! The whole school is an extension of our apartment and the backyard is HUGE! The kids are doing great! They have been swimming 2x in our indoor pool, they have made friends with the 3 little girls next door, and we all love being about a 30 second walk away from our new friends the Turners! They have 3 boys, but they share a love for video games. This is the outside of our apartment for now. Hopefully we will find a home for it all. Our door is the 3rd one. The 1st is a men's bathroom which will come in handy for John and Derek. The 2nd one is a "slop room" and then there is ours, surrounded by piles of stuff. There are 2 other apartments in our hall and one men's dorm. The gym is also down at the end on the right, which Derek is a huge fan of, and it's right next to our classroom, so the walk to school in the AM will be much shorter!!!! We are excited to get home and see what God has for us this summer. John will be working with the youth group and doing other things around the church and we will be staying right across the street from church so that will be very convenient. We have about 1 1/2 weeks to get ready to move again, I sure hope we are all settled by then!

My email changed mi.becki@gmail.com

cell 517-416-3832

home 517-796-5440

She's Back!

Tori had the awsome opportunity to visit the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago with about 20 kids from her school. (7th and 8th graders and 2 of their teachers) She had a great time and thought the airplane felt like a roller coaster. They were busy the entire time, they went to a minor league baseball game, a museum, a cavern, and of course the GRAND CANYON!!! Here are a few pics.The1st one is from the airplane window.

VISITORS!

John's parents came out to visit us this past weekend and we all had a great time catching up! We took them to Holland (on the others side of the state) and looked at a few tulips along the way. Then we went to the beach, but it was too windy. The sand was hitting us so hard it was sandblasting our legs. After we got some lunch we tried another beach that you had to walk 15-20 minutes through a wooded trail to get to. It was beautiful there, but we had to head home (2 hour trip!) so we only stayed 20mins.

Tori is headed to Arizona this Wed. til Sat. on a school trip to the grand canyon!! I'm hoping she takes a lot of pics because chances are we won't make it out there any time soon. Not much else going on except the lasts few days of school. John has 1000 words left on his BIG paper and then it's pretty much smooth sailing until the end! We will be moving on or around the 25th of May and we will be heading back to NY in the 2nd week of June. see ya-all later!

Sorry there are no pics this time, I'll try again next week.

Fun in the sun

Saturday was John's birthday,since it was going to be in the high 70's we decided to go to the beach in Grand Haven on Lake Michigan . We stopped in Grand Rapids to see the Fredrick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Gallery, which had it's butterflies on exhibit. We saw hundreds of butterflies up close! Some of them even landed on people while they were walking around. We chased this blue one around for about 10 minutes until it finally landed with it's wings open so I could get a good pic.

Then it was off to the beach. We had a great time even tho' the water was FREEZING!! The kids loved the sand and they were covered in it by the end of the day.(so was the inside of the van!) We played in the sun all afternoon and when we were getting ready to go to the pier, that's when we realized something was missing! Somehow John's wallet fell out of his pocket, and we think it got burried in about 4 or 5 feet of sand. There was a crew working on taking the snow fence down and the bulldozer made 4 foot ruts in the sand, which we had to climb through to get to the beach and back to the van to leave. We think (we hope) that it fell out there and got dozed over with sand. By the time we got back to the beach to look for it , the sand was all smoothed over and nobody had turned it in. But we weren't about to let that ruin our day, so we went to the baordwalk. While we were walking this huge ship came in the canal and blew it's horn so loud that I think everyone on the boardwalk jumped! We got half way down the pier and Derek had to got potty. And when a 3yr. old little boy needs to go... ya let him go. Luckily there weren't too many people going by right then so he wasn't too embarassed. After that we walked to the end where we sat for a while and looked at the lake while the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous day and hopefully we will get back there again soon.