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.