Updates

I have been a busy guy this past weekend. We traveled to Rapid City for Joe and Bethany's wedding. It was good and I pray that they are having a great time in Hawaii right now. I got to spend some time with Joe on Friday night before the wedding and I am very happy for him as he starts on this new adventure. We had some adventures of our own as we traveled through snow for about half of the trip going down there and had to deal with some ice on the roads for that same part of the trip back. I took the kids to a new restaurant as a special treat on the way home yesterday. We stopped at a place called Space Aliens in Bismarck yesterday for lunch. The kids enjoyed it so much they are already asking when we can go again. I think the closest thing I can compare it to is perhaps Pizza Planet from Toy Story, but this place serves a lot more than just pizza. The food was good and the kids had fun just sitting there eating, even without playing in the game room. They got these alien cups to drink from and they think that is the funniest thing. They were playing with them for a long time yesterday on the ride home. I have some pictures below from the weekend. By the way, I also posted my first newspaper column at my other blog. You can see it here.


This is the kids with their cups.


The reason I am so dressed up is that I was a part of the wedding party.


Here are the kids at the wedding reception.

Curling update

OK. There are probably one or two folks out there who are curious to know about my curling experience. I had fun, but I am a little sore. I learned very quickly that there is a lot of difficulty in doing this right. I had a very patient teacher who taught me to balance and move around on the ice first. In all the times I have watched curling, the people make it look so effortless as they move up and down the ice. Let me tell you, it ain't that easy. I didn't fall while sliding standing up, but I did fall a couple of times trying to learn how to deliver a shot. I also got to shoot a few rocks. The first one that the guy let travel down the ice ended up almost directly on the button!(which is a good thing) As I was leaving, I found out that I used some muscles that aren't used to that kind of work. Overall, it was a lot of fun, and I have decided to go back some more and get some practice. Hopefully, I can get good enough to join in next fall. Next week, I will take a couple of pictures of the club if I get a chance.

The work of evangelism

As most of you know, I am almost done with my bachelor's degree.  One of the final classes I am taking is a course on evangelism.  Evangelism is one of those things that we all know we need to do, but many of us put off doing.  I for one have used more excuses than I can remember for why I couldn't talk to someone about Christ.  Well, I am getting sick of my excuses.  Sharing the gospel isn't an optional thing for any of us.  Most of us probably are afraid to share with others.  Maybe we are afraid of saying the wrong thing.  Of course, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, all you need to do is share how he changed your life.  There is no way you can get that wrong.  I saw a video as a part of my class, where Ray Comfort asked believers if they could overcome their fear of witnessing if they were given $1000 dollars for every person they witnessed to.  What a convicting question.  I have made a couple of adjustments in my life based on what I saw.  First, I decided that I needed to go and put my money where my heart is.  A couple of years ago, I heard about an organization called Gospel for Asia.  They are involved in using native missionaries to share with their people the Gospel of Christ.  For $30/month, you can be involved in sponsoring a pastor who is spreading the Gospel in Asia.  I know that it isn't as heartwarming perhaps as sponsoring a hungry child, but imagine the impact of this kind of sponsorship on the Kingdom of God.  I encourage you to check them out.  But even more than that, I encourage you to share your own story whenever you can.  

Curling

It is funny really.  One of the things that excited me about the fact that God had called us here was the chance to get a first-hand experience with the sport of curling.  I confess to being one of those folks that find this sport endlessly fascinating.  When it was shown during the Olympics a few years back, I think I watched almost every match.  This week I am planning on going down to the curling club for the first time.  Yesterday and today I watched curling on the CBC channel out of Winnipeg to get a better feel for strategy and things.  I admit that some will think it is a little weird, but I find it very appealing.  I will be sure to post my initial thoughts after getting a look on Tuesday night.  

More Pictures

I have been meaning to get some more pictures posted from last week. Things are going well here. We got an unexpected snow shower last night that didn't amount to much. The night before we had a great view of the eclipse. We let the kids stay up to watch it until it was full and then got them to bed. We have been having some problems with allergies and Jeremiah's asthma has been flaring up some as well. Otherwise, we are all good. We are getting excited about traveling to the Black Hills area next week for a friend's wedding. I can't wait to see everyone there again. It has been almost six months since we left there to move up here.
We are seeing a lot of good things happen here as well. We have a conference scheduled with Mike Taylor in April for one-to-one discipleship training and a couple of Bible conferences as well. I am looking forward to that as well.

This is us at the Valentine's Banquet last week.

This is me playing on the PS2 upstairs while
the kids watch and pose for the camera.

Winter Weather

We have another winter weather advisory today.  This is the weather service's way of hedging their bets.  The bummer is that it has warmed up so much today that it may come down as freezing rain instead of snow.  As I sit here typing it is 32 degrees, which is a huge change from the past few days.  For my part, I would like to see more snow still.  But I am in the minority around here for sure.  

Valentine's Day News

We had a pretty busy day today. Amelia took the kids to the nursing home here in town to give Valentine's Day cards to the residents. The kids had fun and were very cute of course. Before they could leave though, I had a chance to put the snow blower through its paces clearing the driveway. I even found a way to get it on the porch to do some clearing there as well. I am going to post a couple of pictures at the end of this post. Also, tonight I was the speaker/singer at a Valentine's banquet hosted by one of the other churches here in town. It was a lot of fun and Amelia and I got to have a nice dinner while someone else watched the kids for a couple of hours.


Blowing the snow in the driveway

The drift that is next to the driveway

This is the drift alongside the walk to our front porch

This is what the walk looked like before I cleared it with the blower

This is the porch from our front door after I cleared some of it with the blower

Super Super Bowl

Well, we had a lot of fun with the Super Bowl party last night.  The game was a good one and the fellowship was a lot of fun.  The ladies hung out in the office area and changed the channel on the second TV.  When we got to halftime, I had planned to show a video to everyone and had to wait a couple of minutes so they could see the end of a show on the Food Network.  They also played Scrabble during the second half and Amelia won the game.  She was very excited.  The kids had a blast and I ate way too much junk food.  But it was a great evening.  The snow has been falling all day today and we have another 4 inches or so on the ground.  And sometime this week we are going to be cutting into our kitchen ceiling to check out the pipes to our master bathroom.  It should be an interesting week for sure.

Super Bowl Sunday

It must be the old youth pastor in me.  We have invited any and all of our church folks to come to the house tonight and enjoy food, fellowship and some football.  Truthfully, I would like to see the Giants win tonight, but it really doesn't matter all that much to me either way.  I am more excited at the opportunity to open our hearts and home to our family here.  We have a couple of TVs set up and more snack food than you can shake a stick at so we are ready to go.  

Leaky Pipes

Well, the -55 wind chill or the -30 air temp managed to freeze up the pipes to the remodeled bathroom upstairs.  I was greeted this morning with a fun plumbing adventure as I first shut off the water and then tried to determine if it was just the hot or the cold or both that had sprung a leak directly about our kitchen.  It appears to be both.  So after we have our church folks over Sunday night for fellowship and Super Bowl fun (with our own halftime show of course), we will be tearing out the ceiling in the kitchen next week.  Pray that we will be able to find the culprit areas with minimal collateral damage to the house.  Everything else is going well.  We are seeing a steady increase it seems in attendance at Awana and we have been asked about starting a Good News club in the school here.  They have done it in the past and it has been very effective at sharing the Gospel with the kids.  We are not sure about the time commitment but have decided to go ahead and check things out to see where they take us.  Pray for us about that as well.

More School News

I finally did it.  I applied for seminary with Liberty's DLP program.  I am planning on starting during the summer.  Actually, I am pretty excited about it.  It's funny, but the more writing I do, the more I am beginning to enjoy doing it (which will be a good thing).  Of course, it helps that I am able to do all of my writing at a computer keyboard.  If I had to do this by hand with a pencil or pen, I am not sure I could take it.  I never much cared for writing like that anyway.  

School

There are plenty of things that I don't necessarily like about school.  I get restless sometimes during lectures when the professor keeps saying stuff that I already understand or keeps repeating stuff that I already got.  I don't like busywork, although to be fair the classes I take through the DLP program at Liberty aren't big on busywork type assignments for the most part.  But what I do love is the learning part.  I enjoy seeing things in a new light and gaining new perspective on things that I have maybe known for a long time.  Today my schoolwork prompted me to some thoughts about the foundations of our faith.  I don't feel like trying to reproduce the novel here, but I posted it on my other blog.
On a similar note, for those who may not know, this is my final term to finish my degree at Liberty University.  I am excited about finally completing this after only 15 years.  : P  I am enjoying it so much that I am still considering very strongly going on to get a Masters degree as well.  Please keep me in your prayers as I work through this time.  

Notes from the Freezer : )

I have been meaning to post a couple of times now, but things always seem to come up.  We are doing well.  The kids haven't been able to play outside lately because the temperature and/or wind chill has been below zero for most of the last week or so.  Right now as I am writing it is actually 5 above but it still feels like -12.  It isn't too bad but we don't get out and around as much in this weather.  I go out to run errands or check in on people to say hi and talk or whatever, but that's about it.  We got carpet done at the church recently.  I have some before pictures but no after pictures yet.  I will get some and post them here.  On another front, after speaking at the youth thing a couple of weeks ago, I have been asked to do some music and speak at a Valentine's banquet for another church here in town.  They even offered to provide a babysitter for us so Amelia could come too.  So I will be doing that on Valentine's.  I am looking forward to it.  

Forward Momentum

Well, we are plugging right along in the new year.  I am starting to find a groove as a pastor.  I feel like I am beginning to understand better how to minister as a senior pastor instead of as the "youth guy".  Last night, I was invited to speak and sing at a weekly youth gathering here in town.  It was a lot of fun for me and I think the youth there enjoyed it as well.  I am attempting my first series of sermons on 1 Timothy and I am excited about that as well.  Also, I am starting school again.  This is my last term and I have three classes to finish my bachelor's degree in Religion.  I have been praying and thinking about doing a master's degree when I finish.  Please pray with me on what degree I should pursue if any.  
We are finding out I think what the true meaning of cabin fever is.  It isn't us so much as it is the kids, who can't run around outside in the yard and are not allowed to run inside the house or the church.  They have their moments of behaving really great and then they turn around and you wonder what happened to them.  Here is a picture of them before we left for church Sunday morning

Don't you wish you were here

I guess it is inevitable that a family from the south would love the snow more than most.  After all, I don't ever remember having enough snow to do this.  We are continuing to work on building a snow fort in the backyard.  This is me on my knees behind the wall.  The kids are enjoying the snow.  It was in the low 30s today, so we got a chance to stay out and play for quite a while.

Christmas wrappings

I guess we can officially call our Christmas over now that the kids had a chance to spend all of their Christmas money.  We spent most of ours too in a trip to Grand Forks yesterday.  The kids went together to get a PS2 (that's Playstation2 for those grandparents out there who are now saying, "What's a Playstation?").  The kids each got their own games for it and they got to play some today.  It is a lot of fun.  (Yes, Amelia and I got some games we like as well.)
We took the money that was given so generously by some of our church members and other folks in town who just gave to us and purchased a snow thrower.  We have a couple of neighbors who have been so giving of their time and energy who have come over and done our driveway on a several occaisions now.  The last time was right after we had received this money and we decided it would be great if we could get our own.  Now maybe we can return the favor sometime.  I am almost looking forward to another snowstorm.  : )

Christmas Time is Here

It was never really in doubt that we would have snow on the ground on Christmas day, but now the forecast shows that we will probably have some flurries falling today and tomorrow, so it will be a white Christmas on that count as well. I for one am thrilled. The kids are having fun playing around the house with the toys from the stockings that they were allowed to open today. This Christmas has been more emotional for me for some reason. It is not our first Christmas spent away from our families back in Arkansas, but it is different somehow. It isn't even a bad thing really. I think I am just overwhelmed with how much God has blessed us. This house that the church provides to us is bigger than we have to have. The kids each get their own room and we have a bedroom to spare. There is space for me to have an "office" at home and for the kids to do their homeschool work. Someday I may actually finish getting the basement area turned into a game/rec area. There is much that God is doing in our lives and ministry. I am blessed with a great family here in our church. God is good. Here is a family photo from yesterday when we got home from church. Merry Christmas to all.

Doing things I never thought I would do

I don't know if it is the past year's experience of going back to college to finish my degree online or the other changes in life that have moved me from a youth pastor to a senior pastor, but for some reason I find that I like to write more now than I ever did.  It could be that with all of the extra studying I feel like I have more to say.  Whatever the reason, hopefully the stuff that is written is worth reading.  I am going to start writing the More Than Bread devotionals on a full-time basis, so I have included a link to the group on the sidebar here.  

Playing in the Snow

Sometimes any excuse to act like a kid will do.  But the chance to play in a foot of snow is one of the best.

This is Amelia with the kids

 

This is Jeff in case you were wondering


This is one of the snow angels that the kids made.
After my recent studies in college classes, I found myself
wondering if they actually look like this at all.

Snow is here

Well, we have had a couple of small snow falls.  Today marks our first snow storm.  At least the first "real" snow storm.  There are advisories and a bunch of snow.  I just measured the snow in the backyard at 11".  We have drifts next to the house that are around 23" and I haven't bothered to measure the snow bank that we have created next to the driveway from shoveling and the snowblower that our neighbor used to help me clear the thing on Sunday, just two days ago.
Here are a few pictures of the back yard area.

This is a before shot




This is the after shot, or the so far shot I suppose



This last one is from the garage looking out.