ARCHIVE GALLERY

January 2007

January 2, 2007 

Happy New Year!  I hope the first 48 hours of 2007 have been great for you…we cannot believe we are closer to 2010 than to the year 2000.  Unbelievable!   

Friends from our home church were married on Friday night and I coordinated the wedding and Randy played (and did whatever other tasks I threw his way…what a guy!)  It was a beautiful sight to see this wedding party standing among the poinsettias (probably 50 red poinsettias) and the most beautiful manger seen.  It was just gorgeous.   

Friday was also my 39^th birthday.  In the morning, Kennedie and I had a couple of errands to run for the wedding, so she went with me and we stopped for a birthday lunch.  It was quick and sweet and the best part of my day.  Just sitting with her and talking about nothing and thinking that this whole child raising thing is going entirely too fast.  Looking at her and realizing the first decade of her life is over and I feel like I just found out we were going to have a baby… 

Saturday, Randy and I drove to Muskegon, MI and spent the night with a dear couple, Chuck and Kathy, in their lovely home.  We sang at River Oaks Assembly of God on Sunday morning and really felt the presence of the Lord.  Thank you Pastor Rodney for inviting us and sharing your precious people with us.   

After church, we met my mom and picked up the kids to head to First Baptist of Northville, only 20 minutes from home.  After a potluck, we were preparing for the concert, when suddenly the pastor received a phone call.  A 34 year-old lady in their church passed away with heart problems.  He and his wife had to leave and tend to the family.  At the end of a really fun concert, he had to tell his church family the sad, sad news.  Please pray for this family and her seven year-old son.  We won’t forget this church family and their sudden grief.  Even so, the night went on as planned and most people headed over to a nearby church with a gym that was set up with games of all kinds.  Kennedie and Kadison had a total blast and we dashed out just in time to get home to see the ball drop. 

Welcome 2007.  

January 8, 2007 

We spent last week moving out of our apartment.  At least the big items are moved and hopefully, by Wednesday, we will be done.  Because of our concert schedule, it makes sense to transfer everything to storage and save money on rent.    

The friends we have are just incredible.  They think through things for us that we often miss…or are just too preoccupied to take care of!  Harry and Melinda Holmes, John Manos, Randy’s dad and brother, my folks and Randy and Debbie Osterlund all helped us pack and move over this last week.  Not to mention the men who helped Randy build sleeping births in the motor home.  He spent three days at Pastor Dave’s and I don’t even know all who helped!  What I do know is that the Lord keeps sending people with the right gifts to make this happen.  Jandel Hefner is a good friend from a nearby church and she is an incredible seamstress.  Now, for the second year in a row, I called her the week before we are to leave to ask her for a major favor.  She is sewing curtains for the births and altering sheet sets to fit the mattresses.  It is so cool!  Hopefully pictures will be posted so that you can see how we have “altered the RV!”  It is awesome!  Thank you to everyone who has helped us prepare for the road.   

Yesterday, we ministered at Plymouth Church of the Nazarene.  We have been there several times and I spoke at their Ladies’ retreat last April.  The whole service went really well and Randy played great.  Their piano is really nice and I love to watch him play a real piano versus a keyboard.  This church has the most unique children’s ministry.  There are different rooms with different themes and each grade rotates week by week.  A computer room, play production room, craft room, movie theater and temple room…it is so cool.  They pop popcorn every Sunday and it smells incredible!  I am still craving it this morning!  We call it “the good smelling church.” 

Well, we thank the Lord that we are at this stage in the preparations to leave for our winter tour.  A few more boxes to pack and store and a crazy week getting everything done, and we will be off.  The RV will be equipped with our desktop computer so you can email us at anytime!  All of our snail mail is going to my folk’s house and they will handle the paperwork.   Please pray that this week goes well and that the Lord blesses all who have helped us, as they have given of their time so sacrificially.  We need your prayers for this winter tour.  We have high hopes of what the Lord is going to do through this ministry and you can be a part of it…by praying for us! 

Keep reading the journal…I will keep up with it weekly and you can keep track of us easily.  We leave on Friday, so please pray for safety and good roads.  Also, pray for our scheduled marriage seminar this weekend at Gull Lake (near Grand Rapids, MI.)  We will report what the Lord does and how He has answered your prayers.   

Have a blessed week!

January 15, 2007 

It is finished!  We have completed the task of moving everything from our apartment into a storage unit, packed the RV for our winter tour and even managed to prepare for this past week-end’s marriage seminar.   After having breakfast with my folks and our pastor and his wife, we left for Grand Rapids, Michigan.  About a two-hour drive, I curled up on the couch and slept the entire way as Randy drove to the DeForest’s house.  Kennedie and KC stayed with Brian and Mary for the weekend as we taught a marriage seminar at Gull Lake Retreat Center.   

The retreat went really well with 19 couples that we enjoyed getting to know over the weekend.  The team, who put the retreat together, did an excellent job organizing everything, which makes for a wonderful time.  They have thought through everything and done their best with the available resources, and then they just let the Lord do His work.  We felt very relaxed and were able to be ourselves and share how God has worked not only in our marriage, but also in the lives of so many others as well.  After the retreat, we stopped and had dinner with one of the couples, Joe and Monica Brummell.  What a sweet couple!  They were very encouraging to us and we enjoyed their company.  That is why we like a retreat.  We are able to get to know people, instead of just being there on a Sunday morning for a few hours.   

Sunday morning, we had both of their morning services, which sandwiched a family worship “kidstuff” service.  It was so unique and well done.  Music and drama and kids led in much of the service.  I really enjoyed seeing how this church teaches their children, and as a result, there are so many young families!  The talent in this church was unbelievable and they utilize their people well. 

A 17-year-old girl came to me afterward and thanked me for coming.  She began to cry and hugged me and I asked her to email me and let me know how she is doing.  She sent me the most awesome email detailing how the Lord spoke to her in the service that morning!  It has made everything worth it!  For the Lord to use our ministry to challenge others to live for Him is mind blowing to me…yet that is exactly what we pray for…it is just amazing.  So, it was a wonderful way to start the tour.   

Leaving Highpoint, Randy and I drove (I slept actually, he drove) to Ludington, which was about two hours north.  We worshipped with Cornerstone Baptist Church and Les Lew, our friend from Tyndale days.  This is honestly, one of the most beautiful church buildings we have been in.  These huge round windows that are mesmerizing and gorgeous colors and wood.  Dear friends of ours who now live in Ludington (but we didn’t know that) saw a newspaper advertisement for the concert and came to see us.  Dave and Pinky Wagner who used to attend Shepherd Fellowship and are so precious to us surprised us and it was such a blessing!  We love the Wagners and were able to spend a little time with them afterwards.  The concert went well, especially for being the third in one day after a weekend of teaching a marriage seminar.   

The plan was to drive back to Brian and Mary’s house and spend the night with the kids and leave for Clarkesville, Tennessee on Monday morning.  But the sleet was starting and we all decided that it was best to leave and try to get south of the bad weather.  So, we got a quick weather update, loaded everything and heard about the great weekend the kids had.   

Brian and Mary attend Kentwood Community Church, a large church in the Grand Rapids area.  One of the youth pastors is Mark Carroll, who was my youth pastor in high school.  The best youth pastor ever and he is still serving the Lord in that capacity.  He and Julie have invested in our lives more than they will ever know.  I was so glad that Kennedie was able to be in his class on Sunday morning and they had a youth activity planned for Sunday night as well.  They were on their way when she had to have Brian pull over and let her out…she got sick.  She was so bummed! 

If you have read our journals consistently, you will recall that whenever we teach a seminar, one of our kids, if not both, throw up.  And, just in case you are wondering, Kennedie threw up…twice.  All I can say is that I am glad Brian and Mary didn’t tell me over the weekend and I am grateful that the kids were with such awesome people who love us!  I am not quick to give Satan too much credit, but he cannot handle us teaching seminars.  He does whatever he can to throw us.  We have another seminar coming up in a couple of weeks, so please start praying now! 

We drove a few hours, and checked into a hotel and slept a very long time.  Although ice was everywhere when we woke up, the salt trucks had done a great job on the highway that was to lead us south to Tennessee. 

Thank you for praying for us.

January 22, 2007 

We drove to Clarkesville, Tennessee and went directly to Ray and Susan Russom’s home.  We have stayed with them before and they have the perfect wing on their home to accommodate a family.  They are the most southern talkin’, cookin’, lovin’ people you could ever meet.  They have grandchildren and just love kids, so ours got a lot of attention over the last few days.   

In fact, Susan and KC were playing the game, “Guess Who?” where you try to guess your opponents character by asking simple questions.  Susan went first and asked KC, “Is yours a woman?” But, with the southern drawl, it sounded like, “Is yours a woe-mon?”  He looked at her with these huge eyes and said, “What’s a woe-mon?!”  We died laughing and that has become our motto for the trip so far.  He is cracking us up and keeping us in stitches.   

I will give you another one…and I can tell it so much better in person.  You have to add the voice inflection yourself, obviously.  We were in a gas station getting fuel a couple of days ago, and he asked if he could get this little toy car (he has a matchbox collection) and I said, “No, not today.”  He looked me square in the eye and replied, “I am beginning to think you don’t care about my collection!”  Now, to me, that is hilarious, and not just because he is my kid.  I think that sentence says a lot about what we think is so important and should be everybody else’s responsibility!   

He also was able to meet a real live cowboy with the tan leather gloves, wrangler jeans, plaid shirt, boots, cowboy hat and even the toothpick!  He was pulling a trailer full of cattle and he let us take a good long look at the calves.   KC was enthralled with this cowboy, so we took a picture.  We are having a rough time with downloading our pictures, so keep checking back.  

Anyway, Grace Community Church with Pastor Tony Miller has been very welcoming to us.  We have been there three times now and it is an honor to worship with them.  Pastor Zach, the worship leader, took us to lunch and we talked a lot about what God has done in His life and how He is working in the music ministry there.  Very exciting.  They have a great team of people and we love investing in them. 

Thursday morning, after a great breakfast by Ray, we loaded up and drove about eleven hours to Texarkana, Texas and avoided the storms you have been seeing on the news.  So far, we have had dry roads and no problems at all.  When you look at the map, it is quite amazing. 

Saturday, we got to Greenville, Texas and landed at Crossroads Community Church.  Pastor Larry and Barbara Allgood are wonderful servants and they have just accepted us as one of their own.  This is an Assembly of God church and their service is two hours long, so we were blessed with experiencing their worship team and a message from Pastor Larry about vision and purpose.  It was excellent and reaffirmed to us that we are doing exactly what the Lord is asking of us.  Our concert went great and the congregation participated joyfully with us.  Their response was very warm and loving. 

Sunday night, we attended their evening classes and fellowship potluck.  Mary Duck taught our class and it was amazing.  She is a very good bible teacher, and when I told her that, she said, “I am seventy years old…It is time I am good at something!”   

We have spent two nights in the guest apartment that is in the fellowship center of the church.  This is such a practical use of resources!  We love it!  It is a little apartment with everything you need and it is so homey.  It has been a wonderful time here and we will leave on Tuesday morning.  Until then, we will catch up on emails, school, correspondence and rest.   

Everything is running well on the RV, except the inverter that we just had fixed before leaving home.  Please pray that someone can get to the bottom of this problem.  It inverts the electricity from 12 volt to 110 and is kind of important.   

The Lord is so faithful and when I look back on the last few weeks, I can’t help but thank Him for the friends and family who helped so tirelessly to get us here.  We thank you for your help and please know that we are asking the Lord to bless you in an abundant way!  Also, you have our undying gratitude.  Thank you for your emails…we love hearing from you. 

We will be preparing for a marriage seminar this upcoming weekend, so please pray for the couples and our kid’s…health!  Thank you! 

Have a great week! 

January 30, 2007 

Last week I asked you to pray that the inverter on the RV would work properly, and we thank you for doing that…but I should have asked you to pray that the alternator would work!   

Pastor Larry and Barbara (from Crossroads Assembly of God Church in Greenville, TX) invited us to stay until Wednesday and we had such a wonderful time of getting to know them, we agreed.  So, Wednesday morning we got up early to load everything into the RV from the little guest apartment that we stayed in, and the engine in the RV kept turning off.  It would start, but then it would die.  We could not believe it.  So, the Lord provided a mechanic within about 10 minutes who took the rig to his shop right around the corner and decided it was best to transfer it to a RV specialist.  We ended up driving it (after a long charge) about 5 miles away to Sonny Eldon’s RV repair.  Sonny is about as Texan as they come and when we explained the problem, he replied in an extreme western accent, “Well, as my grand-dad taught me, things work until they stop.”  I thought, “Hmmm…this is going to be really good, or really bad.”   It ended up that Sonny knew exactly what he was doing and worked really hard to get us back on the road by the following afternoon.   

Even though it was discouraging to have another mechanical issue so early in the tour, Randy, as a good leader should, kept us focusing on the positive.  We were positioned at the perfect place, with a room that we didn’t have to pay for, a church van to borrow, wonderful people to care for us and enough money to pay for the repair.  He kept reminding me that this side of heaven, things are going to break (Sonny is wearing off on us) and it is imperative that we keep our hearts right before the Lord.   It is very tempting to throw a temper tantrum because things don’t necessarily go our way, but that does not speak very highly of our character, does it?  These little tests are used to train us to respond appropriately so that trusting the Lord becomes second nature.  I have a really long way to go.  So, we left for Fort Worth on Thursday afternoon after enjoying another visit with the Allgood's, who now feel like family!   

On a side note, this coming Monday night (February 5^th) on the Fox network, the show “Prison Break” will be airing.  A couple of the scenes were shot in Greenville, Texas at the train station.  They hired 12 extras and Pastor Larry Allgood was one of those!   Look for him exiting off the train and then working as a shoe shiner in the station.  He is the only bald man with a goatee.  Pastor Larry loves Harley’s and wears a lot of black and backwards ball caps.  He is so cool and gentle natured and the kids just loved him.  Probably because he took them for rides in his convertible Chevy SSR truck and for a quick ride on his Harley Davidson motorcycle.  The kids were very excited, but KC kept asking us questions like, “Does he have a helmet and knee pads for me?  Has he driven a motorcycle before?”  We kept assuring him that he would love it, but as the cautious one in the family, he had to make sure everything was in order.  After Pastor Larry took Kennedie on the motorcycle, KC said to Pastor, “Okay, you know how fast you went with Kennedie?...Take me a little slower!”   Check out the pictures in the photo gallery. 

Getting to River Oaks Church of The Nazarene, we grabbed a late dinner with Pastor Danny Dyer.  Now, we had just left the Allgood's feeling so blessed by their friendship and then we meet with Pastor Danny.  The Dyers are just like family.  We were blessed to spend a good amount of time with the Dyer's last year during our tour.  We cannot explain to you how the Lord connects and bonds us to people in such a short amount of time.  I think because we are determined to encourage and serve pastors and their wives, the Lord blesses us with very loving people all along the way.  This is the church where we will park our motor home (they have the perfect cement slab and hook-up) and stay for the next couple of months.  They are so loving and generous, they have even provided us with a car to borrow.  The church has a gym and a shower that we are free to use and they have just adopted us right in and made us feel right at home.  This is a perfect example to us of caring for traveling missionaries as Paul instructs so boldly.  I know the Lord blesses these churches because they are going above and beyond the call of duty.  

Friday and Saturday we taught a marriage seminar at Pastor Danny’s church with 11 couples and then had a Sunday morning concert.  The entire weekend went very well and the kids were healthy the whole time!  Thank you for praying about that and we feel victorious!  These couples were so responsive and the comments revealed what the Lord did in individual hearts and relationships.  It is really easy to think that the information we are encouraging them with is too basic or simple at times (like read the bible together and pray together!) but the fact of the matter is that, if more couples would do that, we would have less divorces.  So, no matter what, we will stick to the Word and let the Lord take it from there. 

Thank you for praying for us and supporting our ministry.  It is truly an honor to serve the Lord in this way.  By the way, the kids love the new sleeping births and they actually spend quite a bit of time in them playing games, reading, and watching DVDs. 

Have a great week. 

Kennedie's Korner  

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