Alaska and Praises

                                                 🍂 Happy Fall Ya'll!🍂 
  This is my absolute favorite time of year! The smells, the colored leaves🍁, the baked yummies, the coffee...I love it all. I sure can't believe it's already the end of November though! We've now been on the road for 7 months. It sure has flown!

                                                    View from our airplane just before arriving in Anchorage,AK!
                                                           
     I posted the following on my Facebook page in summary of our time in Alaska: "We had an absolutely amazing time at our 9 meetings, all the outdoor activities, fellowship, sweet friendships, and viewing God's amazing creation! We are so thankful and so blessed!" There really isn't any way I could put into words just how much we will treasure our time spent in Alaska. Here are just a few highlights from our trip!

    

   We arrived back in the states November 7th, and it's been a whirlwind of meetings, traveling, and the dreaded stomach bug. I have to thank the Lord...He's been with us through it all. Taking care of us and guiding us every step of the way. So far in November, we've traveled to Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and we are now in central NY for the next couple of weeks. 

  🍁 Thanksgiving was very different for us. We weren't able to be with any of mine or Joshua's family, but we still had a great time eating, baking and decorating cookies, listening to Christmas music, and taking walks in the beautiful Virginia mountains. I pray that you all had a blessed Thanksgiving! 🍁

   There is a blessing I want to share with you. I blogged last month that my laptop had been stolen, well praise the Lord, we were fully reimbursed by the airline! And I have a new PINK laptop.😁 God is SO good to me!
   Look for our newsletter update by the end of this week...God is blessing our deputation and I can't wait to share what God is doing! 

                                                                     

Aug-Sept 2017 Newsletter & Extra from Joshua

Aug-Sept 2017 Newsletter is above, and an Extra that Joshua has added a little more information on our goings on below.


a) Praise the Lord for the missions home in West Virginia--God gave us a blessed respite in the West Virginia mountains, time and space to organize for homeschooling on the road, and much encouragement from God's people.

b) A second hurricane did impact the northern side of the Dominican Republic --so please pray for our missionary friends, Chad Papes and his family as they minister to those who suffered loss from the hurricane.

c) We were reminded in September of the joy of missions at our deputation home. God introduced us to a missionary family from Togo, Africa. Brother Emmanuel met the Lord when a missionary knocked on his door and loved him and invited him to Christ. Emmanuel and his wife, both, were the very first ones in their family to be saved out of voodoo worship and God called them to His service. Because of Christ, I can pray with Emmanuel as my brother even though he grew up 5,500 miles away. What a joy for our families to be able to fellowship together around the joy of Jesus Christ and how much He has done for us! Praise the Lord for Emmanuel's wife who spent many hours teaching my wife to cook some amazing African meals. God is good. Oh the joy of missions--and what a blessing to see God using Emmanuel himself as a missionary to his own people. Hallelujah.

d) Seth and Nathan were able to help load resources (120 32 pks. of water) and prepare the vehicles to transport those items to Texas. Praise God for our boys ministering to those in need.

e) While waiting on Honda to troubleshoot an electrical problem, God allowed me to meet a certain technician in Savannah, Georgia. Pray for Austin--he knows Jesus, but hasn't been in church for 6 years. God used a testimony of Jesus to encourage him in the Lord and challenge him to faithfully serve God.

f) Keep praying for our vans to keep running until early 2018. We are ready to start finding the specifications for the next vehicle we'll use on deputation and bring with us to the field--Lord willing.

Thanks,
Joshua

Change in plans

Hello from Alaska!!!
  September has been amazing! God has been so good to us and I just can't praise Him enough!
What a blessing to be a part of what God is doing to reach people with the gospel and encourage believers to serve the Lord with their ALL! I am also so thankful for the churches that have welcomed us and just blessed our socks off! It means the world to Joshua and I as well as our boys!
September found us on the Georgia/Alabama border and then Quitman, Valdosta, and Lakeland area. We were also very excited to be with our Mission support church for their mission conference! God blessed our time with the church family and with the other missionaries. It was such a sweet time.


This will be a short update as I'm attempting to type it on my phone. On the way to Anchorage,AK, we had a little adventure with our luggage...long story short, the airline made us check our carry on bags at the gate right before getting on the plane. We were in a rush and somehow the attendants put someone else's name and destination on my computer bag; which because of said rush I neglected to take my laptop out of. It ended up in California and was finally delivered to us in the middle of the night a couple days later....minus my laptop and cord. We've had an interesting week trying to secure passwords and such and talking with the airline and police all while preparing and ministering at the mission conference we were a part of...not to mention adjusting to the 4hr. time change.

  I look forward to blogging about our time here in Alaska next month, Lord willing. Thank you so much for your prayer and support! Please pray for us as we travel and that God will have His will and way in our meetings and work in hearts.

August on the road

I want to start out by saying "THANK YOU!" to those that pray for us, who follow where we are and what's going on, and for those that try to help out when we are in need! God has blessed us with some amazing family and friends. I am humbled. You just do not know how much your text, message, or phone call means to us.

August found us in West Virginia. We met some wonderful people at the churches we attended and had meetings at. It is wonderful to meet brothers and sisters in Christ in every state we go to! And oh! How beautiful WV is! The mountains and the lakes...wow! We loved spending time there...God's creation is an awesome thing.

We started our new school year on August 1, and it has been....well, it's going. I knew it was going to be a challenge while traveling around and visiting with churches and friends, but it has surpassed even what I thought. Haha! We get it done when we can and the boys are learning.

We traveled over to Tennessee next, and stayed with some friends in their beautiful home. We so enjoyed spending time in fellowship with them and they spoiled us all while we were there! Again, I was in awe of our Creator while in TN. Couldn't get enough of drinking in the sight of those mountains. God blessed us with a great church to worship in and an unexpected meeting while there too!

We took a short trip back to Xenia, OH for a meeting, and had a wonderful time with friends for dinner when we got there. I'm so thankful for the people that God puts in our lives! We had a blessed meeting and just praise the Lord for what He's doing!

We had our longest travel day yet, when we left Xenia, OH, went back to TN where we picked up one of our vans that we had left for the weekend, and then drove over down to McDonough, GA. We were blessed with a mission home to stay in for a couple weeks. It was such a needed time of respite for our family, and a time to catch up on some things. We also celebrated our youngest son's (Jared) 11th birthday! And we had a good time trying to see the eclipse in our cereal boxes. We actually DID see it in the boxes, but didn't know it until later when I saw peoples' pictures on what it looked
like. 😂  We did get this really cool picture of a whole bunch of mini eclipses in the trees' shadows...but again, didn't know that's what it was until later. Elijah just thought it looked funny and I snapped a picture.

I was so super excited to visit with Victory Baptist Church in Loganville, GA. This is where my family went to church way back when I was in 8th grade. This is also the church that I was in when God saved me!!! My youth pastor from back then is now the pastor there and it was wonderful to see him and his family, as well as a few others that I remember. What a blessing to see them all faithfully serving the Lord!

Next, we traveled up to South Carolina, where we were in a 2 day mission conference. It was a church where, when you leave, you feel as if you are leaving family. We just had the best time getting to know the church family there, as well as other missionaries that were there!

So our next day was an adventure. We left South Carolina and was headed to our deputation home in Roanoke, AL. We stopped for some lunch, got back on the road, and was right in the middle of Augusta and Atlanta. I was driving along Interstate 20, when the van started decelerating. I had had it on cruise, so I canceled out and pressed the accelerator just to have it slow down even more. I told Joshua what was going on and we were able to get over to the side of the road. The van quit at that point and wouldn't start. It was a total of 5 or more hours before the tow truck finally got there, and we were able to get the van off the side of the interstate. No rental car agency, UBER, or LYFT would come to us, so we were stuck.

2 local pastors came and picked up me and 3 of the boys and brought us to the church. WHAT A BLESSING! Joshua and Elijah stayed with the van the remaining 1.5 hours until the truck came, and then got dropped off where the rest of us were. Another pastor drove 45 miles to pick up our family and some luggage and drive us to Decatur, GA where our vans (yep, plural...the other one was in the shop while we were in SC) were. And we were connected with him through a missionary friend in the D.R.! God is so good!!! The whole time we were on the side of the interstate, we had multiple friends trying to help us out and praying for us. It was incredible and encouraging to be lifted up by all of our loved ones! We spent a couple nights in Decatur, waiting on our van to be fixed up and then we were able to get to Roanoke. Through that whole day, it was amazing the peace that we had. And we realized how much worse it really could have been...God took care of us completely! And He answered prayer!

Please pray for Gene, a man we met in Decatur, GA. I believe he's homeless and He needs the Lord! Pray that his heart softens to the gospel and that God will send someone else to water the seeds that were planted.

July 2017 Newsletter

June/July 2017

   So it's been way longer since I posted than I meant it to be! I JUST figured out how to add our newsletter to our blog last night...and it's old news now. Joshua will be working on the next one and I will add it as soon as it's done. Until then, I will try to share some of what's been going on with us.

  We've been on the road for almost 9 weeks now! I just can't believe it's been that long. What a whirlwind it's been! We left Florida on May 30th and caravanned over to Roanoke, AL for a short 2 night stay. We had to figure out what we were going to keep at the mission house and what we could stuff into our vans. Yep, vans plural. I mentioned caravanning...at this time we are driving 2 mini vans around the U.S. God has blessed us with our 2 mini vans that are paid off (praising the Lord for that!) and still running. We are hoping they take us into next year before we need to think about other transportation that we can bring with us to the DR. Anyway, we are quite stuffed into both vans...clothes for 6 people, homeschool supplies, office supplies, blankets/pillows and many other needed things. Not to mention the 6 people! We are learning what things are absolutely essential and what we can live without, and believe me that keeps changing. Things that I thought we had to have at the beginning, I have no problem chunking now. We have left a trail behind us either at mission homes or families' houses or we just threw it away.


   When we left Roanoke, we headed to Ohio. We stayed in Mason, OH for about 3 weeks and what a blessing that was! We stayed in a mission home there and the host church just spoiled us. We were able to visit with church family and friends that we enjoyed so much! We didn't enjoy Seth breaking his elbow while there....but God took care of him and he healed up pretty quickly and without him having to have a cast!
From there we stayed with different ones in Joshua's family all around the Columbus area for the next few weeks. They were all so awesome and we are so thankful for them and all they've done for us! We treasure each moment that we get to spend with family and friends along the way.

   God also answered our prayer about our boys attending youth camp. We were invited to go to Anchor Baptist's youth camp as a family and we all had such a great time!

   We definitely had some excitement during that week with Jared having (supposed) appendicitis. Joshua and I were in the hospital with him for a couple of days, but praise the Lord, Jared was able to be treated with antibiotics and was able to go back to camp with us for the last day with no surgery!!! We met some great new friends and got to know some others better. God was moving in that camp, and I for one was blessed and challenged in my relationship and walk with the Lord.

  We traveled to New York next and stayed with wonderful friends for a week. We are so grateful to those who have opened their homes to our family along this journey. I know what a hard thing that can be sometimes and I pray God blesses each one mightily! We hadn't been in New York since we moved away over 10 years ago, and it was so good to see friends and church family again. We enjoyed every minute!

  Then we started heading down to West Virginia. We stopped over in Erie, Pennsylvania for a couple nights...again God blessed us there! Great mission home, great church, and we enjoyed spending time with the church family and the pastor there very much!
And now here we are in West Virginia. We are gearing up to start our homeschool year on Tuesday, the 1st of August, and catching up on some things...one being this blog.


   As of this morning, we have visited and worshipped with 46 churches and in 12 of those we have presented our burden for Dominican Republic at scheduled meetings! Every church we've been to has been wonderful and we've realized again and again how small the world really is, with mutual friends everywhere we go. We are so humbled and blessed! God is so good! Starting next week our meetings start to pick up...praising the Lord for that! We're excited to see what God is going to do and we're excited about what He's already done! Praise the Lord we are 28% (updated from a mess-up) supported now!!!

   Please help us pray for our van situation. Both need work done this week...just pray for God's will and for wisdom and guidance on how we should proceed.

Thank you all so much for your prayers, encouragement, and support! We appreciate every single note, email, message, and call! We love you all!

Newsletter-May 2017