God is so good

our sweet levi before church today.... getting ready for a hair cut:) 

The after shot!! Sweet little man!

( Please excuse all the typos... still posting off my phone... still no internet here yet:)

It has been crazy busy here.  We are still unpacking... but God has been so good and faithful!  We are so grateful!

This morning, father's day, I gave 3 of the  

 boys hair cuts, got all the littles showered and off to church.  We are really loving living right here on campus in the parsonage.  We literally left 7 minutes before church was to start... so nice!  (unfortunately... I completely forgot about and missed the voters meeting an hour earlier!  Duh!!

I tell you, moving brings about a million different feelings and

 emotions... and tonight while we did our devotions after dinner when we were reading in James and got to the quick to listen... slow to speak and slow to become angry part... I had to confess my lack of self control in the slow to become angry area... we had some

 laughs about it, but sadly I have to admit the truth there...

I have been less patient than I would like to admit...  I am the homemaker and with the home in chaos... I haven't done real well!  we finally got carpet I in our whole upstairs (praise God) we were finally able to say goodbye to plywood and airmatresses:):) (I know I totally sound like a spoiled american... I am sorry!)

 I also had a down day emotionally, just being overwhelmed with the amount of work to do and missing friends... which led to the very familiar feeling of being brand new in a place... not knowing many people and missing Samuel.  It led to a new different missing of my son... no more samuel's garden... no more home where he was alive inside of me... it was a sad hard day...

I know myself well enough to rally my praying friends to ask for prayer!  What a blessing and encouragement they are to me!  

And God was so faithful to send just the right phone calls from friends, emails from friends praying as well as a super sweet arrival of dear tulsa friends tonight! God knows exactly what we need and when we need it!  I am so grateful!  

We can not wait to show these friends around town... but even more so, just excited for late night talks, cuddles with the kids, visits to local stores and just being together!   God knew months ago we would need a visit with friends and he brought them at the perfect time!  

We had a nice father's day cook out with greg.  Tonight I am feeling so thankful for the dad that raised me with loads of love and laughs... the father who raised the man that would raise 7 kids with me here on earth...my sweet husband who has immediately jumped into minstry here and works so hard so I can be home with the kids!  

Feeling amazed and so thankful to our faithful God tonight!! 

tidbits...

Mud room and office painted...

Kitchen unpacked and finally really functional...

Younger five down for the night...

The older boys officially chicago blackhawks hockey fans... much yelling at the TV...

Texas grandparents put in a full day helping get things more in order here today...

Big boys and dad about to head across the parking lot to pick up something at the office... PERKS OF LIVING IN A PARSONAGE:):)

Mailed out 40+ LOVE MOORE t-shirts today ( more on that soon)

House about to really fill up for the celebration tomorrow... will have 2 big crock pots going with taco soup for lunch...

Prayers flooding my mind and heart today for friends who are worried about the safety and well being of two of their kids...

Heart hurting for a young lady who lost a premature baby today...  I feel so badly for them... I just can't stop thinking about them...

Through all the busyness and sorrows  of life... I am thankfuk that the Lord is the one in control... sometimes we rejoice in the beautiful things that take place and at othertimes we are crying out and just wanting to make some sense of things...

At the end of all of these days... my hearts cry continues to be come Lord Jesus Come!!

such sweetness

such sweetness... amidst such a crazy week:):)

Isaiah started solids and seems to love it!

I think when it comes to moving he has been the easiest... he is so easy going... as long as you hold him, pay attention to him, change and feed him... he is good to go...

He is such an laid back guy!

 We had the great distraction of  Wisconsin cousins and grandparents coming to help and this weekend will be more of the same with Greg's installation service here.  I am really proud of the kids... they have worked hard and had really good attitudes about the move.  I know it was hard on them... especially the older 4...

It about tore my heart out when Jojo and our old neighbor boy were yelling over and over  and over again across our yards the night  before we left, " I will miss you... I will never forget you!"  After that jo just sobbed... " I never want to move again.... it is so hard!!"  

Rough stuff... but I think now that the hard goodbyes are behind us we can throw ourselves into life here...

We are thrilled that we already have friends planning to come visit and that helps too:)

The church has been so welcoming too.  I think we had 30 people here helping us unload yesterday... a HUGE blessing to us!  We were so thankful!  

Then tonight they had a welcoming dinner for us tonight with the call committee that did the searching and  interviewing for the new pastor.  It was a time of celebrating what God has done in answering theirs and our prayers in bringing us here.  It was a good time of getting to know new friends as well!  

We are really excited to be here.  I know Greg can't wait to jump into work... and once the house is a little more settled I can't wait to get us all involved... the faithfulness of God is evident all around us these days!

safely here...

We are safely in our new home after a crazy ride up... literally trying to out run the storms and tornados...

At one point I had my sister in Missouri watching the radar for me as the storm seemed right next to my vehicle...

We had to get off the highway and take shelter in a gas station bathroom while the tornado sirens roared... I know some maybe thought we were over reacting... but after serving in moore and joplin... you do anything possible to keep your little ones safe!

We got reports that a tornado crossed the freeway just south of that exit 3 miles  flipping semis and then when we left later we saw the damage 1 mile north.... several flipped  semis.  I am so thankful we stopped...

After that it was smooth sailing and we were so thankful to arrive safely at our new home that night at 2:30.... tired but so grateful for God' protection!!

We continue to pray for those in ok as it has been a terribly busy bad weather spring... that night we left ok to move, there were more storms in moore and many more deaths not too far from there... it had to be terrifying for many people!

We plan to take a team from our new church down to do more tornado disaster relief once we settle in just a bit.  We were so thrilled that our new pastor is super excited and is sharing in the desire to have this new church body go and be used there in whatever way the Lord sees fit!

There is much unpacking work to do... but we are filled with thankfulness for our new life in this new place... Boy do we miss our friends... that is the hard part, and goodbyes were almost more than my heart could take.  But my heart feels totally at peace and the Lord has given us many special blessings since we arrived.  He is so good!

I hope to post more about our move... even our rv trip and pics once we get computers up and running:)

Prayers for Moore

The reality of the destruction of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma is overwhelming...

There were other tornadoes that hit different cities in Oklahoma, but the magnitude of the destruction in Moore leaves is hard for the mind to grasp...

 

Last Friday Greg, Louis, Caleb and 12 other teens and adults made up a team that headed to Moore Oklahoma to do whatever they were called upon to do to help with disaster relief there. 

 

I was so blessed to have a friend volunteer to watch my five kids and my niece so that a friend and  I could head down there yesterday to join the team in their work...

 

(My brother's family had driven down from Wisconsin to work... that is why I had my niece.  My sister's family from the St. Louis area also came in to help)

 

 

 

 

We were assigned to work in zone 9.  They assign zones to the different areas so that they can assign volunteers to specific areas and homes in that area...

 

 

It is sort of hard to see, but a lot of times they have to either write the number on the home or driveway since many times street signs are gone... and most times in the hardest hit areas there aren't any house numbers visible any longer...

 

In the hardest hit areas... they label the homes after Fema inspects (before any volunteers can come into help at all) with the inspector number, human lives lost, and pets lost as well...

 

 

The absolute power of the tornadoes to take cars or telephone poles and toss them around like toys is almost hard to wrap your mind around... even when you see it right before you...

 



You can see the two small tents that the homeowners were probably staying in on their property...
 

 This is one of the hardest hit areas in Moore... It looks so much like Joplin...
It was just rubble as far as your eye could see... not too much else standing at all. 

It was so sad... knowing and seeing the areas where these homeowners had lost pretty much everything...  And if anything was left it was so severely damaged.

The homeowners that I was able to speak with really had some amazing perspectives.  A younger lady, Helen, who only had one room left standing from her home, over and over again repeated how lucky she was.  Her home was gone, but her and her parents had survived. 

She was so so grateful for all of the volunteers that had come to help.

 

 

 

This is the amazing group of people teens and adults that we served with.  We were assigned to a home that didn't have severe damage but had so much debris on the property... Our group spent 3 days cleaning up debris.  I know my kids came home having made new friends with the owners kids and even the owners.  It was amazing all of the things that we found.  The strange thing is that none of that debris belonged to this home... You couldn't help but wonder how far it had come... Whose home it had come from.

 

Truck load after truck load of garbage, wood, debris,... there was so much. 

The group accomplished much and I was so proud of the adults and kids that worked together here.

Today after trying to clear debris from inside of one of the ponds the kids were able to have a little fun swimming in the pond with the owners children. 

I know it was fun for my boys and I am sure was hopefully a bright spot amidst a very stressful and traumatic week for them. 

 

 

 



 

As much as I am sure the people of Moore were blessed by all the volunteers that were working there... we too were so blessed to be there.  It was amazing to see the faith based community at work.

 

Group after group of volunteers were hitting the streets of Moore... I pray that the people there felt the strong love of Jesus for them amidst the tragedy of this past week.

 

Any homeowner I had a chance to talk to seemed to really want to share their story.  Stories like that need to be told over and over again... It seemed like all you had to do was open the door and they would start to share. 

 

I know this Immanuel group will be going back and we are excited to be planning on taking a team down from our new church this summer.

 

The work is started in Moore but there will be work to do there for days, months and years to come...

Please continue to pray for the people there... there is much healing needed...

LA

 

We braved the skinny busy streets of Los Angeles to give the kids a taste of Beverly Hills and Rodeo drive...

 

Funny thing was, OBVIOUSLY we didn't fit in at all with the RV... We got a lot of looks... Greg was threatening the whole time we drove down Rodeo drive that he was going to pull the crazy RV horn... I think they just might have kicked us out of town:) 

 

 

The kids and I at the beach in Santa Barbara... Loads of seagulls and of course  loads of fun in the water...

 

We were so blessed to get to see our friends from Seminary, the Barketts.  We camped out in the parking lot (apparently there aren't a whole lot... if any camping areas in Thousand Oaks California:)where they pastor on Saturday night and joined them for worship... Such a treat!

 

It is so nice to now be able to picture them at their church serving... We had a super nice picnic lunch with them... It was just such a treat to be able to see them and visit with them... It has been 3 years since the last time we were able to see them... 

 

This is when we discovered from a kind California policeman that our registration on my sister's RV was 5 months overdue...

 

Did you know that your car/RV can be impounded if your registration is over a month over due??? Now that would have been exciting... He was kind and just let us off with a warning:) Funny!

 

The kids TOTALLY  enjoying jumping the waves in Santa Barbara:)

 

Louis under the Santa Barbara pier...

 

Grape vineyards in California...

I had just asked Greg where wine country was in California... we rolled over the hill and this is what our eyes saw for miles around from every direction.  California is beautiful... so many different kinds of beautiful landscape.

His creation is GRAND!

 

We arrived later in the day to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon... Beautiful... Majestic... Totally wonderfully created by our Heavenly Father...

 

We took the shuttle and WOW was it windy and cool... We should have all bundled up better, but it was beautiful and fun anyways... Thankfully we always remember to bring warmer things for the littler ones...

 

We even got to experience the...



 

Sunset at the Grand Canyon...

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the  heavens.    Psalm 8:1

 It was glorious!

 

 



 

We found a campsite that night and then the next morning Greg watched the 3 littles, while he got some reading done,  and the four older kids and I set out to hike the Bright Angel Trail...

 

We had debated taking Hope, and were so thankful we didn't... It is a great relatively easy hike, but it is dangerous, steep at times, and has a clear drop off a lot of the way... not good for a very clumsy 4 year old.  We were so thankful that we left her with dad:)

 

The crazy thing you ALWAYS need to remember when hiking the Grand Canyon is that you are hiking down first, which is easy... then you head back up... doing the hard work when you are already a little worn out. 

 

We totally felt like we could go much further, but we had to keep reminding ourselves that the way up will be a whole other story and much more difficult. 

 



 

We stopped  for a snack and water break at each of the tunnels.  It gets so much hotter in the canyon too.  We ran across 3 volunteers who strictly hike up and down looking for hikers that have gotten themselves into trouble. 

 



It was gorgeous, and really fun to do with the older kids.  I cherish those moments... I think I am probably a little overly nostalgic... Knowing Louis and Caleb are growing up WAY TOO quickly leaves me cherishing these trips and experiences all the more...

 

Who knows if we will ever get to the Grand Canyon again, let alone with our older kids... So I tried to stop and snap some mental photographs of the sweet special moments with the kids...

 

You could not help but be in awe of the handiwork of our God... It is literally like he carved out and painted the landscape... breathtaking... He sure knows how to spoil us...