The Eclipse!

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I remember when each of the kids were young, barely able to speak. When we would be out at night Connie would point to the moon and ask the kids, “Who made the moon?” I can still hear each of them reply in their own unique, little voices, “God made the moon!”

Yesterday we had a chance to see an incredible display of God’s creativity. Since LaGrange was (just barely) outside the line of totality we ventured about 20 minutes north to a rural church in Nebraska where we got to see the complete eclipse.

Between Kansas and Colorado!

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The last few months have been incredibly busy! On Tuesday we got back from speaking at Bethany Church Camp in Kansas. Tomorrow we leave for Colorado where I will be speaking for two weeks at Twin Peaks Bible Camp.

Our time in Kansas was a great blessing. Getting there was part of the adventure. Camp started Tuesday afternoon so we set out on Monday with a camper in tow. About an hour from LaGrange a tire on the camper blew and took much of the underside of the camper. We limped back to LaGrange. Arrangements were made for us to stay in rooms at the camp. Early the next morning we left for Kansas in our Suburban. About an hour away the transmission went out. We drove back to LaGrange in 2nd gear!

At this point we weren’t sure how we would make it to Kansas. Many were praying and FSB offered for us to take one of the schools vans. We set out again from LaGrange and made it to the camp in Kansas with a few minutes to get ready for the first chapel message.

Through it all, it was a wonderful blessing to see God provide for us. He is always faithful.

We will post more about our time at Bethany Church Camp soon. It was a privilege to serve alongside some wonderful people.

Pray for us as we travel to Colorado. We are praying that this trip would be much more uneventful than the last. Pray also for us as we minister to the 7th and 8th graders this week and high schoolers the next.

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By the way, you may be wondering where we are at with our home. Remodeling our new house has taken a lot of our attention. We hope to be completely finished with our home before FSB starts in August. We will share an update on that soon.

Close to Home! Week 1

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Here we go! We have started remodeling work on our new home. We will live in this mobile home for a year or two until we are able to construct a new home on the property. Already we have seen God provide. We wanted to share some of the praises along the way.

  • We are excited to get busy. There’s a lot of work, but we’ve made a lot of progress in this last week.
  • We found wood laminate at the ReStore in Cheyenne and our local thrift store, King’s Closet. This means we have all the flooring we need for the house and for less than $200!
  • We will have to pay a startup fee of about $2,000 for our utilities. Within less than a week from finding this out God has already provided this through a special gift!

Pray with us (for strength and wisdom)! We will have weekly updates and videos for this next adventure as we get closer to home.

All Things Bright and Beautiful

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We are enjoying sharing some of our family traditions with you! Another that has become an everyday part of our family life is our “Hymn of the Month.” When we lived in India, we realized that our kids weren’t very often getting to hear or sing the hymns that Chuck and I both grew up on. We didn’t want them to miss out on such a beautiful, powerful tradition, so we began choosing one hymn that we would sing with them each night before bed for a month. This has proven to be so much fun and educational for all of us as we have a whole month to focus on the meaning of words, phrases, and concepts from these great hymns of the faith! And by the end of the month, we usually have learned it fairly well. It is a special joy to hear our children sing together, and to know that they are learning things like:

“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.
He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell
How great is God almighty, who has made all things well!”

KBC Missions Conference – Disciples Making (this) Disciple

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It was such a blessing to be a part of KBC’s mission conference this past weekend. The theme of the conference was “Disciples Making Disciples”. It was neat to participate with other missionaries of our home/sending church, but as I left the conference I was thinking more of the church’s impact on me!

At the conference, I was on the panel for one of two panel discussions about discipleship. As I considered the other panel members, the moderating pastor, other church leaders – those who minister in AWANA, in youth group, in the sound booth, I was impressed by the significance of their part in discipling me!

Some of the people on these panels were:

– the camp director of a camp where I spent summers from age 8 to 19
– the church planter who started the church where I grew up (who also happens to be a personal mentor and the current director of our missions organization)
– a missionary pastor / church planter (who also happens to be my brother-in-law)
– the director of a pregnancy care center who’s personal support, along with her husband’s, has been invaluable over the years to me (and who also happened to help lead the youth group in my jr. high school years)
– a fellow TBM Missionary (who also happened to be a former camp counselor)

The impact of these people on my life didn’t just “happen to be.” God has pulled together all these strands of different people and woven them into my life at various times. I think we often consider discipleship in terms of one-on-one, but this conference helped me to see what a a cooperative / collaborative effort it truly is.

I’ve long defined the church as a disciple-making community. God confirmed that for me this weekend, with an emphasis on community .

Take some time and listen to Mark Vowels insightful and practical messages about discipleship.

Missions Conference

Home…Home in LaGrange

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Many of you are wondering about our progress regarding housing / property for our long-term arrangements here in LaGrange. We are excited about the prospect of buying a certain piece of land, but still have to finalize the details. We would aim to build on this land next spring/summer. In the meantime, it has a single-wide mobile home on the property that we can fix up and live in just for the coming year. This mobile home needs quite a bit of work, but we hope to be moved by the end of May.

Here are some pictures.

Please pray…

  • finalizing a price on the property / closing
  • time and finances for working on the mobile home

Our Prayer Cards

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Many of you have been praying for and supporting us for years. I thought I would put together all of our prayer cards since 2003! How many do you have?

2003

The original…our first prayer card before leaving for India. We had just graduated from Weber and were preparing for our first trip. At this time we were also the youth directors at KBC.

2004

After coming home from our first six months in India we printed a number of these prayer cards. We were in the States for a few months during early 2004. When we went back we immediately jumped into ministry with BBCM and studying our Masters degree.

2006

Our mission team begins growing. Anjali was born in May 2005. We spent a couple months in the states over her first birthday and printed these cards during Summer ’06. We were back in India for the beginning of the Indian academic year in June.

2008

The end of 2007 saw our team grow once again with the birth of Asha. You may notice that the prayer cards reveal how we’ve been careful about how we’ve explained where we were working. We became increasingly and intentionally vague about the specifics of our ministry home.

2011

Our original intention was to print out a series of prayer cards, but we found it challenging to get them printed from India and to everyone in the States. We did however, complete three of them. Rainbow the Monkey was drawn by Anjali on the plane trip back to the States for a short visit. This was also the plane trip when we traveled with two six week old twins. Fun times!



2014

This was taken on Thanksgiving day before our most recent return to India. It is our first TBM prayer card.

2017

So here we are. This is our current prayer card. If you want one please contact us!