My Grandma

My Grandparents have been a big part of my life. My grandma taught me how to play the organ, and help me develop my gift of music, and my grandpa help me learn how to fix things and use tools. They both taught me a lot about the bible, and how to live a life worthy of the calling we have received.

This year they celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary. It goes without saying that they modeled a healthy marriage for me (though I wanted to say it anyway).

On June 17th, 2008 my Grandma's life on earth came to an end. I think most of us are in a type of denial that we will ever really die (at least we sometimes live like we are). Yet getting old, and dieing is a natural part of this life, and it happens to everyone. We can't escape it. We can try to run, but we won't succeed.

The hope I have is that though her earthly life gave way, today she is in the presence of Jesus and has found a new life that is truly wonderful.

I like this picture of my Grandparents, my mom, Lynsey and I. It was taken Oct. 14, 2006 and is one of my favorite pictures of them in recent year.

Audio and Powerpoint for our Honduras Report

For everyone who wants to hear the report from the Honduras Team, but you were unable to be at our church this last Sunday I thought I would make it available on my blog.

First, here is the audio file of our report.
Also, here is the power point presentation of our report (lots of pictures included) . . . feel free to click along through it as you listen to the audio.
And if you don't have the 2007 version of power point, you can download a free viewer here.

This of course is not quite the same as being there, but hopefully it is still impactful.

Honduras Report

This Sunday in church is our report back from the Honduras Trip. As I am preparing pictures, and thoughts about the trip. The verse that is stuck in my head is Isaiah 58:9-10.

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday."

Honduras Pictures

I finally was able to put my pictures together from my mission trip to Honduras.
You can click here to see the pictures, or also click on the Honduras 2008 link on the right side of the blog.

While I took most of these pictures, the last 27 pictures were taken by other team members. I still posted them here as I felt they were important pictures, that I wasn't able to get.

Enjoy.

We're Home

The team is safely back from Honduras. Today I started in on my e-mail back home. Already it was full with lots of encouraging e-mails. Here are a few highlights.

1) A couple months ago Juan Carlos was breaking into the Micah project and stealing from them. Once the boys found out who did it, they started to minister to him. During our time their, our team got to talk with him quite a bit, and ended up leading him to the Lord, and baptizing him. We just got a report back that he was in church on Sunday and is beginning to get plugged into discipleship. The commitment was the real deal, and we are excited to see what God has for him.

2) We are getting lots of reports back from the pastors about how much the conference meant to them. We hear that they came home renewed, motivated, and changed. I know at least one of the youth wants to go into ministry as well specifically because of this conference. This conference is something that they would really like to do again.

3) I got quite a few e-mail from the team, still basking in the glow of all the the Lord did, and what they are coming away from the experience with.
I am in the process of beginning to sort through pictures. I will get some up here on my site in the near future.

Things have been busy. Once I got back, I went down to Eugene to co-officiate at my grandma's memorial service. It went really well. I will try to put another post about that with a picture sometime in the near future.