The End of Summer

Yesterday Sam and his cousin Will captured a butterfly. They were VERY excited! I ran upstairs to grab my camera to get some memories. What a wonderful time these two (and Caleb and Kara) have had this summer! Endless hours of running around and around our two houses. We definitely don't have to wonder if Samuel and Kara will remember (when we go to Romania) our home here and their cousins who practically live with us! =) Hope you all enjoyed your summer too. We're LOVING the beautiful cooler weather this week. Just makes me want to run out and buy some mums for the porch =) Happy Back-to-School everybody and Happy Back-to-On-the-Support-Raising-Road for us!

God's Covenant

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

hospitality

Here's a link to a short post I saw on the Girltalk blog (which I LOVE). It has a great view on hospitality, helping me to see that it is a responsibility for all believers. I believe that hospitality can be one of the primary ways to bring others to Christ, by inviting people into your home and showing them first-hand what it is to be a Christian. They can watch you with your kids and with your husband (hopefully, it's a good example you are setting - ha!) and wonder how they can get a home like yours. What they will see is not YOU, but the Spirit of God IN you, and it will be desirous. Hope this makes you think, like it did me, about a way you can be hospitable. Why not start with a neighbor with whom you don't feel that you have much in common besides both of you being mothers? You never know! =) I loved the section that emphasizes that we don't all have the same way of showing hospitality. It will be varied based on "God's varied grace." That takes a lot of the pressure away, knowing that MY way of showing hospitality doesn't have to look like the way others show it. It can be original to me.

Summertime 2009

I have been very lacking in my updating, so I thought I could make up for it in one post. We continue to travel just about every weekend, raising support for our future ministry in Romania. We are so blessed to have family living nearby and love to celebrate all the birthdays and other holidays with them. Here's just a few pictures showing how the summer is going and how the kids are growing...

We took about a week and dug up new flower beds and planted flowers here at the house where we live with Mom and Dad. It was a lot of work, but it looks SO pretty!

At the end of May we celebrated Kara's birthday....TWO YEARS OLD!! We had a party here in Bellefonte...

You can't see it too well, but I found this cute cake online (just jelly beans for the rainbow and white mini marshmallows for the clouds) =)

...and then one in Mechanicsburg a few days later (with Trav's family).

We found these hats in a missionary closet on our travels! Cute! =)

The Many Faces of Sweet Kara

Ladies Retreat and Jumping Beans

This past Friday and Saturday Trav and I had the opportunity to co-speak at a Ladies Retreat in Lancaster.  Calvary Baptist Church of Elkins Park, PA brought their ladies to a Christian camp in Lancaster.  Travis spoke on Friday evening, and then I spoke twice on Saturday.  We used Titus chapter 2, specifically verses 3 through 5 as our main theme.  We've never done anything like this before, and Travis joked that it was his first Ladies Retreat. =)   Leading up to the weekend, we both spent some pretty late nights preparing, so now we're WHIPPED, but it gave us some great experience to draw from in the future.  Travis gave a lot of background to the book of Titus, and then I (using A LOT from the book Feminine Appeal, by Carolyn Mahaney) filled in more practical thoughts and application to us as women.  I can see how the Lord is giving me opportunities like this that will help me when we reach Romania.  I'm sure these principles will be a HUGE help for the Romanian and Gypsy women.  I think we, as Americans, really take for granted the resources that we have at our fingertips for help in areas of Christian living.  We can pretty much just jump online and find any books we could possibly need, as well as encouraging Christian music and anything we want to help us along our way.  These women in other countries, especially places like Romania, have pretty much only the Word of God to help them.  I'm not trying to convey that the Bible is not enough, just simply how much easier it is for us here to receive encouragement along the way.  Anyways, though it may not interest you that much that I spoke at a Ladies Retreat, I've been wanting to use this blog for my own self too as a journal of my life and my family's life, so just consider this a little look into my blog/journal =)  

As an extra, here's a little video I took the other day of the kids.  Sam is teaching Kara how to jump.  So funny!  I think that jumping must just require a certain level of skill that Kara doesn't quite have yet.  My sweet kids: how I love them! =)

My Sweet Kids =)