Prayer Requests and Reflection

Grant is almost a month old. Time has flown by in a lot of ways. We have been doing well, thankful to God for everyone's prayers during this time of transition. Its amazing that soon it will be Thanksgiving and then the end of the year. Please continue to pray for our support to come in we still need about $600 monthly before we can leave in January.

Earlier this week in one of my times with the Lord, I have prayed through 1 Thessalonians 2 over both the ministry at USF and in Italy. Would you pray that over the ministry in Italy, too? . God has been doing awesome things in Salerno with two girls Bible Studies going on consistently. Continue to pray for the ministry as Justin and Abbey Valiquette have come home for a few months to raise some extra support and Bentley and Sarah Love Crawford are coming home soon to have their baby in the U.S. we will not have any men on our team until we get there. Pray that we do not lose momentum in the ministry with these things happening.

God has done some awesome things at USF. I have not done a lot there lately as I have been really been trying to focus on being available so the Lord can raise our financial support. We are really close to starting to launch a Fraternity/Sorority Community group. The Lord has raised a few people up to do so. I have also gotten to meet with a few fraternity presidents to get ideas of how we can be resource to the Greek community. Continue to pray for our efforts that the Holy Spirit would lead and guide us and show us exactly what this community group is going to look like.

Our Anniversary

Two years ago today Rodney and I were married. It's one of those weird things to me where in some ways it seems like our wedding was just yesterday and in other ways it seems like we've always been married. Obviously, there have been a lot of changes in this year of our marriage; raising support, moving to Italy, having our first child. But through it all, I am so glad I'm able to look at my husband and be thankful for all that the Lord has done and is continuing to do in our lives. I remember people telling us that marriage would reveal so much our selfish nature. There is nothing like living in such close proximity to some one else and having your lives be so intertwined to bring out the best and the worst in yourself. I can definitely attest to that now. Our marriage has challenged me and grown me so much over the last two years. My mom watched little Grant for a couple of hours last night and Rodney and I had the chance to go out for a nice dinner. We reflected and talked about the last year and all of the changes. We talked about our first year of marriage compared to our second. And I realized how much better I know myself now than I did two years ago. I've learned so much more about how what really encourages me, what really upsets me and how to communicate what I'm feeling and why. What an unexpected blessing! When I walked down that aisle two years ago I woul have said that I knew a lot about myself and a lot about Rodney. And now, when I look back, I feel like I hardly knew myself, let alone any thing about Rodney. The Lord has been so gracious to us as we've grown and learned so much over these past two years.

And now, a little note to my sweet husband- Thank you so much for all that you are and all that do for me, and now for our family. The Lord has used to in such a powerful way in my life. I am so grateful for our love and our marriage.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (from The Message)

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.

Here Comes Grant!

Grant Charles Walton was born Saturday 10/17/09 at 6am sharp. He was 8lbs. 5oz. at birth, as well as 20 1/2 inches long.

Continue to check facebook and our blog for more updates. We just got home from the hospital Monday at about noon.

Praise the Lord for a healthy baby with no complications during childbirth! We cannot thank the Lord enough for this as well as a rather complication free pregnancy. Please pray for us as we are learning how to be parents. Pray that God would give us wisdom and patience beyond our years as well as supernatural energy to keep up with this little one. Amanda had a lot of contractions since Wednesday leading up to the birth on Saturday morning so we both have not gotten a lot of rest before he came.

Check out the top image on how Grant and Amanda looked alike at birth! It is kind of crazy how similar they look!

Post Orlando, No Baby Yet!

Grant, when are you coming? We have asked him this many times in the last few days. We are disappointed every time he doesn't answer us. We have tried to continue our lives as much as usual but at the same time, we have to be as ready for him to come when its time. As Amanda likes to say: Eviction Day is coming!

We got back from Orlando last weekend and had a great time. We got to visit with a lot of friends, but since we were only there for a few days, we did not see everyone we wished we could have, but thats how it goes. We had an extremely refreshing time in Orlando. It has really helped us and built our faith in many ways. We were encouraged by many friends, Amanda had a good shower our church OGC put on for us, and we got to hang out with Brett and Nicole Bradley. They are raising support to be in Salerno, also.

This past week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we met on Skype with our team in Salerno for a few hours. We got to develop a bunch of our vision, goals, and focus for this school year coming up. Its so good for us to be in these meetings and get to contribute.

Also this past week at Cru at USF, I got to talk about Storing Up Treasures in Heaven from Matthew 6:19-24. I was not sure how it was going to turn out, but it turned out well as God's word was preached and I got to be his vessel.

Getting Closer

The Countdown to Baby Grant continues. We have started going to the doctor like every week. It is becoming more and more real to me as our stroller and some of our cloth diapers have come in the mail yesterday. To my wife, I think it became real when she had morning sickness a back at the first month. That is how men and women are different, I guess. Here are some recent pictures of us, as you can see, we're getting closer and closer...

We are excited about visiting Orlando this weekend. We have not really gotten to see a lot of people from our church and other people in the city we know. If you are not going to see us this weekend do not worry because we can only see so many people and we will probably be coming back to do our baby dedication and speak at some churches so let us know you really miss us with a comment and maybe we can see you sometime. (That last paragraph makes us sound like we are celebrities, its not true I promise)

Also another thing that you can be praying for everyone out there. Is that I spoke to the Inter Fraternal Council at USF last Wednesday and got a few fraternities interested in what we are doing there and how we can help them accomplish their goals. I have followed up with an email and I got no responses. The Lord answered my prayer with the president of IFC, Matt, letting me speak out of at the meeting Please pray as I continue to follow up with all my contacts that they would be interested and for the few that may not that they would tell me straight up. I will be following up with them on Monday.

Life as we know it

So its the middle of September. I am discouraged in a lot of ways that I do not want to list out. Well, some of the reasons I have not really pinpointed yet. I do not want to list them out mainly because it makes me more discouraged and I do not like to be negative, but the problem with that is that sometimes I come off being a little bit in denial. You know what I am saying all you optimistic people out there. Sometimes we can be a bit fake. There I said it! I actually hate being fake, but I my realism and my optimism sometimes battle for my behavior and my realism seasoned with shades of optimism usually wins. I feel that lately I have been trying to be optimistic lately and stuck my realism in the backseat, which means also my transparency. So at least, I just want to be open and honest on our blog. It gives me an outlet.

In ministry, I feel like one must act like he has it altogether (although folks I would not try this at home). Sometimes it just happens whether you try to do it or not. Your ministry becomes more like a stock market investment. You want to always make sure the shareholders are always happy so they keep investing. One can never run his or her ministry like a business, but its a temptation sometimes.

Having said all that I want profess that the Lord owns everything including our hearts. The Lord has provided for us to this step even when stuff goes wrong. The Lord has put a roof over our heads. He has given us good health. He has given me at doing language learning even if I am not as good as Jonathan Prudhomme :) We want to hold fast to Isaiah 41:8-10 and apply it to what God is doing in our family.

In other news, continue to pray for my time at USF. In the area of getting involved in the fraternity system and starting a Bible study, I need the Lord's help. I have one person I have met with face to face named Adam that seems interested and then a few friend of a friend people that I have yet to get in contact with. Amanda and I are extremely grateful for John, Kerri, and Ross who are on staff and been a great encouragement.

I will leave you with the comparison the maps of UCF and USF campus. The universities are the same size but USF is so much more spread out. At UCF, you just park and walk where you need to go, but at USF that does not really work because it can take you like 30 minutes, which means extra confusion for Rodney in his parking adventures.

Back in Tampa

Here we are in Tampa once again. We left Italy from Naples back in on August 12th. Amanda and I were extremely thankful to have Peppe, one of the Italians involved with Agape Italia, take us to the airport at 4am since our flight was about an hour drive's away leaving at 6:45am! The whole travel process from Naples to Denver where we had the STINT briefing conference was 23 hours. (We will talk more about that conference in our newsletter in this month). Everything went smoothly for the most part until we got to our layover in Frankfurt, Germany where from there we would fly straight to Denver on a 10 hour flight. We had a few hours so we got coffee. We tried to our terminal but there was a large German policeman who put up police tape and told me I could not go to Terminal C. I preceded to ask in English if there was another way, in which he replied the same statement he made before. I guessed that he probably did not understand English and walked away. We ate lunch and the tape was not up when we came back, but we had to go through customs and everyone was at lunch at 12:30 so no one was at any of the Passport booths. To make a long story not as long we made it to the gate with like 5 minutes to spare from when our plane was going to take off. To make matters worse on the flight my personal LCD monitor was not working. Thank goodness Amanda is good at sharing :)

We arrived in Tampa on Wednesday the 19th of August. From that time through the weekend we had a lot of family commitments including one of Amanda's baby showers. Monday was the first day that we had some time to finally catch our breath and figure out our plan for the few months we are here in Tampa. Basically what we will be doing is as follows(in this order):

1. First and foremost, have a baby. I am trying to serve Amanda the best way I can during this period.

2. Raise extra monthly support. We have lost a few hundred dollars of monthly support and plan to loose a few more because of the economy and we have to raise about $800 more of monthly support. (I have updated our thermometer on the right side of the page with the latest numbers).

3. Do language learning. I am going to try about 10-15 hours a week to learn Italian. I meet on skype with Andrea for 6 hours a week. Amanda is going to build off what she has already learned in class.

4. We will be helping out with the ministry at the University of South Florida which is about 10 minutes from where we are staying in Tampa. We found out that two of their staff left last year after we decided to pursue the endeavor, so we were an answer to prayer for them in some ways. I think it will be good for me to continue in ministry and sit under another healthy ministry before we go back.

Please continue to pray for us because just as we were getting used to Salerno, we are back in Tampa. We understand the Lord is this is more of the process that the Lord wants us to go through in order to prepare our hearts for ministry in Salerno.