Life in 2009

We are at 75% of our goal!  The only way it happened was God because we literally picked up 10% in 10 days.  This shows God is in charge of support not us.  There are many people who came to us in the last 10 days to be on our support team which is very unusual but refreshing none the less.  I would really like to thank everyone who is currently committed and giving and not giving up on us.  It would be hard for me to start my monthly gift if the people I was supporting were not on the campus they said they were going to be on.  We could not do what we are doing now and putting so much time into support raising if it were not for the people that have started giving.  Our ministry has in a way started now and I very much feel a part that is true.

In general, Amanda and I have been doing well.  We have our ups and downs but in general we are doing well.  Yesterday we talked with Jutty and Abbey, our team leaders in Italy, and we realized how much they need us over there in order to reach the goals and aspirations that we have set for Agape Italia.  They helped us remember that this process is part of our sanctification and that we should not look at it as we cannot wait to get out of this season, but this is part of the process that is preparing us to do ministry in Italy.  Also with their small children, the adjustment has been hard in a lot of ways and so they are extremely encouraged with us heading over there to be a part of things.  It was extremely encouraging because so many times we feel so replaceable, because we feel so weak because we do not have other purposes than to just raise support.  We cannot hold jobs nor have consistent ministry in one place because we travel so much between Tampa and Orlando.  

We are starting to think about logistical stuff such as bank accounts, plane travel, Vonage phones, etc.  When I say we, I mean mostly Amanda.  She loves to look up this kind of stuff and plan and find the best deals.  I love my wife!  We actually have a reason to start doing things and thinking about things because we are so much closer.  This is the update for now, I feel good no tangents this time!

Wisdom.......in your teeth?

Greetings to everyone who reads these collection of thoughts, gripes, or tangents. We are doing well, considering the crazy idea that we got on this past Tuesday after going to the dentist. We decided to pull all FOUR of Amanda's wisdom teeth on Thursday. We decided since we were getting back in the swing of things and stuff was still kind of slow since people are trying to catch up from their holiday activities. It was fun in one sense because I got to share my crazy wisdom teeth stories from when I was a junior in high school, about the nurse joking that she was going to steal my watch and shoes when I was under the laughing gas and I said, "Sure, that's fine" and laughed as the doctor said, "Turn down his gas dosage what are you going to do kill him?" Also two days later after getting them pulled I went on first date with my best-friends-girl-friends-friend to a comedy movie. Dont ever do that it was a bad idea since you havent brushed your teeth in a few days and laughing rips out stitches :) What was great is as I met with people and talked to people at church I heard stories of waking up with the teeth puller wrench in their mouth. One guy had so much laughing gas and only had local anastesia(area numbed around mouth but not put to sleep) that he actually liked getting his teeth pulled and told the doctors he wanted to do it again. A mother who made two of her children out at the same time so she did not have to go through it again, that must have been crazy. There are other ones I do not remember and I need to stop rambling.
Amanda is recovering nicely....her jaw hurts from time to time but she is able to move around and she does not have swelling any longer. Her right side is worse than her left, so she could still develop there but she should be okay. Continue to pray for her recovery.
Lastly, I want to leave everyone with a thought. I am reading through the Bible in a year and over the last few days I have been reading about Jacob and Esau. Jacob was said to have his older brother serve him before they were born. Still through God's sovereignty he still received the blessing from his father, Isaac, after deceiving Esau and Isaac. I have a problem with it, because I have this thing that everything should be fair and if I put in 50 hours a week in support raising related activities that I should be blessed financially congruently. Support Raising just does not work that way and I have to remember just if I do not deem something as fair that it still might be in our Awesome God's sovereign plan.
I also found it interesting that he got deceived by Laban his uncle later when he wanted to marry Rachel. I think it is interesting in the Bible when certain characters get grace at certain times and when some get consequences. I always try to map in out with no avail in my head, because there is no pattern. What I do recognize is that God answers prayer and somehow mysteriously it changes outcomes and hearts, what I do not know is how it happens. Just a few thoughts into how I am processing things during one of the most difficult seasons of my life.

Its a New Year!!!

2009....More importantly today is the first Monday in 2009. This way you can see if all the things you want to do in the new year really get off to a new start. It is good to be back in Orlando. I know all our family is in Tampa, but not to hurt any of their feelings, we just feel like Orlando is our home. It is kind of weird since both of us spent the majority of our lives in Tampa. Maybe its the Uptown Altamonte that we have gotten so used to walking around in the morning and night. Maybe its OGC our awesome church that we have attended for the last 3 years. Or it could be that we live about 5 minutes from the dollar movie theater. Whatever it is we love Orlando. I do not really know why I went off about Orlando, since we will be moving to another country in a few months.
The Christmas break we had of about two weeks was good for us. At first, I thought it was going to be crazy because the 19th-25th when we were in Tampa, there was never a dull moment even though we really had nothing planned at the beginning of the week. It was good to see my grandmother get out of the hospital okay on the 22nd. I thought it was going to be twice in a row with my mom getting out of the hospital on Christmas Eve last year.
All the Christmases we celebrated which each of our families went well and we got lots of gifts! The favorite thing I got was a toss up between Bluegrass worship music from Amanda (yes I like bluegrass and not country, it just puts me in a good mood always ;) and James Bond monopoly from Amanda's mom, Terri. I am not sure what Amanda's favorite gift was but it was probably her watch.
We left for Illinois on Christmas day out of Orlando so we had to drive there in the morning. It was not too bad, we saved a lot of money doing it. Illinois was so cold. There was ice on the ground for two days but it never snowed:( I got to know Amanda's grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousins better. It was good for us to take a break for those two weeks including the week we were in Illinois. I did not realize how much we needed it until January 2nd or 3rd. It is a new year and I am trying to think about support in a new way with God's help as we are now back, ready to go, trying to figure a lot of stuff out for the rest of winter and Spring like where a few hundred more contacts are going to come from. Continue to pray for us we need it!

The Eve of Christmas Eve

It has been a long time since we have shared what we have been up to.  We got some

 appointments in

 Tampa after Thanksgiving.  It was good to get to see a few people after Thanksgiving before stuff gets really crazy in mid-December.  We tried to take some potential Christmas card pics.  They did not really turn out and the one we kept is the last one from Miami, but we did get some great modeling pics:)

We went back to Orlando for some Christmas

 parties.  We were going to miss a lot of parties since we were planning on going to 

Miami for a week to meet with some people down there.  It is  good to see people and meet with people in a non-support raising setting.  When you are support raising, many times you can feel like you are on an island where that is all you do and all you know.  While we were in Orlando, we met with some referrals and some other people we had been trying to get in touch with for a while.  Sometimes I feel like when we are not going to be in a city for a short amount of time, it ends up working out better for us to meet with people.  I thought it would work the other way, but it usually does not.

We traveled back to Tampa on Wednesday because we had a small group we were speaking at that night.  It was a good to sit in on the small group and be reminded about what transparent Christianity looks like.  We are all over the place sometimes we do not get to see our own small group for months at a time. We also gathered some things that we had left in Tampa.

The next day we left for Miami.  We knew a few people down there so it turned out being pretty good with us getting 7 appointments in a week.  

We had a few funny stories while we were down there.  The first of which we sent some of our Christmas photos to the CVS for previewing.  The problem was we sent them to the wrong CVS and wrote the store number down wrong.  We  eventually found the CVS, but just to show you there are 4 in 3 miles on U.S. 1.

One of our appointments there was a knitting club that was that was having there Secret Santa party known as The Sweet Stitchin' Betties.  If you do not believe me go to their blog.

It was good to get some time in a place where we were the only people currently living there.  Thanks Jason and Judith Ann Stubblefield!  We were able to stay in their place while they went home to visit family.

The trip was hard only in the fact that we did not know where we were going, there was sporadic traffic, and Miami is an advanced driving city unlike Tampa and Orlando which is only intermediate.  A lot of old high school driving habits started surfacing again :)  All in all we enjoyed our time to Miami and we have a lot more contacts when we make our trip to go down to get our Visa hopefully in a few months!

We are currently in Tampa and fly out to Illinois on Christmas Day to visit some of Amanda's extended family and then fly back New Year's Day to Orlando, where hopefully our traveling will settle down a bit.  Flying on holidays cuts your flight cost in half which we are totally all about!

Thanksgiving Debrief

We have had the craziest two days! We had one Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, Ben, and my grandparents at their place at 1pm. We had a good time, but were sad my uncle could not make it as he had the flu. Before I go on, I want to stop here because I have a tangent to go off on. Thanksgiving is not a Jesus Christ holiday like Christmas is. I think in a lot of ways Thanksgiving is just important in some valuable principles. It helps prepare our hearts to be thankful before the holiday season even begins. I know a lot of people think Thanksgiving is just an excuse to watch football during the week or make a big meal or a "Turkey Day", but I want to make sure I am grateful before I eat it. There are so many people especially in the U.S. especially this year who do not have much. I do not want to take it for granted what I have and I pray for them to hold on and thank God for simpler things so He can get them through.

After our first Thanksgiving, we had a second at Amanda's mom's at 6pm. It was a good amount of time for my food to digest from the first. The food was also very good and I really think I gained about 5 pounds in one day (the scale said I did, I was not exaggerating). After dinner, we went through our ads and planned our black Friday agenda.

Friday morning we awoke at 3:55 am. Yes, 3 and 4 am are sleeping hours and we awake during them. We headed to JC Penney and then Wal-Mart at 5am. This was our first mistake because it was absolutely insane for electronics. I dropped off the girls, Amanda, her mom, and her sister, Liz and proceeded to find a parking spot. About twenty minutes later gave up and waited for them. I found out Liz yelled at a lady for pushing my wife about ten feet with the front of a shopping cart. We vowed never to go to Wal-Mart again when it opened. We also heard about a man who was trampled to death in New York. Next we went to Office Depot where a lady yanked a wireless printer, Amanda's mom's present, out of my wife's hand. We ended up finding some more so it was not such a big deal, it was just the principle of the thing. We were out till about 1230 pm as Amanda's mom had a lot of shopping to do. We got all of our shopping done for our family done in one day with sweet deals!

A lot of guys out there are like what the heck are you doing? Shopping for that long? Well, yes, Amanda has a good time and I do too as long as we keep moving. I make the whole operation run smooth, the chauffeur if you will ;)

The end of the day was us getting a Christmas tree, setting it up at Amanda's dad's house where we stay when we are in Tampa, and decorating it. The end of the end of the day was Rodney, asleep, face down on the ottoman. :)

Where have we been for 2 weeks?

Greetings! I said we have to do this more and then did not post for over 2 weeks. Pretty ironic I think. We have been busy always trying to stay flexible. We are the traveling roadshow. Traveling between Tampa and Orlando trying to always meet with people. We are thinking as we meet with people either the holidays will be fruitful because people get more generous around the holidays or people will be extremely busy and have many holiday gifts to buy.

One of my favorite things that we have done in the last two weeks is that we attended Flavor Fest 2008 on the night of November 7th at Crossover Community Church in Tampa Florida. I have been growing up going to Christian rap shows there for years. It was really fun for me, but it was also the first time that Amanda had ever attended. She was a good sport and stood with me for about three hours as we walked around from stage to stage and hanging out with a guy I worked with at Pershing last year, Brian or Alpha Simplicity.

We got to talk to Jutty on the 14th. It was a much anticipated call that had a lot of business in the hour we talked. We did get to hear about the focus on the 25 Italians that have shown interest in the ministry instead of meeting new ones. I think this is extremely important if we want to have Italians taking ownership of the ministry within the next year or two. We are excited to keep in touch with them every 1-2 weeks to keep a fresh vision. I think it is easy for us to get lost in what the vision is for Italy with not being there. It is also easy to blame the people over there for not contacting us as much as I would have them do so. We have to remember that they are running the ministry and now with Vonage phones we can call, too!

This past weekend we got to visit Glenwood Presbyterian in DeLand on November 23rd. We spoke at few Sunday school classes. It was good because some stuff in Saint Augustine and Jacksonville did not work out. It was good to share our vision with some people either of us had not known in our pasts.

We are excited about Thanksgiving tomorrow!!!

We Need to Do This More

We are in Tampa for the weekend and then coming back to Orlando for Tuesday and Wednesday because of Amanda's work and then back to Tampa on Thursday for a dessert that some people from Amanda's old church are throwing for her. Then, we have no clue I guess if there are people in Tampa that still want to meet with us and then we will stay here or if there are people in Orlando we will go back for that next week, it is kind of up in the air. We are going to be in Saint Augustine the weekend of the 22nd because Clay Nettles mom, Diane is throwing a dinner for us. We might go to Jacksonville the week prior or after the 22nd because there are some people there we want to meet with there. So we are basically nomads with no home and no consistent plans.

God keeps placing encouraging appointments right where we need them. It really has revealed to us more of His character. It does not mean that we still have gotten frustrated in the last few weeks, but our trip to Tampa has been a lot more encouraging that the first time we went. We are thankful for everyone's prayers!!


We are staying as busy as we can during the day, but sometimes it is tough as stuff slows down some days. We have learned to play about an hour of board games a few days during the week. Among our favorites is Mancala. It is game that you really have to think at and Amanda and I are pretty even at it. As much as I want to do support related stuff all the time because I do not want to regret that I could have done more, i need to have time with the Lord, play games, and exercise to be healthy. Just ask Amanda I can get pretty intense about support raising. As silly as it sounds, Mancala can help balance me out sometimes.