Sunrise to Sunset

There was like 3 posts in like 3 days and I have not really felt inspired as of late.  We had so many group appointments about two weekends ago we wore ourselves out.  We had 4 appointments in 3 days.  It was good to get to meet close to 50 new people and share about our ministry.  One of the nights after sharing, we went out swing dancing on UCF's campus.  I wish I could post some pictures but we forgot the camera probably because it was spur of the moment.  

The Monday after that weekend, the 9th, we had planned

to have a beach day and a celebrate Valentine's Day dinner.  Amanda wanted to wake up for the sunrise and I agreed because we do not always have the opportunity to do stuff like that even though I am more of a sunset kind of guy myself.  I felt sick when I woke

 up, but thought that it was just because I did not get enough sleep, I get sick to my stomach when that happens sometimes.  Little did I know it was the start of the plague.  I ended up throwing up on myself at the beach as I was trying to move the car.  I really did not know it was coming, it was kind of like a sneeze, and spending a lot of time in the beach bathroom.  I did get to see the sunrise in all its glory and spend sometime sleeping off my sickness on the beach. All in all that day I slept close to 7 hours from my original waking time and we had to cut our beach time short.

Amanda got sick the next day when I was feeling better and she recovered on about Thursday.  In the middle of the week we had 

a few appointments to share about our ministry cancel on us for various reasons, which was discouraging because it happened like 3 nights in a row, but it was okay because Amanda was sick anyway and it probably would not have gone well.  

Friday the 13th, we decided to reschedule our Valentine's dinner.  It was awesome to get to connect with the woman of my dreams and get to go on a special date with her watching the sunset and going off to dinner both on Clearwater Beach after we had transitioned to Tampa from Orlando on Thursday for a few weeks.  We felt like we were missing each other on a few different levels so it was really good to get to pursue her heart and her acknowledge mine.

Thanks for your prayers everyone, we have been meeting new people to share about our ministry and continue to pray for our time in Tampa.  Pray that people we are meeting with would make time in their busy schedule to hear about how God is moving in Salerno, Italy and how the we plan to share the gospel of Jesus Christ allowing it to take root in Italians' lives.

Bible in a Year=God's sovereignty

First let me say please read previous blog because we have done two in two days and my wife did the previous one and she is trying to do more so I do not want to knock her post down a notch with this one today.

You guys must be like whoa what the heck happened, 3 posts in a few days, but I felt inspired so I thought I would go for it.  I am not a native blogger, so when I feel like it I need to go for it because who knows when it will happen again.  

I am reading the Bible in a year.  The book I am reading is online called The One Year Bible.  You can click on previous link to read what I am talking about for February 2nd.  Do check it out one the actual website because you can start now too and just finish next February 2nd.  

The Old Testament reading for yesterday was about Moses escaping with the people to Israel and God parting the Red Sea and all of Pharaoh's men getting drowned when the waters fell on them.  I know that this story is always used to share about what is going on in their lives and how the Lord is using them or taking them through the wilderness, so I am weary about using it here, but it does match especially since (I looked ahead in the Bible in a year) and Joshua starts in April.  We hope to leave for Italy in May so it might fit for future bloggings.  Anyway, we feel in a lot of ways God has kind of led us out of Egypt which was our old way of life, working in our jobs and living in our apartment, thinking we would be done with support raising in January.  We are now in this February season at around 75% of our support, 

and not knowing where the rest is going to come, feel like we are in the wilderness explained in today's reading. I have compared and contrasted some points.

It took the people of Israel 3 days and it probably took us 3 months to start feeling hopeless, but eventually it will take us right around a year to be in our "support wilderness" but it took them 40 years :)  

The Lord gave them Manna everyday and I feel like in this season we get manna by taking everyday at a time.  

The Lord currently is preparing us for ministry and those 40 years prepared the Israelites for the promise land because they were not ready.

The people of Israel really felt like they were going nowhere and some days we feel exactly like that complaining and grumbling.  

In leading Amanda and I, I feel like Mr. Inadequacy himself, Moses, but I know he has called me to be a Joshua and enter the promise land eventually!

Pic on right is people gathering Manna.

On a lighter note, I went to my first Orlando Magic game of this great season that they are having and last game for a long time this past Thursday.  We are probably start doing "last times for a long time" for a lot of things that we enjoy doing that we cant do in Italy as it gets closer to us leaving.  I have been a huge fan for a while and found a good deal on a great game against LeBron James and the Cavs and the Magic pulled it out in the end!

Fun around town

I just wanted to post a few pictures of some of the fun things that we've been going recently.  This season of support raising has allowed more free time than we've had in awhile so we're trying to take advantage of the time when we have it.  We know that it's only a matter of time before things get crazy again.  

We went out to a 

local piano bar

 with some friends from church.  Here's a picture of us with Ryan and Sherry (they are the couple that we live with when we're in Orlando).  

We realized the other day that we didn't have any

 pictures of the four of us, so now we have at least one!

Rodney also took me out on a fun afternoon date.  We starting by having a little picnic at a park that I like.  The park has a big open field, but it also has this pretty fountain.  

After the park, we went to the humane society to play with some cats.  One of the hard parts of our support raising has been that we gave up our cat.  Jeremiah now lives with my sister.  He seems to actually like her more than us, but we still miss him :(  The first picture is Jeremiah, he's "studying" with my sister as you can see.  The next picture is the gigantic cat at the humane society who wanted me to pet his belly forever.

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!