Some pictures from the last couple of weeks

This boot is actually a cake that Carolyn made for one of our good friend's, Courtney Ficken, for her surprise 30th birthday! Amazing!It's spring, so I raked some pinestraw for our flower beds. Our neighbor has a stand of pines that is pretty clean underneath, so I got it done pretty quickly. While Carolyn spread it, I did some weed-eating...which is how I avoided the poison ivy (yikes!). Carolyn is very allergic to poison ivy. It's all over her arms. This is the 'best' shot of her left elbow...
Living in the country, we get several 'pet drops' a year. People don't want their dogs and cats and just drop them off by the side of the road. On the way back from raking the straw, I spied these two hound pups running and playing in the middle of the road. We're currently trying to give them to a couple of Wesley staffers but in the mean time, the girls are loving them. Hannah carries them around with little grunts..."huh...huh..." SO ADORABLE!!
And Emmaleigh...the first thing she asks in the morning is, "can I go play with the doggies?" and she has to tell them "good night" before she goes to bed. Really need to get rid of these dogs!
A few Easter pictures...

And a couple of 'waking up' pictures.
Carolyn came in one morning and Hannah was very naked and very pleased with herself. She was laughing and jabbering and exploring her diaper!
And a proud Emmaleigh a few days later...she made her bed all by herself for the first time.

Leadership Interview Day

After months of planning and a few weeks of busy-work, our Leadership Interview Palooza was a HUGE success. 330 of our 370 Leadership students were interviewed in 8 hours. In years past, we've spread the interviews out over the month of April and its been all-consuming and overwhelming for our staff. So, we exchanged a hard month for a hard day--a good investment.
This is Bill and Michelle (two of our staff) who were integral in planning and executing the day. The papers in front of them are the stacks and stacks of applications, covenants, interview and evaluation sheets.

We had 20 stations set up for interviews, which were 20 minutes each.
Our main chapel was set up with a big obstacle course, games and snacks for fellowship. This pic was taken at before things kicked off (the room was more full during the day!).This will mean more to some of you than others, but I (for one) am EXTREMELY glad that the interviews were more timely...and are finished! It's been a really intense few weeks.

JESUS IS 'DA WINNA' MON!!

So, we flew into Kingston Saturday afternoon and took a two hour bus ride into the mountains toward Mandeville. The YWAM base was actually about half an hour outside of Mandeville--deep in the country on the top of a mountain. From the sign, the base was about half a mile around the mountain. It was, as predicted, warm during the days and cold at night (43degrees without heat). It was a really wonderful place, though, and the staff there were extremely good hosts. Mrs. Simmons (below) was our host the whole time and went with us around the area when we went out.

The sunrises were beautiful and from the highest point on the base you could see the coast several miles away.Parts of the base were still showing evidence of Hurricane Ivan five years ago. The roof of the chapel (top right building with the sun peeking out) hit the building in the foreground, which is the cafeteria and storage rooms, and slammed into the great house (just behind me when I took the picture) taking out a whole room and part of the roof. The far building is the dormitories.Another shot of the dorms...The staff team that helped lead the team was (from left to right) William Draper, Brantley Murray, Caren Dilts, myself, and Jason Dixon.

This is a picture that Rebecca took of me talking with some of the missionaries there. Dave and Deb were the couple that hosted us when we came in December.At one point the team took a picture inside the chapel on the base. We did all of our evening intercession sets in the chapel, and I was really encouraged by the excitement of the freshmen in prayer and worship and the depth of their maturity as they served.

Our days started at 6:30 with breakfast and we left the base to do devotions in three of the area schools about 7:45--music, storybooks, skits, and a short teaching. After devotions, we worked for three days on three different projects. We did some scraping and painting on the base (I scraped paint all day the first day); we poured a floor for an orphanage; we poured concrete for an outdoor area for a church (my second two days). The first picture is the line of gravel and sand that we toted by bucket-brigade from 50ft. up the hill toward the right. They mix the concrete by pouring the bags over the gravel/sand mixture and then mixing it with shovels and bucketed water. This is a picture of some of the guys mixing up the concrete. Once it was mixed, you filled up the buckets and then toted it around to pour it out where they were laying it out. REALLY hard work, but I was told that it would've taken the church over a year to do the work that our team was able to do in three days (because of material/labor cost and the number of people we were able to devote to the project). It was a great trip...It gets more and more difficult to leave the family, and I'm getting a little nervous about the two weeks in Zambia. The girls were really sick the first couple of days, so it was a bit hard being so far away when a lonely and exhausted Carolyn was trying to keep up with them. Mid-week was much better, though, when the girls started feeling better and the rest of the trip for me was really good. The big goals of the trip--community building with the freshmen, meeting some tangible needs for the community, and introducing first year students to missions--were more than met!

a pic of a plane for my Lou

Had a chance for a few minutes online. A picture of a plane as promised, Em (more to come):

We had a safe trip down and a good reunion with Dave and Debbie (they appreciate the licorice, Carolyn!). I'll post plenty more pics when I get back. We're really excited about the trip and still would love your prayers as our freshmen are going to be really stretched in how they view their lives in the world as a Jesus-follower.

Jamaica bound

Our team will be leaving for Jamaica later tonight. 37 freshmen and a five staffers. We'll be in the school doing devotions and VBS-ish things in the morning and late afternoon and then several work projects during the day. We'll be back next Saturday and I'll have some spectacular pictures (I hope) to share. I'd appreciate your prayers for kingdom-advancing work, safety, protection and provision. This is the first over-seas missions experience for many of the students and we hope that it shifts their trajectory in life even more toward the Lord and his good dreams for them.

A few pictures from "The Great Snow of 2009"...

DAY 1: Emmaleigh ate snow and Hannah cried.



The "snow bunny" in our backyard. This was just before Hannah's gloves got wet and immediately froze to her hands resulting in an immediate retreat indoors.
DAY 2:

We went to Jon's (brother in law) dairy for some sledding hills. Em and Carolyn:

Hannah, who loves to try anything, would've been on the sled (aka, hamper lid) all day. Em, on the other hand, took a great deal of convincing to try the tube, or anything else.

Eventually the cold won, and we took it back to the house. We have almost as many pictures of these two days as we have from the two months previous! The vast majority have one of more of the girls in some state of crying. Neither of them really like to be cold...In other news, just before we got 4 inches of rain followed by several inches of snow, we framed the floor to the living room. Impeccable timing. The rain and runoff slid off the subfloor into one of the unfinished spots and collected between the new and old block foundations. Jon saved me with a sunk pump at a pivotal time. And its all dry this morning! Praise the Lord!

So, a few pictures of the girls:
In the box that Carolyn's birthday gift came in. The packing peanuts were all over the house for a morning before we packed it up and put it on the front porch!

While working on the living room (pictures to come) the dining room was a storage room. The girls table from their room was reappropriated to breakfast duty. Here're the girls eating some waffles and strawberries.In the driveway with Hannah's Christmas car; they love pushing each other around in it.
And finally...Em outside pointing to the stars. She came inside and asked me to, "build me some stairs, Daddy, so we can go get a star. I can't reach them. Yeah, it would be so great."