our trip to the west, part two: California!

After our visit in Las Vegas with Brent and Amy, we headed to California!  (In Brent and Amy's car--seriously, those guys blessed our socks off!)

Most of you probably know that we are planning to partner (in our future tribal ministry) with a family we met in training--their names are David and Emily.  They are such an awesome, fun, dedicated, hard-working and Jesus-loving couple!  We are thankful for them!  And they are getting ready to leave for Papua New Guinea very soon--less than a month now!  (Yep, they are heading over to PNG six months ahead of our family).

So anyway, Nathan and I wanted to visit them before they leave!  We really wanted to get to know some of their family, and see where they live, and go to their church, etc.  And we are so thankful that we were able to do that.  We loved our visit with them--and we never ran out of things to talk about, that's for sure!

David and Emily have told us all about In-N-Out, so that seemed like the perfect place to start our visit!  First we went to Emily's parents' house and had our reunion :) ...and then we headed to this place!

(David was super excited for us to try it!)

I love this little boy!  Calvin is a sweetie who is good friends with our kids.  When they lived next door to us in MO, the kids played together all the time.  We all miss him! 

They were some big burgers!  The verdict?  We loved it!!

We hung out at Emily's parents' house the rest of that day and that night.  And David's parents came for supper too, so that was so awesome that we could meet his parents too.

I loved catching up with this girl!  

Looks like they are discussing some important matters :)  I think David is waving a fork at Nathan--haha!

Some bonding time with sweet Louise--she is seriously so adorable:)  

The next morning, Dave and Em took us to get their favorite donuts (they had warned us to bring stretchy pants because of all the food they were going to feed us!!)  We got our donuts and then we drove 2.5 hours to their favorite beach called Avila Beach.  

We stopped at an awesome produce "stand" (really it was so much more than that!)  California has some great produce even though it's so dry out there!

We spent the day at the beach...it was so much fun!

(see the jellyfish-thing flying through the air at us?--haha!)

Loved being with this guy :)

On Sunday morning, we went to David and Emily's sending church.  It was really great to be there, and meet their pastor, and their friends--it is obvious that everyone there just loves David and Emily, and that everyone is so excited about missions.  What a blessing that we could go there and meet everyone!

And then we said goodbye.  Which was sad, but not unbearably sad because we will be seeing them in a few short months!  The next time we see them will be in Papua New Guinea.  And I know time will fly until then.

 Please pray for this sweet family.  They are going to be saying some very difficult goodbyes in the next few weeks, and then they will have a big transition as they move to PNG.  Please join us in praying for them!

After we said our goodbyes, we headed back to Las Vegas (because we needed to fly out from the Vegas airport early the next morning).  We got a killer deal on a hotel room, so we decided to do that.  It was a fun time for Nathan and me to hang out just the two of us!  Although Las Vegas wouldn't be my first choice on where to spend time!  (There are sooo many people.  When we were checking into our hotel, there were probably 300 other people/families checking in!  The line was snaked through the massive lobby!  It was crazy.)

We stayed at an Egyption themed hotel--it was so huge and so nice!

And we went over to New York-New York for supper.  Those hotels are just unreal!

Haha!  We ate at an authentic Italian restaurant, and we ordered a salad--and this is what they brought us!  I guess it must be really authentic!  But Nathan and I aren't very cultured, so this is how we looked when they brought it to us :)  I'm sure the waiter was impressed.

We had such a fun time out West!  But it was also really good to be home with our kids.  We missed them!

David and Emily, thank you so much for taking time out of your crazy schedule to show us around California!  We are so thankful we could visit you and see your lives in CA.  We love you and we will be praying!

our trip to the west, part one: Viva Las Vegas!

Okay, so normally a city like Las Vegas would not normally appeal to Nathan and me.  Like, never. There are so many people, and just so much blatant immorality!  And I'm a small town girl :) Big cities aren't my fave.  So...why did we go to Las Vegas?

We went to visit this couple!  My cousin Amy and her hubby Brent moved to Vegas one year ago.  God called them to work at a church that had been planted in Las Vegas, called Verve Church.  And let me tell you, it was so encouraging to visit them and to see how God is using them in this city!  (More on Verve at the end of this post).  Here are Brent and Amy:

 (Amy, I stole this picture from your fb page) :)

Brent and Amy were excellent tour guides.  They showed us around the city--they did a great job of showing us all the touristy areas, while being sure to avoid the super shady/scandalous areas :)  It was so much fun to hang out with them for the evening, and to see their house, their church and their town!

It was so great to be reunited with Amy!  I don't get to see her nearly enough :)

Amy showed us around some seriously beautiful areas while Brent was still at work.  Thanks for giving us a tour in the 110 degree heat, Amy!

That night the four of us went out, after Brent got off work.  We went out to eat, and we saw this sign.  Since Nathan and I have adopted the theme of "Making Jesus Famous in Papua New Guinea", we had to take a picture by this FAME sign :)

We love these guys!  What a great time :)

Okay, so Verve Church is truly an amazing ministry.  Basically, they are doing in Vegas what we will be doing in Papua New Guinea--reaching a different culture for Christ.  Because that is what Las Vegas is:  an entirely different culture that "normal" church might never reach.  So Verve Church is a Bible preaching church that just has a different target audience:  the people of Las Vegas!  And they are doing a great job of reaching the people.  It was so awesome to see the church (even though no one was there!), and to hear from Amy about how she is being used as the director of the kid/student ministry.  So cool.  And encouraging!  It was awesome to see how God is using both Brent and Amy for His glory in such a dark city!

photo credit:  https://cdfonline.org/cdf-guy/viva-la-verve

Brent and Amy, thank you so much for hosting us for a night!  And for everything else you did for us.  We are so glad we could come and visit you guys :)  

Part two will be next:  California!

sharing the vision!

A very major part of our summer is sharing with others about our vision, and about what God is doing among the unreached people in the world!  We absolutely LOVE this season.  There are many reasons we love it:

1. We get to talk about something we are very passionate about:  seeing the Word of God go to all people groups, and seeing the Great Commission being fulfilled!  We live in some very exciting times!
2. We get to hang out with lots of friends!  Many of whom we might not ever hang out with.  And it has been so. much. fun.  For us and for our kids :)
3. Our faith is growing daily!  It has been so amazing to see how God is using our brothers and sisters in Christ to send us to Papua New Guinea.  We have so many thoughtful and generous supporters--we have seriously been blown away.  
4. As our team of supporters grows, so does our excitement to GO and do what we are called to do!  It is SO MUCH better doing this with a team behind us, than it would be to do on our own.  We are all in this together, and that is such a beautiful thing.  And very comforting to us!

Here are some pictures of our vision sharing adventures :)

Mark and Barb.  Ohhh, Mark and Barb.  This couple is so amazing.  They host many of our meetings at their house, and they sit in on each and every meeting!  And they never seem to be bored!  Unless they are just really good at acting! ;)  They were also like my second set of parents when I was growing up, so it has been so much fun to hang out at their house again in this season of life.  Thank you, Mark and Barb.  We love you guys!!

Our rockstar parents are also so amazingly helpful!  When we have a presentation with young kids, either my parents or Nathan's parents always come and watch the kids while we talk to the parents.  It is such a huge help!

Many of our meetings took place in other towns.  We were so privileged to hang out with many families this month, and it has been such a blast.  My only regret is that I didn't get pictures at each place we went :(

We loved hanging out with Caleb and Laura and their adorable kiddos.  And Laura made us some amazing avocado enchiladas.  They were sooo good!

We went up to visit my cousin Amber and Ben and their kids.  Our kids were super excited about that!  They always play so well together:)

We went up to visit our church family in Detroit.  The body of believers there is always such an encouragement to us!  There is no way we could ever express our thanks to them, for all that they have done for our family.

So when we were in Detroit, we stayed the night at Jesse and Bonnie's house.  They were amazing hosts!

And we hung out the next evening at Scott and Jamie's house--that was really fun!  And it involved swimming, which our kids were very happy about :)

We went up to visit Jason and Joy and some other families...it was so good to be back at Gateway!  So many good memories.

And we went to West Lafayette to visit our cousins Corey and Erika.  That was a really fun day!  We spent some of the afternoon there, and the kids got out to play in the sprinkler system :)  And they played with a massive blow up yellow ball!  A kid can crawl inside it and the other kids roll them around the yard.  Lol!  They loved that!

Once again, another picture of Nathan being an amazing daddy :)  He is so fun!

We feel so incredibly blessed by our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Thank you, everyone!  And if you would like to hear about our vision and what we will be doing in Papua New Guinea,  just contact us and let us know.  We seriously LOVE sharing with people.  Blessings!

fun with our favorite four people :)

Our family has a very busy schedule this summer!  It is completely filled with so much fun stuff--great times with family and friends, fun family vacations, and VBS.  And lots of amazing evenings of sharing our vision with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ--sharing with them what we will be doing in Papua New Guinea, and inviting many to be a part of it!  It has been awesome!

Our kids are doing just great with everything that we have going on!  But some days, we just like to take time out to spend with our kids, just our family.  They are such fun people to hang out with :)

We live right across the street from the community pool, so we took them there one day.  That was quite a hit with them :)

(but first we rode our bikes to Bummies...our kids cannot grow up without experiencing Bummies!  However, we found out that they aren't big fans of it...crazy kids, they don't know what's good!)

They LOOOOVE this pool!

We also had a day of swimming at my parents' house.  Our kids always love being with their cousins :)  And we hope we will have more swimming days!  The weather hasn't been the most cooperative :)

waiting for my dad to let them in :)

Daisy loves her aunt Jill!

And we have good times in our backyard--the slip n slide is one of our kids' favorite things.  Especially when Nathan coats it with baby oil :)

Good times, sweet memories :)