Christmas Time

I hope you had a great Christmas. We had a blast. Will and Luke were "doing" advent every night building anticipation towards the arrival of Baby Jesus and Santa. Two of their favorite people arriving on the same day. ROCK ON!
We baked cookies during the day on Christmas Eve and surprised some friends and neighbors with cookies and Christmas caroling later that evening. We even made all of the firemen at the firehouse come out and listen to Luke and Will's version of Jingle Bells. It was a lot of fun and a tradition we look forward to building on every year.
Gifts were simple this year and nobody cared. Will figures the reason Santa didn't need to bring him a Wii was because Grandpa and Grandma already had one that he could play with. What a cool kid.
We went to Iowa after Christmas and got to enjoy some snow and time with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandpa and grandma.

update - - We are hoping to find a place of our own very soon. Looking at a lot of homes as we decide between renting and buying. Yikes.

Fight to save marriage

There is such a call right now to "save marriage". Prop 8 in California was a fight to keep the definition of marriage as that between a husband and a wife. While I agree with that definition completely I think this "fight" is taking our eyes off where we should be focusing.

We are fighting to save the definition of marriage but we aren't fighting to save marriages. As we are so willing to take up the torch to fight against men marrying men and women marrying women, our marriages in our churches are failing more than they are succeeding. Some couples are just going through the motions of marriage while others are just giving up all together.

Maybe we should be focusing on providing society with a good model of what marriage is. If I was on the outside looking in right now why would I want to be married? Here we (Christians) are telling the world what marriage is supposed to be but we aren't living out what we are talking about.

It just isn't right. I think Satan is having a ball with this and laughing as the Christians end up looking like hypocrites again as we tell the world what marriage is supposed to be.

Ministry Pains

Sue and I made a decision to follow our passion and make a run at starting our own ministry. It has been a journey and a huge learning experience. It has taken way longer than we thought it would take and has been way harder than we thought it would be. Aren't there a lot of things in life that seem to go that way?

We just want to have an impact in people's lives and can't believe how much front end work there is to do. Meeting with pastors, meeting with other ministry leaders, talking with couples, putting together boards, sitting with accountants, going back and forth with attorneys, on and on.

Then just as we start a ministry that counts on people donating money, the economy crumbles and people tighten their purse-strings. It makes it all very interesting.

There are great things happening in the midst of all the questions and tough times though. We have one church that has invited us to come in and do a 6-week marriage focus in February. We have a retreat in the works. We'll be starting a pre-marriage group in January. We have another church hoping to do an extended focus on marriage. We have some great meetings scheduled in the next couple of months. So we are thankful as we move ahead.

Thanks for reading. We covet your prayers and ask for God's provision.