Church Camp

LiFT 20008
Central Baptist Church
LeTournea Univeristy
Longview, TX

So Sr. High Camp was pretty awesome. We took a group of 46 students plus 7 adults. God was definately at work in our lives. Our kids just grew closer together as a youth group and more importantly they grew closer to God. We had 7 students accept Jesus as their Savior, several students rededicated their lives, and a few surrendered to full-time ministry.
There was very little drama .....matter of fact....I can't even think of any at all. It was just a great week at camp with a great group of teenagers.

Our guys being manly I guess.

Our girls being as beautiful as ever. Notice the shirts....yea I know they are cute aren't they. Yea....that was a little more work than I anticipated. We had 30 girls going and I thought it would be fun to hand make shirts for camp. You can't tell from the picture, but they have letters ironed on the front and back. They loved them and it was totally worth it, plus we had fun making them. These are our girls and they are precious!

Autumn...Me

This is during God and I time...a devotional time for the kids.

I just loved seeing our kids come together and praying together.

Pictures with Monkey

For mother's day my mother in law gave me this adorable little monkey picture frame. In case you didn't know....I love monkeys and have done Wyatt room in Safari...mainly monkey's though. Wyatt has become attached to his stuffed monkey whom he calls "key". He also is very attached to a stuffed bear he simply calls "bear".

Spaghetti Anyone?

This was from Sunday's lunch, we are trying to let Wyatt learn to feed himself. Too often I end up feeding him myself so I don't have to clean up the mess. So here is what happens when I let him do it, but he's gotta learn right? Any suggestions or this the only way??

Craziness!?!?

Well...the last two months seems to have just flown by. Things have just been crazy busy. I think things are finally starting to slow down a bit now that all our camps are over. So I am a little behind on my posts. I know...I need to get in gear huh! Well I am gonna try to do a little catch up.

Year Five.

Russell and I have recently celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. It has been five amazing years. Here is something I gave Russell for our anniversary this year....I thought I would share it for you to read as well. It is just a little jog down memory lane of our marriage.

Five Years of Marriage
1st year: So young, so fresh. Love. First place together, apartment 107 B. College. Work@Mardels. Work @ the bank. Learning to cook. Shooting your bow off our apartment patio. Spontaneous trips. Sweet memories.

2nd year: First ministry job. Life in the church parsonage. College still. Long drives to Springfield everyday. First dog—sweet Boo. Love. Playing ball in the yard beside the parsonage. Lake of the Ozarks. Life lessons.

3rd Year: Hurts. Clinging to each other in midst of trials. Growth. Love. Support of family. Finding our we’re pregnant…(how did that happen?) Learning to trust God completely. Seeing God’s plan is better than our own. Learning what love is.

4th Year: New Job. New Town. New Church. New friends. Purchased our first home. Healing. Love. Birth of our first son. Falling in love on a whole new level through becoming parents.

5th Year: Ministry growth. Investing our lives in our students. Developing deeper relationships with students. Going fishing. "You’re gonna miss this.” Love. Wrestling with Wyatt. Love. Seeing life in a whole new way...through the eyes of a child.

Jr. High Church Camp

We spent this last week in Chester, TX (close to Lufkin, TX) at Camp Takula. We only take our students that are going into 7th and 8th grades to this camp. We took 15 students and could not have asked for a better group. Lots of laughing, lots of pranks, lots of water games, lots of scripture memorizing, lots of worshiping, and lots of preaching, and lots of prayer. I think that pretty much sums up the week.
One thing I love about camp is just getting to know each one of the kids on a personal level. I have really enjoyed this group of kids...they are precious!

CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH
JR. HIGH
CAMP TAKULA 2008

Here are a few pictures of our week!
Russell and a couple of our boys.


A few of our girls waiting in line for dinner.


Yea. We were the leaders of the red team....and Russell was pretty into it.

I love this game.

Russell and Justus. On Tuesday Justus was saved. Yeah!

Me and one of my girls.


I just love this kid!! I didn't know him at all before camp....he is so sweet.


Ha.Ha. We finally got him. He was pranking on us all week. Revenge is sweet!

We had lots of fun this week, but the week is not about all the fun we had. This week would be pointless if these kids were not being challenged from God's word. We had a great speaker this year, Sean Sears. It is simply about these students getting away from everyday life for a week and focusing on their relationship with God.

It been a while!

It has been a while since I have made any posts, but things have just been pretty crazy. It is summer and of course that just means busy times for youth ministry. It is camp season and we have been very busy trying to get all these kids to camp. Many kids are not able to pay for their camp and we try our best to find a way for every student to go that wants to. So we have been doing a lot of yard work, painting, and cleaning. It is a lot of work....but is totally worth it for those students to get to go to camp. We just returned from Jr. High camp this last week and will post more about that later with some pictures.
Wyatt spent the week with the Grandparents in Oklahoma. He spent the weekend with my dad and the week with Russell's parents and all of his cousins.
After we dropped Wyatt off last weekend Russell and I had some alone time which was great, we even got to go fishing together. I have gone before, but have always had Wyatt, so this time I actually got to fish. We only caught a couple of fish, but had a great time. It is just good to have some alone time sometimes.