A City Life For Me

Today is Liberty and Nehemiah’s second birthday.  Who would have thought that two years with twins could go so fast?  This day two years ago is easy to recall…when my water broke at 4 am and we headed to the hospital in anticipation.  As soon as I was admitted and prepped we headed to the OR and Liberty was born at 8:30 a.m.  Nehemiah was a little more comfortable inside, so it took him an additional 35 minutes to make his arrival! Both twins love to swing! Now that we’ve been through several stages with twins, I would say in a heartbeat that two newborns was a piece of cake!  Once they became mobile, life changed.  Did you know that it’s possible to lose two toddlers in 800 square feet?  It happens regularly!  The approach to age two has been more challenging, but more rewarding at the same time.  Strong wills and sinful attitudes are rampant, and harder to deal with when they come in doubles!  But watching them interact as a team, st...

…BOY!!! Only 16 weeks left to go.  Baby Boy is healthy, and breech!  Today is Liberty and Nehemiah’s 2nd birthday.  They loved their balloons, but they’re a little clueless about the reason they received them!  {Birthday celebration coming next week…Daddy is out of town today!} I had this idea to reveal the gender to the kids with balloons, and to take a picture in order to announce it to our friends at the same time.  However, I learned that balloons and kids don’t mix with un-blurry pictures!  We had fun!

Read… Part 1: ADefinition , Part 2: The Mission Agency , Part 3: The Phone Calls , and Part 4: Traveling and Presenting Our Ministry   One of the hardest parts of deputation for me is living in the van.   Everything we need has to fit in there (glad we have a big one!), and stay organized.   I would add that my preference is for it to stay clean as well, but traveling in the snowy months, having four little kids, and all of the stuff in the van makes it difficult to clean out often.   It was hard to decide what we would need for three months, and what we could do without.   These are a few things we did to make our life on the road a little easier.   I packed four play outfits for the kids, and two church outfits.   Some weeks this is too much clothing; other weeks it is not enough.   We have two kids who still wet the bed sometimes, and two toddlers who are messy eaters.   This often makes for a lot of laundry! ...

Read… Part 1: ADefinition , Part 2: The Mission Agency , and Part 3: The Phone Calls   When Ben is booking meetings, he tries to schedule churches in a reasonable proximity to each other to minimize travel.   At the beginning we stayed in New England so we could travel there on the weekends and Ben could still work his job during the week.   Since February we have been in the Midwest, west, and Great Lakes states.     When it comes to lodging, many churches have a “Prophet’s Chamber” or guest house/apartment in their church.   This is helpful to us with small children because it leaves us free to set our own schedule and routine.   Other times a family in the church hosts us for the night(s) and provides our meals and lodging.   We usually have very good times of fellowship with our host families, and it allows us to get to know the church people much better.   However, it does limit our options with schedule and meals which...

  Last week in between meetings, we took two days to "splurge" on a family "vacation."  We saw Mount Rushmore and knocked that off Ben's bucket list.  We also drove through the National Park and saw all kind of wildlife.  Elaine wanted to take a cave tour since we had just learned about them in school, so we went through Wind Cave National Park (the world's 6th longest cave!).  We also visited the Mammoth Site and let the kids see fossil excavation.        We were concerned that our day at Mount Rushmore would be too windy to be enjoyable, but it ended up being perfect!  We enjoyed hiking the Presidential Trail, though half of it was closed for construction.  (That's what we get for coming in the off-season - everything was under construction!)  However, the half that was open ended up being 850 steps round trip!  We made it though, and Nehemiah did every step himself! Liberty...got A LOT of help from ...

Last week we spent Resurrection Sunday in Williston, ND.  It is on the tail end of an oil boom, but the signs everywhere still said "Welcome to Boomtown USA."   Ben presented our ministry in the Sunday School hour.  We enjoyed fellowshipping with the church family throughout the rest of the day.    Elaine was excited to have made a special treat during Children's Church.  They rolled large marshmallows in a crescent roll and baked it.  When they bit into their dessert, they tasted the sweetness of the Resurrection, but the marshmallow was gone!  I have wanted to make Resurrection Cookies with the kids for a couple of years, but it requires making them on Saturday and eating them on Sunday.  I thought this was a creative illustration of the empty tomb that could be done in one sitting as a Children's Church object lesson!   The girls had matching dresses from Grandma, and the boys  looked as handsome as they do every we...

Read… Part 1: ADefinition and Part 2: The MissionAgency This is how we go about scheduling meetings…     We start with a list of churches.   We currently have over 700 possibilities in our database (not including the ones who have already told us “no”).   We began with churches that we know personally, or have a personal connection to.   Having graduated from Bible College, we know friends serving the Lord all over the world.   Next we take the list of churches (sorted by state) from our Mission Board and begin to sift through them.   This list gets outdated very quickly as churches grow, merge, change pastors, move locations, etc.   So we look up each church on the internet to verify the information.   If they don’t have a website, we usually eliminate the church.   From the website we look at the church, the Pastor, where the Pastor graduated from, what kind of programs the church has, read the doctrinal statement, ...

Read Part 1: A Definition here. Many missionaries choose to use a Mission Board or a Mission Agency to assist them with their pre-field and on-field ministry.   There are many independent Baptist mission boards.   Some missionaries are simply sent by their local church.   Many “home missionaries” (those who are staying in the US) do not use a mission agency.   We chose to use Baptist World Mission as our sending agency.   They currently serve about 170 families (or 320 adult missionaries) around the world.   They assist our sending church and help us make decisions regarding our deputation and field of service, with the approval and guidance of our pastor.     There are several reasons to utilize the aid of a mission board.     1.   They help with paperwork and finances.   Our mission board handles our finances and files our social security taxes.   We send an expense report and they help...

  I have been posting a lot about our deputation travels and progress.   It recently occurred to me that I probably have quite a few followers who don’t really know what I’m talking about.   So I wanted to write a good, detailed explanation.   It will probably take several posts to give you a realistic idea about what deputation involves.   Deputation: noun – a group of people appointed to undertake a mission or take part in a formal process on behalf of a larger group.   That’s the dictionary definition.   We are essentially being “deputized” by our mission board and churches around the country to represent them in a particular field of service.   This phase of deputation comes prior to field ministry, and could also be called “pre-field” ministry.   We are independent Baptists by denomination.   However, as independent Baptists we believe that each church is autonomous, {you know -  independ...

Some highlights from our trip (vacation from deputation) to South Dakota... Little Man kept busy in the car by sticking ladybugs all over his face... Nolan & Ben...my wild, wild west guys Liberty wasn't happy with all of the steps at Mount Rushmore.  She threw quite the fit. A real buffalo, up close and personal, in Wind Cave National Park This old caboose was near our hotel in Hot Springs, SD.  Totally made Nehemiah's day when we let them climb aboard! The "boxwork" is unique to the Wind Cave (world's 6th largest cave).  No stalactites and stalagmites, though! North Dakota (or South Dakota?)  It all looked the same.  Deserted and flat.  We ate lunch by the side of the road - no rest areas or bathrooms or gas stations for miles!