Belize Mission 2008 (part 1)

The Belize Team landed in Raleigh around midnight last Saturday night. It's so good to be home but we miss the people in Belize still. God did some great things in Belize and he did a great work in each of our lives. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. I'll take the next few blogs to tell you about the trip and show you some pictures.

We had to stand outside the Belize airport after we landed while waiting on the vans. There was some cool shrubbery art around the entrances.

Every year we eat lunch at a good restaurant called Cheers on the way to Belmopan from the airport

T-shirts hung at Cheers donated from customers (a Belize Team from Providence has one up there from a few years ago)

This is our dorms at the Baptist Training Center in Belmopan where we stayed Saturday-Thursday.

After we dropped our luggage off at the BTC we went to Balaam Ha and swam in the river and ate at this restaurant.

We would jump off this ledge into the river. It was very refreshing after a long hot day.

Belize Mission 2008

Starting tomorrow morning Providence Student Ministries is taking a group of 12th graders to Belize for a week-long mission trip. I, along with the rest of the team have to be at the airport at 4:30am! Pray for us as we do Bible studies and recreation with Belizean children, teach English to mothers in a village, give supplies to a local school, love on orphans and refugees, and share the Gospel with the locals in the communities in which we serve. Pray for us as we travel and work and pray for the families back home as well. Pray especially for Gwen as she's not big on me being away from her for a week. See you next weekend.

monday nights

On Monday nights Gwen and I enjoy hanging out with an awesome family in our church we really love. Every Monday the Haas' (Tim, Christie, Jordan, Wes) have Gwen and I along with a handful of other people from Providence over for supper. Christie is a wonderful cook and we are blessed to be served by the entire family. In the past, the evening revolved around the TV show "24" but since there is no "24" this season we just goof off and watch whatever is on, throw the football, play Xbox, and just relax. We are blessed each week by them.

Woodall, Wes, and Tim pointing at Shem. What did you do Shem?

"I should have been a quarterback." Mike-guitar, drummer extraordinaire, backbone of the Providence worship team.

Mike and I working on our NCAA bracket as Wes and Jordan look on.

Kate laughing at something.

Tim assembling the mixer (he also ate a piece of dog food that night).

My sweetheart. Isn't she adorable?

new baby pictures!

A couple of weeks ago Gwen went to the doctor and had her 3rd ultrasound. Below are the pictures. Gwen is 3 1/2 months along and feeling well (once she gets through the mornings). In the pictures you can see the little feet and hands. Pray for Gwen as she works hard every day through the nausea and as the baby grows inside her. Pray for the baby too!

Carpet!!!!!!!

So often we overlook some simple things in life that make it nice. For the past month Gwen and I have been living downstairs in our living room (see pictures from previous posts) because we were waiting on carpet to be installed in the upstairs. How quickly we forgot what a blessing carpet is. Well, as of last Friday, the new carpet is here! We don't know what to do now that we can sleep upstairs and finally move all of the furniture up there. The house is starting to come together now. We actually had our great friends Garrett and Lara over last Saturday for lunch. We can't wait to have more people over.

Big Announcement!

God has blessed Gwen and I with an amazing blessing that we really haven't comprehended. We're pregnant! Gwen is now 10 weeks along and it still hasn't sunk in yet. We're going to be parents in September! The due date is September 14th. Below is one of our first baby pictures. As you can see the doctor was funny and made it very clear what we were looking for. For those of you who are already wondering, no, we don't know the gender yet, and no, we are not going to find out. It's going to be a surprise. Pray for us as we continue this incredible journey.

we've been busy!

As you can see, we've been very busy. We've just moved into our new house over the weekend. We're so happy but things are a bit cramped right now since we have all of our stuff on the first floor only. We're waiting on the carpet for the upstairs so we can't put any furniture up there. We do have a deck closet and an attic which helps. You'd laugh, we have our mattresses plopped in the middle of the living room and the TV set up on my dresser. We just walk around and laugh. I told Gwen the other day that we'll look back on this as one of our great memories.