Merry Christmas!

Note: This Christmas post is in place of a Christmas letter to all friends and family. We gave the money we would have spent in mailings and postage to Ryan and Angie Ketchum, missionaries in Cambodia.  Granted, we are related to them, but we wholeheartedly believe in them and what God is doing through them - and we thought you wouldn't mind less mail in light of where and who it went toward. So read on, oh lovely friends and family - and think of less mail to throw away while praying for Ryan and Angie and their 4 girls in Cambodia - check out their blog as well at http://www.familyketchum.blogspot.com/

Your Christmas letter (without the envelope or stamp)

What a year! 2011 has held an incredible amount of changes for us! God-changes. God-movement. God-vision.

We moved to Idaho the first part of this year, after a lot of prayer, to start a church. March 1st, we left a wonderful Nazarene congregation in Oak Harbor, Washington, with dear friends that we grew to love and cherish. We moved our belongings and our babies - our dogs too - and headed to Boise. We landed in Nampa for awhile as we watched rentals in the Northend for a perfect place to land. And as God would have it, he used a retired NNU professor and his family who needed to rent their daughter's home to bless us. We moved in August 1st into a quirky and awesome 1925 year old home. The floors creak, the ground is unlevel, and walls are cracked and parts of the home are just, well, old.  But we LOVE it! It is a perfect home for us and a wonderful place to begin this crazy journey!

We have already met amazing people in our neighborhood who have become quick friends. We are excited to see what is next and walk each day by faith. We meet once a week, if not more, with our planting partners, Chris and Camille Rodes. They are dear to us and we have cherished the team God has put together for such a time as this. Many people have commented on the fact that both guys in our team have the name Chris. If you take it further, the girls names both start with a C as well, so everyone of us have the same initials: CR. Weird, yes - but designed well! haha. The four of us "CR's", have finally put a launch date on our gatherings after a lot of conversation, prayer and continued faith. We will begin meeting Saturday evening January 28th. Please pray for us as we step forward in this.

The family is doing well. Chris is working at Sierra Trading Post. It is a retail job, and he'll tell you that's not his first calling, but because of the background and outdoor gear sales of Sierra, Chris is loving his job. Cherie is a stay at home mom with the three little ones, and continues to build relationships out in the community when she takes Abby, Micah and Samuel to weekly events at the Fort Boise Community Center.

Aloysia recently moved back to Oak Harbor from Pasco where she was helping with a new church ministry. She is working at Starbucks on Whidbey Island now and is working on finishing her degree and continuing to follow God's direction for her life. We love her and are proud of her and her heart to listen to God's voice.

Abby just turned 5 years old and has the creativity to prove it. She loves to sing and is so excited about going to school in the fall she can hardly stand it! She thinks that her little brothers are great, for the most part, and wants to help mom in the kitchen anytime she can. She is a handful of laughter and goofiness, and she'll sing a song for you that she makes up in her head on the spot, once she's past her initial shyness. We love her and love how she's growing up so sweet.

Micah is all boy! He loves Thomas the train and anything to do with the Disney movie Cars! He jumps and runs everywhere and makes noises for everything he touches. He loves his little brother and big sisters and think that mud is the funnest thing to play in. He is 3 1/2 years old and we cherish his precious heart and tender smile.

Samuel is walking! And doing an amazing job! He is 1 1/2 years old and all of his doctors and therapists say that he is nothing short of a miracle......ha, if they only realized. Samuel is our explorer. He loves the garbage can, the dirt in the plants, the stuff under the rug in the living room, and especially the water in the toilet bowl. I am constantly following him, wiping his hands, putting things back, and wondering where he is ALL at the SAME TIME. He is a wonderful miraculous ridiculously crazy-lovely boy! We love him and love telling his miraculous story. People still stop us in the store and on the street to meet little Samuel - for some reason he draws them - I just consider that he spent some serious face time with his Creator, and it shows.

We are blessed. Blessed, I say! We are still raising support to survive, but somehow, every month the Lord shows up in amazing ways, and we are left speechless and grateful. Our bills continue to be paid on time. We have food on the table, and our cars have gas in them. We are rich in faith, deep in love with each other, and wealthy in relationships.

When God calls, we choose to listen and obey. And as we continue to walk forward in joys and even in days of sadness, we know that God is still God in our sorrows and our miracles. We hope that this season, you experience God-miracles and God-joys. May you know that we love you from the deepest part of our hearts, and may you realize that today, you are cherished and passionately loved by God, the king of Kings, whom is the reason why we say, Merry Christmas!

Our new house

http://homesite.obeo.com/Viewer/Default.aspx?tourid=454447&RefURL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.google.com%2furl%3fsa%3dt%26source%3dweb%26cd%3d7%26ved%3d0CDoQFjAG%26url%3dhttp%3a%2f%2fhomesite.obeo.com%2f454447%26rct%3dj%26q%3d422+Thatcher+images+Boise+ID%26ei%3dRJ0lTruqGIOcsQOKsJn1CA%26usg%3dAFQjCNEdRx_ejeZIlqlsuYgbZqYPQHyt8g

We are so excited to finally be moving to the Northend of Boise Idaho.  We have been in Nampa Idaho since March 2, 2011 and have left half of our house packed in boxes out in the garage with the faith and trust that God would open a home for us in His perfect time.  He did, and we love what He provided! The house we will be renting is owned by a couple that used to work at NNU, and God was working out all the details before we even knew that!

We will be moving to the Northend on August 1 and joining our partner family in this church plant. The Rodes family (Chris, Camille, Elijah, Gracie, and Lucy) have already settled in their home in the Northend on Harrison Blvd. and we can't wait to join them! We know God has some great days ahead!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

I can't keep up!

Wow! It's almost the end of May and there's so much that has happened!  We are finally in Idaho - we arrived with a Uhaul and a very-packed minivan on March 2.  We were blessed to have a house open up 5 days before we arrived.....a total God-thing! It's in Nampa, which is not where we want to plant the church, but the target area is now only 30 minutes away compared to 12 hours! So I'm saying that's just fine for now!

We have half-unpacked, and are going through a lot of our stuff to "de-clutter".  We want to make sure that WHEN we find a house for rent in our price range in the north end we will be able to move as simply and easily as possible.  Plus, we've begun to hear God's call to simplify and cut the "fat" from our lives.

We're still fundraising for half of our income and are at about 33% of our goal. In April God took care of the employment income that we need as well - Chris got hired at Sierra Trading Post and has enjoyed it a lot.  He's a closet gear nerd, so this is right up his alley!  He'll deny that he knows that much about stuff, but if you ask him one question about Merrell shoes, well, you've taken a very long and detailed road down that conversation!

Anyway, the kiddos are getting bigger.  Samuel is 10 months now and doing his best to crawl - he loves the army crawl, but can't quite figure out how to get on all fours yet!  Micah is finally completely potty-trained......enough said! :) Abigail is becoming quite the little 4 year old artist....she learned from daddy today how to draw a tummy on a stick figure. It was her thrill of the day! And Aloysia is moving to Pasco, WA soon to help a couple of our dear friends in their church plant.  She is excited and anxious about it!  We think it's a great decision as she follows God's call on her life!

Well, for the grandparents, here's a couple pix of the kiddos. :) We went to the Boise zoo the other day and enjoyed some fun and blessed sunshine!  Thanks for your prayers everyone - we feel them and know God continues to open doors toward this north end church plant endeavor!

Preparation, preparation, preparation

We have had a very productive last couple of days.  Thanks to our boss in Oak Harbor, we were given the chance to take some time away from our current jobs to head to Boise to do some house hunting and job hunting. We packed up all three kiddos and headed to Idaho with a list of houses for sale and for rent, and a list of jobs available. We found a cheap hotel in Nampa - only $41 a night, and booked it for 3 nights. We arrived at the hotel LATE Sunday night (1am) after driving through very thick fog for the last 3 hours of the 12 hour drive. We were very grateful to arrive unscathed.

Monday morning we awoke with excitement about being in a stage of preparation for this church plant. It always feels good to be proactive about a God-calling. So we drove to Boise, to the north end, and began our hunt. We had a couple appointments with some property managers at different rentals to check them out. We found one that we just fell in love with - it was perfect in every way imaginable. As we spoke with the manager, we shared a few comments about our faith and why we were coming. She shared about her church in the area, Calvary Chapel, and we told her we had gone to that exact church a number of times and really enjoyed it. While we shared God's calling on our lives with her, she began to ask about jobs. We told her about aquiring jobs and fundraising part of our income as well while we were in the infant stages of the church plant. We let her know that was our reason for being here - to find a home and a job. I felt her spirit sink a little and knew something was up. She sadly let us know that because we didn't have current jobs in the area, that she could not rent us that home - she said, "If my husband and I owned this, we would rent to you in a heartbeat, especially knowing what God's calling you to do.  But we don't.  My husband and I own our business together, and I'll call him to ask what he thinks, but I don't know if this will work."  So we waited. The phone call came about 20 minutes later with the disappointing news that the home would not be available to us because of our situation.

Feeling discouraged, we moved on. We found another house for rent a little bit further away from where we'd like to be, but decided to put an application in on it. We found out quickly that housing in the north end is like diamonds - everyone wants one if not two, so we knew God had to be a part of this process as well as everything else we are doing. We ran into a couple friends at REI while Chris was asking about a job there who reminded us that God knows our needs, financially and physically (home, jobs), and when we need them and where they need to be. So we choose to trust. I needed to be reminded of that.....again.

We spent the rest of that day applying for EVERY job we could think of.  And even had a couple friends call us with options for jobs they had heard of, and we applied for those too!  We have yet to hear back from anyone of them, although its only been 24 hours, but most of the jobs have applications online that we filled out, so we're asking God to get those into the appropriate hands. Chris even turned in one more application in person this morning before we got on the road. We are hoping to hear from some of them when we arrive home, of which we are on the road as I'm typing this (about Tri-Cities area).  We should arrive home in Oak Harbor tonight around 11pm or midnight.

So here's where we stand: We are still in the process of fundraising, and have raised $160 a month so far. - we started fundraising right before Christmas. Our goal is to raise monthly support for 2 years from sponsors amounting to $2200-$2500 a month - that will be added to the income we earn from our community jobs. We are asking God as well to direct us toward jobs that will work around each other so our number 3 priorities, our children (number 1 being God, number 2 being each other and our marriage) are able to be raised by us within our home.

God is faithful to guide us, and we are aiming our sights at Him and His adventurous calling on our lives. This is where we continue on......

Be The Change

We are so excited about the coming days ahead and know that God has trained us, equipped us, and grown us in our ministry here in Oak Harbor, WA.  We will take what we've learned here and head to Boise Idaho with vision and faith that God will use us how He sees fit to minister to people in the heart of Boise.