God Blesses.

  God continually blesses us on this journey.  It shouldn't surprise us that He loves us so much.  After all, He did send His Son to die for us.  Yet, we are still in awe at His grace, love and mercy. As we delight in Him, His majesty is just further revealed to us.

  Today, eleven years ago at 11:21pm, He blessed us with our first born daughter, Jara.  She truly was a gift from God, finding out that we were pregnant with her on Christmas Day 1998.  She was also a gift from God that reached out to us, to reveal His love and desire to commune with us. We had been refocusing our lives on Christ for a little over a year before her birth.  But something about becoming parents, it spurred us into overdrive.  It caused us to jump right in, no second thoughts, and dig deep into a faith and knowledge of our Lord and Savior.  Upon her birth, we began full force serving in ministries at the church we were attending and haven't looked back since.  At her dedication to the Lord, we also got baptized through submersion.  We publicly proclaimed a commitment we had both made almost two years earlier. Jara was used by God.  She is a reminder to us of a turning point in our lives where we decided that standing on the sidelines wasn't enough, but it was time to enter the game.  We didn't just go to church.  We became part of Christ's Church.

   He has brought us far over the last 13 years as we began our walk with Him again.  He has blessed us more in the last 11 years that we have walked in unwavering faith and obedience to His Word.  He blesses us even greater now as we have sold out completely to Him and His Work and His Call upon our lives for full time work in ministry.

  When He spoke to our hearts regarding mission's work, we weren't sure where, when or how that was going to look in our lives.  Then as Jared was called out of a secular job and into full time studies at Bible college, we knew that God was up to something big in our lives. We knew that He was preparing us for what His will was for our lives.  We just had to walk in complete faith and obedience.  During the year of Bible college, God used that time to redirect our lives, our thoughts and our priorities.  Now, He is sending us. Really US?  It humbles and blesses us that our heavenly Father would see fit to use these imperfect and unworthy voices to spread His Word, hands to do His Work, and feet to go to all nations.  "It's not because of who I am, but because of what You've done.  It's not because of what I've done, but because of who You are."  Yes, God Blesses!

  We pray that God bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you.