Adequate Advocate

On the Road I hesitate to write a blog post of our travels so far because SOMEONE/SOMEWHERE/SOMETHING will be left out! It doesn't mean you aren't important to us!!! We have been "on tour" (fundraising) for a month now and there is simply too much to write about - we've covered about 2,000 miles, visited/talked with hundreds of people, slept in 13 different beds, played on 8 playgrounds, finished one whole bottle of motion sickness medicine, and forgotten to take pictures most of the time! We just want to share a few pictures with you from the moments when we had a camera near by and REMEMBERED to use it and let you know we've been busy and BLESSED but still have a long ways to go (both in the van and in our finances!). If you want to catch up with us this summer, it's still not too late to put in your request for a visit! :) One of our LEAST favorite visits - to the doctor for shots! Gotta get a lot of those before flying to Ghana. Th...

...And moving on to Phase 2 of our Preparation Plans! With God's help, I successfully completed the last projects, papers, and exams of the semester; said farewell to my part-time jobs in Elizabeth City; packed up and moved out of our apartment there and headed on the road with my family! last night of my homecare job  We are acting in faith that God wants us to return to Ghana to effectively serve Him in His Kingdom there and by faith we are beginning the most challenging phase of our plans - PETITIONING for the monthly support pledges we will need to return to Ghana.  We started May 20th and still need to get our schedule filled.  If you, your church, your small group, friends, etc. would like to see and hear of our work in Ghana please let us know.  We are praying for more speaking opportunities and more open doors. We are confident that God will supply our needs and cause everything to work for His glory and our good!   It IS challenging (I mean, who ...

To return to Ghana as missionaries by September 2012 we have to plan and prepare!  These are our three phases: Prayer  Petition Pack! Right now we are in the prayer phase and invite you to join us!  We have started a prayer group and you can ask to be included (by email or facebook or yes, even snail mail!).  We will keep you updated with pretty regular specific prayer requests of things we will need God's help with to overcome (physically, emotionally, or spiritually) in preparation for and upon return to Ghana.  We know God answers prayers in amazing ways and so we will also rejoice in sharing with you our praises as well!  Here are some of our recent prayer request posts:    "A prayer and a praise. Our hearts have been heavy for a little while now with the news of the death of a brother-in-Christ in Ghana. He left behind a wife (Gloria) and three children, Rahel, Gilbert, and Gifty. The youngest is just three years old. He had been sick...

As we hinted at before, Ghana is a TOUGH place to live.  So as the saying goes....when the going gets tough, the tough get tougher.... or something like that!  In preparation for returning to Ghana, we HAVE GOT to get our bodies prepared!  Jessica started out by joining a weightloss challenge and taking an early morning bootcamp fitness class.  Twelve weeks later and quite a bit fitter, she won the challenge and prize money!  Yay!  Attah participated in a powerlifting competition back in December - and won.  It did help that there weren't any other competitors in his bodyweight division. :)  Seriously, though, we want to be as effective as we can be and hit the ground running when we get back to Ghana, Lord Willing!!!, by early September 2012.  Jessica is training for a race with a friend in Richmond in TWO WEEKS!  Kinda scary - this will be her first race and it looks like quite an interesting one!  Check out the link her...

    You can endure anything when you think it's just temporary.   Our family's stay in the States since June 2011 has been a good example of this.  We didn't intend to come and stay here for as long as we have, it all came about so suddenly and we were not prepared for it; but we quickly threw together a home with the help of generous and kind folks here and certainly weren't picky about the color of the towels or brand of pots and pans or size of beds or matching sheets.  After all, we were just making do for a short while.  "It's just temporary," we tell ourselves.  When we try to give a squirmy 8 month old a bath in the kitchen sink and start to wish for a home with a bathtub in it, we think to ourselves, "Hold on - it's just temporary!"  When we see dirty clothes growing mold and wish we had a washer and dryer in the apartment so we could wash clothes more frequently we quickly remind ourselves, "It's just temporary!  What's ...

LIGHT!      We were blessed to attend a winter preaching retreat in Hanover, VA this past weekend. The preacher said, "God is Light!"   (See here for the whole thought-provoking sermon - http://www.hanoverchurchofchrist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/WinterRetreat_Session3.mp3 )      The first time I ever heard that God is not to be pictured as some old man with a beard sitting on a throne in the clouds and Jesus with blue eyes, long hair and scarred hands sitting beside Him but rather as bright, blazing light/glory I thought to myself, "How boring and unintriguing!  Just this great ball of blinding white light!"  With amazement I realized how wrong I was the first time I ever visited Times Square.  Who wouldn't want to visit famous Times Square in the heart of New York City?  I was excited to get there!  Standing in the middle of the square and looking up all around me I saw....tons of huge billboards...

   That's known as your golden birthday - when your birthdate and your age coincide. Today is our Zion's Golden Birthday.  It only comes once in your lifetime.  Then it's gone.  So quickly it comes and goes, before you know it!  Maybe some of you didn't know it and your Golden Birthday has already come and gone and you missed it!  If I look at it in the grander perspective of time, childhood is like that!  It comes and goes and before you know it, they are grown and gone! Zion startled me the other day by asking, "Mommy, can I live forever?"  I wondered what train of thought had lead him to this question and asked why he wanted to live forever.  "So I can play with all my toys forever," he replied.  But before he knows it, he'll be through the toy stage of life and ready for the "real" toys - cars, motorcyles, phones, or such.  As my sister Brittney pointed out recently, supposing he is grown up and ready to leave home by the a...