ministry news

One of our Chapel's and Chapel Center is getting all new carpet.  It is a wonderful thing, but when you have old government buildings you will always find asbestos. joy, joy.   

The contractors are extending the carpet laying process to remove the asbestos in Chapel 1. Which is chaos when you have three protestant services and one Catholic mass scheduled to use that facility all in the same day.  It means a lot of work for everyone.   All four protestant services and two Catholic mass services scheduled for Sunday have to be either at Chapel 2 or another facility.   

Our service being the contemporary service can easily move anywhere.  We were already praying about moving to an old Airmen's club called the Kashim.   This is a perfect opportunity for us to get to try it out and see if it will work for the congregation.   We had our first service there Sunday night and I think it went great.  It has so much potential.  

It is also a lot of work, because we have to setup and tear down for every service, but we are okay with that.  Kyle started a service like this at our last base,  Fusion (Young Adult Ministry).  It was a lot of work too, but it was fun, exciting and some of the greatest highlights of our ministry.   Speaking of Fusion, we heard some exciting news about Fusion from our Chaplain friends who took over the ministry when we left.  They are getting the whole bottom floor of the building given to them.  They are going to turn the whole thing into a Young Adult Ministry Center.  God is so awesome.  I love hearing that the ministry is continuing, but not only continuing but doing even greater things since we have left.  Exciting!     I think that is what Paul was talking about when he wrote about each minister having different gifts.  Some plant the seed, some water and some get to see the fruit of all the labor!   It seems like in our ministry experience we are usually the plant the seed stage. ha!   Sometimes when I am weary I would love to be involved in a ministry that was already going great and I could just ride the wave of greatness! :)  No, actually I think I would be a little bored.  I think we both enjoying getting our hands dirty in the planting part.    

I am excited about the service.  I think God has some great things in store for the young airmen and families of Elmendorf! 

Easter pictures

A friend of mine on base has a photography studio in her home.  She did a great job with Emma, because she actually smiled in some of these!  She loved the live bunny experience of course.  What kid doesn't?  I am in the mood for spring.  I am buying a spring wreath for my door tomorrow.  I don't care if there is two feet of snow on the ground! :)

beware of your local playland

Today, I took Emma to the play land at McD's to get some playtime in with some other children.  It was chaotic.  I seriously hate it there.  There was a little boy no older than three that was wearing snow boots and was kicking everyone down as they tried to come up the slide or stairs.  He was terrorizing everyone he came in contact with.   Within a twenty minute time frame, he had successful caused five different children to walk off the playground crying.  One of them happened to be Emma.  I was not happy about that, but I didn't want to cause a scene so I just hugged her and then made her stay away from that little boy. 

I felt sorry for his Mom.  She was alone with three little children.  She kept saying, Michael stop kicking, Michael keep your hands to yourself.  But the entire time she just sat in the chair and did not ever give the child a little more motivation for good behavior.  He really needed discipline.  He was a cute little boy, but his behavior was worse than anything I have almost ever seen in a child that young.  Crazy.  

The sad part is that several of the little children were afraid to go back in. I am laughing, but it was sad.  Emma wasn't afraid at all.  She usually can take care of herself. She is pretty bossy like her Mommy. ;)

I am so ready for summer to be here. I am more than tired of cold.  I need a warm sunny vacation.  I am seriously doing some research for a vacation for us in the near future. I am getting a little weary with the snow.  I have been in Alaska since last September and that is too long for me. :)

blogging about blessing, what an annoying title :)

Have you ever thought about the idea of blessing?  Or why the Bible says stuff like, "I will bless the Lord"?  I have actually studied it a number of times with the Hebrew/Greek lexicons. What I do for fun. Not really, I'm kidding. If I am reading something I don't understand,   I just go on Biblegateway.com.  It takes about 1 minute to find every lexicon, concordance and translation you could ever want.  Love it.  

Anywhoo....I have been writing a lot of emails lately because if you want to get something done for the Air Force you send an email.  I have been working closely with a lot of the chapel staff working on programs. In closing I would always write something like "have a blessed day" or something like that. Just because you don't want to write "sincerely" or "yours truly". ha.   It sort of made think about what I was writing though.  A lot of people say "be blessed" or "blessings", but what does it mean?  

Finally, someone answered my question today.   Thank you, Beth Moore.  Day 3 of my study this week was entitled, "Blessing Others".    The verse in Ephesians 1:3, "Praise be to God and Father....who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ..."

The word blessed in this verse comes from the Greek word transliteration eulogeo. Meaning to praise, celebrate with praises, to invoke blessings; favored of God, blessed.   The break down of the word Eulogeo is Eu which means good or well and logos which means word.  Put the two together and you have a good word.  In other words, when we are blessing God we are speaking good words about Him or what we would call praising Him.   Speaking good words about God is encouraging and uplifting to your spirit, and God asks us to bless Him, He loves it. But, what about what the good words He speaks over us.  I don't really know that I  thought too much about that part of it until today.   I will quote Beth on this because it just too good to leave out, "We might not realize just how much we want to bless God until we grasp how much He's blessed us".  God has been talking about me and it's all good.

"Part of God's spoken blessing over our lives involves us allowing God to act in man's life to accomplish His purposes instead of the allowing men to have their own way." 

I am glad for the times that God did not allow me to have my own way.  Our first real ministry position at Panama First was so much our element.   We loved the youth.  We couldn't believe we were actually getting paid to hang out with youth and love them.  It was hard for us to leave and go active duty.  I felt like I could have stayed there with Kyle being a youth pastor forever. I literally cried until I didn't think I had anymore tears! :(  But, I couldn't tell Kyle, no, I don't want to do this, because I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do.  I have went kicking and screaming towards most things in my life I guess. ha.  Another one time was deployment, I dreaded it so much, but I can honestly say that it was a great growing experience for both me and Kyle spiritually. I would not trade that deployment.  Moving to Alaska was another challenge.  I feel like it has been perfectly planned for me to be here though.  Very good assignment for me. 

God has perfectly planned the map of our life.   It's a good thing we can only see a little of the map at a time. It would be more than we could handle if we could see next year, I think.   I would have missed out on so many good things in life if God would have allowed me to have my way all the time. Thank you, God for the spoken blessing on my life!

deceptively delicious

A friend of mine here at Elmendorf introduced me to a great new cookbook.  It is called Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfield, Jerry Seinfield's wife.  He is such a funny guy. Anyhoo.  It is great because it hides the vegetables in the food kids love.  Like mac and cheese that has pumpkin puree in it. It is a genius idea.  The only problem I see is that you are not teaching your kids to like plain veggies and fruits.   I bought the cookbook to try out, because I am having a hard time getting Emma to want to eat anything but junk.  She sees her little friend that has all the "good" snacks and she munches down on chips and "fruit" snacks that are just glorified candy.  I buy this stuff sometimes, but I don't want her eating this junk all the time. She literally doesn't want to eat good meals because of this.  She is so young that I don't want to send her to bed hungry, and I don't want to force her to eat everything on her plate.   I have a strong personal opinion about children being made to eat everything on their plate.   I think children should obey their parents, but I also think kids usually know when they are full.  If you don't teach kids to know how to stop eating when they are full, they won't get it as an adult either.  Just my opinion.  I could definitely be wrong. 

One of my goals this week is to help Emma want to eat better at meal times! :)

 

rainy weather, my friends faith story and again, believing God

Our weather is crazy warm here.  It is has been 35-40 degrees for the past few days and it is a mess.  I would rather have colder weather and it least the snow would stay frozen.  My car is trashed with dirt from the streets, and a lot of snow is melting which creates horrible ice situations.  Last night, I was carrying Emma outside because I did not want her walking through the huge puddles, and I slipped and fell while holding her.  It scared both of us pretty bad.  I hit really hard my elbow and side.  I didn't break anything but I was in pain last night. Asprin helped last night.  I am still sore today and I think that is why I have a headache. ha!  Emma is fine.  She just cried when we hit. I think because she was scared.   I am fine if she is fine.  I am just older so hitting the ground with full force kind of hurts! ha.  This is why I don't snowboard and I ski.   Snowboarders fall the time.  I don't like doing that! :)

Our Bible Study was stinkin awesome today.  One of our ladies from Chapel shared her testimony of when she went through the Believeing God study.  Her son was going through what they thought was just a rebellious stage.  She kept praying for him, and that God would reveal what the source of the problem was.  They found out a few months later that he actually was addicted to heroine.  This was a boy from a christian home.  My friend is a great Godly lady, but somehow the son was led down this destructive path.   They were advised by a lot of people to send him to secular programs that would help him to recover from this addiction, but she said she knew in her heart that the answer for him was a relationship with Jesus.  One evening they were watching the movie Facing the Giants, she was crying her eyes because movie was so good. :) She looks over and her son is crying too and said, "I think I get what you are telling about this Jesus".   He wanted to start a relationship with God.  He is now in Teen Challenge and still trying to recover from such a horrible addiction. But, my friend is still believing God for complete transformation.  Of course, the whole room full of women were all bawling our eyes out! :)  

Our homework this week was so much about this very subject of believing God even when you don't see immediate results.  I love so much the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 that talks about these great men AND women of God had faith that God would do what He promised even though some of them died without seeing the results.  So awesome.   I love Rahab even more this week after my study.  I do not ever remember reading that she was Boaz's mother until this week.  How cool is that? I am sure I read that before, but I have too much information in my head and a lot of it ends up leaving my memory. :) 

Amazing story. God used a prostitute woman who later became the mother to Boaz, and in the lineage of Jesus himself.    God will always use who ever HE pleases. I get sick to death of people putting God in a box, and saying God can not use women or whatever else.  God will use who ever He choses despite what we think or say.  He is God.  We can stand and say God can't do this or He won't use some people, but He is God.  If He wants to use someone, He will.   Get over yourself people!!!!    He uses the weak, most unlikely to succeed people.  He doesn't have to have to do things our way.  Again, He is God.  The ultimate Commander in Chief.   That was my little soap box for the day.  :) sorry to throw that up on everyone. ha. 

what's your "one thing"?

Today, I was reading about Paul and His life purpose.  He had "one thing" that he wanted to do above anything else.  You probably know the verse that goes something like this..."this one thing I do...press toward the mark"...  I think he is talking about the goal of Heaven in this verse.

It made me think about living a life of purpose. Do you have a "one thing"?  Or do you have a million one things?  I could fill my life with all kinds of things to do and some of them might actually be good things. But, at the end of my life, will I have regrets of things that I did that where good, but not really my purpose?

We went to our friends house last night, and I was challenged by their friend visiting from Florida.  He is a missionary to Air Force Airmen with the Navigator's.  You need to meet one of these guys, because they are great.  He had a career as a pilot in the Army, I think and felt God leading him towards being a Nav missionary.  He said That if you live your life like you could die tomorrow, then you live with no regrets.  He said it much better than I am writing it.  You just need to meet this guy.  Ryan K., if you read this you probably know him. :)

The mix of the conversations last night and then today's reading, really made me think.  What is my "one thing"?  Am I am living a life with no regrets?  With purpose?  I already know the answer.  I do have regrets in some areas.  I think I just need to love people more.  I do know that at this time in my life, God has lead me to encourage military women.  I pray I always listen to the spirit's leading.

i resist change

God never changes.  Plans change.  People change. Trends change.   But God does not.  He is the same.  Not in a boring way like eating the same meal three times a day seven days a week, but in a comforting way.  He is dependable.  He is steadfast. 

I am growing to appreciate change in some areas of my life.  Change is an uncomfortable thing to face, but sometimes it's good.   I believe that we are born a sinner and we need a Saviour, we need a heart transplant.  Some people don't feel that way.  They think we are born okay people and basically good, and we don't really need much changing.  

I have experienced a lot of change in my small lifetime. :)  I have moved about five or six times. I have changed decor in nearly every room at least three times.  One year I really love something and then the next year I am tired of it.  Military life is FULL of changes.  Did I mention that it was FULL OF CHANGES!   God help me.  I grow weary sometimes of making a plan and then out of no where, "oh, by the way, this changed, and we are now doing it this way." ha.   God help me to be adaptable. ugh. 

I have to believe that God knows my path and my steps, but sometimes I wonder if even God is wondering what we are doing down here. :)  I know He is not really.  

One thing that will not change is God's love for people.  His compassion never fails, His love unending.    I know that no matter what geograhical changes I might go through, God knows my address.  He knows every detail of my life.  I am glad someone does!