Yet another belated post. There is alot to update, so here we go.
Tampa:
Yes, we are headed to Tampa. After years of asking the Lord to "send us" we now know that He is sending us to Tampa, FL. There are so many ways that the Lord made this overwhelmingly clear, but here are just a few. UNITY. We prayed that the Lord would unify our hearts with Drew and Jessi (the couple we will be churh planting with) about where we would go. Originally we were looking up north and they were looking out west, so we knew it would TOTALLY be the Lord to unify us on a city. Well, He faithfully did that with Tampa. We all left our trip in August with an enthusiasim about the city and a longing to do ministry there. CHARACTERISTICS. Based on the type of church we wanted to plant, we asked the Lord to help us make a list of characteristics we would want the city we planted in to have. Some of those characteristics are diversity, growth, education, and need. Tampa met all of these. NEED. I reitterate this because this was a biggy for all of us. There is a huge need for churches in Tampa. In the "city" of Tampa, there are over 400,000 people and no like-minded churches. There is also a great oppertunity for Justin and Drew to start a church planting network for future church planters to have help and guidence as they begin a new work in the area. (Most large cities already have a network of church planters for new pastors to help with the start of their ministry. Tampa is the only one that we were praying about that didn't.)
Abigail:
Abigail is no longer my baby girl - she is my little girl! She is walking. She is talking. It totally blows my mind. She has about 20-25 "words" that she uses regularly. When I say words I don't mean fully constructed words. Some of them are partial, but many are fully annuciated. Some of my favorites are "Annie" (her Raggedy Ann doll), "Sasha" (our landlord's dog), "egg" (which comes out "gee"), "Yeah!", "NO!", "cracker" and "oatmeal." She is walking all over the place. In fact, we are almost running at this point. She favorite thing to do is to go see the dogs. She wakes up some mornings asking for "Sasha." She has a precious sense of humor. Like her daddy, she can be quite the show off. She is so much fun these days.
Justin & I:
Justin just finished a crazy week of finishing our support letters and preparation for preaching today at our church. (If you would like to listen to the sermon, you can go to http://www.northwake.com/) He was a faithful servant today. It was so great for me to see him use the gifts that the Lord has so graciously given him. Other than that we are just preparing in so many ways to move to Tampa in the early summer. With that in mind, I have been soaking up every moment of the beautiful fall weather we have had lately. We just returned from a week in the NC mountains. We were blessed with the oppertunity to go while the fall foliage was at it's peak - it was BEAUTIFUL! You can't help but stand in awe of our magnificent Creator when you look out over a mountainous landscape of red, orange, brown and green. We had a blast.
Finally, here are a few of the tons of pictures I had to choose from over the past couple of months. ENJOY!
