Hello All! We are having a great time in Arkansas. The people here at Jacksonville Baptist Temple are very sweet and have really taken care of us! We left last Monday after some setbacks, but we finally made it here at about 9:30pm. When we woke up the next morning Caleb and I both felt just awful! We had headaches, upset stomachs and other issues nobody wants to hear about! Caleb pressed on and worked that afternoon, but I rested. We're not sure what the problem was, maybe allergies?, but we're feeling much better now and are adjusted to Arkansas....we think!

The church here has two mobile classrooms and Caleb is putting two small bathrooms in one, and connecting the existing bathrooms in the other one to the water and sewer lines. Things are progressing smoothly and he should be done this week, hopefully! He is going to try to set up some meetings for Wednesday and this coming Sunday with some churches in the area. It's always good to be able to present your ministry when you can!

I will try to post some before pictures this afternoon!

Here we go again!!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. After Anna was born Caleb left for E. Wenatchee, Washington to remodel some bathrooms in a church there. He was gone for four and a half weeks while the kids and I stayed home in Oklahoma. I didn't feel that Anna nor I were quite ready for a trip that far away so we all stayed back. We survived!! Caleb came home last week and we were very happy to have him home.

This next week is VBS at our church and then the week after that we will be going to Jacksonville, AR to do some work in a church there. We will be there for a few weeks, then we'll come back to Oklahoma for our church's 8 year Anniversary and Revival.

After that, we're not sure where we're going. Maybe North Carolina and maybe Pennsylvania, depending on who needs us! Maybe somewhere else.

Please, please pray for our trailer/camper situation. Right now we have a camper on loan from a church here in Oklahoma but it is very small, 24', with no popouts. With four kids now and winter approaching, it won't work much longer. When we go to Arkansas we won't need it because the church will be letting us use their Missions Apartment and we probably won't be taking Kayla and Noah. They will stay here with Nana and Papa (Caleb's parents and our Pastor) so they can go to the first few weeks of school. I just don't see how this camper will work if we go to NC or PA in the Fall/Winter. We know the Lord has a camper out there for us, please pray for His guidance and grace to give it to us!!!

Right now we are almost to 60% of our support. God has been so good to us and we are grateful to all of our supporting churches! We had a nice break off to have the baby and be home for a while, but we are ready to be on the road again and get work done!

Baby Anna

Well we had her! Baby Anna was born yesterday, June 16th, at 3:12pm. She weighed 7lbs 11oz and was 19 inches long. She is beautiful and healthy and has blond hair. Laura is really tired but doing fine and Anna is eating great! Thanks for the prayers.

Prayer for the Baby

Last week we went to Lindsborg, KS to be in a Missions Conference. We were supposed to be there from Saturday night to Friday morning and then we were going to stay in Wichita Friday night and go to my sister Julia's College Graduation and head home late Saturday night.

Sunday morning I wasn't feeling well at all and only a tad bit cranky! By the time the afternoon service started I was feeling very poorly and noticed I was having some serious contractions. After the service I laid down at our hotel for a little over an hour and drank a ton of water. I was still having them so after talking to the hospital, my mom and most of my friends on Facebook, we decided to go to the hospital.

They put me on Brethine to calm my uterus and when I only had one contraction in an hour, they let me go. The next day I called my doctor and she said to take the Brethine every six hours and that we could stay in Kansas, but to go to the hospital if the contractions started again.

After talking to the Pastor (Chris Matthews) we decided to leave Tuesday morning for home. Caleb was able to present our ministry on Monday night and the church was very gracious and understanding about why we had to go! We made it home Tuesday and my doctor put me on bedrest.

Saturday we decided to still drive to Wichita to see my sister graduate, since it is only a three hour drive. The day was great, I had a wheelchair, plenty of people to watch the kids, and there was always someone around to get me what I needed! My entire family was there; my parents, all of my siblings, all the neices and nephews, and we had a blast! I love my family and I love being around them!

So if you could please pray for us. I'm not allowed to do anything, just sit or lay down and drink water. This means that Caleb has to do everything including cooking, cleaning, laundry, and taking care of the kids. Plus he has responsibilities for the church and other things that he has to do. Please pray for him that he can handle it all and not take on too much! Pray for baby Anna too that she will wait a couple more weeks before she decides to come out. I'm 35 weeks today so in two weeks I think I could have the baby safely. Please just pray that I can last those two weeks! This medicine makes me a little bit crazy. It makes me swell, shake and my heart race.

Thanks for the prayers!

It's a Girl!

FINALLY, I am able to post this! For some reason my computer hasn't been letting me post a blog, so I haven't been able to update it. But, now I can. We found out on April 13th that we are definitely having a GIRL despite predictions from almost everyone (including an old Indian lady in New Mexico) that we were having a boy! She is very healthy, growing well, and has her organs all in the right places. We were a little disappointed since we wanted a boy, but we're just happy to find out what she is! So I've been buying clothes like crazy and a few of my friends have been giving me stuff. The Lord has been good with sales, and good deals at thrift stores! We have numerous pictures of her, but I'll just post one. The name we have picked out is Anna Lauren after my Grandma Anne and my friend Lauren, who was my Maid of Honor. We recently connected again and I cherish her friendship!

Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns

I promised a post about when we went to these places, so here it is! Even though I'm really tired and will probably forget a lot of things. On Monday we went to the Grand Canyon and had a lot of fun! We didn't realize it would be so cold, since where we were staying it had been in the 70's all weekend. The kids all had coats, but Caleb and I didn't have anything. We had to resort to paying for overpriced Grand Canyon hoodies and wind breakers. Actually, my hoodie was the only thing overpriced, Caleb got a good deal on his wind breaker.

Noah has been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon for a LONG time. He's been talking about it for months and for the last two weeks has been asking everyday when we were going. I wish I could've gotten a picture of his face when we went to the first lookout, you could tell it was a lot more than he was expecting! He just stood there at the fence looking out, amazed. I asked him if it was better than he expected and he just nodded his head and said "Oh yeah!" which, if you know Noah, is a lot for him to say!

We went to most of the lookouts, walked as much as we could even though it was so cold, and took lots of pictures. Noah, Kayla and Caleb became Jr. Rangers (Caleb really wanted that badge!) and they took a nature hike to complete their assignment. I stayed in the van with Lela, who had fallen asleep. We were going to eat sandwiches at a picnic table overlooking the Canyon but it started snowing once we got all the food out so we decided to eat in the van!

On Tuesday we drove to Carlsbad, NM where we found an open Missions Apartment at Bro. McKinley's church. We were grateful to find it since we had a cancelation in Colorado and had nowhere to go for five days! We thought it would be a 10 hour drive but it ended up being a 14 hours drive! We made it to Carlsbad at 1:30am. Amazingly, I was able to stay awake the entire time and keep Caleb awake for the last four hours of the trip.

On Wednesday we relaxed and on Thursday we went to Carlsbad Caverns. We didn't tell the kids a lot about it, except that we were going into some caves and there might be bats but no bears and no mountain lions! When we got there we sat in on a lecture about bats (gross!) and then got in the elevator to go 750 feet down into the Caverns! The kids were stunned as we rode down, the elevator guide explained how long it took to dig the shaft and you could see the rock passing by as we went down. They didn't say a word the entire 10 seconds it took!

They were warned to use their quiet voices once we got in the cave, but I'm pretty sure they would have been quiet without the warning. Once you get off the elevator it's like you're in a different world. It's dark, quiet, damp and cold. We started walking around and the kids couldn't stop looking around, pointing, and just gaping in awe! It is truly amazing to see the different formations in the rocks. We didn't see any bats since they don't migrate back until late April, but the kids were okay with that! We walked the entire Big Room, which was a mile and a half hike! I was tired and sore halfway through, but I kept going. What else could I do? It was worth it, but my back was sore the rest of the day.

Noah and Kayla also got their Jr. Ranger badges at the Caverns and it was fun to help them fill out their books. Noah had to ask a Ranger questions and he did it bravely! I am so glad we were able to go to the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns. It was a wonderful oppurtunity to relate what we were seeing with our eyes with stories from the Bible. We talked about how after the waters receeded from the flood, it formed the Grand Canyon and then the Caverns as it continued to go down into the earth. I'm sure that's not the most scientific explanation, but it was neat to see the kids be able to connect what they were seeing with what they knew from the Bible. It's also amazing how other people can be so ignorant of how the Canyon was created. Their own scientific "studies" tells them that every year the water leaves "this much" of a mark on the Canyon wall, yet they insist that it was formed over millions of years. When all they would have to do is count the "this much" marks on the walls and it couldn't be much more than a few thousand years! But they always have their explanations to explain away God! The Caverns wasn't as bad, except explaining how long bats had lived there by studying guano droppings.

This week we will be in Rio Rancho, NM in a Missions Conference and then Sunday Night we will be in Liberal, KS. Then we are going HOME! And will be there most of the time until after I have the baby. We have a few meetings, but we won't be gone for more than a week at a time. Thanks for reading and thanks for praying for us!!