Temporarily Signing Off. . .

Well, the house is pretty much packed up (or what's left) and we're getting ready to leave bright and early Sunday morning. While we absolutely love it down here and love the house we just got to move into, when God calls, you go! We cannot even say how pumped we are to come and see everyone and especially that we'll get to be around long enough to spend the holidays with our friends and family. So until we arrive in Minnesota, we're signing off. . .

Home Church

In preparation for being on the road, we have been having "home church." We did this occassionally in Minnesota when temps and road conditions got too bad to leave the house on Sundays, and the kids always loved it. On the road, we still plan on visiting lots of different churches. But because part of our mission is to spend as much time as possible growing closer to God, we'll have the benefit of being able to do "church" every day of the week, not just on Sundays.

Dylan loves opening up the worship set with his guitar solos. We just have to figure out a way to get him guitar lessons on the road so he can play "real" songs!

Next, Faith likes to go up on "stage" and sing either an improv song or one that we've learned. We have a memory verse CD where the kids learn entire chapters of the Bible through song, and today that is what Faith treated us with-Psalm 1.

Our reading today was the story of the rich man in Matthew 19. After this young rich man told Jesus that he had kept all of the commandments, he asked Jesus what he still lacked. "Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." When talking about this with His disciples, Jesus said, "Everyone who has left their house. . .for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."

We thought this would be a good lesson as follow-up of our "living-estate sale." Our main prayer for our children (and ourselves, for that matter) is that they are not brought up to be "American Christians." We don't want them to go about their lives like everyone else, doing sports, shopping, building up possessions, and trying to fit God into those activities. Our mission is to let go of all those things and start over, with God first and let everything else fall into place. When Jesus told the rich man to sell everything, he said to do that first and then follow Him. Notice selling everything had to come before following Him.

In our society, it was easy to pass off this story for people in a situation like us. Who, in our country, would consider us rich? We had our electricity threatened to be shut off a couple of weeks ago. But based on the fact that we made almost $2,000 from selling over 2/3 of our stuff and still had an entire car load plus of stuff to drop off at Goodwill, I would say that the story of the rich man applies to virtually 90% of Americans.

The song on my playlist by Third Day, Offering, sums it up well. It says, "Who am I that you should suffer your very life to set me free? The only thing that I can give you is the life you gave to me." That's all I have that I can offer to Him, and that's what I want to do. (See the video above.)

Selling it All!

We've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off doing a garage sale, packing, cleaning the house, and closing up odds and ends down here. We had a garage sale last weekend and are having our last one this weekend, starting tomorrow. We sold about 2/3 of our possessions last weekend and are just trying to sell off the remaining things this weekend. What an experience it has been! As you're sitting in your house right now, look around you and imagine all the things you would have to sell in order to live in an RV! It's a little scary thinking about how much it would cost to restock an entire household, but we'll keep the bare essentials and that's all that's important. Some of the things were really hard to let go of though but were very well received by customers who really wanted to gain from this venture! Can't say I blame them! One of the favorite items that went with a little fighting on behalf of the customers was my pair of refinished chairs. I bought these at a church garage sale a few years ago for $5 together. They were an icky oak finish with nasty, stained fabric and wheels on the bottoms of the chair legs. I refinished them in red mahogany stain and reupholstered them in a french providential-style red and gold upholstery fabric. I found a matching footstool and they were definitely my personal favorite! I think in the future, if we ever live in a house again, I'd love to refinish furniture and resell it. Who knows!? For now, here's the vision from God that we posted on our garage sale fliers:

1. To let go of our material possessions and live in an RV with our four homeschooled children;

2. To travel across the country assisting in service projects wherever our help is needed; and

3. To grow closer to and learn more about our Lord and Savior each day who redeemed us from our old way of life and to share this truth with those we meet on the road, saved and unsaved alike.

Our prayer is that our lives will glorify the Lord and that we will make the most of every breath He gives us on this earth before calling us Home.

Recollecting on Oklahoma

Now that God has shown us a way back to Minnesota and called us back there, I find myself recollecting on our journey down here and the purpose of it all. As I think about it, I realize how important each one of us are to God. My brother Derek was so important to Him that He called us, a family of six, to move away from all that we've known and was important to us into a foreign land with many tears and sadness, just so Derek would come into a relationship with Him. Our salvation is so important to Him that while it may make Him sad, doing things like He did to our family is worth it for the salvation and promise of heaven for one soul.

I'm reading this book called "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn (thanks again Rachel!), and here's a section I'd like to share:

"For every American who believes he's going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they're going to Heaven. This optimism stands in stark contrast to Christ's words in Matthew 7:13-14: 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.'"

"No one goes [to heaven] automatically. Unless our sin problem is resolved, the only place we will go is our true default destination. . .Hell. We dare not 'wait and see' when it comes to what's on the other side of death. We shouldn't just cross our fingers and hope that our names are written in the Book of Life (Revelation 21:27). We can know, we should know, before we die. And because we may die at any time, we need to know NOW, not next month or next year. The voice that whispers , 'There's no hurry; you can think about this later,' is not God's voice."

Because it's of utmost importance, I would move across the country again if it meant one person's salvation and receipt of eternal life. Praise God for His love towards each one of us!!

It's Too Hot!

Okay, so we've spent almost every day playing in the sprinklers. But we can't even play outside until after dinner usually, because during the day it's too hot. I mean, like over 100 degrees hot! Right now, at 7pm, it's 101 degrees, so we won't even go outside tonight. The air is so thick, it makes it feel like you can't even breathe!
For the days where evening time finds itself in the 90's, we turn on the $10 sprinkler and the kids have a blast. Gabie cries and throws tantrums to play in the sprinkler, so we've concluded that it's virtually useless to spend tons of money on pools and trips to waterparks. If the kids can continue to have this much fun with a $10 sprinkler IN OKLAHOMA'S SUMMER, than kids anywhere don't need a ton of money either, right?!
Pray for us, that we won't need to spend another summer down here! I really hope it doesn't get any hotter than this, although I've heard rumors of 115! Tomorrow's high is supposed to be around 106, with a heat index of over 110 I think. Oh well! In the meantime, we'll be thankful for the blessings we have to get us through this weather, like air conditioning (in the house, unfortunately not in the vehicles!), water, homemade strawberry yogurt popsicles, and a yard to play in!