New House - 10 Kids

Bethany and I are heading into another week of respite and feeling intimidated. We are at a new house and there could be as many as 10 kids and 1 kid who has a parole officer! Needless to say we ask you to approach the throne of our Father in heaven to lift us up. We need wisdom. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us, sustain us, and teach us when and what to say. We need to know how to be Godly parents and let the Lord's love shine through us. We pray for God to reach out to these kids with his love and use us. Pray for us not to just see the intimidation of new relationships, crazy kids, and negative influences. But pray for us to trust the work God can do, ask Him to do it, and walk forward in hope and obedience. Most of all pray for us to be reminded and know more about the truth of the gospel so we could live out these hard situations with gratitude to our savior and a message of hope for those we are in contact with.

Your prayers make all the difference. Thank you for praying for us.

Praises: God helped me to fix a computer I was working on for probably 12 hours!

Precious Moments

On Father's Day we were working at a house and we took the kids to church with us. They created Father's Day cards in their Sunday School classes. Here is the one that Eric received from a 7 year old boy that we work with regularly. So precious!

We have lived in Arizona for almost a year and last night for the first time we saw a real live moving tarantula in the parking lot of our apartment complex. Yuck!


My wonderful husband bought me some daisys to brighten up our kitchen table. It makes it cheery inside where we spend most of our time because it's too hot to go out!

Vancouver, B.C.

Last year when we were planning our wedding and honeymoon, I thought it would be great to go to Vancouver, B.C. because I had heard that it was so beautiful there with fun outdoor activities. The cost, however, seemed higher than our budget would allow so instead we chose the east coast of Canada and went to Nova Scotia. That's when this blog began! God, in His wisdom and generosity, knew that we would get the chance to go to Vancouver to celebrate our first anniversary instead and so this year we once again found ourselves in Canada at the end of June only this time it was on the opposite coast.

We flew up to Vancouver via the graciousness of Eric's parents. His dad had a business meeting up there and then rented a vacation home for a few days. Check out his companies website here. Eric's mom and older brother, Dan, also joined us for the stay. Our activities included roller blading around a beautiful park overlooking the ocean, kayaking up a fjiord, taking a ferry ride, walking through beautiful woods and hiking to the top of a mountain in the snow while wearing t-shirts and shorts. As you can see from the pictures below, Vancouver is one of the most beautiful places in the world, especially if you like to be outside. Our weather was perfect and every day was full of adventure. It was a great way to mark one year of marriage and it was cool how the activities we did reminded us of the same things we did on our honeymoon, including celebrating Canada Day! (To refresh yourself on our honeymoon, refer to the beginning of this blog).

We are very grateful to Eric's parents for giving us such a great vacation!

Celebrating our anniversary with fine seafood.

At a place called "Skookumchuck" which means "strong water".

Kayaking around the fjords. Double kayaks are called "divorce boats".

Ladies and Gentleman, I present the Dragon Fruit!

Canadians don't have Homeland security. They just have this scary bird that can see into your soul.

The family looking tough in our kayak skirts.

My older brother Dan gave a beautiful toast and prayer to our marriage.

The moment Dan was done my dad changed the subject to urinals which gave all of us a little chuckle.

We were on a budget in Vancouver because things there were quite expensize. The Canadians taught us that when you pay half as much you get half as much.

This was the view rewarded to us after a hike through the snow and swarms of bugs. (That's why I have my hood on.)