Christmas Season Encouragement

After reading about the Christmas advent I mentioned in the last post I began to think about other resources that have been an encouragement for me to focus on the Lord during this season. One of my favorite resources has been a book from Noel Piper, "Treasuring God in Our Traditons". It has really been inspiring to me to see ways to make sure the Lord is the focus of our own family traditions, especially during this season of the year. I have been rereading it recently to help me focus on Him personally and I am trying to make sure we as a family are focusing on Him as well. Here is where you can find it online. You can actually read it online for your personal use.

Another resource that has been a recent encouragement as we are beginning to prepare for the Christmas season has been a blog written by a family of women, called "Girltalk". I have been following their current series on focusing on the Lord, using the story of Martha and Mary. The Lord has been using it to turn my eyes toward Him during this season of life when I have little time but a desire to behold Him. For anyone who is short on time, their devotions are short, Word-centered and challenging. Here is the link to their series. I hope that it will be of encouragement to you as well!

Christmas Advent

I was reading a blog this morning, while drinking my morning cup of joe, about truly focusing on the Lord during this season and it was such a great reminder that this season really is all about Him! She shared about a family tradition they have of making a Jesse Tree and hanging ornaments that symbolize the life of Christ on it in honor of Him. It is one way they are celebrating this season! We too will be decorating our own Jesse Tree with similar ornaments on a small tree we have. I will take a picture for all to see at the end. There is a devotional included which we will be doing as a family! I am so looking forward to sharing this time together! Let us know if your family already has this tradition or may start it. The post that I read this morning is here. Enjoy!

Our tour of Atlanta

This month BJ has been traveling quite a bit. We are trying to raise new support and the Lord has blessed us with $720 of new support! We are rejoicing in this and are so thankful for our supporters who have been so faithful to partner with us in ministry and also our new supporters who have joined with us in reaching college students for Christ!

After our Thanksgiving dinner with college students Thursday a week ago we traveled to Atlanta to visit with some supporters and spend Thanksgiving. It was a great and fun-filled week but we are very grateful to be home. Unfortunately I was not able to get to a computer and post some new updates on our blog so I will try to summerize.

One of our annual traditions is to go to ride the Macy's Pink Pig in Atlanta with my sister and her son. My aunt took my sister and I every year when we were young and we wanted to continue the tradition with our sons. We are thankful to our husbands who were our wonderful photographers for the ride. We had a great time with the boys and they loved it!









What were we thinking? This was not made for two adults!



Ready to ride!



We also had a great time with cousins on Thanksgiving. My aunt hosted Thanksgiving at her house and they had a great pile of leaves that the boys loved! They had so much fun that Tucker, our nephew lost his tan shoe in the pile of leaves. His dad finally found it 10 minutes later. It was so funny! The boys were very patient with us as we tried to take plenty of pics for the family.








Thanksgiving fun with cousins!


Our final adventure in Atlanta was Stone Mountain Park. My sister and I worked there as one of our first jobs and wanted to take the boys up the skylift and on the train. It was much colder than we thought but we had a great time and the boys wanted to ride them multiple times but they all wiped out as soon as we they got home!








I hope that your Thanksgiving was full of fun with family and friends! We only have one more week of campus time in Statesboro before a week of Staff Training and them hopefully we will be at home for a little while.

Thanksgiving Dinner with Students

In our first year of marriage five years ago BJ and I began a tradition every Thanksgiving that we will continue as long as we are working with college students. Every year the week before Thanksgiving break we host a Thanksgiving dinner with the students whom we are discipling and involved with that year. Each year it has been an encouragement to hear what the Lord is doing in their lives and to see how much the Lord has grown them and us from the previous year. One of our favorite things to do is to go around and each share one thing that we are thankful for. I love this time because it is a reminder for us all that we do have so much to be thankful for and that there is one person alone in which to thank because all that we have comes from Him! Last night we hosted this event and enjoyed a bounty of delicious food, had a great time of thanksgiving and sharing and topped it off with some praise and worship to finish the night. One fun addition is that we had a "Thanksgiving Tree". We had a branched tree, thanks to our staff girl Asher, and we each had a leaf which we wrote our name on and then on the other side one thing we were thankful for. We then hung the leaf on the tree until it was covered. It is a great reminder of real lives that the Lord is and has blessed and it is currently our table centerpiece which we can enjoy. Thank you for giving and praying for us and our ministry and I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families too!










Our bare "Thanksgiving Tree"


Our full "Thanksgiving Tree"

Thanksgiving time and an International friend

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches I wanted to include Trey on the festivities. So at the library we checked out a few books on Thanksgiving and I bought one from Books-A-Million named "A Fireman's Thanksgiving",which of course he loves. It has been fun reading to him about Thanksgiving and learning about being thankful for all that we have. We have been talking about being thankful and that really all of this comes from the Lord. I think that as we have been talking it has been just as much for me as it has been for him. It is a good reminder that the Lord is our provider in all things!

This week it was also great to catch up with an old friend who is working oversees! We had a lot of fun and got to visit Starbucks and other local sites. Here she is with the boys; on this day they were in rare form! How thankful we are for good friends!