HE Knows The Plans He Has For Me!

I think for a time I forgot my blogger address!! I seem to go forever in between posts, but I have some exciting news and thought this would be a fun way to document it.

The last year has been one of the hardest and craziest of my entire life... and it continues on. God has been faithful to use these difficult times to build in me deeper trust and love for Him than I could have ever imagined.

 

Last November I was blessed to be a part of a women's ministry team to Guatemala from Mission Community Church. As the events of our year have gone on, I have been constantly reminded of how blessed I am to have my sweet babes being treated for their illnesses in the States, and how blessed I am to live in this amazing house, and how blessed I am to go to a beautiful church building to worship with my church family, and how blessed I am to have a car to drive to the grocery store and money to spend on the things that we need. That list could go ON and ON!!

Paulina and her PRECIOUS newborn baby girl!!!

Maria... this young lady has a piece of my heart... her love for the Lord, her family and community were evident in everything she did and said!

My heart has not been far from my beautiful Guatemalan friends this last year. So as the church let previous teams know about future trips, I felt a deep longing to return, even though I knew that it might be crazy in light of the kids’ current health statuses! I began to pray for whoever would go on the team, that God would bless them with a clear answer and provided the means. Then one day I casually asked Troy what he thought about me going back... and his response surprised me, "I already planned on you going back!" Wahoo!!! I was excited to start praying and felt I needed to hear God CLEARLY say "Yes." I prayed for a CLEAR answer... Little did I know that I would get such solid affirmation in the following 24 hours... that it is indeed God's plan for me to go on the trip this year! I am beyond excited, and a little nervous. It will probably take me more time to prepare meals for my family than I'll actually be gone... but I know that it will be worth it! I can't wait to see what God will do in and through me.

 Hanging out with these precious friends!!

Here are the details...

The trip is November 10-18... 8 days!! The team on this trip will be comprised of a construction crew, a veterinary team, and a women's ministry team. I will be serving on the women's ministry team... and as much as I appreciate the beauty of God's creatures, I will probably be praying that I don't have to do much animal touching... not a big fan of chickens and cows... I know some of my friends must be laughing right now!! But seriously...

 

 Teaching Angelica to hand stitch.

 

I would love my friends and family to be involved too!! Here's how you can help...

· Please Pray!! “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-8

•  Specifically ...
• For the health of my family as the time approaches and while I am gone.
• For me to be a willing vessel to do ALL that God calls me to do on this trip, even if it involves chickens of cows.
• For peace
• For traveling mercies
• For the funds to go

· Please send me. Here's how...

Online: If you would prefer to donate securely online, please go to http://tinyurl.com/d4s2wfs.

Set up a quick login account if you don’t already have one and follow the simple prompts. Input my name, amount of donation and payment info. If needed, please contact me for additional instructions or details about giving online.

Check or Cash: IMPORTANT Please Note for tax purposes, when sponsoring an individual for a mission trip, please do not write the person’s name on the check anywhere. Please follow the below sample format and use the receipt form at the bottom to designate who the funds are for. This receipt form must accompany all check donations.

Please mail all checks to me personally at my return address or to Mission Community Church, Attn: Justice Dept, 4450 E Elliot Road, Gilbert, AZ 85234.

 

I am beyond thrilled to be part of what God is doing not only in my home and community, but also globally!!

Micah 6:8

 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Thank You!!!

 

 

 

Not a Hallmark Day

"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a Mother." Lin Yutang

Yesterday was Mother's Day. I was spoiled with gifts from my Hubby and kiddos. Sister picked out a long purple skirt, which of course I wore to church! Brother pick out a gardening knee pad... I'll probably be taking advantage of that today when I am out searching for squash under the giant leaves!!   Troy took care of making breakfast and lunch, cleaning up all the dishes, and getting the kids ready for our day of fun. We enjoyed a day of family time, loving on some special moms in our life and talking to the ones that are far away, swimming and playing at Grammies and Grandpa's house.  It was wonderful to be pampered and fussed over for the day!

Today is mother's day too!  But today is like most days, unnoticed by Hallmark, when the privilege of being a mama is found when you look for it.  It will be found in moments that I stop fussing over a clean house, laundry and the making of meals and say thank you for the millions of graces that God has for me today.

• Charity's song, praising God for the day He made just for her!
• Monster trucks driving through the rocks.
• Stealing away for a few quiet moments outside with my love.
• Kids snuggled together on the couch.
• Giggles
• Imaginations in full swing.
• Sunflowers reaching toward the heavens to open up and declare God's Glory!
• Goggles needed for bath time.
• A pre-mopped bathroom floor... looking for blessings in the bath time aftermath.
• Needing lots of kisses from Daddy before he leaves for work.
• A few minutes to jot down my thoughts!

This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

A Morning Banana Split and a Weekend at the Cabin

This morning we are drinking a Banana Split smoothie which somehow had me thinking about the cabin last weekend.  I'm not really sure how my brain is making these connections, but I'll just go with it!!

It's been fun coming up with newish ways to serve raw foods.  Many of the books I have read suggest having a drink in the morning instead of solid foods since it is easier on your diegestive tract, so that is the route that we try to take in the mornings... LOVE having a Vita Mix!!!  In the last 5 weeks we have all started taking Juice Plus, which we are SO excited about, and have just recently started enjoying Juice Plus Complete- a vegan protien shake. So this morning we made a Banana Split protien smootie!


Serves 4
2 scoops of Chocolate Juice + protien powder, I am sure you could sub out something else
1 1/2 cups of fresh or frozen strawberries
1/3 cup of peanuts or 1/4 cup of peanut butter
1/3 cup of cut pineapple
1 1/2 bananas
2 handfuls of fresh spinich
2 cups filtered water
ice- we use lots

Blend and drink up!!  Kids are enjoying theirs right now!  Of course Charity is drinking her Banana Split Protien smoothie minus the banana, but it still tastes pretty darn good!! And now on to the cabin tangent...

Troy unexpectedly took a few days off work... much needed. So we decided after our busy Saturday we were going to pack up and head to the cabin Sunday morning.  One of the things we love about going to the cabin is there is no cell signal, so when we are there, it is truly a retreat.  The kids really notice too.  We enjoyed seeing them run out the door to go play in the woods and explore.  Charity seems to relax a lot more than the norm and we saw her feeling better in our fews days up there than we had in almost two weeks.  There is something very healing about being able to run and play in nature and breathe clean air and feel care free!  Besides being a technology retreat, it was also a food preperation retreat.  For what ever reason our kids didn't gripe about having raw veggies at lunch (our normal at home lunch) and there was very little resistence about out salad dinners and loaded morning fruit plates.  It was a relief to say, "Sorry, nothing fancy the next few days... this is the cabin!"
Here are some of our trip pics...

Playing on the porch.

Josiah taking us for a ride!

Charity's self portrait.

This is how I enjoyed the majority of the time on the lake... trying to tan the pastey whiteness.

The Bald Eagle... so awesome to watch this beautiful bird.

Checking out the Bald Eagle sitting in the tree.

Elk!!

Most of the pics were from our day at Woods Canyon Lake.... We enjoyed renting a boat and seeing the Bald Eagle nest, and the Bald Eagle, a herd of elk as well as several other animals during our few days  :o)  We were all sad to come home Tuesday afternoon...I think we will be returning VERY soon!!  Looking forward to a lot of summer weekends at the cabin!

Bald Eagle nest!!

Time is Flying By: A Long Overdue Update

Whew!  The last time I blogged was in August 2011!!  This season has been one of the busiest and hardest of our life... running a close second is the first 6 months of marriage.  But that is another story for another time!  I could have never guessed what God had in store for us last August, but now as we continue to press on we see all the amazing ways that our Lord has prepared us for our journey.

September happened like September normal happens...and we finished our normal September with an unexpected visit to the hospital that wound up being 8 days long! Our sweet girl was so sick and the doctors could figure out what was wrong.  After several days we were able to consult with a GI who decided to to a colonoscopy and endoscopy to see what was going on inside our girl.  Finally a diagnosis.  Ulcerative Colitis.  It's funny the peace that comes with giving something a name.  I remember that feeling well, just like with our little Mr.(if you're wondering what that is all about you can read about it here), just having a place to move forward from feels amazing when you have living in a place of mystery! Fortunately there was no mystery from God's perspective, and even in that hard place we had this awesome transcends understanding kind of peace... and a history.  God had provided all that we had needed to get through a hard time before, and He was sure to do it again!

I wrote this on my white board the day before we took sis to the hospital...

So the next few months in a nut shell...

• We went totally vegan the first week of October. It's been an amazing journey... and I am so thankful to have my husband totally on board!  Being a man isn't defined by the number of bloody steaks you consume in a life time!!
• In November I went on an AMAZING trip to Guatemala to encourage some beautiful sisters in Christ.
• Sister had a relapse and symptoms started returning the weeks before Christmas. Our GI continued to insist that diet changes wouldn't work in helping to change symptoms or in healing colitis... Huge red flag went up for me... Our food going in doesn't change the way it comes out?? That sounded like it was defying logic!
• I prayerfully started reading books on naturally healing Chron's and Colitis, all the while meds and steroids increased.
• Mr started to have migraines because of his shunt :o( Seems to be about once a month when it gets to throw up intensity.
• We got some hard news about what next steps the GI wanted to take with Sister's treatment.

So picking up our...saga... in February... We consulted with a Naturopath.  After all the things I had been reading and had been prayerfully considering we felt called to take a leap of faith and work towards getting our girl of medications. Clearly they weren't working and we definitely weren't comfortable with the GI's next steps. Logic says that what we put in our bodies will impact our organs and body function. And even on the vegan diet I knew in my gut that something else was bothering Sister's little body. We LOVE our NMD and have continued learning so much through our time with her.  A recent allergy test revealed a lot!  So now we are working diligently on her rotation diet and have moved to vegan, gluten, and corn free!!  I am doing more and more raw "uncooking" and we are now about 80% raw.  The best part about all of this is that eating this way is 100% healthy for all of us!

Keeping track of the rotation diet...

At the Arizona Wild Life Zoo and Aquarium with Great Grammies and Grandpa

We are so thankful for our family.  They have been so supportive!  We had our first vegan Thanksgiving and Christmas... and all of our meat eating family blessed us by enjoying our vegan fare! Though my dad says that he'd be a starving vegan, we were blessed to have our Easter dinner at Pita Jungle (where he could eat chicken :o).  Sister scarfed up some serious tofu!! 
We are so thankful to our friends for checking in on us. For blessing me with much needed phone calls and emails and texts reminding me of God's faithfulness.  On the hardest days they have been there when I needed to cry or didn't really know what to do next.  We are so blessed to have an awesome church family that have been so faithful to lift our girl up in prayer. And my Guatemala sisterhood... I know that God has blessed those friendships in my life for just these times!  I feel SO blessed to have these women praying for our family.

Posing for a pic with Baxter at the D-Backs game.

All this thankfulness to say that GOD IS SO GOOD!!  And He is SO FAITHFUL!!  Right now we remain at his mercy as we are learning so much about trusting and obeying.   We don't know when God's timing for healing our girl will be, be we see daily the benefits of learning to eat holy.  As hard as it is for a little 6 year old to have such a hard diet, we see how God is blessing her with strength and encouragement from so many to continue on.  In the last few weeks we have seen so many wonderful things happening... Sister's energy continues to increase- back to being a normal active 6 year old, we're decreasing meds, Mr is liking all the foods he is eating and enjoying his occasional cheese cheats with Daddy on golf days, and we are nearly at the end our our first homeschool year looking forward to a break before we start first grade in June.  I am confident that God will keep us at the edge of our seats moving forward!  But I know that He'll be there with us too!



Psalm 16

  Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.

  I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.

 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.