Okay, so it has been a really really long time since I’ve updated on this… life has just been crazy.  Both of us are working full-time, and I am taking an overload of classes so that I can get done with my degree by mid May… just in time with a baby coming in July!  We’re very excited about that, and it’s definitely fun planning now that we know we’re having a boy.  Here are a few pictures from our last ultrasound:

If you didn’t catch the title of the post, his name is Owen :) 

Well no more time to post anything else– this is a final week for a session of my classes.  At least we now have a post that was written in 2009!

That title has multiple meanings this Christmas.  The first, obviously, being the verse talking about our Lord Jesus Christ.  We hope this Christmas that everyone is making a true effort to keep their focus on the wonderful Savior.  Too many times we get caught up various things around Christmas: presents, family, shopping, traffic, finances, house taxes, etc.  Please, get caught up in Christ.

This weekend, Jo and I spent time with her family.  We had a good time playing some very competitive Scrabble and name-that-Christmas-tune, we had an excellent dinner, and opened presents to finish the night. 

As for my family, we’ll be heading up to Iowa for their Christmas Eve party on Wednesday and coming back after dinner on Christmas Day.  Short trip, but we’re looking forward to it.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that the title “For unto us a child is born…” had multiple meanings this Christmas.  The other meaning is that Jo and I are expecting a baby!  :-)  We are so excited to have this opportunity and hope that you will pray with us that everything goes well.  The due date is at the beginning of July.  We don’t know what the gender is yet, but we will be telling when we find out. 

How’s that for an update?  :-)  Again, we are excited!  I must leave you all here as I need to get ready for another Monday at work.

Hey everyone!  I (Adam) am just writing a quick update to let you know that I finally got a job.  :-)  Thank you so much for your prayers.  I ended up getting a great job that will give me some great experience.  I will be starting work on Wednesday, November 5th.  I’ll be the Assistant Branch Manager at U.S. Bank here in Jefferson City.  (or if you watch the show “The Office”…I’ll be the Assistant TO the Branch Manager

I’m excited to start this new job.  And this last week before work is giving me a great chance to finish the work I’ve been doing on the house.  I’ve been scraping, recaulking, and painting all of the windows around the house.  The upstairs windows have been the most entertaining (requiring a truck parked on a slanted hill, cinder blocks in the bed of the truck, a long ladder, and me on the second to last step).  However, I’m done with those as of today.  It’s been good having something to do during the day and actually getting this huge project done.

Well, that’s all for now.  Thanks again for your prayers.  I really do appreciate every one of them. 

So it has been a very long time since either of us have touched this.  So to briefly give an update of what has been going on since August…

I finished an eight week session of school and also ended up changing my degree to BS BA with a major in Marketing with a minor in Information Systems.  I got a job at a local medical group in their business office and have been working there for about 4 weeks.  I do charge posting so I code medical reports and send charges to the insurance company… fun fun.  It’s nice– stress free and I get to listen to my ipod all day in my own little cubicle.  :) 

Adam is still applying for jobs… it’s a slow process but hopefully something works out in the next few weeks.  Meanwhile he has been doing a lot of tedious never-had-time-for-projects around the house. 

Last weekend my sister Shelby got married so that was both a lot of work and a lot of fun.  The reception was at the top of the Met so it was a great view.  At the end of this post are a few pictures from the wedding. 

The weekend before that we spend some time in Omaha, NE for Andrew Brandenburg’s birthday.  That was a lot of fun– I played lazer tag for the first time so that was an experience.  Since we were so close to Ames, IA we made an impromptu visit to Aaron, Lacey, Eli & Isaiah’s house.  It was a lot of fun seeing how energetic and happy Eli was being at home.

Our youth program at the chapel is going really well this year and we have quite a few new kids in the upstairs (older) group. 

Other than all of that, everything is about the same. 

So we are now home for good– we got home last Wednesday at about 2 AM after a lot of fun with the airlines.  In this trip we had a total of 3 cancelled flights (two due to weather and one due to maintenance).  We got there and we got back so we can’t complain too much. 

Originally we planned on staying in Newark, NJ and riding the bus into NYC everyday.  We did that for the first few days (it is a long process) but then some of Aaron and Lacey’s friends at the Ronald McDonald offered a studio apartment for us to stay in.  The apartment belonged to their mom who was away for the next few weeks.  It was so much better!  It really saved us so much time and money– and it was just a few blocks from the Ronald McDonald house. 

We really enjoyed our trip to NYC.  It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with Aaron, Lacey, Eli and Isaiah.  Eli wasn’t going through any treatments the week we were there so we had a lot of time with him.  We all went to a Met’s game, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitian Art Museum, Central Park, Build a Bear, and some activities at the Ronald McDonald house. 

Here are a few pictures:

Adam, Aaron, & Eli jamming at the hospital (he had a few checkups during the week)

Adam and I– we took a boat ride one morning and saw the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center site, Ellis Island, the Governors’ Island, Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and the Williamsburg Bridge!

We are enjoying being home after such a busy summer.  We now have Rufus back and our house no longer has that no-one-has-lived-here-forever smell.  We just got our internet hooked back up today so that makes doing homework (for me) and searching for jobs so much easier. 

Can you believe it?  Camp is currently more than half way through Ozark family camp #1.  The kids camps have come to an end for the summer.  Kids 6 was packed full of campers and there was a group of boys for the Ranch Hand camp as well.  The week went very well.  One boy went home early due to breaking out in hives.  Also, there were a lot of homesick campers, but we managed to get by with only one boy going home for that reason.  He said he had fun, but was set on going home anyway.  I (Adam) personally talked to him before his mother showed up and he knows the right answers and says he is saved.  However, when I asked him if he knew for sure he was going to heaven, he said he “hopes” so.  We talked some more after that, but you may want to pray that he really understands.  Anyway, the follow-up meeting for kids who professed salvation or received assurance had a total attendance of 46 kids!  It was amazing in some of the cabins, you could really see God working in them.  Praise the Lord!

Jo and I went through our list of campers for the entire summer and counted how many kids professed to get saved and how many received assurance.  This is what we counted:

Salvation: 105

Assurance: 25

We want to thank everyone for your prayers!  It has meant a lot to us and we believe it has helped all of us through this summer and helped it to go so well.  God hears you, thank Him for that! 

Jo and I packed up and left camp today as we are preparing to leave early Saturday morning (2:30 AM) to catch a flight out to New York to visit Eli and the family.  We are excited to have that opportunity.  One very cool thing about it is that one of Aaron’s friends from work gave us 40,000 of his frequent flyer miles so that we wouldn’t have to pay our flight tickets!  That’s a huge savings!  We thank him for that and thank the Lord for providing for us so much this summer.  We’ll be in NY for 10 days then be coming back home.  Please pray for us and for the staff from this summer as most of us are looking for jobs now and some are making big decisions in their lives as far as work and school. 

Thank you all again for your prayers!  We love you all and hope you are staying encouraged in our Lord Jesus Christ.

So I need to be brief for the sake of time…

Camp went really well this last week.  Everyone enjoyed Nate Thomas’ puppets and Barry is always a fun director.  About 37 kids showed up to the meeting on Friday afternoon for those who had gotten saved/gotten assurance of their salvation. 

Next week is the last week of kids (super sad).  Please keep it in your prayers.  The week is completely full so there will be 180ish kids there.  The speaker is John Heller and John Allan & Matt Coyle are directing. 

So we missed a week of updating… last weekend was just pretty crazy.  We had a long weekend and about 28 of the staff went to six flags.  It was a lot of fun and the long weekend really helped refresh everyone. 

So as for Teen 1– It was a small week, somewhere around 50 campers.  Even though it was small it was still a lot of fun (and maybe partly because it was so small…).  Scott Degroff and Steve Price were the speakers and Joe Hawkinson directed.  The schedule was intense but really a lot of fun.  The theme was gladiator and the activities were pretty hilarious.  One night all the campers were woken up at 2 AM to go the dining hall and play baseball.  As far as salvation and assurance– I am away from my notebook and I don’t remember!  I do know that both teen weeks had a lot of campers desiring to grow and a lot of campers received assurance of their salvation.

Teen 2 was different from Teen 1 in that it was a big camp.  There were around 140 teen campers– half of which looked 5 years older than me.  The week went really well– of course with so many teenage campers the hormones were raging but everything stayed under control and it was a really fun and rewarding week.  Jonathan Brower was the speaker and Barry Kemp was the director.  Last night Mr. Brower asked all the kids who had gotten saved this week to stand up– about 6 or 7 kids stood up.  He then asked those who had gotten restored to the Lord to stand up– about 30 or more stood up.  That was pretty awesome to see.  A lot of the teens really are desiring to grow in the Lord so pray that they can continue on in acting out their faith now that camp is over. 

Teen weeks are hard to end for me.  I just wish the campers could stay longer.  They have so much they are battling in today’s world.  Many of them have already gone through so much more than I have and they are only 13-17 years old.  Pray for them– so many of them are turning to things other than the Lord to help them deal with the pressures of this world (drugs, cutting, guys/girls…).  Also pray that those in the Jefferson City/Columbia, MO area would follow up with those of us in the local area through our youth program Monday Nighters.  It would be awesome to be able to teach and encourage them year round.

Just to share a positive story…

After one of the messages this week a guy returned to pick up something he had left behind.  As he was walking out he mentioned that he thought that the message that night had been really good.  As he was walking out, Steve Allan asked him, “So what about you?”  The guy asked what do you mean.  Steve went on to ask him what he was going to do with the Lord.  The guy ended up coming to know the Lord that night in the chapel.  One little question led to one great conversation which led to the Lord working salvation in this guy.  I do believe his profession was genuine because you could see his excitement and his desire to grow in the Lord throughout the rest of the week. 

As for next week– camp is really big again!  As for girls it is full at 110 and there are about 70 guys.  Barry Kemp is directing again and Nate Thomas is the speaker.  Barry has been great at filling in for any directors that have canceled last minute this summer. 

*Another note– keep praying for Eli.  He recently had surgery because of a bowel obstruction and the recovery process has been going slow.

Wow– I can’t believe kids 4 is over now and next week is a teen week!  Kids 4 went really well.  It was a big camp– pretty much full as far girls go– just a few beds to spare.  Daryl Lynn was the speaker and Barry was the director.  I really liked them both a lot.  One things that Daryl did that was unique to other speakers was that he tried to have one on one time with ALL the campers… like 140ish campers!  That’s pretty amazing and it was really successful– if you bribe kids with candy they will beg to spend one on one time with you!  So that was really cool to see him always talking to kids.  A lot of kids professed salvation last week/got assurance.  45 kids showed up to the meeting on Friday afternoon so that was amazing. 

The week went really well and there weren’t any big injuries.  We did have one busted lip from falling on the stairs but that happened Friday at dinner so luckily the girl didn’t miss much. 

Just so you can have a camper quote for the post:

Joanna Lynn had a homesick camper that ended up going home.  When the girl was leaving, one of the girls in her cabin (who had a lot of doubts at the beginning of the week but was confident in her faith by the end) told her “You can only leave if you KNOW you are going to heaven!”  The girl said she knew for sure so that was pretty cute.  It’s cool to see those comments from such young campers– it is just neat to think that they are thinking about spiritual things on their own.

Pray for teen weeks– this one is going to be pretty small… about 50 campers or so.  Teen weeks are a bit more challenging but it’s also really refreshing to have more indepth conversations and talk about real life issues with the campers. 

So we’re finished with another week of camp.  Kids 3 seemed to go well.  There was a lot of exciting news about kids making professions this week.  What was even more exciting to me is that counselors were coming up to me thrilled for their campers.  Sometimes I don’t think we see that enough.  We hear that someone gets saved and say, “That’s good.”  Where’s the rejoicing?!?  How exciting that is!  We had a follow-up meeting yesterday afternoon for campers who had professed salvation or received assurance this last week.  25 campers showed up!  I was thrilled to see that many.  Please continue to pray for these campers as some of them will go home with no spiritual influence at all.  One of the coolest things I saw this week was two brothers that came to camp.  They realized the importance of reading the Bible, so they made it a point to read together every day.  I pray for them, that they would continue to encourage each other.  Also, yesterday, I took a hike with a group of boys to the cave.  While we had stopped at the creek, we had a short conversation about God’s power to speak things into existence.  Then I mentioned the story in John 18 where Christ says, “I am He,” and those who came to arrest him fell back from the power of His words.  Once I had mentioned that part, I had a camper look at me and say, “Really?  Wow!”  (It’s those moments that I continue to realize why we’re there at camp).

The other significant thing that happened this week is Jo’s birthday.  :-)  It’s a shame it has to happen during camp.  She was thrown in the pool 4 times on Wednesday, and received a pie in the face once right before going in.  (I might insert a comment here about how I had nothing to do with any of these moments…it was all her lovely girl staff friends that wanted to show their love for her).  She was sore the next day from struggling to get away so many times. 

Anyway, everything else is going well.  Again, we want to thank you all for your prayers.  I must go now, as we are currently celebrating Jo and Kate’s birthday and their Dad’s Father’s Day.  We’ll “see” you next week.