Sunday I became an official member of Castle Rock Community Church. While I have attended and been involved with several churches, I have never applied for membership until now. There hasn't ever really been a reason for not joining a church, but I know this is definitely the place where I belong. We started right off with the 2009 budget and discussions about our building project which is still on hold until some other things are worked out.

Sunday was also Sherlise's birthday. I picked her up for church in the morning and after church and our annual meeting we went out to lunch. Then we decided to bake a cake. I had her do most of it and we talked about why each step was important.

She decided she wanted pink and yellow balloons and hearts, so I suggested heart shaped balloons, which is what we went with. Years of watching my mom make cakes for our birthdays helped with the decoration part of it.

Sandy, Anthonika, Duane and I all sang for her and enjoyed some of her creation. It was good day and it was good to be able to help her feel special. She turned 20 this year and will graduate in May. For some reason my brother's school decided to move graduation back a week so I'll actually get to be here for Sherlise's graduation, which I'm very excited about because it is a big accomplishment that should be celebrated.

I'll be sending out prayer cards in the next week and Laura was helping take the photos. This one just sort of happened, but it was my favorite. I used a bit of Photoshop to get the desired effect and think it turned out very well.


This photo also just sort of happened. I was taking photos for Tyrone's prayer card and they were all trying to be very serious but Tyrone and Ana kept giggling which made everyone laugh. We are planning to print new posters to hang in the church and this photo will be used as one of them.

This has been quite an eventful weekend and I wish I had photos to go along with almost all of it. Pastor John and Wendy spent the weekend visiting supporters and their son in Minnesota and I stayed with the other three kids: Ana, 15; Elijah, 11; and Jeremiah, 8.

Saturday went well and I was able to get Elijah to his usher meeting and Ana to gymnastics in the morning and the afternoon went well as we went to the rec center at Tulane University and the swimming pool at Loyola University. The kids were good and tired for the evening so we ordered pizza and hung out.

Sunday morning I was able to get up in time to make dirty rice (a New Orleans favorite) for the church potluck but I forgot to go home and get church clothes the night before so I had to do that in the pouring rain. By the time I got back to the house it was 9:05 and we were supposed to leave at 9:25 to have Ana to church in time to be an usher. Of course, I had still not showered so I was running through that, trying to get kids dressed and ready and make sure the rice didn't burn.

We got out the door about 15 minutes late, but were still to church in plenty of time and I felt very accomplished. Potluck went well and at about 12:25 Elijah came to me and said that we could still make it to his basketball practice, even though he had told the coach the night before that he wouldn't be able to make it. So we rushed home, changed and headed off to the coach's house. But there was no one home and Eli couldn't remember where practice was. Thankfully his son walked up at that time and was able to call him and ask.

So we headed off in the general direction of where Eli though the gym was. It took us a while, but by trial and error we found it and he was only a few minutes late. I made it back to the house and was able to rest for about an hour before I had to wrap a birthday present and get the kids in the car to pick up Eli, run Ana to gymnastics and get the boys to a birthday party.

The afternoon was then spent at Jazzy Bear for the birthday party for a two year old son of one of the guys on staff. There were kids from 14 months to 11 years and it was several hours of high energy and lots of sugar.



We pretty much crashed that evening and kept it low key. Ana and I were watching tv and the boys were playing video games in the basement when I heard someone screaming. A minute later Eli came running up the stairs saying JJ was bleeding.

Ana and I ran downstairs and found JJ laying on his back, his foot in the air bleeding down his leg. Somehow he managed to slice from the inside of his big toe and around the bottom while playing on the elliptical machine. We got him upstairs and ran it under water in the bathtub trying to figure out how bad it was. We called his mom, who is a nurse, and finally got her and some advice. We got it to stop bleeding and ended up calling another friend (also a nurse) who was able to come over and help get it cleaned up. She was also able to determine he didn't need stitches, which made us all happy!

So we kept it elevated and wrapped and by the next morning it looked better. We stuck close to home and didn't do much. I took Ana to school in the morning and picked her up in the afternoon and other than that we kept it very low key. PJ and Wendy got home around 5:45 and I was so glad to see them!

Overall it was a good weekend, but I see even more so now why God generally grants one child at a time and they start out small!

Late last week we heard a lot of noise outside, which was originally deemed to be construction crews installing pylons for a new apartment complex. Others (myself included) weren't convinced. The next morning I looked as I drove by and saw what I gathered to be movie trailers, not construction trailers.

That day we again heard the noises, and as it turns out, it was gunfire, but not the deadly kind, the movie set kind. Today A friend and I spent a good deal of time freezing on the side balcony of the yellow house waiting for them to film a scene in the lot kitty corner to us. It took forever to get set and we had to go inside before they filmed the first time. But we were able to go out again later and see them actually shooting both the guns and the movie.

It's rather entertaining, but it is also extremely loud. I figure it has to be that way for the cameras to pick it up or something. I guess it's good that it is unnaturally loud though because around here so much gunfire could be very disconcerting if we didn't know it wasn't real.

It is unfortunate that I return to my blog with a heavy heart. It has been a while since I wrote and I have since been to Iowa for Christmas and I am now back in New Orleans. Much has happened, but perhaps the most recent is the most important.

This past weekend a 22-year-old father took the life of his 2-year-old son to avoid paying $4,000 in child support. Not only is this the fifth life to be lost in New Orleans in the first few days of 2009, but it is a shocking wake up call to us all.

As a staff we went to the place where the body was found, a mere six blocks from our church, to pray for the community and the family. It's a sobering thing to think about and is a true representation of where we are as a nation. It's a stunning reminder to pray fervently for this city and this nation as no politician, no celebrity and no amount of money will make a difference. It's not a republican issue, it's not a democrat issue, it's a church issue and it is time for the church to stand up and be the church and say, "no more!"

Please pray for New Orleans in this new year, but also pray for your community. And pray for God to use you to reach those who are hurting, whether they are in the cubicle next to you or across the ocean, and he will honor that prayer.

On a totally different note, Christmas was wonderful. I made it safely to Iowa (by way of Kansas City) and managed to get in ahead of the storm. I hardly slept at all the night before I left as I kept thinking I would get stuck on my layover in Atlanta if the weather became too bad in Kansas City. But when my dad and brother picked me up, other than being deathly cold, the weather and roads were fine and it was sunny in Iowa.

Being home is always a great feeling. While I have made my apartent my own little home, there is still just something about my parent's house that always feels a little more cozy. Weather did play a part the first weekend I was home and blizzard conditions kept me from attending a wedding in Des Moines which I had so wanted to go to.

And a lovely "welcome home" gift was the -18 degree weather with a -30 windchill. Now cold is one thing, but that's a different ballgame. And when I was coming off and unusually warm December week in New Orleans, it was just plain painful.

We didn't do a ton while I was home and that was okay. We hung out as a family a lot and did plenty of laughing about just about everything. One of my favorite Iowa winter pasttimes has become sleeping on my brother's bed while he and John play video games. Even with squealing tires and plenty of shooting I'm able to fall fast asleep.

Christmas Day was laid back and fun, spent with just our family. The day after Christmas we headed to Kansas City for Christmas with my mom's side of the family before I flew home on Sunday. We did a little shopping and it is always good to see family. The trip home was (thankfully) as uneventful as the trip to Iowa, except I was able to get my cup of Starbucks at the airport.

It was great to arrive home, and unthaw, but it almost seems like I was never home. Somehow vacation time just goes by so fast! I did, however, find out that I'll be in Des Moines as the end of February for the EFCA Central District conference, so I look forward to catching up with those I didn't get to see at Christmas.