God and His Goodness

Everyday brings new challenges but God is always FAITHFUL. Recently we had a lighting storm in our area and our tree beside our home was struck by lighting. It was truly a sound that will bring you out of the deepest of sleep. It was about 2:00 am when it all happened and we knew it was very close to our house we just did not realize how close. The next morning when my husband went out he saw that it was our tree, and the bark was striped completely off in one section from the top of the tree to the bottom. This was amazing to see considering the tree is about 90 feet tall. The thing that I realized is just how amazing these storms can be. The most awesome thing about this situation is right next to this tree is another tree that is almost just as tall and is only about 3ft away with a gas tank beside it. So why write about this? Well sometimes we just go about our day thinking we are always relatively safe in our own home, but in fact it is a false sense of security that could be taken away in a moment. Be thankful for each moment and pray often so when things happen that are beyond our control we have that vital relationship with the One who does have control...Jesus Christ.

Busy as Bees

We have been extremely busy around here for these last few months. To give you a taste of all we have been up to we have started a daycare at our church, our youngest son Tanner just graduated from high school, and of course just everyday life such as putting in our garden and all the typical work around the house. Sometimes I think I need thirty hours in a day but I would just fill it up and need more time anyway. For our garden this year we are only planting tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and bell peppers. We mainly need the beans and tomatoes but the others are good to have for salads and besides that I have really been wanting some pinto beans with ham hock and cornbread salad with the other fresh veggies. Tanner is now working as a stock person at a grocery store nearby and will be starting college in the fall along with my husband. It seems so different not having children in school anymore and it truly was a sad time of my life because I had a very hard time adjusting to the ideal that my baby was 18 years old and was now going to start a new chapter of his life. I know God has every thing in his control my only prayer for him is that he will do the will of God for his life. That has been our prayer for all of our children and that is why we raised them the way we did. As for me God has started a new journey in mine and my husbands life with the opening our the daycare (Cornerstone Great Beginnings) on May 24. It has been awesome because we have met some of the nicest people you could ever imagine and the children are wonderful too. It is amazing how you become attached to them in such a short time. God is really a great God we pray he will continue to bless our family and move us in the direction that he would have us go. We do so many things with children like the kids church we recently had and it was awesome as well. We have so many awesome people that help us out but this time the Wisener's took a great idea they had and we all went with it. I know they put in a lot of work because we always want to make sure the kids have a great time learning about Jesus and there is a lot of prep time to make that happen, so we want to thank them for all the extra time they put into it. The rewards are great too because we had one child receive the Holy Ghost this time also and that is a total of six in the last 3 extreme kids churches. We are expecting more and more for God does give the increase. My prayer is that every child we meet we some how touch their lives and they will never forget us and what they felt through the love of Christ. Below are some pictures of all the things I have written about in this update. May God Bless You All!!!!!!!!

Here are the tomatoes with the cages. Boy what fun it is trying to get those cages in the ground.

Here are some day lilies right next to the garden. Nothing we planted but just beautiful.

Here are the beans. They came up very quickly this year. This is only two weeks from the day we planted.

And now for the Graduation pictures:

Here is Brother Greg (Our Youth Pastor) leading in the graduating class of 2010.

Here is Sister Wilbanks (the school visionary) and the first lady of our church. She is an awesome woman of God and we were blessed to have all of our children graduate from this school.

Here is our Pastor presenting the graduates with their diploma. This is Tanner getting his.

Here are the three graduates for 2010 from Cornerstone Christian Academy. There were four graduates but Brittani had a car accident on the way. Thank God she was okay.

Here is the moving of the tassel.

Here is the whole clan (except for Patrick).

Oh there's Patrick...but now Chase is gone. We just couldn't get them all together.

Congratulations to all the graduates this year!