Yeah Sean!!

As of this Saturday, Sean will officially be a college graduate! After 4 1/2 years he is done. We are both very excited! No more homework and tests for him! He has enjoyed relaxing the last few days. Work has really slowed down for him because of the weather. He is still leading worship at our church. We would appreciate your prayers as he looks for a job after we get back from Christmas.

We are done visiting churches for the year and we are enjoying a few weeks off. On Sunday we are headed to New Jersey for a few days, then to Florida to spend Christmas with my family. After that we're heading back to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to spend a few days with Sean's family in a cabin. We are so excited to spend time with all of our family. We're thinking it will be our last Christmas in the United States for a few years so want to spend as much time as we can with them.

We are looking forward to a few relaxing weeks and we'd appreciate your prayers for safe travels and the Lord's direction for what to do next when we come back. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Our God is Greater

We are officially 43% funded as the year is coming to a close and I just finished calling our last set of churches. We have learned so much in the last few months about God's faithfulness. God has provided in ways that we did not even know were possible. The last few months haven't been without their challenges, but we are learning an entirely new way to rely on the Lord.

Still, our goal is to get to Australia in February. We still have a very long way to go before then though. We're still trusting that all of our funding will come in whenever it is supposed to--even if that means after February. I had a long car ride last night and I was listening to one of my favorite singers, Chris Tomlin. One of my new favorite songs by him is called "Our God" and the lyrics are so powerful. They say:

Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other

Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, our God, our God!

And if our God is for us, than who could ever stop us,

And if our God is with us, than what could stand against?

We are at a place in our fundraising where we do not know the next steps take. We have called an entire list of churches-almost all of the Wesleyan churches in Indiana and now we're done. We do not know where to go next. Who do we call? How do we find more churches to visit? We have no idea. Thankfully we have churches to visit up until the first week of March, but after that we don't know what to do. As I was driving though last night, I was reminded of God's incredible power. He is greater. He is stronger. He is on our side. I turned the music up loud and sang out to the Lord, praying that he would lead us and continually remind us of his greatness and power.

Remember today that our God is great and powerful and mighty. Remember that he is your Savior and trust in him. He is so good. His plan rarely looks like what we think it will, but it is so much better. Trust in him today!

Let Your dreams come true through us...

This week we got to stay close to home and visit Brinker Heights Wesleyan Church which is just 10 minutes away from our house in Marion. I (Sam) had the privilege of meeting with the Pastor a few months ago. I really enjoyed getting to know him and sharing our passion for Australia. He shared with me that the church has a huge heart for children's ministry which was very evident today.

We started off the morning by going to the college/young adult Sunday school class. The woman who led the class actually was a missionary kid in Australia when she was in high school! It was so neat to be able to hear what she had to say about her time there. After that we headed over to the church for the worship service. It still never ceases to amaze us how wonderful it is to be able to worship with other believers all around the United States.

Today marks our last church visit of 2010. To sum it up, these last few months have been challenging, rewarding, scary, difficult and we're out of our comfort zone the majority of the time. I remember one time that someone told me that you know you're doing God's work when you are out of your comfort zone. Oh boy, we really have been! But it's all been so good! I think we've learned more about the Lord's faithfulness than we ever had and we're learning to trust in him in ways that we never have before.

One of our newest favorite bands is called The Rend Collective Experiment. I highly recommend looking them up!! One of our favorite songs right now is called "Broken Bread" and it talks about being completely surrendered to the Lord and allowing yourself to be used by him to make his dreams come true rather than your own. It's so hard to want to take control of fundraising and think that it has something to do with us, but we're learning it's a daily surrender. It's our desire to simply be used by the Lord. We do not want to pursue our own dreams, we want him to use us to accomplish his. We cannot wait to see what this new year has in store for us and we seek to follow the Lord.

Below is a link to one our favorite songs by The Rend Collective Experiment so we can get a little taste of who they are :) Unfortunately, the song above is not on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N3h0BKV6gw

Joy

When I think about the Christmas season the first word that comes to mind is JOY. This time of year fills me with so much JOY!! I love almost everything about Christmas. The lights, the music, the decorations, the snow! It's all so wonderful. Sean and I hung up our Christmas lights over the weekend. I couldn't wait for it to get dark so I could go outside and look at them. I absolutely love putting up the christmas tree and looking at all of the ornaments. Today was also the first time that it has snowed and actually stuck to the ground. It took almost all of my self control to stop myself from calling Sean and waking him up to tell him to look outside. I think this is one of the most wonderful times of the year. If you talk to me in a month I'll probably be ready for the cold to end and the snow to go away but as of right now I am enjoying it to the fullest!

When I woke up this morning I was thinking about all of the joy that this season brings to me and then I stopped and thought that it does not even compare to the joy that I have in Christ. The joy that I have goes so much deeper and has so much more meaning than simply Christmas lights! I have a Savior who died for me, who took my sins away so that I can be beautiful in His eyes. I have a relationship with the Creator of the universe. I have a Friend and Counselor who loves me for exactly who I am. I am so joyful because of my relationship with my Savior. Sean and I cannot wait to go to Australia and tell people about this joy that they can find in Christ but we also want to remind you of that today. If you have a relationship with the Lord praise Him today! Continue to seek Him and the love and joy that ONLY he can bring. Share this love and joy with those around you. Remember what this season is about. If you do not know the Lord, please talk to us or another believer about Him so that you can come to understand the beautiful joy that he gives and how you can have this incredible relationship! I cannot imagine what life would be like without him.

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 63 and I want to share just a little bit with you. It says,

"Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands."

I hope that you can all experience Christ's love that is better than life and the immeasurable joy that only He can give!