Sendusout

Every other summer my family gets together for a vacation/reunion. I have 2 brothers and a sister, all older, with families of their own so we make a pretty impressive group when gathered. Plus we are spread all over the U.S. from North Carolina to Massachusetts to Colorado to California to Idaho. We have been taking it in turns to host these events somewhere in our area of the country and this summer we are all having a Pacific Northwest vacation!

Mom and Dad arrived this evening and the rest are coming in Tomorrow and Saturday. We will spend next week at a vacation cabin in McCall where Melissa and I were married in 1998.

During the early fall of 1997 we kicked this tradition off by getting together on a lake in Maine near my brother Eric’s house. It was an incredible time. I slept in a bed on ! the screened back porch right beside our dock on the water. I will never forget listening to the loons call and dive and seeing the mists dancing over the glassy water in the predawn. God did a lot of speaking into my life over that weekend. He showed me the strong heritage of which I am apart in my family and in Christ and gave me a wake up call as to how I was going to add to that heritage. It was over this weekend that I knew it was to Melissa Swank that I would be spending my life with. It was also during this weekend that I knew Melissa and I would have a life together that was open and willing to go wherever God would take us.

We were married in April of 1998 and were moving to Romania for 3 months of volunteer mission work by June of 1998. These events were the start of a strong foundation which the Lord was developing in both Melissa and I. Now we find ourselves 8 years later with a lot of Spiritual growth, healing, and revelation under our! belts, our children born and growing, and more hungry and des! perate t o be walking step by step with God than ever.

As my family arrives and we spend the next 10 days together I am eager to see how the Lord will speak and minister to us through one another. I have been praying this would not only be a very special time for us to spend together before we move overseas, but that God would work through us and in us to bless one another. I am sure we will have lots of fun too playing on the lake, biking, and enjoying one another’s company. I will be putting up lots more pictures I am sure.