Author: ba

Posted on

First Question

Jay asked his first full question today. Ben was lying on the couch today and Jay asked him, “Are you reading the bible Daddy?” Totally grammatically correct! :) It was so cute. I love how he talks, even the mistakes he makes are cute. My precious children!

Posted on

Georgia … the Country, not the State

In Georgia our team had an amazing opportunity to teach at one of the only Kurdish churches in the world! We taught the book of 1 Peter to them, chapter by chapter every Saturday and Sunday Night for a month.

One particularly unique moment happened when we were teaching Chapter 3:1-6. These verses emphasize the influence that the behavior of believing wives can have on non-believing husbands. All of a sudden a few of the women started sharing that their husbands were not believers. We gathered them in the middle and prayed for them to have strength, wisdom and the ability to really live out this truth in their lives. The tears were flowing and the atmosphere was filled with a tangible presence of the Holy Spirit. It is moments like those that remind us why we are teaching God’s word!

Posted on

Cars the Movie

Mater and Lightening the Queen (spelling purposely wrong). These are Jay’s favorite heroes. “Watch the cars movie” is a line that we hear all day long, but it is so sweet how he loves cars and trains and airplanes. He has a special ‘Trucks’ drawer for all of his vehicles and it is open all day long. In our new house we have a rule that all the toys stay in the bedroom, this is probably the best thing we have done in all of our parenting days :) So thankfully all of these little cars and trucks that we would constantly slip on are now contained into one room.

Posted on

Shining

There is no other word to describe the look in Cassie’s face when she is filled with joy and excitement about something. She shines. Her eyes sparkle, her smile lights up the room. She is a wonderful daughter that we love so much! Thanks Cassie for shining your love and light into our lives!

Posted on

Crucial Conversations

The leadership team we are a part of is reading together through this book, Crucial Conversations. It has been the perfect book to read because we are growing and learning together about all sorts of important things regarding have healthy, helpful, safe conversations with people. Our brother Ike recommended it to us and I think it is one of those books that everyone should read! One of the things I thought was really good is that the authors talk about how we have this false impression that if you are going to have a ‘hard talk’ with someone you either will be honest and destroy the relationship, or not say anything in order to keep peace, but that is the fools choice. In fact it is possible to be honest and still maintain relationships. Something else that they talked about is how often we lose sight of what is important when emotions get involved. We start trying to ‘win’ and make our point instead of just looking at what is the main goal of the discussion. This has been a great book for Ben and I to read in our marriage, in parenting, and in leadership. We highly recommend it!

Posted on

Ukraine / Russia Article

One of the teams that we sent out stayed for one month in Ukraine and then moved on to the mid-west of Russia. Here is a quote from one of the interns, James from Germany:

“From the training time on God began to show me that teaching the bible and even teaching in general is not really about me as the teacher, it is all about honouring God and serving the people in my audience. As a teacher I can be so focused on myself and overly concerned with my performance and what people think of me, but I’ve come to realize that what really matters is what the audience “walks away with”. Throughout outreach I was able to put this revelation into practice and learn how to better make God’s word applicable to people of different backgrounds.

One of our main goals was to equip Ukrainian and Russian believers to study God’s word for themselves using inductive principles. We guided them through small books such as Philemon and Jonah and were amazed to see and hear what they “got out of it”. God gave us many opportunities to strengthen his body, the church, and encourage believers to dig deeper into the bible.
I think it is just amazing how God speaks to his people. Our audiences were encouraged by the truths they discovered and how these principles could be applied in their own lives. That is really what it is all about. We study and teach God’s word in order to be transformed, becoming more like him and giving him glory!”

Posted on

A City with One Heart

A pretty cool event happened a couple weeks ago. Around 15,000 Christians in Winnipeg got together, rented out the MTS Centre and had a big worship service together. Across denominations, across stereotypes, a city with one heart!

Posted on

Making Noise

Jay has discovered high heels. Yes, one day he might regret this is recorded in his blog, but for now it is so cute! He gets out Mommy’s shoes, or Cassie’s shoes and says ‘Hiheels’ (all one word of course), and then he stomps around the apartment! We move into a house in a week today, and we are sure our neighbours below our apartment will say, “Finally!”

Posted on

Asia Update

In an earlier post, I mentioned we would like to highlight each of the teams that we sent out in October. The team on the left flew to Hong Kong and spent two months teaching there and in their northern neighbour. Their newsletter is the picture on the left – it’s a picture because the authorities in some countries scan all electronic information but if its a picture then the text is no longer text and basically, “unscannable”. Sylvie, one of the local leaders commented on their teaching, “in 10 years I haven’t seen anyone teach in such a way that ‘these people’ were able to understand!”

Thanks for being a part of sending Sonya, Tonya and Vicka to Asia!

** click the picture to see their update large enough to read the text :)

Posted on

26 Weeks

Everything with Bingo is right on track. Weight gain is gain. Development is good. Angela started to feel him kicking at just the right time. Pregnancy couldn’t be going much better. Speaking of development, after the ultrasound today, it has been confirmed that Cassie and Jay will have a baby brother!