Christmas break--Bowling! :)

This would be me trying to get a good picture... didn't work so well. :) haha

Last week (yes, I'm way behind on this post) we got some friends together to go bowling during break. :)

Elaina

Sarah and Melanie :)

Tori and me

Trying different techniques...

...we're not the greatest bowlers in the world... but we had lots of fun!
Hey, we had food (you can't really see it in the picture), so it's all good. :) haha

Buddies
Ian and Matt

My sister!

Andrea was busy bowling and didn't get too many pictures, and mine... well... don't compare with hers! But we got some. :)

Hope everyone's Christmas season is going great!

Christmas... all because of an amazing God

"Well, Pharisees couldn’t stand Him,
but they found out they couldn’t stop Him.
Pilot couldn’t find any fault in Him.
The witnesses couldn’t get their testimonies to agree.
Herod couldn’t kill Him.
Death couldn’t handle Him and the grave couldn’t hold Him. THATS MY KING! DO YOU KNOW HIM?"

-Matthew Alashari


I just had to repost that cause I think it's pretty great. Our God is AMAZING! We don't always understand what He's doing in our lives, but He's always good and He always has a plan! Just wait it out... and seek and serve Him while doing so!

Hope you all have a blessed Christmas.

"Hallelujah! The King is here, given for all men..."

I'm posting-- with pictures!!

Impressive, right? Maybe...? :)

Getting our Christmas tree...

That's the one!

Seth: "What did they do with their snow? Last time we came here they had snow!"

When we got home, we realized that the tree has a pretty big bald spot... so we put that in the corner. You can still see it though. haha :)

watch this.

But if we are the Body
Why aren't His arms reaching...?

True Friends

A true, godly friendship is based on what the friends have in common--God. In order for the friendship to be strong, the thing that bonds it needs to be stronger, and that is each person's relationship with Jesus. Read these verses about Daniel and his true friends before Daniel interpreted the king's dream:

¹⁷ Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. ¹⁸ He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

Daniel 2:17-18

These were true friends! What held them together was their personal relationships with the One who made them all. They never let their friendship with each other get in the way of their relationship with the Lord.

When there was trouble, Daniel went to his friends. He didn't pour out his problems to them, but he told them what was happening and asked them to pray. Do our friends know that they can come to us when they need prayers? Are we intercessors on the behalf's of our sisters and brothers?

When Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (Shadrach, Meshach and Abendego) were told to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar's idol, they had the courage to refuse because Christ was the driving force in every one of their relationships and decisions. The easily could have bowed down and to save their lives (and keep their friendship), but they chose God first. Look what He did! He saved them anyway!

One last thing... I heard the song "More Than You'll Ever Know" by Watermark the other day. Here's the chorus:

You've been more than a friend to me
You fight off my enemies
'Cause you've spoken truth over my life
And you'll never know what it means to me
Just to know you've been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
More than you'll ever know...

Wow! What power we have in the lives of the people around us through prayer!

20 Things I'm Thankful For

Well, I decided that I need to get back on top of keeping up my blog! I've really been slacking on it for some reason... so I'll start with 20 real things I'm thankful for. I know it's after thanksgiving, but shouldn't we be thankful every day?

1) Freedom in Christ
2) Family in Christ
3) New Hope Church
4) Music
5) Hope
6) Books
7) My small town:)
8) God's Word
9) Sun and warmth
10) Cousins
11) Dancing
12) Creativity
13) Work made fun
14) Food
15) A healthy body
16) A secure family
17) Persecution
18) The Internet
19) Forgiveness
20) Abundant life!

Re-post 20 things you're thankful for!

Challenge

Engraft this verse:

Joshua 1:9
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

It actually works. I didn't realize until a few days later. I wasn't even trying to memorize this or meditate on it. I emailed it to a friend and therefore was thinking about it, then I realized that the last few days God has actually been helping ME to be strong and courageous! It's so amazing! God's Word does powerful things in our lives even when we don't realize it!

See for yourself!

Victory in Jesus Christ!

We hear that a lot, but how often do we really realize that it's true? We're don't have to fight these battles alone. First of all, we know that we have victory, because Jesus has conquered! Second, God has given us people to help us fight our battles. We're all struggling with things... many of them the same as others. We don't realize that we need to stick together and fight!

Saturday we went to a fantastic youth rally and I heard this example. You're in a battle and you have 10 people to fight. Your enemy has 5 people, so you know that you can beat them easily. You send one man out to fight the enemy. Of course, he gets defeated (5-1, right?). You send another man. He's defeated as well. This continues to happen until your whole army is defeated! Why did this happen? It was 10-5?!?!? Of course it was because you sent out your men alone! If everyone would have fought together, you would have won!

This is what we do as Christians! God has given us family in Christ to help us in our weaknesses! We need to stay together and fight, knowing that we can win only through Jesus Christ.

Don't fight your battles alone.

Please pray

Right now my parents are on their way to Ohio to visit my grandpa. He's been in and out of the hospital for a couple years now. Yesterday he went in and it was pretty serious. He had surgery this afternoon with a 50% chance of coming out alive. I don't know all the medical details, but he did make it out of the surgery.

Dad and Mom took the three little kids and are dropping them off to stay at my other grandparents. In the morning my parents will go the rest of the way to the hospital. Andrea and I are here at home and staying at a family friend's house for the night.

Please pray for my grandpa and the rest of the family with him, traveling safety for my parents, safety for Andrea and I here, and that my family would be able to be a light to our extended family these next few days.

Thanks so much,
Marissa

September already?

Wow, the summer sure flew by fast! I can say I am looking forward to fall, though! So many fun things happening and a new season of life starting! :)

Last Tuesday I took my road test and passed! I'm officially a licensed driver now. :) Praise God for blessing and watching out for us the other day. It was a kind of hectic morning.

I was supposed to be taking my test at 10:00 on Tuesday. At 9:15, my mom and I were finally getting out the door. I wanted to get there early so that I could practice parallel parking for a little while (I hadn't done it much in our van). When we got in the van, we found out we didn't have current registration for it. After looking around for a few minutes, we figured it must be in my dad's car so we though the best decision would be to drive to his work and check. We figured that if wasn't there, we could at least switch cars and I could use his.

At about 9:30 we arrived at his work and fortunately he was able to come out and help us. UNfortunately, he didn't have the van's registration.... or the car's. Now I didn't have any car to drive, and it was too late to go home and ask our neighbor, we'd never make it back on time.

We had tried calling my aunt multiple times about using her car, but she was with a patient and couldn't answer. Finally, 10 minutes before the test, we got a hold of her. She works literally across the street from where the test was going to be and, of course, she HAD current registration for her car. :) We were able to run over there and she let me use her car for the test (what a HUGE blessing!). We actually got to the parking lot about 5 minutes before 10:00 and I was still able to practice parking for a couple minutes. :) The test ended up going fantastic, even though I'd never driven her car before. THANK YOU, AUNT ROSE!!!! :)

God always knows what He's doing, doesn't He?!?! No matter how confused or frustrated we feel about a situation, He's in control. :)


Another thought.....

I read Proverbs 16:9 yesterday which says,
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."

As teenagers, we're often confused about the future and what God wants us to do. Often I find myself making my own plans for myself but being afraid that I'm not following God's plans for my life. This verse is so comforting to me because it reminds me of this,
"If God wants you to do something, you'll do it. You're not going to miss an opportunity that He wants you to have."
God's got great plans for my life. He's not going to let me get around them. :) Keep trusting.

Trust is really a hard thing for me sometimes, but God's proved Himself faithful again and again. Sometimes I wonder why I can't remember that.... :)

Perfect Peace

Hard Things

Note:
~This post was supposed to go before the last one, but somehow blogger published it after~

As I'm sitting here waiting for pictures to upload for a post about our summer trip, I realized, "I've been posting about what I'm doing this summer, how I'm having fun, and endless pictures." Fun posts and pictures are by no means bad or wrong at all, but I figured I should really post about something worthwhile.

I just started the book Start Here by Alex and Brett Harris. After reading Do Hard Things last year, I knew I couldn't miss this book! Only a few chapters into the book, I have been so encouraged that God does have hard things for us to do right where we are. Some may be big-- like raising money for a new well on the other side of the world. Some may be "small"-- helping an elderly person scrape snow of their car or befriending a stranger. The main thing is learning to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit wherever you are. God has jobs for us, we just need to learn how to listen and obey.

I started the book last night and since then my mind has been swirling with hard things that I can do for the Lord, some big and some not-s0-big. My siblings and I have a nursing home ministry that we've been doing for a while now. We usually go to a certain facility once a month and play for the residents, and recently I've felt that God would like me to add another place that we go. I found somewhere that we've been before and my mom also thought it would be a good place to call, but talking to people I don't know is not something I love to do. I really felt like God wanted me to do it, but I really didn't want to. My mom offered to do it for me, but I decided that this was a hard thing I needed to do, besides, it will get easier every time, right? :) So I called, and it ended up being a lot easier than I thought. I don't know what they'll decide, but it's up to God now, and I did a hard thing for Him!

My point being: pick a hard thing and do it! Don't wait. Make a list of steps you need to do leading up to your final goal. Ask for God's blessing and plunge in!

Soli Deo Gloria-- always!!!

Marissa

There and back again... more summer

And now for a fun post--with pictures. :) Andi and I (mostly Andi) took so many pictures on this trip, and this is just a few of them. I had trouble weeding them out!

Last weekend we went up north with our very good friends and enjoyed getting to see them again! We've been going up almost every year since Andrea was born, so it's always something we look forward to.

Ian with our God-sister Talitha. This is the first time we've seen her when she's actually really talking- a lot! She is so sweet!

She and the boys got along so well!

Saturday we went to Lake Michigan and swam, ran on the sand dunes, and looked for Petoskey stones. I found this really neat one right on top of the sand!

~Discovery Center~
Someone managed to catch a picture of Andrea smiling. :) I'm not sure she enjoyed this part as much as the rest of us.

The challenge was to stack these magnets up to the paper. It was a little harder than we thought, but we did it! Teamwork! Mom couldn't get any closer with the camera because apparently the magnetic pull is so strong that it ruins electronics.

Gecko

More swimming in the lake.

Sisters

Sailing

Andi and I with our God-brother Luke.

Awww

Right before leaving for home. We went to a different part of Lake Michigan a few hours before we got in the car for the 3+ hour drive home. Unfortunately our family aren't very good travelers, so 3 hours to us seems like a long time. :)

Now that fair and going to the cottage are over for the summer, we're not very busy and are just enjoying the last few days of the summer! God's faithfulness has been evident all year and I'm looking forward to seeing what He's going to do this fall/winter. It's hard to trust sometimes, but I know that God has the perfect plans for my life always. I've been wrestling with doubting and trusting the last few days... and it's good to know that God's always in control of our lives.

What's been keeping you busy this summer?

In Christ,
Marissa

Fair week 2010!

I had so much fun last week! Getting projects done and getting the animals ready this summer has been a blast! Now fair has come and gone! Here are some pictures:

Working in the kitchen :)

Photography judging

Our little 5-8 year old showing his rabbit. Isn't he adorable?

He got a little nervous up there... but he was still cute! :) haha

My sister!

Showing

Decoupage

Cross-stitch

Glass painting

Andrea's photography

Small animal auction

She had the best smile up there. :)

I can't wait to start working on fair projects for next year! And to get our animals. :)

Blessings!
Marissa