Less than two days...

...until I deliver my first sermon ever. My nerves are firing at a rapid rate, my blood pressure is up, and my anxiety level has been raised to a whole new plateau. I'm preaching on Mark 8:27-38 - Peter's confession, "You are the Christ." Also where Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." This is a wonderful passage to preach on, however, my insecurities lie in a small fear of getting up in front of others. I was very active in high school drama, but I'm finding that this is a completely different situation where I haven't been able to draw upon my previous acting experience. I'll post my sermon after Friday!

Zambia Missions Team Blog

We have the privilege of sending a number of our congregants to Zambia, Africa, to work with Trust Orphans through World Hope for two weeks. The group leaves tomorrow morning from Grand Rapids and they have given us with a great blog to read all about how God is working in Zambia and how they themselves are being transformed by the Lord of all the nations. They have our prayer support and I hope they have an amazing life-changing adventure!

Bumper sticker read:

If going to church makes a Christian, then does going to the garage make a car?

What I learned from Dave

My wife and I went to Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover in Grand Rapids a couple weeks ago. It was a great five hour affair, which I highly recommend. If you ever are given the opportunity to go -- GO!

Dave really challenged us and our beliefs about how money should be spent in order to get out of debt. We don't have a lot of debt, however we have one student loan. We have this incredible sense (which Dave talks about) of attacking the student loan with everything we've got until it's gone. This isn't an easy thing to do, but we're going to do it! We received our refund check from Uncle Sam and the whole amount minus a couple expenses went to the loan. It was incredibly painful to put thousands of dollars toward the loan but I know and I believe we are on the right path towards financial freedom.

Pics of the kids

"I'm ready to scuba Dad!"

"I'm a monkey!"