Stepping Out In Faith

Back at the end of November, our pastor's brother came and spoke at our church. The sermon was called "The Power of Prayer". At the beginning of the sermon he asked us to thing about a particular issue/problem currently in our life. The first thing I thought of was trying to get pregnant. (Ken and I have been trying just under a year.) The points were:
1. Powerful prayer will speak positively about the situation
2.Powerful prayer set our focus on God, not the obstacles
3. Powerful prayer stays committed even in difficulties
4. Powerful prayer sees miracles
If you want to watch the sermon-email me and I can give you directions on how to get to the website to watch it. (raebarnes@hotmail.com) It was a really good sermon. I am watching it again right now. I wish I could find the sermon notes so I can put some scripture up too. I will have to keep looking..........

At the end on the sermon he was giving example of things people have done to show their faith that God would answer their prayers. One example was: Tithing where you would like your income level to BE, rather than were it was currently at. Another was--GET THE BABY'S ROOM READY. As soon as I heard that, I knew that is what I wanted to do. Ken was working up in the sound/video booth that night. I immediately sent him a text message saying "Lets get the baby's room ready". He sent one right back saying "I was just thinking the same thing!". I have to say that I loved Ken so much more in that moment. We went home and discussed it a little. There was a lot to do before we could even think about that room being ready to paint. I did go and pick up some paint samples and we picked a shade of green that we both agreed on.(Ken was a little disappointed that I wouldn't allow "panthers blue") When Ken's parents were in town after Christmas they asked us if there were any house projects that needed to be done. We told them about getting the baby's room ready and they jumped at the opportunity. Dick did all the painting--he doesn't like to share! Ken and Dick got new shelving put up in the closet. Paula and I rearranged several rooms and reorganized things. That was a big help. We also went to Babies "R" Us and bought some gender neutral baby clothes.

So Ken and I are stepping out and faith. We are getting our baby's room ready. We are getting it ready and waiting on God to do the rest. Soon we will start looking at furniture and deciding on cribs. We are going to get everything except the baby bedding. That will be decided when we know what we are having. Here are pictures from that fun time!

BEFORE:


DICK GETTING STARTED:


KEN AND PAULA LISTENING TO THE PANTHERS GAME
AND LILY WANTING TO PLAY!:


THE AIR MATTRESS ON TOP OF OUR BED:


ONE GREEN WALL AND ONE WHITE WALL:


GETTING THE CLOSET DONE:


FINISHED FOR NOW!:

Advent Conspiracy

Nobody wants a Christmas worth forgetting. What if we would worship fully, spend less, give more and love all? Check out adventconspiracy.org for more...

Snow Day (for some)

Today was a snow day for most of central Arkansas. The temperature began to drop yesterday morning, and misty light rain began around noon. Soon after, the rain began to freeze and the rest of the day was a mix of sleet and a few snow flurries.

Schools and many businesses are closed, and Rachel was already off today. She is spending the day making and baking Christmas treats with her mom. The roads are not really that bad, especially because every TV and radio station tells people to stay home and do not get on the roads unless absolutely necessary. They think that the first sign of winter weather must be the beginning of an ice age (like the movie Day After Tomorrow). But hotels are still open and it is business as usual for me. I'm not thrilled about driving home on these roads in the dark, but since the roads should be pretty empty, I have no reason to be worried.

It was nice to get up this morning and see our first snow and ice at our house.

We finally have our garage back!

Ever since buying our house in May, our garage has been full of extra stuff. Boxes and boxes of stuff. Most of which was in storage for over a year - we didn't need it then and haven't needed it since being in the house.

We finally set a date for a garage sale and Rachel's brother, Karl, helped to split our garage into things to keep and things to sell.

Karl and Robyn had a lot of things to sell and we had a combined garage sale last Saturday. Being a holiday weekend and the day after Black Friday, we didn't know what to expect. Then it was rainy on Friday and early Saturday morning.

We were very surprised at how much we were able to get rid of! We started out with a HUGE mountain of clothes and ended with enough to fill only two boxes. Altogether, we made almost $500 and now there is room to get a car in the garage.

Mid-November Update

My birthday was November 5th. Rachel surprised me that Saturday with a birthday party at our house. We had invited our friends Brian and Maria over to have lunch and play cards. They showed up and I went outside to start cooking on the grill. Then the doorbell rang and it was Ryan and Samantha. I realized something must be up, people kept showing up, and we ended up having about 20 family and friends from church.

Rachel's brother Karl came over and helped us move/organize/get rid of stuff in our garage. He and Robyn will be having a garage sale with us on November 29th and hopefully we will get rid of a lot of stuff that's just laying around taking up space. I'm just glad that we can get one car in the garage now!

Leeland concert at church

I'm a scrooge when it comes to Halloween. We decided to go see Leeland in concert at church.

Cold weather moving in

Rachel and I raked some leaves in the back yard last week, and we'll have a lot more to do once all the leaves fall. Oh well - just another thing that comes along with home-ownership... The cool weather this last month has been great, but now the cold weather is starting to move in. Our house has been pretty cold in the mornings and we turned on the heat Saturday morning. The temperature was down in the lower 40s this morning, and it will be even colder tonight.

We had a late night Friday hanging out with 3 couples from church. Saturday was spent getting the house ready for the cold weather. We finished adding some weather-stripping to our windows, caulked the inside of our windows, and installed a programmable thermostat (fun job and a lot easier than I thought). I even bought some outlet/switch insulation - pre-cut pieces that go behind the covers and around electrical outlets and light switches. We've never had (or paid for) gas heat before, and all you hear is how expensive heating costs will be every winter - hopefully what we did will help with our heating costs, but we'll just have to wait and see...