Into the Heart of Malawi

80% of the population live in poverty, surviving on less than 1 US dollar a day.

The spread of AIDS in Malawi has reduced life expectancy to 43 and threatens to destroy families and villages.

http://operationworld.24-7prayer.com/country.php?country_id=85

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My sister Samantha is spending the next 7 weeks working with Circle of Hope International to reach out to the people of Malawi. She has been gearing up for this trip over the past couple of months and as of yesterday she landed in Africa. Please keep her in your prayers as she spends this exciting and challenging time overseas. Samantha will be posting updates on her blog as well as on the Circle of Hope website. There is also a prayer guide on the CHI website with specific requests relating to what the teams will be doing on certain days. She is going to have an amazing experience and I can't wait to hear what the Lord did while Samantha was over there. Until then I will continue to pray and I ask that if you are reading this please join with me in seeking the Lord. Our heart is to see the Gospel spread to every nation tribe and tongue and to see people set free through the powerful death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Praise be to God!

Overwhelmed By The Faithfulness of God!

Things I Miss About Louisville:
- My church family, especially our amazing community group
- Assorted shopping places (Borders, Old Navy, World Market, etc)
- Starbucks...awww man an iced coffee sounds amazing right now.
- Plenty of date night places to choose from
- The fulfillment I received when I could tell I was making a difference with the girls at Maryhurst.

Things I Do Not Miss About Louisville:
- The traffic and absolutely awful Louisville drivers.
- Our teeny tiny one bedroom apartment
- Working 3rd shift hours.

Now my list for what I miss about Louisville is slightly longer than the drawbacks of living there however let me share about life here in Maysville. I told Jon the other day that the longer we are here the more evident it becomes that God faithfully saw fit to place us at Lewisburg Baptist Church. The almost 18 month search was well worth the wait because I can tell you now that this small community of believers has completely taken us in as their family. God intended to display his amazing faithfulness by making this place exceed our expectations. There is something special happening here and it started way before we set foot in Maysville.

Just A Few Things I love about Maysville:
- Our church family. I have a funny feeling I may be writing a lot about this in the future. We have especially been enjoying our Thursday night small group and the church has an exciting week of VBS coming up soon. I'm looking forward to tons of Gospel opportunities.
- Our beautiful three bedroom parsonage, all of which the church pretty much takes care of.
- Walking out in the yard at night and seeing the lawn lit up with hundreds of fireflies.
- The pristine countryside.
- Oh...and did I mention the people? As a church family they welcomed us here with open arms and after an amazingly good pot luck they presented us with a cooler full of gift cards to local restaurants and hang out spots. What a blessing that was to our little family.

God is good and continues to provide for all of our needs. I am still looking for a part time job so prayers on that front would be appreciated. I guess I'll close out this post with 8 month pictures of my boy. Sorry these are almost a month late. Hopefully I can actually post his 9 month pictures on time.

Look at those teeth!