God's Calling vs. Our Desires

"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever." ~Elisabeth Elliot~

This is a quote from Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of martyred missionary, Jim Elliot. Jim Elliot's famous quote is my favorite, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

As soon to be full-time missionaries we realize that we are giving up a lot, but what we give up is less of a cost than our Savior gave up for us. He gave his very life for us so that we can gain a life that we cannot lose. In following Christ, who gave up everything, how we can anything but give up our desires, our possessions, and our everything in order to follow Him in the calling He has placed on us.

Although some may not understand this calling, I choose to give up my plans and purposes, my own desires and hopes, and accept His will for my life, wherever that may lead me. I have found that as I give up my desires for the things this world says are important and follow His calling, then His calling becomes my desire and the things of this world become less important.

Pictures From Around the House

We received some more pictures today from the streets near the house. This one is on the roof looking toward Esperanza Viva (the youth home). The tall buildings in the distance are the grain towers. If you get lost, all you have to do is find the grain towers and walk toward them because the youth home is the next street over.

This is a picture looking into the back yard.

Another view from on top of the roof. It shows the gas tank.

This is the tinaco or the water tank. This is where all the water pressure comes from. You have a pump that pumps water up to the tinaco then the pressure is from the downward fall.

This is the street looking right from the house.

This is the street looking left from the house.

The kids are very excited about seeing the house we will live in, especially Erin. We look forward to being able to do things with the kids and staff in the big back yard. That will be so awesome!

Our House in Mexico

We got news today that the house we were looking at is going to work well for us. We got all of our questions answered on it and they will be getting all the paperwork to fax to us for our signatures. This is really getting exciting!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Exciting News and the Next Step in Our Move

Today we received some pictures of a house that Juana found for us to check out. Juana is a staff member at Esperanza Viva in Mexico. She has been given the job of looking for a place for us. She sent us a bunch of pictures which I will share if we choose that house. For now I am just showing the front of the house. It looks like it would fit our family well and the price is right. It is a two story house with three bedrooms, one and a half baths and it has a yard. One of the things it has that not all houses have are closets in the bedrooms. That is a big plus! Also it has a complete kitchen with cabinets. That is also something that is not an automatic. The landlord is willing to work with us on the price for the rent. Erin is very excited about the house and loves the pictures. She wants this one. We first need to find out exactly where it is and how close to walking distance from the youth home it is. We also need to know if we can get high speed Internet there. One thing we really want to be able to do while we are in Mexico is to keep in contact with all of you here. We want to be able to keep you updated on what we are doing and how God is working. So having Internet access is very important. I will pass on more pictures as soon as we decide if we are taking this house or not. Please keep us in prayer as we try to make a decision on our housing and check back soon.

Erin's First Gymnastics Meet

Today was an exciting day for Erin. She had her first gymnastics meet and she did a great job. Here is Erin, her coach Donita and her friend Janina. Erin and Janina are the only level 4 gymnasts at our gym.

Janina's mom did their hair yesterday so that it would stay out of their eyes. It came out really cute.

Warm ups.

Erin's first event was the uneven bars. During warm ups on the bars she was having a very hard time. Donita even had to help her up on to the bar and she wasn't doing any of her skills on her own without help. But she suprised everyone during the actual meet and received an 8.650.

Next was the beam. Again in pratice this week she was very shaky on the beam and was falling off a lot. But when she got on during the meet, she was quite steady and did great receiving an 8.850. It was so awesome to watch her come through on it after all her hard work in practice.

The next event was floor. She enjoys floor the most. Until last week though she was having a hard time because she couldn't get her round off back hand spring. Well, she got in the middle of the week and she did it at the meet also. Her score on floor was 8.70.

The last event was vault. It is hard to get pictures of vault because they go so fast. Her vault score was 8.850.


For her first meet ever, she did very well. Her all around score was 34.60. Awesome!
After the meet, Jim said she could do the next meet also. So, she has her next meet on Saturday, February 28th. That will be all the meets she does since there are no more lined up before we move. We are glad she was at least able to do these two while she is here.