More of the House

 Our office! We finally have an office to work in and keep all of our CEF stuff in! This has been a huge highlight of our new house. It's so nice to keep all that stuff contained to one room...as long as I don't sneak work out to the kitchen table. We've made the main floor second bedroom into our office for now and will someday finish the "office" room downstairs. I'm getting spoiled since there's more room in our current spot, however.

 Here is our storage closet that David made shelves for. It's hard to believe that it is already packed with CEF stuff! Maybe someday we'll even have closet doors!

 Here is David's desk (that was given to us with the rest of our furniture!) We only have one office chair right now and since we only have high chairs, the seating thing still could use a little work.

 And here's my desk...next to the big window!

 This is my favourite light fixture in the whole house. David refused to have a chandelier or low light in the dining room because he always hits his head on them. I had one light fixture to buy and found this one on super clearance at Canadian Tire. I'm not sure why everyone that comes in considers it a "Sarah light". =] Thankfully David's head does clear under it, not by much, but it does clear it.

 This is the hallway from our office, with the bathroom on the right and our bedroom in front. Turn to the Left to get into the living room.

 Our living room!

 We are so blessed to have been given this wonderful furniture by our friends moving to the U.S.!

 This is the famous "crazy yellow chair" that some of you have wanted to see.

 I think it's so neat that the couch came with green cushions...the same green as a doormat I had and as some of my placemats and that matches my teapot.

And last of all the greeny coloured chair.

The Newsboys Concert

Most years we are at the International Plowing  Match over David's birthday, for the whole week so it's very hard to do much celebrating besides buying a poutine, so this year, since we weren't at the Plowing Match I got to pull off a few surprise celebrations. We were scheduled to be in Brantford doing a Teacher Training weekend, so it worked out perfectly when I discovered the Newsboys were having a concert in London after the training was finished. The Newsboys have been one David's favourite groups (although he confesses to being a  true DC Talk fan.) The concert included 8 other music groups.

 We arrived an hour early to get good seats...and ended up waiting in line 3 1/2 hours because two of the semi trucks with all the equipment got stuck at the border for 2 hours. So, Johnny Diaz came out a did a spontaneous performance and worship time about 15 feet from us. That was pretty cool.

 A fun part about the day was that we got to hang out with our "daughter", Belle. We were each planning to go to the concert without knowing the other was attending. It made our extra long wait fun because we got to visit with her.

 They certainly have some amazing props as the robotic arms move up and around with the guitar player and keyboard player.

So, besides getting to sleep far past our bedtime, we had a lot of fun. It was the first concert we've ever been to together...it took 4+ years to make it happen!

Prayer Card Photo Shoot

 One of the interesting things about being a missionary is the necessity of having a prayer card to give to people to help them remember to pray for us and the children, along with being able to get in touch with us or with CEF...which requires correct information. Since the CEF Ontario office moved last year and we moved this year, we knew that David's dreaded event awaited us...the prayer card photo shoot. I use to take pictures for fun with my friends when I was little, David did all he could to avoid a camera (and still does). I do admit there is something a little unnerving about knowing you're going to give this picture to a few hundred people to look at for the next few years.

So, since we're cheap and his sister Melissa has a good eye for photography and is willing to oblige us I asked her to help us out a couple weekends ago when we were visiting. She did a great job considering who she was working with and the weather.

 We were having trouble keeping our eyes open. I will spare you the 30 pictures where we alternated who closed their eyes because of the wind.

 We walked around a park by their condo which is by Lake Ontario trying a few different spots. We had a friend Daffy the sick duck that also wanted to join our pictures. We were rather disturbed to see his tongue stuck out of his mouth...maybe he licked a flag pole?!

 David likes to get in his thoughtful, pondering look.

 Another result of the wind blowing was the my hair would NOT stay in it's spot.

 Then the light wasn't bright enough...

And we saw a squirrel friend. (I still think black squirrels look strange after growing up in a solely gray squirreled world.)

However, in the end we did find a nice picture that worked and once we get the lettering finalized, we'll be mailing them out to you all to put on your fridge.. so I'll hold you in suspense until then.

Our house!

 David finished the siding a couple weeks ago! We plan to put a deck on the front under the kitchen door that extends to the left side, but will drop to 2 ft on that side.

 We got to spend Labour Day weekend with David's family in Pickering! Yay! His parents gave us the mums and planters...now it looks like a real house!

 Here's one side.

 The back.

The other side.

 The mum before it goes into full bloom soon. =]

 Our bathroom! Yay for running water! I never knew how amazing it is to have the toilet fill itself up with water.

 It's so wonderful being able to brush our teeth with water from the tap!

 Our bedroom with the furniture that God gave us. A couple from our church moved back to Virginia and didn't want to move their furniture with them again so they blessed us with it! What an incredible gift! We didn't really have any furniture and they gave us exactly what we needed: a bedroom set, living room set, dining room set, and desk.

 Our closet that will someday have doors. I was just glad that we had a closet rod by the time we moved in.

The end of Summer

Sadly summer seems to be coming to an official close for us, now that we've finished our final week of camp and "summer ministry" as of yesterday. David's trying to convince me that it'll be easier to see fall come now that we can watch the leaves change from our windows...I'm still not convinced. The summer seems to go by so fast and we never really have time to stop and enjoy it in the midst of ministry crazies. I'm wishing we'd get some of the 90* F Minnesota weather sent our way to make it feel like summer a while longer.

So besides the sadness of summer leaving, a lot of wonderful things happened this past week.

A camper's view on life at Monarch Bible Camp.

 Going into the week at Camp Kwasind I really didn't want to go. It's always a rough group of kids from inner city Toronto (Jane & Finch) and all my insecurities get brought out to the extreme. I was feeling ready to be done, a little jealous of all our co-workers that were taking vacation and not a lot of love for the kids. I had been asking God to change my heart but it still hadn't happened. Then, during the third day, David and I retreated to our car pray (since we didn't have a cabin). After being honest with God, it was amazing how he changed my heart over the next few days. When we left camp and were driving home, David laughed as I began saying how much I would miss the kids...only a few days after saying the exact opposite.

Kids enjoying the canoe one last time before going home.

One girl in particular is heavy on our hearts, as she goes home to a mom that is dying of cancer. She and I went canoeing one day and she told me how they hope her mom will make it to Halloween. Please pray that her mom will give her life to Jesus before she meets Him.