One Year Anniversary

One year ago, we vowed to love, honor and respect each other FOREVER! Although many things have changed within just one short year, we realize that commitment to our Lord and each other is the thing that will last!

May 24, 2008-May 24, 2009:
-Sarah moved from the USA with David to Canada June 10
-We began working with CEF Ontario full-time
-Spent our first three months of married teaching children in a different city nearly every week
-Moved to Port Sydney, Ontario in September
-Found a great church- Harvest Bible Chapel Muskoka (in Port Sydney!!) in September
-Submitted the paperwork for Sarah to become a "Permanent Resident" and tried to wait patiently for the verdict (which means no border crossing)
-Sarah unknowingly began to "talk like a Canadian"
-We both have been stretched in our relationship with the Lord in new ways and the more we get to know Him the more we realize we want to know more!

Minden Good News Club

It has been exciting to see the children continue to come out to the Good News Club each week in Minden, with new children coming every few weeks! We only have 3 weeks left for this school year. Please pray for these kids! There are quite a few discipline issues that we need wisdom in working with the kids on. We are focusing on a series on "Living God's Way". Something we each need His strength to do!

David's sister, Melissa returned last week from working with CEF in Guyana for seven months. It was great to have her come and share as David interviewed her. The flag of Guyana was even hung in the front for the special day. The kid's couldn't believe that she'd found a huge frog in her toliet one morning!

From a GNC Girl

Last week David taught the Bible lesson about Naboth's Vineyard and being content with the things we have. He gave a challenge to the kids at both of our Good News Clubs to give something to someone that week, either something they bought with their own money or already had. (He also told the kids if he didn't do it, they would get to "stone" him with soft balls...which they didn't get to do, since he bought a Gerber plant for me!)

Nearly all the kids came back having put the lesson into action! One of the little girls from each club gave David and I something. The picture shows the card, Birthday banner and old pencil that Sydney gave us. =]

The First Picnic of 2009!

After church we decided to walk down to Mary Lake and bring our lunch for a lovely change of scenery! It's SOOOOOOOOOOOO exciting to be able to get out of "the dungeon" (our apartment) now! It's fun to run in to people we know as we are outside now...it's feeling like home! (We tried to walk to church this morning but some friends stopped and picked us up! We did successfully walk all the way home though, all 10-15 minutes. =])

Our little girl

On a random note:

We were given tickets at the last minute to the Fundraising Auction at Muskoka Christian School (where we hold one of our Good News Clubs). We hadn't even known what we were actualyl going to until I looked at the tickets while we were driving there.

Neither of us had ever been to a real "live" auction, so found the whole thing quite fascinating. After a delicious dessert buffet with crazy fancy desserts (I guess the fact that it was held at a Resort had something to do with that!) we watched in fascination as people willingly bid on great items, paying prices we would only laugh at. I had noticed an adorable picture while viewing the items before, but didn't think David would be willing to bid on it. He bravely fought to get the picture for me at a reasonable rate...and was successful! We are now the proud owners of the first picture we have ever bought! It's called "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" also known as our first little girl. =] We were glad to be able to help support an excellent Christian school too!

72 KIDS????!!!!

Yesterday the 4th Easter Party was held at a public school in Orillia (Uptergrove). A club hadn't been held at this school for the last several years, so we didn't really expect that many kids. However....we ended up with 72 kids from grades 1-4 (out of a school of around 300 kids K-8!) David completely lost his voice for the rest of the day after the party, as that many kids can just about border craziness even with 8 adults. There was a stream of kids (10-20) that came back to ask me questions after the Bible lesson about the Road to Emmaus; questions from "How did Jesus come back to life?" to "What is the Bible?"

• Please pray that these kids will remember the truth they heard and will come to know and serve God!
• Please pray that we will be able to get a church to adopt the school so that a weekly club could be established next fall.

What's ahead?

In case you're wondering about things to pray about here's a few:

• David's preaching at Port Sydney Bible Chapel March 29 and we're doing music
• Weekly Good News Clubs that began in Utterson and Minden: one is mainly churched kids while the other is about 50/50
• Two more Easter Parties in Orillia
• Planning for Summer Ministry in the "north"- recruiting teens to do ministry and scheduling churches or invidiuals wanting to hold an outreach to kid's in their area through a VBS (at a church for 3 hours to a whole day) or 5-Day Club (at a home for 1 1/2 hours)
• Health and Safety for David's sister, Melissa in Guyana and direction from God

Ministry to Kids

Over March Break we had the joy of seeing 15 different kids come out over 3 days for the "Rescue 9-1-1" event. We had a blast and it seemed the kids had almost as much fun as we did. =] David "the magician" did a few tricks each day relating to the lesson.

The picture shows him doing one of his current favourites "try to copy me to make a knot in the rope without letting go." It's a great illustration of our need to rely on God.

We also went to Cannington Baptist on Friday to play floor hockey with kids and share the Gospel. We will return there in April for the AWANA Awards Sunday. It was exciting to see the outreach that the church has, even in a community where you wouldn't expect a lot of kids to be hanging around.

Jayda the Horse

We were able to visit David's sister, Leanne's horse a few weeks ago. Leanne is in the process of breaking this huge Clydesdale in...Jayda (the horse) is still supposed to grow more. She's going to be HUGE! Leanne sat on her for the first time that day and then let me sit on her and "ponied" me around! It was fun!!!

Even more exciting was that we were able to wish Leanne and Daniel congratulations on their engagement that weekend! It seems that the Guyatt family has a thing for marrying their siblings' friends (as in I married Melissa's brother and Leanne is marrying David's friend.) At least we know we all get along this way. =]

Mouse in the House

They say every new home owner must have their first experience with a mouse in the house. While we are only renting right now, the mice decided to train us in a bit.

My Super-Brave-Hero-Wonderperson, David, rescued me (and our dishes, canned food and everything else in our bottom cupboards) from the nasty little varmints that decided to leave their trail everywhere. After he caught 2 mice, we had the privilege of removing everything from our cupboards and washing it down. (Not the choice way of spending a Sunday evening, but a necessity.)

I guess this should cure me for a bit of longing to be back in Burkina Faso, Africa (except it would be lizards there) or with David's sister, Melissa, in Guyana, South America (with mice and frogs).