Top 10 of 2010

It has been a long time since we have thought about blogging....mainly because we have had a whirlwind of a year! We were writing our Christmas cards this week and begin to brain storm about the best things that have happened to us this year. So, what better way to revive our blog than post our top 10 things of 2010!

Top 10 of 2010
10. We decided to stop buying frozen pizzas in order to prefect the art of home made pizza making...o, and also to be more healthy :)
9. David shaved his beard this November for the first time in 2 years. He promptly grew it back in 2 weeks.
8. Lindsey, with the help of her mom and grandmas, made Ethan’s first Halloween costume. He was a cute sack of taters!
7. David has continued to pursue his passion of song writing and is in the process of recording a CD on his MacBook.
6. David attended his first ever Vikings game in the MetroDome over Thanksgiving break.
5. Relationships with International Students. This fall, David begin meeting with Jun, a Korean student at UIS, to speak English for an hour every week on campus. Since then, we have been able to meet Jun’s wife and two children. We are so excited to continue having them over for dinner and learning about each other’s cultures. Also this fall, Lindsey was blessed with opportunity to disciple an exchange student from China who accepted Jesus while here!
4. Late this summer, we were able to open up our home and have our friend Derek move into our basement. It has been so much fun getting to know Derek better and having an extra set of hands around to rake our leaves.
3. David’s little brother, Scott moved to Springfield in August to begin college at UIS. It is great having someone in David’s family live so close to us.
2. We moved into our first house together this spring! It is crazy and weird that we are in a place in life to be home owners, we feel so grown up ;)
1. Our beautiful, wonderful son, Ethan Andrew’s birth!

We hope everyone has a blessed and wonderful Christmas season!

Maybe in 2011 we will be better bloggers :)

Sump Pump

Last night, at around 1:30 a.m. our sump pump alarm started going off. I went downstairs to see what the deal was. I ended up spending a half an hour standing in front of the sump pump alarm just staring at it as it blared its alarm over and over again because I didn't know how to fix it.

We're having a baby soon. The due date is in a little over a month. Last night as I stood there staring at the sump pump blaring in my face, all I could think about was how very soon I'm going to have another being in my life who will do things over which I'll have absolutely no control. I expect that there will be times when our child will cry and all I'll be able to do is sit there and endure the screaming. I'm so excited for the challenge, but last night really reminded me that this is real, and it's coming soon!

We can't wait!
-dave

Dreams Coming True

The last few months have been crazy in campus ministry. Hence why we haven't blogged much. Many apologies!

In the midst of this whirlwind, I felt like I needed to follow up on a previous post that talked about a direction God seemed to be guiding CSF toward. I feel like if there were ever a post that hits on what we wanted this blog to be about, -- "We hope this blog is a record of our encounters with our great God and the people He puts in our path." --- this is it.

After that previous blog post, crazy things began to happen. Check this out--

1. I have been given an amazing opportunity to meet with area High School Youth Group leaders on an almost monthly basis.
2. We scheduled an event where we essentially took our "Edge" service to the High School Youth service at our church (South Side Christian Church). We had the service February 28th. We brought lots of college students to the event and they did a great job of connecting with the high schoolers. During the service, Soebeck Song (the Youth Leader) initiated a time in which all the students (high school and college) prayed over the seniors. Afterward, we were able to get contact info for those coming to UIS and LLCC, and provided info for those not going to UIS & LLCC.
3. Without any prior knowledge, our friends the Blacks decided to bring the Lakeside Christian Church High schoolers to the Edge on March 12th to feed us dinner and to stay for the service, exposing each of them to campus ministry!
4. A student from Rochester Christian Church asked Todd to show him around campus. On March 8th(I think I got the date right) Todd and I gave him the tour and we were able to share how important a community of believers on campus can be. In addition, he just happened to run into 3 of our student leaders during the tour.
5. This Friday, one of our students' parents is cooking for the Edge and bringing their High School youth group along, exposing them to campus ministry.
6. We scheduled an event on April 23rd to bring the South Side High Schoolers out to campus for a Friday night service so that they could see what campus ministry is like actually on campus. Soebeck thought that this would give them several opportunities to really get exposed to campus ministry. The event has turned into something much bigger. After simply telling the student leaders this event was happening, they said they wanted to invite their youth groups as well. Without trying to make it happen at all, we now have several of their youth groups attending this event. We have had to try to find a bigger space. In addition to this, we got a call from a former student who is a rapper who just happened to have the 23rd available and wanted to see if we would like him to give a concert (not knowing this event was going on). So now, we will be having a concert after the Edge by a rapper who is a former student of CSF.

Pretty sweet. Can't wait to see what He does next!!!
-dave