Now snow is falling!

Our baby Christmas tree is a beautiful 1 1/2 ft. fiber-optic with blue, green, yellow, red, purple and orange colors! We went all out and decorated our window seal with one strand of red lights (as shown in the middle picture)..Tyler, my adorable husband, was excited to help decorate our apartment for Christmas..Doesn't he look happy!? Really it was fun!
On a more serious note - Tyler preached his first sermon/short message on Wednesday night at youth group and it was AMAZING!!!! God definitely spoke through Tyler and it was so uplifting. Tyler preached on exercising your faith and how we need to get off our spiritual couch and do something with our faith. It's so easy to go through the Christian steps, but not truly live for God. He handed out "faith fitness cards" that had an action for everyday of the week to help the youth live out their faith better.

It leaves me speechless to see how God is working in Tyler's life and through the lives of these kids at Youth group - he is incredible! We are anxious to see where God calls us to do youth ministry!!

Leaves are Falling!

Tyler and I experienced our first long and lonely weekend apart because I wanted to go visit my girlfriend at her Christian college in Kansas City. I couldn’t let Tyler be left alone in crazy Marion, so I sent over Paul from home. We had guys and girls weekends and overall it was fun! Kim and I went shopping – which was incredible! Tyler and Paul played video games, what else do guys do? I don’t think you can separate us for two or three days ever again! I missed him way too much, he’s my best friend.
School is going…We just want it to be Christmas break already! We get to come home for a week and spend time relaxing away from school work and our jobs. Tyler has an extremely busy schedule: several projects, a huge Inductive Bible study assignment (on Ruth), preaching his first 10 minute sermon from James (entitled - Exercise your faith) – I’m excited that he’s giving me a sneak preview this weekend! He’s also juggling work and me – I’m a full time job! Haha. God is in control and that’s the only way we can get through all of this!
I love my online classes (yes, all my classes are online) and I’ve made all A’s! The class I’m currently taking is a little more demanding of my time, but it’s worth it. Work is terrific, I can’t be happier with this job and the people God let’s me work with!
We’ll be in Illinois next weekend for my little brother (Zach) and Tyler’s sister (Jonica) high school musical. Hopefully gas stays under $2 before we hit the road for the first time this month!
We love you all!

Home for the Weekend!

John and Larissa (Far right)

Tyler and Jena

Jonica opening acceptance letter







Aunt Katie, Abby, and Ben at Vball game (Below) & Jonica and Mom at the Wedding on Saturday.
We went home (finally) after a month and a half. We made it back for Jonica's Senior night volleyball game (thursday night) and they won..We were also able to give Jonica her acceptance letter to IWU - hand delivered from IWU :)

While we were home we spent time with family, hair cuts at my mom's, finally spent more than 2 hours with John and Larissa, attended the Lahr wedding, and got to see our church family. It was definitely a needed trip to charge our batteries to make it to Thanksgiving.

Life is great in Marion. God has his arms around us and is taking care of us daily. Thanks for your prayers as we venture it out over in Indiana by ourselves. We know God has big plans in store for our future.