Driving to the snow!

I love that i can say that. Sorry to my friends in Canada that have it permanently, but after growing up for 21 years. I love the fact that i have to drive to snow. We went to Lori's family christmas this weekend up to Shaver Lake which is in the Sierra Nevada mountains (i think).
Anyway it started out snowing just a tiny bit on saturday night. So we took Elijah out for his first snow picture ever. We went to sleep and woke up to atleast 6 to 8 inches of the fluffy white goodness. I think i'm only calling it that because i get to drive away and leave it there.


I felt so un-canadian as i was digging our car out of the snow. i was using a dust pan to dig my car out of the snow. That's also the real picture of our new car. It was so nice up in the snow this weekend. i had fun using the 4 wheel drive as well.

We are having a blast with Elijah, and loving being parents. He is starting to sleep well. It's so much fun. i love him so much....he's now passed out on my chest as i type this out. I love just having him lay here. I love our dad n me times.

some more pics of me

Well we are doing good. Eli is staying healthy and strong, Here are some good pics of Eli and his mom last night. He is just so amazingly cute. I can't get over it. He's so nice and alert right now, and getting rid of his jaundis. He's making so many funny facial expressions. He's constantly making us laugh.

I'm finally here...

So on Tuesday, November 7th at 6:34pm, our new little boy came into the world. Elijah Chaz Barrow weighed in at 8lbs 13 ounces and 21 inches. He was a big guy. Lori had to have some stitches, due to Eli being huge and Lori not so huge. He's being doing really good. We brought him home Thursday afternoon. He has a little bit of jaundis (i think that's how you spelll it). So we are trying to get him to eat lots. Eli wasn't latching on quite right so lori got a little tender so we are taking a day off and having formula today. He had a reaction to the stuff they put in their eyes, so he had great big swollen eyes. They are now back to normal pretty much.
Last Night was great. We went to bed around 12 and he slept until his feedings, was up for about ten minutes and then back to sleep. We were able to sleep last night it was great.

God is good...

So when we got married about 5 and a half years ago, Lori's grandparents gave us a 1989 Dodge Colt. She was faithful but we sold her to someone else in September. It was sad to see her go but her time. We sold the Colt because I was lucky enough to get onto the wheel of fortune and won myself 4 grand. It was great. So we moved into the 90's and bought a 1995 Honda Accord Wagon. I wish i had a picture of it...maybe i'll post another one another day. So we've been driving that sweet Honda for about 2 or 3 months, and minus a few flaws like needing to replace the front cv boots and half axels, it's been a faithful car. God has definitely been good to us this year. We've been to Portland, Louisianna, Las Vegas, and Nicaragua, and now we are expecting our boy any minute now.
So last friday we were at our Missions night at our church, and our pastor was like "i hear congrats are in order". We had no clue what he was talking about. He said "congrats on your new car", Lori told him we got our car in June but thanks. He then told us that someone gave a car to us this week through the church. We had no clue. Someone gave us a 1991 Nissan Pathfiinder.
This isn't the actual car, but it looks almost identical, same color, same doors. I have one of those wheels across the back hinge though. We couldn't believe it. We are so stoked. We were wondering what we were going to do in January when the DTS starts. I'm going to need to be there most days and lori only part of the days. We were trying to figure out how it was going to work out with the baby and all. I know lot's of families make it with one car, but we were definitely thinking it would be alot easier with another car. We even thought about getting a motorcycle or vespa, but i've not had very good luck sitting on vespa's.
It's been amazing to see the way that God has provided for us this last year. We are definitely very thankful and feel really blessed.
Here are a couple of pictures of Lori from the last week. The one on the left is from a week ago today, and the one on the right is on thursday which was Lori's due date. Still waiting for some significant amount of contractions to get this baby out here.

dinner with jon lovitz

Well yesterday was an interesting day. I slept in a little while and tried to catch up on some rest. We then had to go to our church for this saftey class, because we work with kids at our church. It was allright, then we had our YWAM baby shower for us. It was for people that know us through YWAM. Afterwards my good friend Jeremy from Onetruth clothing wanted to go out for a burrito. So we drove to this yummy restaurant called Tio Alberto's. Good mexican food. We order our food, and sit down. Because we live in such a crazy college town and it being 10:30 on a saturday night, it's very normal for there to be alot of drunk people. We were sitting close to the door when some drunk college kid started screaming through the door about going to subway. I was like what is this guy talking about. It turns out Jon Lovitz was eating at the restaurant with us. Well he was eating with some other people but we were in the same little mexican restaurant. Apparently he did a comedy show at our local university and then came out for some late night mexican food like us. You may know Lovitz from such great hits as City Slickers, Wedding Singer (He's going crazy, and i'm reaping all the benefits), old school yellow page commercials, The Benchwarmers, and most frequently the subway commercials (which explained the crazy drunk kid yelling about subway).
That was our little Californian moment of running into random famous people every once in while. Thanks to those of you that cheered me up on Friday.

Blah

Today is just one of those days when you wish you could just go back to bed and wake up tomorrow. I don't know what's going on but there's just something that's getting me down today. Everything is pissing me off, and people are driving me nuts. But then i stop and i still feel like crap, but there's so much good stuff happening. I'm about to be a dad. i have an awesome wife. i have so much to be thankful for. Especially after i just read my friend ang's blog about all this crap that's happening in the sudan. but regardless i'm still having a crappy day. i found this cool picture on flickr.com. it kind of represents my day it seems dark and gloomy, but there's still some good in it. We're about to go and have thanksgiving, i know it was on monday. our staff all get together every friday night and have dinner, so we just decided to have our canadian thanksgiving tonight instead. Sorry that this hasn't been a happy joy blog.

The Stages of Lori

Well here's a collection of the stages of lori. I threw in one of us together. The first picture is of us camping. We went right around easter. It was pretty fun, even though it rained most of the time.



These are some pictures of Lori getting her birthday present. She got it way back in February. The first picture is about 20 minutes into it, and the picture on the right is the finished product.


Here are some pictures of Lori along the way. The first one was 17 weeks, then 20 weeks. The last two were taken today and Lori is 36 weeks. The other two were somewhere in between i'm not sure exactly when they were taken.

Nicaragua

So my time in Nicaragua was great. It's an amazingly beautiful country. While i was there i found out that Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and has many children who are forced to work because of the economic conditions. 80% of the population lives in poverty. Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America but the least populated. It was hard to see how poor these people are and not be able to help them more than we did. Alot of the homes we saw were just made out of corrigated steel, and some even used cardboard as walls. It was hard to see the level of povety these people are at. It definitely makes you think everytime you go and buy a 3$ frappachino.

The first week we were there we worked with YWAM and taught at their school for grades K-5. We taught the kids bible stories, crafts, and physical education. It was a good week, and a good place to start our time in Nicaragua. We played football or soccer for us almost everyday with them. They worked me quite a bit, but it was still fun playing with them. I spoke at a youth group for boys. We played soccer for an hour and half, then had a bible study, then played soccer for another hour and a half. It was pretty tiring but so much fun.

Our second week in Nicaragua we worked with an organization called Rise Up Inc. (www.riseupinc.org) check out their website it's pretty cool. What they are doing is starting a foster family home for girls. It's really cool. While we were there we went to a place called Chureca. Chureca, which is literally translated “scavenger,” is one of the largest dump communities in the world. The area is infamous for crime, extreme poverty, and hazardous health conditions. We went one day and just walked through the community. We met a lady and she asked us if we could pray for her husband. There was something wrong with his back where he hadn't been able to sleep well for 4 months. He was given a bunch of different pills but because they can't read he had no clue what he was taking or what he shouldn't be doing while taking them. We prayed for his back and saw him two days later and he said he was feeling much better.

The second time we went we brought rice and beans to give out to families. The last lady we gave out a package too, asked us to come pray for her baby because it had a respiratory infection. We later found out that her house was full of smoke with no windows open and the baby was just sitting in there breathing that smoke all day long. When we showed up we prayed for her baby and when we finished it went to sleep and was super peacefull. This lady was the poorest person i've ever seen. And i've seen some poor people. We all felt like we were suppose to give her all the money we had. We only had like 15$ out of the six of us, but to this lady it was the biggest gift. We told her that we don't know her from anyone else but hoped that she would be wise with the money. Not something in the Missionary 101 handbook to do.

We also got to go to another city and hang out with some boys that sniff glue. They are super poor and sniff the glue to forget that they are hungry. The only thing that sucks is that they are now addicted to the glue and walk around high all the time. We bought lunch for two of the kids and tried to keep them there long enough to come down off their high. I would love to be able to go back and work with these kids again.

It was a great trip and i really want to get down there again and see if we can help these people more long term. I know the guys at Rise Up are starting some really awesome programs at the Chureca and with the boys. Check out their site and see if there's anything you can do to help.

Finally home

So my insane summer has finally come to an end. Since the beginning of June i have traveled 28,000 miles or for those of you who live in non miles locations about 44,800 kilometers, i think. It was hard to figure out the conversion. Anyway. It's good to finally be home and not be leaving anywhere in the next 10 days. I'm going to take the next weeek off and try to get some good rest. It's only 6 weeks until our baby boy arrives and I can hardly wait. I'll post some pictures of my trip to Nicaragua this week. It was an amazing time and probably one of the poorest places I have ever been. Here's a picture of lori from two weeks ago. I'll post another one of her this week. But i've been gone for the last two weeks.

Continuing Discipleship....

We are currently in Chico, California for about 10 days of conferncing and workshops. The last 6 days have been for our Discipleship Training Schools(DTS), and then the next four days are our west coast staff conferences.

As I sit here in the lobby waiting for all our friends from other YWAM locations to show up and the rest of our staff I've been thinking alot about continued discipleship after students leave our schools. This was a topic that came up during our DTS workshop. As YWAM we have been so good at training students and "ruining them for the ordinary", but we have been horrible at seeing them continue in discipleship after they leave our little green house environment. We set up this super cozy super unrealistic environment for 5 to 6 months and then release them to the hounds once they leave our staff. We have them in 12 hours of lectures, 3 hours of intercession, worship 3 times a week, small groups, tons of accountability. Then we send them home to people that sometimes don't understand what has changed in them or how their worldview has been insanely changed.

So we are trying to create ways to have them flow into continued discipleship after they leave our base, and that we don't just drop them after they leave. We are going to try connecting with their pastor before they leave, what they expect, ways they can help them when they come home. Sending them materials when they get home. It's been really cool. It's something i'm going to try committing to see changed at our base and the way we run our DTS's in Pismo!

I'd upload some new pictures but we are in the middle of nowhere. So it would take forever. I may put some new pics on this weekend when we go to starbucks or something.

We're Alive

Well...It's been a crazy summer so far. We've gone from Portland, to Vegas, to Oakland, to Louisianna, and then this week to Northern California and then on the 8th I'm going to Nicaragua for 2 weeks.

We've been super busy. But I've been loving it for the most part. We started out this crazy summer with a staff outreach to Portland, Oregon. We worked with the Portland Rescue mission and also got to do some ministry over at the world famous, Burnside skate park. It was a really great time. We were also scouting out the area for one of our staff that is heading up there to start a new YWAM base in Portland.
We headed from there to Las Vegas where we helped lead some groups with the Mission Adventures program there. We worked with two groups for 10 days in the blasting heat of the Las Vegas desert. It was stinking hot. We go to do some cool ministry there on the Las Vegas strip. I also got to lead worship for the week and also spoke on a thing called the committment service. It's a time challenging the students on Lordship and having them listen for God's voice.
We also went to Oakland to train a youth group that we took to Louisianna to help with Hurricane Rita clean up. Hurricane Rita is the forgotten stom down there. It was a good time both in Oakland and when we took them to Louisianna. We were able to bless the family that we worked with and it was a great trip.

Will is going to Nicaragua for two weeks with some of our staff. There are 4 new staff that have joined our base and part of their orientation is to go on a outreach. So will is going with them to Nicaragua and help facilitate their trip. He will be back by the 22nd of September. So have no fears. Unless the baby comes 6 weeks early there is nothing to worry about. Lori is doing good, and we are like 29 weeks along. We are both really looking forward to the baby coming. We are going with Elijah, but we don't have a middle name yet.

the devil must use a pc

So i've been working on these horrible base computers that our YWAM base has. The one freezes in xp as soon as you click on your screen name. Then i put it into one of our other computers and i am able to get the files off but now the cd burner isn't working. I've been trying to convince the people i work with to switch our base computers over to mac. It would be so much nicer .
These computers have been the bane of my existence this last week. I wish the info on them wasn't so important. This picture is a sweet little representation of what i want to see happen to them. Anyway, just the ramblings of a happy mac user. YEAH iBook.

Invisible Children

There is this movie called the Invisible Children. This is something that Lori and I are super passionate about. These three guys from San Diego went and made a movie in Uganda. The movie is about kids in Uganda that walk miles every night from the bush into city centers so that they are not kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night by rebel forces(the LRA). Once the LRA kidnaps kids they force them to fight as child soldiers. It's only about 55 minutes long. It's very worth watching. You can also check out the site at www.invisiblechildren.com.

Click on the poster below and you can watch the whole movie.

Staff Fun Day

We recently had a staff day. We set aside the day and just have fun together as a staff. So this last friday we did a photo scavenger hunt. The picture to the left is us serving drinks at a local jamba juice. The little girl got freaked out and hid her drink from us once we handed it to her. Oh how fun. We alos had to do the Rocky run up our Pottery Barn stairs. Well i'm not quite sure how to get the video to work. So i cheated. I uploaded it to my myspace account so go to www.myspace.com/willnlori and look under my videos under my picture.

bullied into posting

so i talked with a friend today and they said i need to start blogging. So here it is. We skipped church easter weekend and went camping up the coast. We had a great time. This was the biggest group of poppies. It was really cool. That's the ocean in the corner of the picture. We just chilled out and enjoyed God's creation. I've been trying to take alot more pictures recently. I've been playing with the macro feature on our digital camera.
I really am lucky. I live in a very beautiful part of the country. Well that's it for now. Paul your probably the only one that is going to read this. Thanks though