Eli's first Birthday

Well I haven't posted in a little while. It seems like we have been insanely busy. I thought i would put some pictures up from Eli's birthday party. These pictures are from his birthday on the 7th. We had a party with my parents and lori's parents.


These pictures are from Eli's birthday party with a bunch of our friends. I think there were something like 20 kids there. It was insane.
Eli is getting so big, we are starting to see more and more of his personality. He is starting to talk more. It's still really just blabbering. But he it really sounds like he is trying to communicate with us. Here is one of my favorite photos of Eli and Lori.

tragic news...

Please be praying, as i'm sure you all have heard by now about the shooting at YWAM Denver. Please be praying for our friends that are on staff there and for the families affected by this shooting. It's crazy to think that someone walked into the base and started shooting people. Below is a letter from our friend and the Denver base director Peter Warren that i got off of another friends blog. This really sucks...Pray for peace, and comfort in this time of grieving for YWAM Denver.

Dear friends of YWAM Denver,

Linda and I just returned from the hospital at 6am. Along with a number of
our staff and students we were awaiting news of our four staff who were
shot last night. It's with a heavy heart I need to tell you we just lost
two of them. Tiffany Johnson and Phil Crouse passed away in surgery in the
early hours of this morning, Sunday December 9th. They were wonderful
young YWAMers in their early twenties. Dan Griebenow is in critical but
stable condition with a bullet still lodged in his neck and Chuck Blanch
has two bullet wounds in his legs but will be fine.

Thanks for praying for us. Our whole community has been uprooted as the
base in Arvada has been declared a crime scene and no one can return to
their beds during the investigation. We've relocated everyone up to our
mountain campus, Eagle Rock, for however long this takes.

Please lift up the family and loved ones of those who were lost in prayer.
We're so grateful for the worldwide YWAM family that is reaching out to us
during this difficult time.

Your brother in Christ,
Peter

It's raining it's pouring

Well it's finally raining here in California. I can't remember the last time it has rained here. It's been awhile. Hopefully this rain will help with the dry stuff down south of here. For those of you that have been wondering we are quite a way from the fires. So we are all good.

We went on vacation last week. It was a much needed vacation. We haven't been away just us, in forever. We are usually traveling with friends or visiting family. So it was a nice break to just get away and hang out together.

We went up and stayed at the YWAM base in San Francisco. It's not the nicest part of San Fran, but only 2 blocks from everything downtown. One of the benefits of being in YWAM is usually can call up any base in the world and see if they have any hospitality rooms availabe. So we went up on Tuesday, ate this Indian restaurant place we love called Naan & Curry. Then on Wednesday we went out to Alcatraz. Neither of us had been out there, so it was a neat experience. We got to go on this Myth's of Alcatraz tour that took us to all these parts you don't usually see. We got to go down where they filmed parts of the Rock. It was a good time.

We came home on Thursday and made a stop at one of Lori's favorite places on earth...IKEA. We were able to find some great things for our house. We don't have very good lighting so we found some things to brighten up our house. It's starting to come together.

On Friday we had our staff fun day out at Avila valley barn. We dressed Eli up as a cow. It was fun. We got some great pictures of him. Had fun with our staff out there, and then went and hung out at one of our staff houses. We went from there to a friends birthday party at this new karaoke bar. It was fun, i sang some fun songs. Now we are just trying to enjoy the rest of our weekend.

Me and my boy...

So this weekend Lori went to a ladies retreat with our church. She left Friday around lunch and came home on Sunday around 5 in the afternoon. I was kind of worried about the weekend and having Eli with just me. BUT...it was amazing. Eli is really a good little baby. We had tons of fun. We went to the park, and hung out. He slept amazing for me at night. It was really a good weekend. We got to watch some football on Sunday afternoon. He didn't make it through the whole game though. It was pretty cute though. He fell asleep on my lap. He slept for about 2 and a half hours. Which is also a miracle. I really love having a son. Even this afternoon when he didn't take a nap all afternoon, it wasn't as bad today because Lori is home again.

I have been feeling super creative lately. I'm in the process of starting a not-for profit business called hope eternal clothing. I have been dreaming it up for the last 2 years, maybe year and 1/2. This last week someone gave me (until i can get a better computer) their old pc. I was able to get photoshop on it. So after Eli went to sleep on Saturday I stayed up until 2 working on some designs. The idea of the company is that all the proceeds go to buying med's and food and helping people overseas. I will write more about that soon.

Thankfulness

I just wanted to write a post about how thankful i am for everything that God provides for us. I have been thinking alot lately. Our friend died two weeks ago in a motorcycle accident. He was 28 the same age as me, he had a wife and had been married for about 5 years. We went with his wife to Mississippi after hurricane katrina.

His accident has made me start thinking lots lately about how we are fortunate for every day we have. To make the most out of every day that we have. To be thankful for everything. God has blessed me with an amazing wife. Lori is so good to me, and some days i feel like i don't even deserve her, and i don't but i'm lucky enough to spend the rest of my life with her. Then we have an awesome little boy, he's healthy, fun, full of energy, and so much joy. He has the best smile, he makes me laugh so much, and i love getting to spend every day with him. I love that we work a job where i get to have around me everyday.

We had some friends over last night, and they were asking if we still get amazed at God's provision. I told them that we do. That it still amazes me every month when God continues to meet our needs and provide for us. We have two great cars. We just moved to a great house only about 2 blocks from the beach. It's totally great. We moved in and it had a washer and dryer. Which we haven't had for the last 7 years. They lasted for about a month and then our dryer died, but somebody had a washer dryer set to give to us right away. It's just been really good.

I just wanted to write a post about how thankful i am...Thank you Jesus for everything you do for us!

Barrow flavored M&M's

So i've been finding all these weird sites where you can make yourself look like some kind of charachter. It started with the Simpsonizeme.com site. You can see us as Simpson's pics below. But today i found the site that you can make a m&m look like you. Here is our picture of us on the mission field.

We are doing good. We are getting ready to head up to Montana early Saturday morning. We have a DTS conference to go to. We are there for the whole week.

The house hunting could be done on Friday night. We are meeting with a landlord at like 9:30 at night. They live up in the bay area so we have to wait for them to get down here. Then we have to get up at 4 and drive to Montana. Hopefully it goes well with our meet with the landlord. We still need some more moula but God is always faithful. We'll post some real pictures of us soon. i promise....

So we are moving to Oceano. I hate moving. I like the new house part. I just hate the looking part. It always stresses me out. We feel like we are suppose to live in Oceano. So the scary part is that we don't have a place to live in Oceano yet, but i just gave notice that we are moving to our landlord. So Jesus needs to help us out now.

We are trying to find something around $1000.00. We are looking for atleast a two bedroom place. We don't want to have a place where there are people above or below us. I know we are being kind of picky. I just hate how people are either really loud above you or you have to watch how quite you are above someone else.

For those of you reading this not from california. Rent sucks here. Most two to three bedroom places are 1200 to 1500.

Anyway if you can be praying for us. We would love it. If you want to start supporting us monthly to help up out with our expenses that are going up. We would greatly appreciate it. If you want to help support us send me a message and we'll work it out.

Thanks

Will, Lori and Elijah

The Simpsons movie

So in honor of the Simpsons movie opening today, Here is our family in Simpson's form. There is this cool website (simpsonizeme.com) that you can upload a picture of yourself to and see yourself looking like a Simpson. I want to make a website of all our staff. Maybe check out ywampismobeach.org/simpsons. Besides looking like Sipmson's we are doing ok.

Well...what have we been up to. Eli is starting to try and walk, and he's getting very good at standing by himself. It's crazy to think that he is only 8 months and trying to walk. It's been so much fun to watch him grow and the new things he does everyday. Here are a couple of pics of eli from the last couple of days...


I have also been reading a couple of books. I started out reading "Letters to a Young Evangelical" by Tony Campolo. It was a really good book with lots of challenging thoughts in it. I would encourage everyone to read this book. I'd put some quotes down but one of our friends is borrowing it right now.

Then there are a couple of books i have to read for our worship department at church. But they have been really good reads. The first one was "Facedown" by Matt Redman. It was amazing and only around 100 pages. It had great thougths on worship and worship truely is. Worship needs to stop being about us and about bringing glory to God. Great little nuggets in this small little book.

The last book that I'm attempting to read right now is "Cat and Dog Theology". It's a really good book as well. It's about the difference between the way that Cat's and Dogs think. Cat's are always looking for ways that they can be blessed, but dog's bless you just because they can. It's how we always look for God to bless us, instead of looking to bless him, even if things aren't going well in our life.


Well that's it for now...i will try to blog again soon...

4th of July

Well we attempted to watch the fireworks on the 4th in Pismo, but so much fog rolled in you could only see the fog change colors. Oh well...we saw some as we were driving back to San Luis Obispo.

We hung out with some friends every tuesday night and play some games, have pizza, and just hang out. Well this last week, with everyone having wednesday off. We had a sleep over at their house. I had this great idea to make funnel cakes. The only part that sucked was that we started this at 1am. Then we realized we didn't have enough oil. So i headed out at 1 in the morning. Everything was closed, Vons had closed an hour earlier. So i ended up getting it at 7-11 for the smallest bottle of oil for 4$. I finished making the funnel cakes at 3 in the morning. We ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep, because there were 9 kids there all under 6 years old.

We went to the park in the afternoon on wednesday. Here are some of Elijah's first time to the park pictures...

Eli vs The Chair

Here's the story. We left San Luis Obispo around 7am yesterday morning and made it to Portland around 1 am this morning. The fight of the century took place this morning between Eli and The chair. Here's the stats on both...

Eli the fly guy
Height: 2'6"
Weight: 22lbs
Hometown: San Luis Obispo, California
Advantage: cute
Weakness: cant walk well

VS

The Chair

Height: 3'4"
Weight: 12lbs
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Advantage: hard steel parts
Weakness: not cute

So it was a interesting fight. Eli started out very aggressively crawling over to the chair. He was making all the first moves as the chair stood still as a post...or chair. Eli took the first moves at trying to climb The Chair. But it was The Chair who came out victorious. Eli fell fast and hard with a blow to the head. After some ice on the head, Eli was back to his smiling self again. Here are some photos of the first battle wound on Eli.
We made it about 4 or 5 hours from Portland and the traffic came to a complete stop. This was us standing outside the car on I-5. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours. Apparently two big rigs got in a accident and one of the drivers died. It was really sad. I took a picture of the truck. While we were waiting on the road we stood in the shade of the big truck in front of us. I took a picture of Eli next to the trucks wheel.

DTS has come and gone....

It seems like only yesterday that 15 students from all over the place showed up here in Pismo. We started the DTS on January 7th i think. It's crazy how fast the time goes by. Lori and I ran this DTS with Mary one of our staff assisting us. We also had two other staff Brandon and Cindy who led the outreach to Kenya and Rwanda.

This has been the best DTS I have been able to work with our be around. They all had amazing hearts and all had a call to missions in some form. Here are some pictures of the group.

The whole DTS group

The Boys of the DTS and Will's small group
(left t0 right - Matt R., Me, Eli, Matt H., Cody, Coffe, Zach, Brandon)

The girls

Lori's small group
(left to right - Shelly, Katrina, Beth, Lori, Eli, Amy)

Cindy's small group
(left to right - Lauren, Stephanie, Katie, Cat, Cindy)
Mary's small group
(left to right - Crystal, Rhiannon, Mary, Kara)
The surfing track that me and brandon worked with.

So most nights the boys would go to sleep like this on outreach....
and wake up like this.

We really miss all of these guys. they are at home for the most part now. I look forward to hearing about the amazing things they are going to do.

For us, we take a little bit of a breather and start preparing for the next DTS to come next january. We start meeting with the staff that are going to work with the next school, figuring out speakers, and housing.

We are going to Portland on Monday to visit Tierney who use to be on staff with us but left to go and start YWAM portland. We look forward to going up there and encouraging and spending some time with her and her staff.