Howell - Beckett wedding in San Simeon, California

I had the privilege to add another thing to the list of many things i've had the opportunity to do. I got to take my friends Elizabeth and Jason's wedding pictures. I was pretty nervous to say i would do it as i have never taken wedding pictures before in my life. I talked with some of my friends that actually are Professional Wedding photographers and they told me to just have fun and put my heart into, and that's what i did. 

On October 25th, Jason & Elizabeth got married at the pier in San Simeon, California. It's a really beautiful area about a hour north of Pismo Beach. It was really foggy along the whole coast the day of the wedding, except right on the pier. There was totally a great spot right on the pier that was the only clear spot on the coast. The sun was shining and it was great. Here are a few photos from the day it was tons of fun.

Fall fun

We are really busy this time of year. We have 6 new staff joining our YWAM base this next week. Most of them have arrived this week. It has been really interesting because the house 5 of them were suppose to move into fell threw on Thursday. So we have them staying all over the place right now.

It makes this already crazy time of year a little bit more crazy. The first two weeks of November is new staff orientation, followed by two weeks of DTS staff training. Then we are in December and that's a whole other crazy month.Once a month we have a staff fun day where we close our office and go and do something fun together. With it being October we went to Avila Valley Barn and hung out at the pumpkin farm. Lots of fun animals for Eli to check out and even a hay ride.

Maybe if i try posting more on here it will help me keep taking new pictures of the boys as well. Or atleast take pictures of Liam. Here are some pictures of the boys, and one of me to keep Phil happy.

Liam chillen on the couch

Liam smiling on the pumpkins

on the hay ride

familia picture '08

Eli being super cute

Eli falling of the pumpkins...Eli and Daddy

2nd baby days...

So i feel horrible, but we have not been as good at taking pictures of Liam like we did with Eli. I think there are already like 2000 more photos of Eli when he was 2 months old than we have of Liam. But here a few. I still have more on my camera that i have to take off this week.

here are some pics of the last couple months...

Eli making one his faces

Liam being cute in a Tonka truck
more cuteness in the truck
Eli wearing my hat
Eli with his cousin(on left) and Liam
Eli playing in his pool at Grandma's house

Eli and his friend Pablo

Eli sort of riding a bike...he was sitting and i was pushing him

some new shirts to come....

Hope Eternal the t-shirt company that i started with YWAM Pismo Beach at the beginning of the year, is starting to take shape. We have almost sold all of the shirts that we printed, and are in need to order more. We have our shirts available online, in a surf shop in Pismo and a bookstore in San Luis Obispo.

We are hoping to print two new t-shirt designs by September 1st. The following designs were made by the amazingly talented Jon Lunsford. 

Jeremy Sizemore came up with some ideas to create a shirt for Tibet where all the proceeds go to helping families living in Tibet. 

We were praying for Tibet and felt like through God we could see true freedom for Tibet.  Everyone has seen the bumber stickers for Tibet or the t-shirts that say Free Tibet. Even if we see Tibet freed from China there are still the spiritual aspects that hold the country back.

These are two other designs that Jon has done for us as well. Blogger is being a little bit annoying right now, so it won't let me upload pictures right. So i'll have to add the other designs later. We really love them both and are waiting for the finances to come through to print them. Thanks again Jon for all your great designs.

new blogs to come

I've been really busy traveling and doing stuff i don't really want to be taking care of. 

But i now have a red tomato growing in my garden. It's very exciting it is just a cherry tomato, so it will be gone in one bite. But maybe i will cut it up into little pieces and make a salad or something with it.

I also had a random realization yesterday while trying to get eli to say "w." That when you say w it sounds like double u. which it sort of looks like. Then while writing this i realized that the french have it a little closer with the way they say it like doble vey cuz it looks more like two v's. 

Anyway...i'll post some sweet pics of my cherry tomato's soon.

A short rest...

We got all the DTS students out the door and onto outreach. Our Justice &  the Arts DTS left on the 1st and our Surf DTS left on the 6th. Our surf DTS flew out of SLO, and apparently you can't check bags over 6'8". The surf team had two bags that were 10' and one that was 7', so i put there surf board bags in the van and drove down to LA at about 8 sunday night. I made it down to LA around 11 and met the team outside of LAX and gave them their surfboards. I was so tired that i ended up staying at a Motel 6 in Thousand Oaks. We have heard from the teams and they both made it to their outreach locations successfully. 

Lori, Eli and myself are going to be going and visiting the teams in May. We are going to be going and visiting our surf team in Phuket, Thailand for 10 days. We have never been to Asia so we are really looking forward to this trip.  We have 6 students and two staff that we are going to be meeting with, encouraging and ministering along side. 

From Thailand we are going to fly back to Hong Kong and then head down to The Philippines. 

We have a team of 16, 13 students (all girls), 2 girls and 1 guy staff that are there.  I think Cody is going to need some serious man time when I get there as he will have spent the last 6 weeks with 15 girls. We will have to go kill something or do something really manly. We look forward to seeing the teams it is going to be a good time. I think we are buying our tickets today or atleast reserving them so that we can buy the tickets in 7 days. We still need some money, but God is always faithful to provide.  

We are praying that everything goes smoothly as this will be the first time that we are taking Eli overseas. We are praying that he will be able to adjust to the time and the food. I'll try to keep this updated as we are heading out. 

Eli playing at the park...and home

So we went to the park the other day. We really should go more as it's about 100 feet from our front door, and it's probably even closer than that. Eli loves the slides and running around at the park. This is a series of pictures of him on the slide.

We thought this was pretty funy. His hair was so Stat-icky. (i think that's how you spell it.) It was like his hair loved the slide as much as he did. He is starting to talk more. Not really words but just babble. But it's fun to see him start trying to talk more.

We took some photos of Eli around the house the other day so here's those as well:

so serious...i loved the way this picture turned out though...

sitting on his fire truck

posing on the couch

playing with keys after lunch

pizza induced trance

Living your Values

So...this week I have been really being hammered. Lori and I last Thursday watched the movie Amazing Grace. It's about abolitionist William Wilburforce and ending the slave trade in England in the early 1800's. He eventually saw the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. Watching this movie really stirred me as I have been starting my T-shirt ministry through YWAM Pismo Beach.

About a year and a half ago, i felt like i wanted to try and do something to help people overseas. When we went to Tanzania over 3 years ago. I heard stories of people that would die because they couldn't afford the 3$ malaria medicine. 

So i decided to try and do something about it. I decided i was going to start a t-shirt company. Some of thoughts i had were:

Hope to bring Change

Hope to bring freedom

Hope to bring life

Hope to bring a future

Hope to make a eternal difference.

So after going through all of this i decided on calling it Hope Eternal. All of the proceeds go towards buying medicine, food, clothing and shelter for those in need around the world. In December we printed 2 designs.

All of this to say I have been thinking a lot about living my values. I have this ministry that is trying to help ministries bring change to social injustices around the world. However in my personal life i don't think twice about the products i buy. So in one part of my life I'm trying to raise funds for ministries to stop these injustices, and in the other part of my life I'm totally supporting the injustice.

I started looking at some justice sites. I checked out stopthetraffik.org. It was crazy to see that even chocolate is using slave labor. In Cote D'Ivoire, 12,000 children have been trafficked into picking the cocoa beans for chocolate companies. 

So i know i need to change slowly, but i want to try and change. I know it won't always be convenient, but i want to try.

DTS Students '08

DTS 2008 Surf School

Andrew from Australia

Matt from California

Tyler from Minnesota

Benedicte from Norway

Maria from Norway

Kirsten from Florida

DTS 2008 Justice and the arts DTS

Abby from Australia

Betsy from Pennsylvania

Gabby from California

Jacque from Colorado

Mackenzie from Michigan

Mariel from Colorado

Natasha from California

Paulina from Sweden

Sacha from Canada

Sarah S. from Colorado

Sarah T. from California

Serene from Australia

Sue from Switzerland