Mackenzie and Cam's update

Mackenzie's growing so fast! She's not too far from being almost as tall as me. It's amazing to think that we're parents of an 8 year old! She likes homeschooling and being able to spend more time with her family. She's learning cursive and said tonight that it's her favorite subject right now. She likes creative writing and illustrating her stories. She loves art projects and reads almost any chance she can. She also attends Providence Enrichment School one day a week at a local church. It's for home school kids K-5th grade. It's on Thursday's, all day. They study art, science, language, Spanish, etc. (Not math because of the mixed grades). She really enjoys being there and loves the teachers. She's making friends there too... one who's here for a sleep-over tonight actually. She's made quite a few friends since we moved here to MS, several who are Korean. It's neat to see her getting a glimpse of other cultures at such a young age. We have some friends from Scotland, Sweden, England, Korea, & Czech. She really has the ability to make friends with just about anyone. She's a great girl!

Cam's growing so fast...he'll be 2 the end of April. He has a spunky little personality and is all boy! He'll play with Mackenzie's dolls/barbies once in a while and ends up dragging them around by the hair and throwing them across the room...boys. Unfortunately, he seems to enjoy hitting and just discovered he can get quite a scream out of Sister when he pulls her hair. He loves to play outside with all the other kids around his age in the neighborhood (and there are a lot!). He mostly walks around, inside and outside, like he rules the place. His smile is so charming and curls so sweet, it's hard to teach him otherwise =)

I ran out of time to update about the rest of us. I may have to do one person at a time. So, here's my update. I'm quite busy these days. We decided to home school Mackenzie this year! It has been great, and a lot of hard work. It's been an adjustment for all of us...Mackenzie was used to going to school and I was used to her being gone at school. It's hugely impacted our daily life around here. I'm glad I can be a part of her learning, to see her progress, to encourage her through struggles and relearn a lot for myself. It has been good for our relationship too...we are learning together, how to glorify God with our actions, attitudes, tongues...it has been humbling. I know the Lord is working through all of it! I also take care of a 3 year old girl three mornings a week (about 18 hrs.) her name is Maddi. This has put an interesting spin on things (homeschooling). Her mom is a teacher so this summer I'm sure she'll have Maddi home with her. And we'll have to see what next school year brings. This semester I'm doing childcare one morning a week at the church again. It's a good time for me because not only am I bringing in some extra income, I'm able to visit with other mom's while I'm there. Time is passing by way too fast. All of a sudden I have an 8 year old who's not too far away from being as tall as me, and an almost 2 year old. Another thing I'm excited about this year is that I am Vice President of Mrs. In Ministry at RTS. Mrs. in Ministry is the ministry for the wives of students at RTS. We meet on Thursday evenings and have speakers come to share with us. Some speakers are women from local churches/in ministry and some are professors at RTS. Each week after the speaker, we break up into small groups and each group is assigned a faculty wife. That has been really neat to have the opportunity to get to know the wives of the professors Brad has teaching him in class. There are some very neat women here who have a heart for us as wives of men training to go into the pastorate. So, next year I will automatically move into the President position. It's been good to get more experience in a leadership role...all the experience/help I can get before we go back into full time ministry the better!

Good thing we never told anyone about this...

As you can see, we never even wrote after the first post...life these days... We're going to give it another shot. Well, we've been here about a year and a half and we're feeling a lot more "adjusted" these days.
Brad just started his fourth semester here at RTS. He's still enjoying seminary, which is a good thing, seeing as we have 2 1/2 years still to go. He began on the three year track and after a long, hard first year, we decided to switch to the four year track and feel much better about that. Brad's had to work a couple jobs at the same time as going to school full-time, so it was a wise choice. Brad is now the Pastoral Care Intern at First Presbyterian Church of Jackson. He works directly under the Minister of Pastoral Care and feels blessed to be in that position. He goes along with Brister to hospital visits, home visits, funerals and the such. Brad's thankful for the opportunities to learn things he can't just read a book or sit in class and learn. He works at the church 20 hours a week and will do 40 during the summer. He also is continuing his "work-study" job 10 hours a week at the Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic with the RTS program. He gets to study in between answering the phone, so it's good study time as well as a little extra income. Brad's also enjoying opportunities to preach once in a while. Local (within a couple hours distance) churches presently without a pastor have a pool of students through RTS who can fill the pulpit periodically. Brad will do that maybe once a month this semester as well as teach a Sunday School class at church this quarter. He's definitely very busy...working 30-35 hours on top of classes and a load of reading a papers... enjoying most of it though.

Mackenzie and Cam look soo much alike!!

Here we are...goofing around with the camera. These are the most recent. You can tell which ones are excited to have their picture taken.