Swim time

The summer in AZ means lots of time logged in the pool. The kids are getting quite good at it. Kate has the freestyle stroke and back stroke down and is working on the butterfly and breast stroke at lessons. Here's some videos that I took today while Rachelle worked.

YL Staff

Rachelle and I met last week with John Irwin, the regional director with YL in the area and decided that our family would join staff on a prt-time basis to help get ministry going in the Surprise area.

We will officially be moving as soon as we find a house in Surprise and can close on it. Please pray for that process, as we have a home that we LOVE, but so do many others, so we are in a multiple offer situation with a forclosure.

We are very excited to get going and begin reaching out to kids in the Surprise area.

Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, our family went separate ways for vacation time.

I took 3 boys from Surprise (our new ministry area) and went with the 90 or so others from the Northwest Valley on an 18 hour bus ride to northern California and YL's Woodleaf.

It was a great time for many of these kids who had never experienced YL before, seeing them go from not so sure about this stuff to going all out in participation. From the mud obstacle wars to the mud wars, high ropes course, tower of terror and ridge runners, these boys ran full-on into their fears while learning to trust in their leaders and trust in God. Each day we had time (or two) to sit in small groups and discuss what all of this "God stuff" was about. I was blessed by all of the open and honest feelings that were shared along with difficult stories about life and what really happens.

There were about 300 kids from parts of CA, ID and AZ, and I would estimate that 50-75 stood up at the "say-so" and dedicated their life to Christ (still causes chills). What a blessing.

I hope to get Rachelle to write soon about her trip to TX with the kids. Here's one of my favorite pics from the trip.