Amazing story!

Karrie is a girl who I have been spending time with since we met at our New Year's Conference. She was on the soccer team at USA and became a Christian a couple of years ago. She is graduating in May and going to speech pathology school here in the fall. She comes to our house regularly to spend time with our family and be a part of our lives.

Her sister (Kelly) is close to becoming a believer and Karrie had been praying for God to perform a major miracle for her to go to Summer Beach Project and He did! Kelly has been saying these last few months, "God always does great things for everyone else, but never for me. He doesn't care about me."
In one week, God showed her He does! He:

• had one person she didn't even know pay her whole way to Beach Project ($1200) - money was a major barrier to her going
  
• caused her art internship in New York (that Kelly never would have said no to because it was too important to her art career) and roommate situation for the summer to fall apart
• caused her parents, who were mad at Karrie for wanting Kelly to go to Project, to be in favor of it

I have personally gotten to know Kelly at New Year's Conference and at our Winter Getaway this past March, and have had many gospel conversations with her. I am excited about getting to continue to be part of her life this summer and watch God change her.

Cute pics

Russ- KA fraternity

Russ is a guy I've been spending lots of time with. He became a believer last semester and is so excited about his faith. We do a Bible study together and he gets something new every time we meet! He told me the other day that he wants to learn to share his faith because he has a burden for his brothers in the fraternity. Pray with me that the Lord would continue to use him and that Russ would continue to make faithful decisions to follow Him. Russ is also thinking about investing his summer at the beach project. It would be great to see him go!

Here's Russ's testimony:

Until this past summer, I always thought I was a Christian. I lived my life doing what I wanted whenever I wanted to, and I believed that I was a fairly moral guy. I thought that because I was a good person and I believed in God, somehow I would see my family in heaven. Fortunately, I started dating my current girlfriend. She showed me what it was to be a true Christian and how incredibly happy I could be if I became one also. Eventually, I warmed up to the notion of talking to someone about Christianity as opposed to just believing in God. It was last summer that I met Shane Black for lunch where he answered about 200 questions I had. This spiked my interest to the point where I thought, “I want to be that happy… I want to know I’m going to heaven… I want to have all the answers.” It was in July when I decided that I wanted to be a real Christian and not just someone who believes in God. So I prayed, I went to church, I read the Bible, I educated myself as much as possible about becoming a Christian, and I asked God over and over to enter my heart and take over. Finally, on September 26, 2006, I prayed again for God to take me over and enter my heart, and He finally did. For the first time I felt the warmth and comfort of an active relationship with Jesus, and it felt phenomenal.

I’ve never been so happy in my life since that day I became a believer. Since then I have been attending church at Grace Community church, participating in Campus Outreach activities, making new Christian friends, and trying to spread the faith especially to my fraternity brothers. I really get excited when I read the Bible and the stories it has to offer because, though thousands of years have passed, all its teachings are still applicable today as they were 5000 years ago. Also, I have really enjoyed growing and learning from other Christians through the fellowship, wisdom, and strength they give me. But most of all, I love feeling, and seeing in others, the joy and indescribable happiness that comes through loving Christ and knowing that He loves you back.

They're growing up!

Bailey has just turned two, and is a constant delight (mostly:) She is talking in full sentences now, and it is so fun. Owen is turning 8 months old this week, and weighs 25 pounds and is already half my height. Here are some recent pics!

Thank you God!

This is Kim:
We have jasmine (about a foot high) for a lovely 2/3 of our backyard, and it just keeps growing.

On a sidenote: When I was over-emotional and we were looking for houses last summer, after Duane had told me he liked the house, we stepped into the backyard, and I said, "Is this what you want for your children?" (another side note, our backyard in Pcola was HUGE and I had so looked forward to Bailey and Owen getting to play back there). Duane and I laugh about this now, but you get the idea of how much jasmine is in our backyard (and the rest is pretty much dirt).

Anyway, we had checked into getting it dug up when we moved here and got a quote for about $1000 (then would have had to sod on top of that). Since we are having to build a shed right now, we could not do both. Well, our neighbor next door had some landscaping people working on their jasmine, and I mentioned we were trying to get rid of ours. They offered to dig it out of our backyard if we didn't charge them for the jasmine!!! (And I just thought a few minutes ago, we know they'll get all the roots because otherwise it won't grow:) Just wanted to share God's faithfulness in the "small" things!

Jonathan - TKE fraternity vice-president

I'm trying to spend time sharing Christ with fraternity guys. This has been a hard thing for me to do. They live in their fraternity houses and the "in-roads" are not that easy to come by. A door opened up a couple of weeks ago with a guy who came to one of our meetings. His name is Jonathan and he is so close to putting faith in Christ and beginning a relationship with his Creator. I've had lunch with him the past 2 weeks and got to share about Christ both times. He says he wants to put his trust in Jesus. Pray with me that he will. He has influence with his fraternity brothers and has even introduced me to most of them when I went to visit him at his fraternity house. He wants to go to SBP, pray that God would open the door for him to take summer classes from distance learning programs in Panama City.

My vision for the fall is to disciple him and help him reach his fraternity brothers for Christ.

Justin - freshman

Justin is one of the freshman that I spoke of above. I've been spending more time with him lately and have developed a good relationship with him. He's let me in on some past family issues that have been hard for him to deal with but is now seeing God start to help him deal with them. As he opens up more and more about his life, I see God move in to heal those areas. I think it's cool to hear him make statements like, "I want to do what God wants me to do with my life and not just run from one situation to the next." As of now, he's made the decision to go to the SBP. Please pray with me that he would stay at the Univ. of South Alabama. He is contemplating going to Troy to be closer to family (I'm not saying that is a bad thing). May God's will be done.

Freshman dorm Bible study

I've been spending time in the freshman dorms. Last semester I was a part of an intramural flag football team (watch video I made on right!!!) in order to hang out and meet these guys. From those relationships I started a Bible study in the dorm in which 8 or 9 would come. Some of them went to our New Years Conference in Atlanta and have started to get involved with our ministry. This semester I've continued to hang out with them and started a new, more in-depth, bible study that challenges them to examine their faith and encourages them to reach out to others. A few guys to pray for specifically are John, Joe, Chris, James, Justin, Nathan, and Ryan. A few of them are seriously considering the Summer Beach Project. Please pray with me that some would go.

Where am I having ministry this semester?

How have I been building new relationships?

• Volleyball team- I have 4 freshman USA basketball players on my team, 1 is spiritually interested that I know of
  
• Softball team- getting to know some of the guys involved with our ministry
• Cafeteria- sitting down and meeting guys who eat and hang out there
• Co-rec Volleyball team- a guy invited me to play and I got to share the gospel with him
• Fraternities- visiting guys I know who live at the fraternity houses and meeting as many others as I can there