Sophie is Six Months!

Today our baby girl turns 6 months! We love her and are so thankful for the best blessing that is in our lives. I truly cannot imagine my life without this little human being. It's so fun watching her learn and grow.

The other day the marrieds on the 2nd floor decided to have a dinner together. We all brought our own food to eat and then a little extra to share. It was so much fun, and it reminded many of us of Acts 2 where the early believers are said to "have everything in common with one another" and where they shared in the "breaking of bread" together. It really is a neat community that we have here.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned on this blog before, but we cloth diaper, and I LOVE it. We decided to do it to save money, but I (Alisha) admit that it has become somewhat of a hobby. It's fun that we are not only saving money, but Sophie also gets to wear cute diapers!

And here are some 6 month pictures of Sophie girl :)

I've Always Hated Titles...

I think Blogger makes you have a title for your post. I've (Alisha) always hated titles. As an English major, I would type my entire paper and then come up with a title at the end, and usually it was the part I dreaded the most. Okay, that was a side note. Onto the update...

We have begun our second block of classes. We are still in Romans, but we now are both taking James too. Ben is also taking History of Missions and Islam. We are really being challenged in Romans to consider how all men are held accountable for their decisions and how all men know the truth. We are also overwhelmingly encouraged by Jesus Christ's obedience to God the Father to justify us and give us the opportunity to reign in life (rather than death). As believers, we are reigning now in life! While Adam's choice only led to death for all, Christ's decision has allowed us to have peace with God rather than enmity. We have the opportunity to spend 45 days in this 16 chapter book, and we are amazed that 45 days doesn't even seem like enough!

Ben has continued to work at Red Lobster 3 times a week. Alisha and Sophie like to go on stroller walks and visit friends :)

Sophie has continued to help Daddy with his homework:

...still loves child care:
... is growing quite the mullet:
... loves to smile:
... wears cute farm clothes from Uncle Dana and Aunt Karen
... and cute outfits from Aunt Katie (and cute cloth diapers underneath the cute outfits):
And while we're on the topics of Sophie outfits... we're so blessed by many family and friends who have bought Sophie the greatest wardrobe. We never have to buy her any clothes. Thank you!

Angels and Families and Romans, Oh My!

We are all doing great! We're a couple weeks into classes, and we are really enjoying the ones we are taking right now! We are both taking Romans and Family Relationships, and Ben also has a class called Angelology where he learns about Satan, angels, and demons. It's interesting and a topic that many people know very little about. We are reminded again about how fortunate we are to have two years to devote to studying the Bible, and we realize how much we didn't know before. Ben is also back at Red Lobster, but his schedule is more consistent this year which is better for making plans.

While we're in classes, Sophie enjoys her time in child care with two great teachers and other babies... and lots of fun toys:

Sophie has started having a little bit of food. She loves it:
Grama and Grandpa Jenks came for a visit to Indiana, and Alisha and Sophie took a weekend trip there to hang out with family:
Sophie helps daddy with his Romans homework:
Sophie playing on the floor... still not scooting or crawling, but she's anxious to!
She's 5 months now!

Reaching the Unreached

We were talking last night to the parents of a new student here at NTBI (this new student's brother also graduated from here last semester, and we knew him). The parents are missionaries with New Tribes... they currently are church planters in a tribe in Papua New Guinea. We were talking with them about our desire to go overseas and work with New Tribes, and they were telling us about how few people go to the unreached. Of course, we already knew this. But we liked the way they put it.

They said 16 people out of 1 million people go to the unreached... but 1 million is a hard number to grasp. So (this guy is a mathematician), he decided he would explain it in relation to pennies lining a football field. If you line pennies all the way around the entire football field, then you would have a lot of pennies, but not anywhere near a million. He said if you have 15 football fields lined up, that you will have 1 mile. However, if pennies were lining all 15 of these football fields, you still would be nowhere close to 1 million. It takes pennies lining 11.84 miles of football fields, which is around 177 football fields, to equal 1 million pennies. To take it back into context of how many Bible-believing evangelicals are going to the unreached... only 16 of these pennies that would cover just a small portion of one of these 177 football fields are going. That's a small number!

People need the Gospel.

Just some food for thought on your friday afternoon. Will you pray about how God would have you involved in reaching the unreahed?