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?

People Really Are Going

Sometimes I forget that there really are people, like you and me, who are in tribes right now working to learn a language that's barely known, creating a written language, teaching Bible stories to ears who have never, ever heard the name of Jesus. Sometimes I forget all of this when I live in comfortable America... even when I live at a Bible/Mission school that is sending out new missionaries all throughout the year to reach these people. Sometimes a speaker comes here to NTBI and reminds me though that there really are people going. Not enough. Never enough. But there are SOME people going.

Yesterday and today a man named Tim shared with us during orientation. He spent time as a missionary in the South Pacific, and he worked in a tribe, lived with men who wore gourds as their only clothing, dodged bow and arrows, and witnessed the salvation of people who had never previously even known that Jesus Christ existed. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that this man standing in front of me had done all of this. He looked like me and you. He talked like me and you.

Even more so, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that there are thousands of people groups who never heard the gospel, and many of these who have never ever heard the name of Jesus Christ. I grew up in America. Even though I know many non-Christians, these people still all KNOW the name Jesus Christ and know the basic story of the Bible. It is literally impossible for me to grasp that there are people who know none of this.

This is why we are passionate about what New Tribes does. First, they go to people groups (and build friendships there) who have no written language and give them the gift of allowing their language to be put on paper (which allows for the preservation of a language, for better health, for better education... for so many things... I wrote my senior paper on this subject in college). But then, even more importantly they give them the Bible in their language. This is such a privilege that we take for granted often because we have so many copies of the Bible in America.

There's a video called Awayo that NTM has. Tim spent time with the tribe that Awayo is from. It's a video I've seen a number of times, but I think the story became more real when I met a man who actually knew Awayo. Awayo is a real man with a story; he just lives half-way around the world. I'll post it below incase you would like to watch it.

New Home and Leadership Training

We are officially settled into our new home, and leadership training has been going well. We arrived on the 10th and the training began that night. We spent a few days here and then headed to a camp where we stayed in cabins and enjoyed time at a beautiful beach. I was lame and didn't take any pictures. We had fun, although I (Alisha) was limited in what I could do because of Sophie. Ben has been asked to be a Student Work Program leader. In order to keep the costs down at NTBI, each student (except for mothers) has a work detail that takes anywhere from an hour to 3 hours a week. As a leader, Ben will be in charge of making sure a group of students gets their work detail done.

Today is registration day, so there are a lot of students moving in. We are excited about meeting new people, and we are especially excited about getting to know the new families that are coming to NTBI. We have met a few already.

I tried to upload a video of our apartment but couldn't get it to load. Here are pictures for you to enjoy though :)

Our door:

Looking into our apartment from the door:
Kitchen:

Living Room:
Our bedroom (which looks really boring, I know... we also have an awesome huge closet to the right):
Sophie's bedroom.. this is the first time Sophie gets an actual bedroom so I had so much fun decorating:

Moved In :)

We're back at New Tribes!! And we're moved into our new apartment. We are very excited about our new apartment for three main reasons:

1. We now have running water!!! They've put in running water in all of the apartments now.

2. Sophie will have her own room!! I really enjoyed having Sophie sleep in our room for the first 4 months, but we never had any other option. It's nice that she can have her own room now.

3. We have a real living room area!! (See pictures below) This will be so nice for entertaining, but also for Sophie... she has already been rolling all around on the floor.

We still need to decorate, but we've unpacked everything. We are currently doing Student Leadership Training which is keeping us busy. We will be going to a camp for the next 5 days, and then we start classes on the 24th. We are ready for another semester :)