August 2004

Many changes are taking place in our household. We had a fun and active summer. Five single interns occupied our 2nd floor...Ryan from Texas, Catherine from New Hampshire, Kim from Cincinnati, Jeremy from Cincinnati, and Matthias from Berlin, Germany. These five along with the Nixon family (Dave and Jody, Jon who is 16 and Carrie who is 18) made up the household. Carrie graduated from high school in May, and joined the interns on many of their activities this summer...movies, playing in the park, swimming, etc. The summer was filled with cicadas, lovely cooler weather than normal, spontaneous games of woofle ball or frisbee or croquet in the back yard, ice cream runs, travel here and there. We spent time on Saturdays working in the yard or on household projects. And through it all we bonded....grew to love each other and share much about our lives with each other. We prayed together daily, and for each other constantly.

Prayers concerning vocation seemed to be prevalent. We even held an all night prayer session to pray regarding this topic...for ourselves and for others we knew who were struggling with the same thing. It was all so very good, and God has been faithful to answer. Many changes have come and are coming.

Dave will begin a new job this week, working with the Northern Kentucky Vineyard as the pastor of discipleship. Community House will be involved in this work, helping develop community groups, hosting folks from our Northern Kentucky family in our home for retreats and training, and just in worshipping with the family in Kentucky.

Cat received an offer for a teaching job in her home town in New Hampshire...she's still contemplating the possibility of doing this. If she decides to accept, she'll be leaving to move to New Hampshire sometime this fall.

Ryan has decided to pursue teaching and is currently doing some course work in order to achieve this goal. He'll be moving back to Dallas in October.

Matthias left two weeks ago to return to Germany. He'll continue his schooling there which he hopes to have finished by March of 2005. He's also working with a house church in Berlin.

Kim left last weekend to move to Madison, Wisconsin to be a student in the Mad City Church training program. She plans to live there for at least a year...and Kim and Matthias have fallen in love : )

Jeremy began a new job working with Jonathan Hicks in home renovation this past week. He's going to try this out for a while and see how it goes.

And Carrie leaves this weekend to move to Houston, Texas for a while. She'll be taking some classes at Houston Baptist University while spending time with her grandfather.

Steve and Sara Harris and their two children, Joseph and Grace, will be joining our household in mid-September. We're finishing up some renovations, getting rooms ready for their family. We're very excited about having little children in the house again!

So the house is emptying out....changes are coming....loved ones leave and new friends are coming. All is good, though the good-byes are sad. We continue to pray and see what new and wonderful things God does.