Kade trusted Christ as His Savior!!

So, I don't even know where to begin. This past week I have had two conversations about children accepting Christ at a young age and then getting baptized. And let me just tell you that I was the one saying that I want my children to be old enough to really remember the decision so that they won't doubt their salvation later on in life. In fact, just this afternoon I was telling a friend that Keith and I would lean toward having our children wait to get baptized until they were old enough to really believe for themselves and not just believe because mom and dad said that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.
Well, I think the Lord put the smack down on me. Around five o'clock, Keith sent me an e-mail with a link to a video he wanted me to watch. The boys were sitting here with me and so I pressed play for us all to watch. It was the baptism promo video that we are showing at church this Sunday to let people know about our next baptism coming up next month. To my surprise, Kade sat still the whole time (like 8 minutes) watching and listening with his mouth wide open (which means he was focused :). So, at the end of it he turns to me and says, "So I'm getting baptized, right?" I said (a little shocked), "Sure, at some point, when you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and that He rose again. And that you trust that it is thru Jesus that you can have a relationship with God." He looked at me like he was offended and said, "Mom, I do believe that. Remember the pictures that we saw of Jesus on the cross? I know he died for my sins, that he died for all of us because we're all sinners. " I quickly excused myself for a moment and called Keith. We affirmed each other on the phone that it was awesome that Kade seemed to be getting it, but that we would still wait to let him get baptized because he is so young.
Keith arrived home and Kade immediately told him the same thing. We all talked some more and both Keith and I realized that for Kade, this was very real and that he truly was serious about where his trust was/is. So Keith and I told him to pray with us and just tell God what was on his heart. He held our hands and prayed the sweetest prayer saying that he believed that he sinned and that he believed that Jesus died for his sin and everyone's sin and that he rose again and thank you God for all the people and that he's a Christian. Amen.
It still seemed so surreal to Keith and I. We asked if he wanted to tell anyone and thus began almost an hour of him calling people and walking down our street telling our neighbors. He was just so clear each time and Keith and I didn't help him with words at all. We wanted him to be able to articulate his belief. Retta said that it sounded like he was preaching to her :)
So, where are we now on the whole age thing for baptism? Well, Kade will be getting baptized like he asked to do. He just watched a video of his dad telling our church body that Jesus modeled it, commanded it and the early church did it. His dad also explained it by saying that it helped identify to others what Christ had done on the inside. So, to ask Kade to wait to obey after sincerely placing his trust in Christ would keep him from fully obeying the Lord. I will just pray that the Lord will allow him to remember today and his baptism so that as he grows, he won't doubt that he is redeemed and a new creation in Christ.
I just got back from taking him to Chile's with Tomi and Henry (our close friends) to celebrate. It was so cute because Henry has also trusted Christ recently and is planning on getting baptized. We hadn't told the boys about the other's decision because we didn't want that to sway them. So it was funny when Kade got in the car and told Henry, "Guess what, I trusted in Jesus tonight and believe he died for my sins and rose again." Henry cut him off to tell him, " I believe in Jesus too. And you know what? I'm getting baptized." Kade looked at him and laughed, "I'm going to get baptized too!"
Such a precious day. Thank you Lord for forgiveness and salvation. I just thank you so much and pray that you will continue to move in all our children's lives that they may all know you as their Lord and Savior.

Crawling!!

Bryn's been getting around for the past couple of weeks by either crawling backward or rolling to her destination. But no more! She has officially found a way to make her knees and hands work to her advantage :) The boys and I were playing with her on Wednesday morning when she just began taking off like it was an old skill. The best part is that once she made it to where she wanted to go, she sat up and started clapping for herself. Even she knew that she had just achieved something big! This video was taken a little later in the day after she had had a couple of practice rounds.

Leap of Doubt - Current Series at Church

Easter Sunday kicked off an awesome series at our church called Leap of Doubt. Here is the preview for this coming Sunday, the 19th. If you do not have a church home and are just plain skeptical about the church (global) and/or Christianity, please consider joining us for the next five weeks.


The Church is responsible for Injustice from Douglas Hallam on Vimeo.

You can get on www.leapofdoubt.com to see more videos - they should have the message from this past Sunday up in the next day or two. Something that we are trying in this series is texting questions to the church during the message. Then, at the end, the very hot pastor (I'm allowed to say that - I'm his wife :), will do a Q & A session and answer as many of the questions as he has time for - how is that for quick response time to your burning questions about faith?

Bryn and Addie

OK, I have laughed so hard at these pics that Kendall and I took today of our babies that I just had to share them with my take on their "conversation."

Here goes:

Addie: "Brynlee, what happened to your big toe?"
Brynlee: "What!? I don't know...let me have a look at that!"

Brynlee: "Addie, look at that band-aid - my big toe is starting to hurt actually."

Addie: "What do you want to do? Should we sit here a little longer or start crying so that we can be carried around a little while?"
Brynlee: "I don't know. Let me think about that one."

Brynlee: "Let's just have fun and pose some more for our photo shoot!"
Addie: "I'm confused. Weren't you just saying that your big toe hurt?"

Addie: "Ah, what the heck? Life's too short to be serious for very long. Let's strike a pose."

I know, I know. What's wrong with me that I'm coming up with conversation for my baby and her sweet friend? Well, this is what I do to wind down at midnight. Isn't that normal? :) Goodnight. I hope you have laughed a little.

She's 9 months and so much fun!

Brynlee turned 9 mo. on April 2nd. She could not get any easier - I mean seriously, she smiles 95% of her day. And oh, how she can already flirt with her eyes. I so look forward to going into her room every morning to see her beautiful smile and hear her "talk" to me. The best thing is how she hugs me. She'll really squeeze my left arm and nuzzle up against me when I hug her. Here are a couple of more fun things she is doing now that she's a big 9 mo's:

clapping
waving bye-bye
pursing her lips together and blowing
eating pretty much any solid food I give her
crawling backwards
rolling everywhere
talking with her hands (no joke, just like I do!)
saying Gracie, patty-cake, Kade, mama and dada
she says the same thing when she's waving bye but I can't make out what it is yet
taking baths with her brothers
she loves to pat everything from the Bible (Pat the Bible) to books to my shoulder
she has pulled up a couple of times
pulling all bows out of her hair (to her mother's chagrin)
smiling and laughing a lot!
sings her abc's (hehe, just kidding - she won't start that until next month :)

I do think she's pretty bright - and I'm not biased at all! I would love to post pics with this posting, but my 'Upload Image' icon is not working right so I'll try again tomorrow.

March madness...

So, I am pretty bummed that March passed by so fast without me posting once on our family blog. It was a very fun month...

• a new dog,
• a romantic weekend trip to San Antonio for Keith and I
  
• Brynlee turning 8 mo.,
• Kamden celebrating his 4th birthday,
• a trip to the strawberry patch,
• Keith getting to go with his dad to spring training in Arizona,
• a one day trip to Dallas for Karen's (Keith's sister) baby shower and
• a picture with an Olympic gold medalist to finish off the month.

With all that we still enjoyed the constant chaos of our home and the full time ministry the Lord allows us to be a part of in reaching every man, woman and child with the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. I will say that there were quite a few times during last month where we felt exhausted and overwhelmed (the most often used word in my vocabulary right now) - so for that I am glad to be reflecting on the month and not living it again. This month has given us a couple of hours to process what we need to do to slow down our pace a little and so far, we have been willing to make the adjustments.

Here's what I am going to do to make this post shorter. I am going to back-date the next couple of postings to the day in which the event occurred. That way, I don't end up with a book for this posting. I am going to attempt to link the posts to this one so that you can pick and choose which one's you are interested in reading. And it will make me feel better to have a couple of postings in March :)