Christmas pics...

God is AMAZING!

In case you didn't know, we follow/love/worship/talk with this guy named Jesus on a regular basis in the Waters' household. We are tremendously reliant upon his grace and mercy to make it through our days. TODAY... he sent us some Christmas money. I know that it came from people who had planned and prepared gifts to share with our family. But, we are EXTREMELY thankful for the generous spirit that God put in some people's hearts this season. We have lived, hoped and existed in this strange place of seeing God come through in powerful ways over the past couple of years. When Corrie and I left our old church in Loveland in July of 2004, we had no idea how we were going to make it financially. Being debt free (at the time) helped a ton. I had always read about random checks in the mail that preachers and ministries had received over the years. They always amazed me. Now, WE LIVE IT every single day. God is simply AMAZING! Here are some of the MIRACLES that the Waters' have experienced over the past couple of years in this area. This is by NO MEANS an exhaustive list and I've probably missed a ton of these. I don't want to offend anyone by missing your gift, but rather at 11:02pm I want to GLORIFY GOD for your hearts and how they've changed our lives. Our church has experienced a mountain of miracles also. These are some that have greatly changed the Waters' lives:

• August 2004 ~ FORD said we overpaid and sent us $500
• January-Summer 2005 ~ there were countless random checks to the Waters until the church got formally incorporated that summer. I cannot even begin to list all of them.
• July 2005 ~ $800
• December 2005 ~ $1,000
• March 2006 ~ $200
• December 2006 ~ found cardealer with pastor's discount and got $20,000 vehicle for only $9,000
• January 2007 ~ $7,000 from Corrie's old employer
• July 2007 ~ $1,000
• September 2007 ~ $200
• October 2007 ~ $1,000
• November 2007 ~ $2,000+ from different people
• December 2007 ~ $900+ from different friends and family

I was pretty heavy on the 2007 ones cuz this is the year that Corrie has tried to be a stayathome mom and God has come through a ton. These are just the random checks and they don't even count for all the times that our pantry has been filled with food by different friends and family, all the gifts of diapers and formula, and all of the different ways that God has blessed the Orchard church.... We've been able as a church to raise money for incorporation, for remodel of a 100+ year old building and so much more. ANyway, just some ways to share during this time of Christmas all the crazy ways God has gifted us. Loving you all very much during this Holiday Season.

adam

Pray for us...

we are in a real spiritual battle as a family and as a church right now. The church did a dinner for the community this friday night (and it was awesome!). God really blessed it. Then, it was almost like a switch went off. The powers of darkness took notice and have hit us every day since then. Pray deeply on this one friends.

God IS victorious, but we need protection right now.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life."-LINUS from the Peanuts Cartoon

Zeke's snow day...

Ethne in the bouncy chair and eating food...

I'm not a fan of politics and religion mixing...

most of the time because our God is a global God. He's actually wrapped up in the politics of every country and not just ours. That's sometimes a revelation to us. But we must remember that God raised up nations (like the Assyrians) and used them for his purposes to wake up the Israelite people from time to time. This is revolutionary for us to understand that God put leaders in the places that he chooses and then uses them for his glory and not theres. Check out ROMANS 13:1 "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

I also know that God wants us to be good stewards of the gifts that he has given us. Such as a free country. Such as the right to vote for our elected representatives. In this time of transition for the country that we do live in. It was nice today to learn a little more about a candidate that 1)used to be a pastor 2)is pro-life and does NOT like abortion 3)wants marriage to be legally defined as the union of one man and one woman 4)actually cares about people and faith before politics... These are things I could get on board with. I'm not a registered republican but I hope this guy makes it out of the primaries. Read up if you want to ~ http://www.mikehuckabee.com/

Sorry, these took awhile...

We had a crazy THANKSGIVING this year. Here are a few shots from that week. Corrie's first bird all by herself. Most of the family before dinner. And there was a sweet rainbow after all the rain we had.

Pray for us...

money has gotten really, really, really tight. Join us as we plead before the Father for this stress to just melt away. We're tired of this stress being so all-consuming. We'd love to stop paying all of our bills late. We'd love to get a paycheck for the work we're doing.