Please Pray for Afghanistan

As I was having my Quiet Time last night I was burdened to begin praying for Afghanistan. I hear about them in the news often and know people over there, but often the thought of the country doesn't move past that. But God was reminding me that it's not just a name of a country, but people, millions of people. People who's lives are daily endangered, threatened and dramatically altered in ways I pray I will never know first hand. And as I began to pray I became overwhelmed with the realities of their lives. Where do you even begin to pray? Not only that, but the situation is so GOD sized. Only GOD can stop the fighting, change the false indoctrinated thinking, bring healing and peace. Then the words to the song "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin and "How Great is Our God" came into my mind. GOD is so great and powerful that He can do the impossible, the imaginable. And I, we, can play a part in the miraculous work by interceding in prayer for the Afghan people.

So, I ask and challenge you to begin to pray for the Afghan people. Below are some things to be specifically asking God for. (I got these suggestions off of the Operation World website, www.operationworld.org)

There are 32 million Afghan people living in a country about the size of Texas. The country is Muslim with about 3,000 people who are Christians. The median age is a young 17 years old. The country has been at war for 22 years. 1 million people have died, 2 million left maimed and 4 million children orphaned.

PLEASE PRAY:
1) For openness to the gospel through their suffering.

2) For peace, Reconstruction, an awakening to moderation and tolerance.

3) For just, fair and honorable government to be raised up.

4) For protection, faith and witness for Christians and small fellowship groups. Afghanistan has the most least reached people groups in the world (70). There are 48,000 mosques and no churches.

5) For basic human rights to be restored to women.

6) For the Bible to be translated into Afghan Persian. They currently don't have the Bible in their language.

Roadtrip Adventure to New Hampshire

Joshua, my brother, had been in Dallas working during the month of May and was going to drive back up to New Hampshire for his college graduation from Dartmouth College. He came by our house in FL and then I drove with him the 25 hours up to New Hampshire. The first day we drove all the way to PA, which was 17 hours. He and I thought it was going to be a long day, but surprizingly it wasn't bad. NPR and books on tape helped pass the time. The second day only was 7 hours. We drove through 13 states in all on the trip. Below are a few of the state signs we were able to catch as they welcomed us into the state. In PA we spent the night with my friend Christine and her husband Mark. Christine and I have been friends since my days with Edge Corps and she was one of my bridesmaids in my wedding. Thanks again for putting us up!

This is some of the great scenery we saw driving up the East Coast. The sweet car we drove up in.

We met my parents, brother Daniel, and Grandparents there. We spent the time touring around the area. We had breakfast downtown Hanover at the historic Lou's Diner.

Bought some Dartmouth gear at the Co-Op where Joshua has worked during college. Went to the Queeche Gorge, the East Coast's Grand Canyon. It was amazingly deep!

The Dartmouth graduation is outside on what they call "the Green" infront of all the cool old buildings. It was HOT, probably in the upper 80s and in the morning! We had to get there about 8:30 am to find seats, graduation didn't start until 9:30 and it was over around 12:30 pm. It was long, but it was great to get to be there and to support Joshua in his accomplishments. Congratluations Joshua!

The day after graduation Daniel, my parents and I drove down to Lowell, MA to see some of my extended family. I went up to Maine so I could mark it off the list of states I have visited. I only have Alaska and N. Dakota left to go!

We hit the beach afterwards. Nothing like the beaches of FL!

Washington DC

The end of April Joe had to go up to DC for work and I went with him. The trip was lots of fun. We stayed at a really nice Mariott thanks to the US Government. During the day while Joe worked I hopped on the metro (I love public transportation!) and toured the city.















We celebrated my bithday while in DC. Joe took me to the resteraunt that is on top of the Kennedy Center.

It was a VERY nice resteraunt. It reminded us of the Mastercard commercial where the couple saved all their points to be able to go to this fancy resteraunt, then the food was small and really it wasn't all they thought it was going to be cracked up to be. The food portions were small and everything quite expensive. We ordered water, no salad or anything like that, ONLY an entree each and it was still almost $100! We left there and went to Georgetown for dessert.

We don't do well with finding our way around in new places while driving, so I convinced Joe to get a GPS with our rental car. We loved it. Joe especially LOVED it. There is an option to look up a specific place and so he took it everywhere with us even when we were walking!

Welcome to the World of Blogging

Well, I never thought I would end up a blogger, but here I am. Many of our friends start a blog when they get pregnant/have a baby, but we figured we're just as interesting as a baby, if not more, so why not start now? We hope our blog allows you to be a part of our lives on a more regular basis than we've been sending out emails.