Hawaii Here We Come!

ALOHA

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying the marvelous season of miracles that is upon us now.

We had a great Thanksgiving with my Sister's Family. Isabella, Ethan and their cousin Holly had fun playing and making homemade snow globes together.

Church has been very Busy. Brett is helping the church do their first advent this year. The families all made thier own wreaths to take home and were sent home with a daily devotional done by others at TJN. The children all recieved a small advent calendar. This was a big hit with everyone. So great to see families getting the tools they need to worship and celebrate this Christmas season.

So Brett is feeling very exhausted from all of this! We are so ready for Hawaii!

We leave on Dec 3rd and return on the 16th. Please pray for safe travels and lots of fun!

I Got Plugged!!

Check out "My Adventures in Children's Ministry" blog for information on this posting. It's very exciting...check it out to find out what international group has plugged my blog!

Shalom!

Brett

The pics

Trying to get the perfect Christmas Picture!

Recently I took the children to our favorite lake park to take pictures for our Christmas card this year. I am finding that each year this is proving to be a harder task. So I'm sharing the ones that will not be in the mail this year.
Things are going very well here. We are always discovering new things about nature and weather.
Last Friday we had an interesting encounter with a deer. As you know they are very beautiful but not very smart(wow that sounds like some humans!). We were driving down a local highway and a deer ran into our car. Yes it ran into us! not us running into it. Brett saw it just in time so the deer was able to survive and so did the rest of us. The car got some very minor damage. We're thankful for Gods hand in this!
Isabella is having so much fun now at school and is excelling in her reading and writing. We are so glad that she is feeling at home now. Its taken lots of prayer and patience.
Ethan is Talking a mile a minute now and is very into all vehicles still and loves his BOZ videos. I'm so glad that I'm getting some great quality time at home this year with him!
Brett is continually being challenged in wonderful ways. A couple weeks ago when he shared from the pulpit he had so much fun. Brett thinks this may be the start of a new passion in his life.
We are praying for all of you and hope all is well!

Comfort In The Deep Freeze

As of today we all have nice warm winter coats. And it's a good thing because it was wicked cold today. So cold that we went to a local lake and pond to throw some rocks on the ice. Here's a couple of pics of Izzy and Ethan out on a dock in an ice covered lake.



Warm days are ahead for the Richmond family!

What's Buggin' us in Minnesota

Last Monday night we saw one of the largest bugs we have ever seen. We don't know what kind of bug this is but it was freaky looking.

You could actually see the shinny eyes.

If you know what kind of bug this is let us know.

To make matter worse we found another one today (saturday) under the ice in a local lake. It was actually swimming in the water.

The first person to get back to us with the correct answer will get an authentic Minnesota souvenir. Post your answers in the comments section of this blog.

Halloween 2006

The kids had a great Halloween this year! We went to a local Church that was doing a Harvest party. It was about 20 degrees here so the event was packed! It was truly the best Harvest Party we have ever attended. This church did and awesome job and we saw many of our new friends from TJN there.

Isabella and Ethan had fun painting pumpkins, eating candy and many other great activities. They loved having my parents here to visit during this fun time as well.

Overall Halloween was an exciting time and we are glad that Ethan kept his costume on this year:)

Most the movie

This weekend I had the great joy of showing the 2003 Academy Award Nominated Live Action Short film "Most" to our congregation. I followed it up with a short devotional about the "limitless love of God". If you haven't seen the movie follow the link below and check it out.

It is one of the most incredible illustrations of God's love that I have ever seen.

"Most" the Movie

The End of Community

....at least for a couple of months. We ended out "40 Days of Community" Small Group last night. We had a fun time finally getting our plans in order for out commuity project and created our banner for this Sunday's "40 Days Celebration" at the local armory.

We have really enjoyed our group and how they have embraced us in friendship and extended love to us. We look forward to what God is going to continue to do in us as a group and in us as individuals.

Here are a few pictures from last night.

Paul, Kristi, Drew, and Camille


Dee, Caitlyn, and Corbin


Carrie and Sam


Making our Group Banner


Liberty adding her hand prints to our "hand cross"


Trinity getting her hand painted


Our Banner