Well, everyone, it's official. Ryan is the new youth minister for Grand Central! He applied for the job and the elders met with him yesterday and he accepted. So, YEAH to Ryan!!!!! HIs official first day is the Monday after July 4th because we will be on vacation until that. We are at Work Camp right now, and we are exhausted, but it has been soooo worth it. Pray for good weather the rest of the week so houses can get painted. Thanks to everyone who had been praying for Ryan and this job. We love you all!

Teaching..........I love it! I could not have asked for a better job! I teach at a small Christian school in Parkersburg and I love it! It's totally different than what goes on in public schools. Ryan is teaching 6th grade at Madison Elementary, but his job is cut at the end of the school year due to 6th grade going to Middle School. So we don't know what the future holds as far as his job! I hope to stay at NCS as long as I teach! That's how much I love it! Ryan and I bought a house in December, so we are busy fixing it up and making it ours. We are so busy in the evenings after we teach all day that we are hardly home. Yet, our house always manages to get messy even without us there! It must be our cat! haha Well, not much else to update everyone one. Have a good day!

Teaching Update

School is going really well! I just finished teaching the 3rd week and I absolutely love it! I use to say that 5th grade was my favorite grade, but I have completely fell in love with 3rd!!! I think I could teach 3rd grade the rest of my teaching career! I have 15 students, 10 girls and 5 boys, and they are wonderful! I love all of them! Everyone is upbeat and positive at North, totally different than public schools. All of the teachers are ladies which is really neat. We have a devotional together every Tuesday and I feel that I have already made really stong relationships with several of the ladies! I love it!!!! I have some classroom pets: 3 hamsters and 1 Beta fish. The hamsters are Wilma, Betty, and Chuncky and the fish is Fred. I bought Wilma and Betty and a student bought Chunky. I apparently bought Betty pregnant because I walked into my room this past Monday morning and heard strange noises. I walked over to the cage several times before Betty sat up and all of the little babies popped their heads up. They were really pink when they were born, but 4 days later that already have lots of black fuzz coming in. The mom is a black bear hamster and it looks like they are all going to take after her! Can you imagine the kinds of questions and comments I get from 3rd graders!?! And we have already discussed how we are going to split 7 baby hamsters among 15 students. We are taking pictures of the babies as the grow and change so we can look back on it later! It has been a great teaching experience though!

Now, on a completely different topic:

Sunday we had S.O.S. (September Outreach Sundays) at GC and Express and Ambassadors from OVU performed. While Express was singing an upbeat song I looked over and saw a little girl probably between 2-3 and she was dancing her bottom off! She was wiggling and jiggling and didn't have a care in the world. I couldn't stop thinking about how innocent and care-free she was. She danced with such happiness and excitement..........isn't that how we should be all of the time? We're saved, we have hope, Jesus has washed our sins away and made us clean......Oh, to be a little girl again.

MY NEW JOB!!!!!

Well, again it has been forever again since I last blogged. I know...I'm horrible! We don't have the internet at home, so I don't have much of a chance to blog. However, today I had to! I had an interview at North Christian a few weeks ago. They were hiring for 3 different positions so I thought I should at least give it a shot. The interview went really well and a few weeks later they asked me to come back to talk to the Pastor of the church. The Pastor couldn't come because he had a toothache, but we had the meeting anyway. They told me they hoped to know by the end of the month (May) who they were going to hire, but as of June 1 I hadn't heard anything. I thought that maybe they hired other applicants and that's why I hadn't heard. I talked to one of my references and she told me that they had called her on May 31 to ask her about me, so that made me feel a little better. On June 5, the principal called and asked if we could do a breakfast meeting at Bob Evans today. So, at 9 I met him for breakfast and after we ordered our food he informed me that out of 40 applicants I had been selected as one of the three. In the interview they asked me what grade I would want to teach if I could chose any grade. I said 5th, so because of that they put me in 3rd grade. I am now officially a 3rd grade teacher at North Christian School!!!!! Yeah!!! I'm so excited! For those of you who have been praying for me thank you. I'll try to keep you posted more often if I can!

Forever...and ever....and ever....

So it has been forever since I last posted. A lot had been going on since December 18th. Sorry! I'm not going to have enough time to write about it tonight. Ryan is on his way to pick me up from my mom's (I was helping her decorate) and then we are rushing home to watch "Thank God Your Here!" It looks so funny. When I get another spare moment I will try to update everyone!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Friday is my last day to work at Powell Apartments. If you didn't know, OVU owns the apartments, but as of January 1st, we will be owned by a new company. Luckily I am also subbing, so I will still have some type of an income. Subbing has been slow, so hopefully it will pick up soon! Ryan is also subbing as well, and he's still employed through the church part time working with the Powell and Young Adult ministries. We would love to land a full-time teaching job next fall, so pray for that! My brother moved back to Parkersburg and is going to go back to OVU in the spring! I'm glad he's back. He had a really rough time at Harding this past semester, so I'm glad he's back in town. Devin is still in the hospital, but hopefully she'll come home soon. Her birthday is on Friday, the 22nd, and she won't be home to celebrate her birthday, and we're not sure about Christmas yet, so pray for her. She's away from home and it's hard on all of us. Other than that, there's not too much going on. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thank God for PRAYER!!!!

My family is going through a lot of stuff right now....if you could just pray for God to show us what He wants us to do right now, that would be greatly appreciated!!! We are trying to see God's will for our family, but when the storm clouds roll in it's hard to see the sun shining. What would we do if we didn't have prayer?