Blake turns one!

On Saturday we celebrated the unforgettable day our little Blake was brought into this world one year ago on May 15th. It's hard to believe how fast the time has gone and that he is already one! We had a barbecue with several family and friends present and it was a sunny, beautiful day. The best part was that Blake had a blast and loved all the attention! Here are a couple of videos and some pictures from the day.

Balloon Fun




Cake for the First Time!

First Taste of Cake!

Wow!!!

Mmmmmmmm

I Could Get Used to This!

Blake with Walker

Opening Presents with Daddy

More Presents!

Blake and Costa

Cookie Monster!

The Plan for Now

We thought it would be a good idea to let people know what the plan is for us as far as overseas missions and a timeline. It seems like we have been talking about going overseas and preparing for years and years (and we have!) and yet we are still here! Is there an end in sight? The answer is yes.

We plan on applying with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) but in order to apply with them, Matt has to have enough flight hours built up first. Missionary aviation can be very dangerous as they are usually flying into and out of the middle of nowhere (jungle terrain, runways that go uphill etc.). Mission organizations take the experience of their pilots very seriously.

Right now we are with Proclaim Aviation. Proclaim helps missionary pilot's prepare and build enough hours to be able to apply to go overseas. He is working (on loan from Proclaim) at Moody Aviation as a flight instructor, building his flight hours and preparing other young pilots for overseas service. He almost has enough hours! The contract with Moody goes through next Spring.

Matt is scheduled to take his big Technical Evaluation (TE) test with MAF next April. This is a HUGE deal. It occurs in Nampa, Idaho at the MAF headquarters and is a two week, vigorous test of both his flying skills and his knowledge of maintenance. The whole family will go for these two weeks. Part of the two weeks is a wholistic evaluation of us as a family, so Ellie and Blake are not off the hook for this TE!

Upon passing the TE, we will officially be MAF missionaries and will start orientation with them next July. During orientation we will be assigned our country of service and will begin preparations for our language studies. How exciting!!! Of course before leaving we will need to have 100% of our support raised as well. As far as where we will go, we are open to where God leads us, but our top two areas of interest are Africa and Indonesia/South Pacific. Anything can change however so we will see!

Though this preparation phase has taken a very very long time (8 years since Matt first began at Moody Aviation!), it's exciting to see how close we actually are to being able to serve our God overseas. On this journey we have learned a lot about faith, trust, and perserverance. It has also been a challenge for us to remember that we cannot just live in the future. While our ultimate goal is and always has been to go overseas to serve God, we need to be giving God our best every single day, even here in Spokane. So thanks to all of you who are going on this journey with us. Hopefully we can be as encouraging to you as you all are to us. We love your emails, blog posts, and prayers, and we'll do our best to return the love!

We Find a New Home for our Sweet Dog Leyla

God recently answered a prayer for us regarding an issue that had been weighing heavily upon our shoulders for many weeks. As Blake grew old enough to move around more he became very interested in our dog Leyla. It gave him great pleasure to scoot over and try to tug her tail or pat her face. Up until then she had been fine with him but she became very nervous around him and her behavior changed. It was too risky to keep her.

Though we knew this was best, we were both very sad. We've had her since she was a puppy and even planned on taking her with us to the mission field. She definitely had some irritating personality traits but we loved her anyway. After weeks of looking for the right home without any luck, we became desperate and made an appt for her to go to the shelter. You have to understand, for us this was devastating. We both LOVE animals and this option was my worst nightmare, but we had Blake's safety to think of. I cried a lot of nights thinking of what might happen to her. After many prayers, still no answer.

On the day she was due to go to the shelter a lady emailed me wanting to meet her. We drove out to her house which was about 30 miles north of Spokane. They lived on 20 acres of the most beautiful land. Hills, trees, pastures...this place was dog heaven!!! She and her husband were older with kids grown and out of the house and she wanted a dog with lots of energy that she could take on 20 mile trail rides with the horses. Perfect! They were huge animal lovers like us and had other animals that could keep Leyla company as well. Leyla learned to get along great with the other dogs (another miracle in itself). Since then she's been able to run free and go on several trail rides, running alongside the horses and chasing squirrels, swimming in ponds, all sorts of things that dogs love. We miss her dearly but at least we know that she is even happier where she's at now. What an awesome answer to prayer!