God is Good!

It has been a cold, busy week but a lot of good things have been happening and we just want to give God some praise!! First, my garage sale was a huge success! I set a goal of $1,000.00 and thought it was crazy but I just recounted the money today and we made just over $1,000.00 to go toward our Born Clinic bill. Not only did we raise the money, but my house is so cleaned out. I am attaching a before and after picture of my storeroom so you can see what I mean. My friend Sherri has started an organizing business and has been so instramental in helping me make this happen. We did my closet, my kitchen and pantry and my storeroom and it is incredible. I am so thankful for all of Sherri's insight and help and will send some of you all of my before and after pictures in an email soon. This will also make our house easier to pick up and show.

This week we also received a letter saying that we are entitled to special home adaptation that we applied for only less than two weeks ago! We will find out how that works and hope that we can apply part of this grant to the purchase of land to build on since this will be the next step after selling our home. We already have two plots in Jenison in mind.

An update on our newest family member. He is still called Prince since we didn't come up with a name fast enough and the name just stuck. We did come up with the name Toby (after Toby Mac the Christian music artist) but he is mostly Prince or Prince Toby. He has been doing very well and has had no accidents and is right at home with us. A minor problem we have with him is those tiny little legs can jump our fence in the back yard so he has been on some adventures.

We have been having many people being saved over the last few weeks at our church and it is so exciting to see God working among our congregation! More than 30 people have come to know the Lord at Wellspring and God is glorified! Some people have come to realize that they didn't actually have a point in time when they gave their life to Christ and have been unsure of where they would spend eternity and have made that step of faith and assured their eternity in heaven. Can I just take a second to ask all of you who are reading if you know the One who died on the cross to save us from our sins? Our Savior Jesus Christ!! Without him and the price of his blood, we would be lost! We have hope in Him!! He died so that we may have life to the fullest. He paid the price for our sins! We are not worthy of this free gift! I praise the Lord that I made that commitment at Camp Geneva with a camp counselor when I was young and that Eric made that commitment after Zach was born in his car one day when our marriage was failing. God is our redeemer, rewarder, rebuilder, restorer! He is a life changer. Even our son Zach made the decision at age 5 to ask Jesus into his heart and we are praying that he will continue to seek God's direction for the rest of his life and that Maddie will some day make that decision. I want to leave you with a verse from last Sunday's pm service that rings so powerful for us and hopefully you as well:

Romans 5
Peace and Joy

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Blessings to you today!!

Lori and Eric