Lives Restored!

This past Sunday afternoon was a special day for Restoration Church because we got to witness and celebrate baptism. Since our church doesn't own a building yet, we do this in a really unique way -- in the pool at the YMCA! Dan really likes it this way, because it is a good way to get out in the community instead of staying inside the walls of the church all the time. The two times so far that Restoration Church has had baptism, there has been at least a couple of people who work there make comments like "I've never seen anything like this before!"

The couple that got baptized Sunday, Tony and Terri, have such a great story of how God has worked in their lives. They were involved in the Catholic church for years, but recently Tony was just feeling that he wanted something more and that something was missing in his life. They heard about Restoration Church through word of mouth and they decided to come check it out. Tony said he knew that first Sunday that he had found what he was looking for. Soon after that, he met with Dan to talk about having a real relationship with Jesus, and he has since committed his life to Christ! They have both been attending ever since, and when Dan announced that we were going to be having a baptism service for anyone who wanted to make that profession of faith they knew they wanted to take that step.

So we had a nice crowd from the church come out to the YMCA pool to witness and support Tony and Terri in this beautiful symbolism of what Jesus has done in their lives.

Here is the happy couple afterwards:

It was a great celebration time. Baptism is such a beautiful visual symbol of how Christ restores lives, and this was a wonderful reminder of why we are here in Buffalo!

Two Days + No Computer = Bliss!

Wes and I had the privilege of having a little getaway this weekend in Ellicottville, NY and it was just fabulous! Ellicottville is about an hour south of Buffalo, and it's actually a ski town. Alex's parents (Alex is one of the other pastors at Restoration Church) own a condo there and they were kind enough to let us stay there for free! Wes has been especially busy the last few weeks, plus we'd been going through some tough life stuff, and we just needed to get away from all the mayhem for a little bit and do nothing, so this was totally perfect.

The condo was really nice, check it out:

Here is the view while standing on the balcony:

As you can see, they are literally right there at some of the slopes and ski lift. Of course most of the snow was melted and it's past ski season, so we were literally the only people in the whole condo place which was very nice.

Here's Wes and Boston in front of their condo:

The weather was absolutely perfect and gorgeous both days we were there: sunny and in the 60s.  It was so much fun walking around with Boston and enjoying the beautiful sunshine.

We had no plans, no schedule, no computer...and it was the best. All we did during the day was go for walks, drink coffee, watch old movies, play games, and sit out on the balcony. It was just fantastic. Wes dominated in chinese checkers, but I dominated in parcheesi! 

Here's Grandpa having his coffee:

(If you can't see, the mug says Grandpa)  

And Boston sunning:

We took this one on one of our walks - the condo we stayed in is there to the left of the slopes.

Friday evening we went into the cute little downtown area of Ellicottville to walk around, look at the shops, and have dinner.

Here's some relaxing on the balcony. Boston had too much sun, so he decided to get in the shade in the corner.

We're so thankful and blessed to have had this opportunity. It's SOOOOOO good to get away from the regular routine sometimes and simply enjoy being together, and that is exactly what we did!!  

Mission Arlington '09 ~ Part 2

Alright, so day 2 of our mission trip we went to Mission Arlington as usual to find out our assignment for the day. It was kind of neat not knowing what we'd be doing until we got there each day! Day 2 started with cleaning.  One of the apartment complexes Mission Arlington works with has given them an apartment to help house their volunteers, which is so cool that they've done that.  This apartment was very much in need of a cleaning, so that's what our group did that morning.  

We spent a few hours in this two bedroom, two bathroom apartment wiping down the walls...

cleaning the toilets...

cleaning the kitchen, refrigerator, stove...

cleaning the furniture...

vacuuming all the carpet and baseboards...

and removing nails and screws from the walls, reattaching shelves, replacing light bulbs, etc.

Oh, and cleaning windows... Apparently it takes four men to clean a window.

Here we all are outside the apartment when we were done.

We worked up an appetite, so we went to a place called Black Eyed Pea for lunch and they had good ole southern cookin' and sweet tea!

We got to introduce fried pickles to our New Yorker friends who had never heard of them!

Here are the girls back at Mission Arlington:

Then that afternoon we got to go back to the apartment complex we'd been to the day before to hang out with the kids again.  We were really excited to be able to go back again and see them all.  We did another Bible story and played lots of games.

Here is Jose - we love him!

And another pretty little girl.

Me and Matthew again:

And another game of "Stop and Go" (it got pretty intense as you can see in the background)

Day 2 was another great day.  We got to the Mission on Day 3, again not knowing what we'd be doing.  What we ended up doing all day was really cool.  Mission Arlington gets a LOT of donations every week of clothing, furniture, and miscellaneous items.  People call them to let them know of what they want to donate, and they send volunteers to pick these donations up.  So that's what we did.  Our group got split up into groups of two or three, each got to use an F-150 to drive around (all that had been donated by Ford to the Mission), and got our assignments of where to go and what to pick up!

It was actually really fun and exciting to get to drive all around Arlington picking up these donations that were going to be given to families who really needed them.  

On this day alone, they had 180 pick-ups to do!!  This happens every week and they totally rely on volunteers to get this done.  It's so amazing to think that God had us here for this specific week to get these specific things done.  What is equally as amazing is that they told us that by the end of the day, all the donations that the volunteers had picked up would probably already be given out to people in need!  As many people as they have calling daily to make donations, they have more people calling daily who have nothing and are requesting things. I am just still so in awe of what they have going on here at Mission Arlington and how many people everyday are getting to experience the love of Jesus through it!

So one of the highlights of this day was that while we were out doing pick-ups, we had to stop for lunch and we happened upon this Chick-fil-A!  Thank you Lord for this provision! ;) 

Wes and Derek had to secure this refrigerator we picked up since it fell over while we were driving.  Woops.

When you come back to the Mission, you just pull your truck in and there are more volunteers there to unload everything you've picked up and sort it out in the bins:

Pretty amazing.  After doing the pick ups for most of the day, we then loaded up a trailer with a lot of the furniture everyone had picked up that day and took it to a local apartment complex. We unloaded it and let people come out and get anything they needed! I'm so thankful to have been a part of such a tangible way of sharing God's love with people!

I don't feel like I've been able to get across how great this trip was, but I am immensely thankful that God worked this out exactly how He did, and we were all blessed so much to be a part of Mission Arlington.

Here we are at San Antonio airport, ready to head back north!

And of course the on the plane shot:

Flying into Buffalo over Lake Erie:

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us, prayed for this trip, and gave to make this possible!