Pictures of our Trip To Nova Scotia....

When we left yesterday at 7 AM from our home in Quebec City, the kids were very excited....It began to snow! It had first started to sleet around 6 AM and then it turned to snow. As we drove south the snow got worse and the roads began to be a mess. As we drove, we witnessed all sorts of car wrecks and the kids even witnessed one truck sliding and then crashing into the ditch. We finally made it into Maine and the snow turned into rain and fog. The trees here brilliant colors and the drive was beautiful!

Silas did great for his doctor's appointment and took his shots like a real man...he cried like a baby! We finally made it into St. Johns, New Brunswick at about 6 PM and at 7:30 we finally booked a motel room (what a mess it was trying to find a room!) It was a long day and we had a great sleep last night. We have about a 4 hour trip today and then I preach tonight. Thank you to all those who pray for us. We praise the Lord for you!

Upcoming Mission's Conference....

We will be leaving this Thursday and making the 11-hour trip through Maine and back into Canada for a Mission's Conference in Nova Scotia. We will be dividing our trip into two days to make it easier on our family, not to mention I have to preach on Friday evening and I do not want to be too exhausted (does driving for extended periods of time make any one else tired???...all I do is sit there and drive but it wears me out!).

We are driving through Maine to be able to stop in Jackman, ME so that Silas can have his doctor's appointment and get his next series of shots...poor guy, doesn't even know it's coming!

This conference is with Sackville Independent Baptist Church and Pastor John Dodd. We are very excited about this meeting and we kick off the meeting with a meal on Friday and then a service in which I will preach. On Saturday, we will take part in a banquet and Kami will give her testimony and her perspective of the call to the Mission Field. For Sunday, I will be teaching a class and then presenting our ministry and the field of the West Indies. We have heard many great things about Sackville Independent Baptist Church and their love for missionaries. We are looking forward to this meeting. Please pray for our safety, for the meeting to go well, and our van to keep running. I also hope that we do not run into any "winter" weather along the way that may slow us down (the weather people are calling for flurries on Wednesday evening!).

Silas gets a haircut....

We have noticed that Silas's hair has been getting kind of long in the back and hangs over his ears lately.....so we decided it was time to give him an Air Force "high and tight" haircut....(that's right Grandpa, no wimpy Army haircuts here!)


Before:During: (He loved his haircut...he just laughed and here you can kinda see him smiling)...After: (Everyone enjoys a good book after a great haircut)

Fall & Freezing....

Fall is just about over, here in Quebec City. The leaves are rapidly, and I mean rapidly falling off of the trees and the colors have changed from brilliant to brown with the occasional trees who haven't realized that fall is here! The temperature this morning was 32 degrees (0 celcius) and our van finally begins to blow warm air when we are on our French professor's street! It makes for a long cold ride in the mornings. The kids have been having a blast raking and playing in the leaves. Here they raked and made a big pile to play in.

Our average week goes something like this....

Mondays: studying French, completing homework, grocery shopping, laundry, and errands.

Tuesdays: Wake up at 6:30, make breakfast, Bible reading/prayer time, French classes from 9-11:30 and study the rest of the afternoon..(this past Tuesday after class, I spent 7 hours studying...ughhh), then we normally have church visitation at 6:30.

Wednesdays: same schedule except we leave for church at 5:30 for Kami to teach piano and for our kids to have their French class. We get home about 9pm and we are tired!

Thursdays: same schedule and plenty of studying French.

Fridays: We do language school and then we have our Friday afternoon family fun night. We play games with the kids and have a special meal/dessert that they choose.

Saturdays: Lately it has been traveling to some meetings but normally we study French and get the house cleaned up from the week. I usually prepare my SS lesson and then we get everything laid out for church.

Sunday: Kami plays the piano at church, I teach a SS class, and then every other Sunday afternoon we have a children's class that Kami and I teach.

It seems that French is slowly consuming more and more of our time. We look forward to the day that we can fluently speak French!

Our week long Mission's Trip!

It has been a long day of cleaning, putting in the outer winter-windows on the house, dumping all of our flower pots, drying the fresh herbs from our little garden, and completing our French homework. Kami has a turkey in the oven in honor of the Canadian Thanksgiving Day and it is smelling really good!

Here are some highlights from our trip we took to be a part of Golden Harvest Baptist Church's Mission's Conference this past week:

We arrived on Saturday and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with the Pastor, other missionaries, and some church members at the Swiss Chalet which is known for their roasted chicken! On Sunday, I taught the young convert's class and presented our work and goal for the West Indies. Here is a picture of all of the missionaries and the Pastor and his wife....Lunches were served at the church except for Wednesday. Pastor Smith is an old North Carolina "boy", here he is playing his "jug", "washboard", and "washtub"!!!.......(by the way, he makes a "mean" BBQ!).......

On Wednesday, all the Missionaries were taken to the Mandarin, a chinese buffet...but none like I have ever seen! Their were so many choices, including a carving station, and probably over 40 desserts of all kinds!....this is all of us and we are stuffed!.......

I preached on Tuesday and gave a personal testimony of my salvation and call to the mission field on Wednesday. Kami also spoke to the AWANA girls on Wednesday evening as well. After the service on Tuesday, the church showered us with presents in what they call their "Missionary Christmas".....we were overwhelmed with the generosity and love from such a mission's minded church!.......... It was a great week of preaching from all of the missionaries and I enjoyed hearing the great testimonies of salvation and the different works and ministries going on around the world. While in Niagara Falls, we took several trips to the Falls. I have to admit, the Canada view is much better than the American view.....especially at night, the Falls are all lighted up with brilliant colors! On Cliften Hill Avenue, down by the Falls, there is so much to look at and do. We told the kids that they could pick one thing for our family to do...they picked the Crystal Caves which is a mirror maze. We had to each wear plastic gloves and what a great time we had bumping into walls and losing our way around this maze!
We did plenty of sightseeing as well in between meals and services. We had so much fun and fellowship with everyone at Golden Harvest Baptist Church. They truly love their missionaries and they all have such a giving heart! What a great week!

We are also glad to be back home and starting back in language school tomorrow morning! Here are a couple pictures for you to enjoy.......

Tired and Tired.....

We made it back after the long drive from Niagara. We drove back in two days because little Silas is not quite yet able to cope with 10 full hours of driving stuck in a car seat. I will post some pictures from the conference in the next day or two. We were overwhelmed with the reception we received and all of the attention that was showered upon us.

After waiting at the police station in Montreal for over 1 1/2 hours, Kami got her purse back. We praise the Lord that nothing in the purse was missing, not even the $20 in cash that she had.

We loved traveling through the good old USA! We cut through NY and even made a stop at WalMart on our way back to stock up on some items that either we cannot get in Canada or are too expensive. I started to develop the flu on Wednesday and traveled back with the flu and am still not feeling very well. Brenna has spent most of the day on the couch today with a sore throat and borderline fever...so please keep us in your prayers, we really do not want language school interrupted because of the flu running through the rest of our family.....

Stay tuned for more information in the next day or two.

Conference & Compliments!

Our conference started today and this morning was a great service. It is always good to sing in english and to hear preaching in english as well. Everyone is so friendly and we are having a great time. We will be giving our field presentation this evening, preaching on Tuesday and giving my personal testimony on Wednesday. This is going to be a wonderful week.

Kami gets complimented very often on how young she looks to have a 13 year old son, not to mention 4 children. One kind lady said to her this morning, "You don't look old enough to have all these children." Then she turned to me and said, "You must be treating her very good to keep her looking this young!"......Thankyou, finally some credit to my wonderful skills as a husband!!!....

Like Mother...Like Daughter....

Last night, Kami tried to call her mom. Her dad told Kami that her mom had to run back to the soccer field where she was watching some grandkids play soccer. Apparently, she had left her purse at the soccer field and was running back to see if it was still there.

When I heard that story, I thought to myself, "I sure am glad Kami didn't forget her purse anywhere...the credit card, debit card, checkbook, license....what a mess that would be if it fell into the wrong hands!"

That was last night....but this morning, we loaded up the van and Kami looked frantic. She checked the van and then said, I lost my purse! We thought through our day yesterday and realized that she had left it at McDonalds, about 400 miles away in Montreal, Canada!
We called the McDonalds and the manager said that he had the purse and we told him to hold on to it because we would have a friend pick it up for us this afternoon.

That was this morning....this afternoon, Madame Estelle went to pick it up and the other manager turned it in to the police! So now we have no idea where the purse is except that the police of a foreign country and a foreign language have it! We will be traveling through Montreal on our way back home to Quebec, so we will be searching the police stations in Montreal for Kami's purse! (PS...I just found out her glasses are in the purse along with my inhaler...at least she won't see me if I'm dying of an asthma attack!)

Getting Our Ducks In A Row...

Today was a very long day as we prepared to take our trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario. We are a family of 6 getting ready to be gone for 7 days....there is so much stuff to think about and to pack. I have to admit, I was the first one finished! My bag is packed and everything is stuffed right in there just perfectly!

We finished our prayer letters, folded the letters, stuffed envelopes, and put labels on over 200 envelopes to be able to mail them when we travel through New York. We are definitely doing our fair share to keep the U.S. Postal Service in operation! (No need to thank me Sis. Taylin and Sis. Keela !)

Then it was time for quarterly expense reports.....ugghhhhh........Kami and I worked together getting all of our receipts in order and getting all of the paperwork finished, submitted, and filed. These are two things (prayer letters & expense reports) that when we get done, we feel so relieved!

We are currently finishing some odds-n-ends packing and then we are off tomorrow on the first leg of our trip to Niagara Falls for our Mission's Conference. Please pray for us as we travel and that Silas will tolerate his car seat for an extended period of time!