Two Trips

I just returned from a weeklong trip to North Carolina to visit my dear friend Melissa and her family. It was refreshing and relaxing, not to mention a treat to get away from -20 temperatures and enjoy some winter sunshine in the lower 48! We shopped, took our little ones to the playground, visited Melissa's sister in Raleigh, and went to the Billy Graham library in Charlotte (which I would highly recommend visiting!). Overall it was a great treat!
Justin is gearing up for the regions tournament for wrestling, to be held in Kodiak. He leaves tomorrow. They will fly straight from Kenai to Kodiak and be gone for 4 days. After this weekend, there is only one more wrestling tournament, the State Tournament, and then the season is over. I am pretty sure that both of us underestimated how time-consuming this coaching job would be for Justin, but I know that we have both enjoyed being a part of the wrestling season this year!
Our process of contacting churches is continuing. We are asking churches to take a look at our information packet and decide whether they'd like to hear a presentation from us. We feel like things are moving slowly, but the level of support we are raising is slowly but surely rising! I don't know why we're surprised at God's provision! He is so faithful. We'll show a ticker on each new post that lets you know what level of support we're at, so you can be in the know...I'm still figuring out blogging (I am NOT computer savvy!) so it may appear in a strange spot on the blog!
WE ARE CURRENTLY AT ABOUT 18.5 PERCENT!

Back to work!

The sunset on Christmas day, from Kenai bluff
Merry Christmas!
A moose in our backyard!


So far I have been posting about once a month; here's to hoping that it will be more like every other week from now on! It's marked on my calendar: UPDATE BLOG, and you all know that if it's on the calendar, it's going to happen. :)
We had an awesome Christmas! We spent Christmas morning together as a family and our friend Scott got to come and spend the weekend with us too. After church we headed over to my parent's house. For those of you who don't know the Mese family, there are 12 of us, and it makes for quite a crowd when we get together! We spent the day eating and playing boardgames that got very exciting at points! Ha. I love spending time with family.
Over Christmas break we spent a lot of time on support raising projects. Finally mailing out our support letter, (what's the word for procrastination in conjunction with honest to goodness busyness?) contacting churches through phone calls and email, and putting packets together to mail out to familiarize people with Victory were just a few of the things we did. On Sunday, the 8th, Justin presented our ministry to the congregation at Calvary Baptist church, our home church. We are planning to hopefully travel to several churches around the state and share our ministry with them as well.
We know that we've got an uphill climb, financially speaking, to reach our goal by the end of May, but we also know that God is in control. I hope you realize that I don't say that in a cavalier kind of way. It is rather a scary thing that we're doing, it is quite uncomfortable at times, and there are moments when Justin and I look at each other and think "what are we doing?" But we know exactly what we're doing because it's exactly what we are certain God wants us to do. It's actually quite comforting to know that at the end of the day, if we have worked our hardest at what we know to be the work that is cut out for us, we can then relax in God's capable hands and let him do the REAL work. It thrills us to anticipate the exciting ways that God will move our lives toward this ministry at Victory.
We had the awesome chance to drive up to Victory and the Valley a couple of weekends ago and visit some of our friends at camp, admire the beautiful winter look of Victory peak and surrounding areas, and celebrate the new year's coming with the youth group at Glacier View, the church in Victory's community. We also stayed a night with our friends the Engles and had a little too much fun playing Fruit Ninja on the Kinect. :)
Not long after we came home, Norah came down with a nasty double ear infection. She fought it for a few days with a fever that just wouldn't let up and when we finally got her on antibiotics, she had bad reactions to both kinds we tried. I am so thankful that she's now feeling better and back to playing and running around again!
So far, January has been either very cold (-20 degrees or so), or very snowy, but thankfully not both of those at once. I'll see if I can get some good pictures that will show you just how much snow we've gotten around here!