Have I told you how much I love my wife?

Have I told you how much I love my wife? As of yesterday Erica and I have officially been married for 1 year! It was an incredible year spent together, and if the first is any implication for the next 60-70, I'm going to be very blessed. We celebrated the big milestone on Saturday by heading off to Fresno for a day of exploration, shopping, coldstone, and a fine dining experience at the Macaroni Grill.

We also got to go to church yesterday. We were both very excited for our first day at Gateway. It is one thing to work at a church, but it is another to worship with a church. Uncle Al preached in the morning service and Joel (our cousin) gave the message at the 604. We were introduced to the congregation and got to share a bit of our story within God's story with them. Once again, we are very thankful for you prayers, thoughts, and letters of encouragement. Let us know if there is any way we can uphold you in prayer.

Prayer Request

Bob and Anna are the wonderful people that donated housing to us for the summer. Bob built up the Malibu Boat company from scratch and then sold the company a few years back, but remained in charge of the operations. Well, today Bob is resigning from the company. The board believes that they need to go in another direction in this tough financial time even though Malibu is doing much better than other boat companies under his guidance. As it is please pray for Bob and Anna as they have poured years of their lives and passion into this company, and are now forced to step out and simply watch what happens.
The flip side of this is that Malibu owns the house that we are living in, so we are going to have to move to an apartment. Bob and Anna have said that they will continue to provide housing for us, which is very humbling considering their condition and we are extremely grateful. Praise God for the people that they are, but ask him to continue to give them strength in this difficult time in their lives.

Well, we are officially moved in. Sorry it took so long for us to post, but we don't have regular internet access at our house yet. By the way, the house we are staying at is quite the place. I told Erica when we moved in that she should NOT expect this for our next house:) It is quite large, so if any of you get the hankering for a road trip, we have a place for you to stay. Yesterday was my first official day of interning and we felt I should start it off as any good CRC church would--in a 3 hour meeting. We are still working on the definite terms of the internship, but right now are getting situated and introduced to a lot of the happenings around Gateway Community CRC. If you would like to check out the church, feel free to visit the website at www.gatewaychurchmerced.org. We are still looking for a job for Erica, so please pray for that. She had an interview at the church and was offered to basically be the homeroom teacher for 15-20 kindergarden through first graders from 8-5, but we felt that was a bit overwhelming and might not be the best fit for her. We feel a bit more training might be needed for a position such as that, right mom?
Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers, we look forward to hearing from all of you. Feel free to call, email, or post on the blog!

Leaving Saturday

We wanted to take a minute and thank everyone for all of their support. It has been both affirming and encouraging. Once again, thank you for your prayers. God is doing big things and we are just thankful to be a part of that. Please pray specifically that we will have a safe trip out. We are taking off Saturday for Merced! We can't wait to see what God has planned for our summer. Just the feeling of being in his will--which all of you have continually affirmed for us-- is extremely exciting and really limitless. It is our prayer that God would use us in amazing ways this summer. We are praying that he would stretch us and develop us for his purposes. God is good. Be excited!

in other good news...

God has continued to provide for us and our extended family. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and thoughts for us, we are praying for all of you as well. Early this week we found out that Erica's grandpa Groeneweg's biopsy came back cancer free! This was a huge answer to very many prayers. Her other grandpa, grandpa Vink was also in the hospital but was released and is doing better. Last weekend was Grandpa Schaap's big birthday bash. The entire Schaap side was out and it was really fun to hear all of Grandpa's stories about his life.

I hope you realize our gratitude to all of you for your support and continued encouragment regarding our summer plans. We feel that God has been very active in plotting our plans for the summer and we are extremely excited to watch his plan unfold over the summer. Pray that we can be pure insturuments for him to be used for his purposes, not our own.

Good News

We got some good news yesterday. We were originally planning on a Dordt summer ministries scholarship of $1000 to supplement our income for the summer. Well, we got an email from Dordt and ended up getting a $400 summer ministry scholarship. This was a little disappointing, but Erica reminded me that not only is this $400 we didn't have, but that God will provide in other ways (indeed she is my better half...). Last night I received a business scholarship for $600, which brings that right up to $1000:) We also heard from our friends that they would like to sublease our apartment for the two months we are going to be gone. This way we won't have to pay rent for a house we're not living in. God is good!

Jeremiah 29:10-12
10 This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

Passion Week

There is a part of me that really doesn’t like passion week. While it is a beautiful story of a God’s love for his children, so great that he would send and sacrifice his own, I just have a hard time with it. I hate to admit that I am the reason that Jesus died. From my own self-righteous, humanistic approach, I don’t like the dependency that it causes. For without God, I am truly nothing. Without him, I have no gifts, no abilities, NO LIFE. It is easy to look at the cross and say, “yep, Jesus had to come and die for their sins because they keep on sinning.” For those people. But me, He died for me? This realization causes a response on my behalf that I am not sure if I am comfortable with. It cause me, well it humanly obligates me to do something out of response. If someone took a bullet for me, I would no doubt do whatever it took for the rest of my life to ensure their happiness. However, someone took 4 nails and a spear to the side for me, took on hell itself, will ultimately crush Satan, and here I stand like this is no big deal. I cannot simply blame my sinful nature, because even my sinful human nature would respond differently than I have if a friend today did all that just so that I could have life. It just doesn’t make sense, and that is what makes passion week a bit uncomfortable to me. The crucifixion of Christ was not necessary. He didn’t have to do it. But he did! He died for me, for us, and for all the crap that we would do so that he could make up for it with his own sweat, his own blood, and his own tears. And here we are living our comfortable lives like it’s no big deal, just a free pass to heaven. This makes me uncomfortable.