In Dreams Awake.

If you were to ask us, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?", we would probably answer with something like "experiencing another culture; people, food, lifestyle, raising awareness, and with our own children too!".

Pretty vague,huh?

I've spend many hours wondering about our future, and where we would be, what we would be doing and accomplishing, what kind of people we've lived with, what types of food we would try, how many children we would have, what languages we could speak, what kinds of cultures we would have experienced, etc. The more I think about this, the more excited I get.

Ted and I are what you would call, a different "breed" I guess. We both have a heart to head overseas. And we both have a heart for people of all shapes, sizes, colours, backgrounds. Sometimes, even for me this seems a bit too vague.

One thing I have realized lately is this, yes Ted and I are what would be called "visionaries",people who have many different visions, dreams, goals, and ideas, but don't necessarily remember the practical side of things. The finances, the time and energy, the conditions... When we sit and begin to think of these things, well, this is were we become a bit overwhelmed.

Sometimes when I think of these things, I feel as though it puts our dreams, visions, and goals in a box. And we are the "outside the box" people.

We sometimes beat ourselves up about this, not because we regret who we are, but because we have so many dreams, and ideas, that we don't actually pick one up, and begin to strategically plan and invest in it. (I hope that I am making sense).

God reminded me that we are in Him, therefore we have His heart for people. We have His heart for the used, neglected, poor, hungry, abused, etc. We have His heart for the Nations. When I think of this, I cannot help but realize His heart is not at all vague, but relational to the core. He wants to see ALL come into His Kingdom, and know Him. Experience His unconditional love, His loving mercy, and His unfailing grace. Ultimate Freedom in Him!

This excited Ted and I. God is our Source, our Foundation which never wavers, our Hope which we can bring into the world, our Beauty everlasting, our purpose, our reason to live and love others.

I read this quote once, (C.S. Lewis) one which is now up on our wall of our living room. A daily reminder and truth. It read:

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."

I find a discontent when I am living outside of this dream. The dream that God has placed in our hearts. Do you know what I mean? This Holy discontent?

God recently spoke to Ted and I about a decision. A very difficult one at that. (This blog is already a novel, so I will share this with you in our next blog!)

Love, Jami Joann

Life Rollercoasters.

Have you ever ridden a rollercoaster? One which has many loops, sharp turns, and many ups and downs?

I think that would best describe our emotions and life as of right now. This may sound like a harsh reality, yes but it's really not. I can assurre you, our rollercoaster in staying in place and on the track. Weird metaphore,I know, but it describes us perfectly right now. (Plus we both LOVE rollercoasters)!

The past two weeks have been the busiest weeks in quite a while. Being pulled in almost every direction, the good & the bad.

You may remember me sharing about a youth retreat Ted and I would be running this past weekend. If not, well, we were asked to be the "youth part" for a church retreat. We ended up having 14 youth, ages 13-18, Junior High and Senior High. Only three of the 14 were guys, so the majority were young girls.

It was incredibly rough to be honest. Both Ted and I left the weekend feeling compeltely drained and unsuccesful. Our teachings were alright, only the students could care less about anything, but freetime. I was a teen once (not even that long ago) and I too remember those moments. Plus each of them were influenced by peers, which usually leads them down the wrong path. God did teach us personally, which I guess was the plus of that weekend.

Also, as you know, the new students arrived last week. It's been an intense two weeks, learning the students names, and getting to know our small groups. Plus, the "thailand outreach" was so up in the air, due to ticket prices, that every other day until Monday, we were totally unsure of what would happen. In fact, we were almost sure we wouldn't be going to Thailand...unless that is...God performed miracle tickets...and guess what? HE DID!

We are officially going to Thailand, on a tight budget yes, but a budget none the less! Our outreach team, as of right now, we are a team of 14 including Ted and I! Amen, huh!? Thank you for your prayers!

Another thing, which is way less priority...we were given a Macbook laptop as a gift at Christmas, which was such a blessing. Well, it has been giving us trouble, and just Tuesday (the day that ted was going to do a presentation of thailand for the school) our computer crashed. Completely crashed.

I took our mac into an Apple store yesterday, and they told me that our computer was "the most corrupt mac" they've seen. I didn't know what that meant until the guy then said that they wouldn't be able to recover any of our files, because it looked like someone went in and changed all of our english files to gibberish. Ted and I are really shocked. As of this moment right now, we are shipping our computer to the apple headquarters and then waiting until they send us a new computer (for free). Which is nice, but our documents and photos are ALL lost.

Please pray for us, because this is really hard. We did have a back up hard drive but not a lot was on it. Which means our thailand, wedding, ted's afghanistan photos...all gone. However they did say that we could send it in to another place and pay $700-$800. Which will not happen.

I was just telling someone, that I am not really freaked out about all of this, I know God will work it out.Even if it means, we just get our computer backed, all cleaned and fixed, but lose the documents. In the long run, it's really not that big of a deal.

There is ALOT MORE that I will share in the coming blog! It's a bit about our future, and the sudden change God has placed in our "plans". HAHA, our plans, funny how we sometimes think we know!

Love,
Jami Joann

New Faces.

Yesterday about 60 new students arrived from around the country and a lot from around the world. It is such a blast putting faces to the names which we've seen on paper for the past weeks or even months. 

Last night we had what is called a "Welcome Night", where all of the students and staff gather to have worship, fellowship and snacks. It's a good chance to get to know the students and where they are from, as well as what school they are in Denver for. 

Right now, Ted and I are really busy. We've barley any time to take for ourselves, but that is what the beginning of schools are usually like. I actually have three hours of today off, which has been refreshing. If you think of us, please pray for us! We don't want to get burnt out in anyway!

This is our season of relationships. With God, with each other, and with people in general, so we want to make sure that this is one main priority. 

Well I can't type long. Thank You for your prayers!

We love you!

Jami Joann