Farming......

Remember awhile back when I did a post about Sam and Nicole's farming project? Well, the tomato and cucumber plants have done wonderfully!! The flowers, well, they must have been dud seeds cuz they haven't done nothin'. It won't be long before we will be eating from our own garden!!!!!!!

Kitchen Pictures

Here are a few pics from our recent remodel. My husband is such a handyman!!!! I have so much more counter space!!!

Catching up!

It has been an interesting week to say the least. We started out the week by taking out our old wall oven unit. This is a leftover project from our kitchen remodel that we did nearly six years ago. We are kind of slow at getting all of our projects done! Plus I used the oven. Why? Well, long story, but my newer oven that I bought during the remodel never worked consistently. We bought a new fridge last winter and the wall oven would make the fridge come on since they were right next to each other. So, $150.00 dollars and six technicians later, we finally got the thermostat changed!!!!!!! So the old unit came out this week! This of course left an ugly hole in the wall. So, my wonderful husband, used all his carpentry skills, plus some new ones and built me a shelf to move our microwave up off the counter and into the new shelving unit!!!! Now, no kidding, I have doubled my countertop space!(didn't have much to begin with!) My sweet husband bought me a new microwave too!!!! Of course the cabinets needed painting after we noticed that we just couldn't paint the new shelving unit cause everything else looked horrible. You know how these projects get bigger and bigger!!! We did finish and I have to admit that my kitchen never looked so good!!

Anyway, on Thursday I was sitting at the computer when I experienced exteme pain in my chest and heart area. After suffering for nearly 30 minutes we went to the Emergency Room and had an EKG done. It came out clean. The Cardiologist suggested that I come back on Saturday and get thoroughly tested. I had a "stress test" done as well as an ultra sound on my heart. I was given a "clean bill of health". But we did learn that I have a valve that doesn't close like it should. This isn't the reason I experienced the pain that I did on Thursday. I also learned that I need to have a better routine of exercise as the bottom part of my heart looked "rigid" rather than flexible. We still don't know what caused the pain. I will admit that I got a "wake-up call". I've been reminded that my time here on earth could conclude at any moment. My daughters also were reminded of this. We had to leave Natalie and Nicole behind when we went to the hospital. I'm not sure which hurt worse, my chest or my "heart" when we left two teary eyed girls here at home when we rushed off.

Tomorrow we take off for a week at the Texas/Mexico border. We will be staying in Harlingen, Texas. My parents are taking the opportunity to fly down and meet us!!!! We are really looking forward to some Stateside eatin'!!!!!! And Mountain Dew!!!!!!

On the church front! We had 71 in attendance today! We now have plenty of space to put everyone and then some!!!!!! It is neat to see folks hang around and visit with one another!! This week again most of the church stayed and played volleyball. We didn't leave church until 3:00!! Please continue to pray for property for us!

Our new location!

Today we had our first service at our new location! Oh how we enjoyed all the space! We came home from church and couldn't believe how we have crammed ourselves in our home all these years. We have plenty of space to grow and we need your prayers as we determine what the Lord has for us as far as finding a more permanent location.



Look at all the space!!!



Coffee Shop/Snack Shop area--great fellowship!



Our new auditorium!!



Nicole's class!



Our youngest children's class. Photo is blurry cuz I was holding on to a two year old!



The guys enjoying futbol rapido!



Elizabeth, Ana and Natalie hangin'!



Chillin'!



Araceli, Tanya and Estrella enjoying our new seating area after the service!

Elbow Grease

Never dreamed cleaning could be so much fun!!! Saturday we had a church work day at our new rental location. We got a lot done and we had a wonderful group of folks that came and helped!! We scrubbed down walls, floors, washed windows, painted and did some lawn work! I came home and every muscle in my body ached. I could barely get out of bed this morning. The park looked amazing when we finished!

Church is moving on!!

For the past five years we've had the privilege of hosting Nueva Vida Baptist Church in our home. I have to say that it has been a wonderful experience and I'd even do it again! We've watched a lot of folks come through our doors during this time. We so appreciate our three founding Mexican families that have been with us since the beginning. Our family units has now grown to 20!

I'll be honest. I don't quite know what to do with my house. We need to replace our livingroom furniture and the carpets upstairs in the bedrooms. I think we've about decided to leave things as they are until we can replace the furniture. For the past five years we downsized our furniture. We got rid of some, hid some and scrunched the rest into our t.v. area. On Sundays we've moved a chair into the office and moved our loveseat against a wall to spread things out. This allowed us to have a very large open space to hold over 50 folks comfortably. We will have around 50 black chairs that we will still store at our home. The property where we will be renting already has chairs for the auditorium. We will only need to supply chairs for the kids. My mind has been spinning as I try and think of things that the church has had here that we will need to move by next Sunday. Also we will need to be able to store things at the property probably in plastic bins. In some ways it will be a little more work to have church at the new property but it will give more opportunities for folks to serve and take more ownership of the church. Nueva Vida is still God's Church but instead of Sam, Jamie and the Hornbrook girls getting the church ready every week, folks will take turns arriving early on Sundays to spot clean and make sure things are in order.

Pray for us this weekend as we clean on Saturday and have church Sunday at the park! Everyone here at church voted unanimously for the move and there is a lot of excitement! Nearly every church family is coming to the Work Day on Saturday!!! One lady spoke up and told us that she loves to paint and that she could paint all day!!! Now that's exciting!!!!!!!!! She later told me that she paints her house every year because she loves to paint that much!

Please continue to pray for us. If this property should sell, and we aren't the buyers, then we'd have to look for another place to rent. I've mentioned before that we'd love to buy this property but we have to see what the Lord does!

Slideshow

On the right side of my blog you will see that I have uploaded a slideshow of pictures of the property that we Lord willing, will start renting for our church starting May 17th. The park consists of a swimming pool, volleyball court, fronton court, playground, several buildings and lots of green grass!!! We would love to purchase this property. We can invision lots of ministries that would grow God's Kingdom! Pray with us as we take this next step of growth here at Nueva Vida! (If you want to view the pictures in a larger format just click on them and you will be taken to Picasa. Once you are there you can click on each picture or view it as a slideshow.)

Ready to get out and about!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has been a long time of staying couped up. Our whole family has enjoyed to some degree these "lazy crazy" days but believe me, we are ready for things to get back to normal. Tomorrow the high schools and colleges will go back to school and then on the 11th the elementary schools will open again. We have been doing school here at home. My girls have gotten breaks here and there but for the most part we have been trying to finish up our school year.

This Sunday we decided to have our last service here in our home. The property where we will be meeting starting the 17th needs some cleaning. We are going to have a work day on the 16th as well as one after our service on the 17th. We are extremely excited about this next phase in our church. We will have plenty of room to grow. Now we need to pray that the property doesn't sell until we have money to purchase it or have another place to meet. We'd love to buy the property but we have saved up $70,000.00 dollars and we need closer to half a million. Pray with us concerning this. We are renting the property for less than $500.00 dollars a month.

By the way, we never did know anyone who had the swine flu virus or anyone that knew anyone that had it.