Hello lovely friends and family!!!

So the time has come to reveal what we have been praying and planning on doing after the summer! Hooray!!!

I think I mentioned in our last post that Josh and I were planning on moving after this current SBS that he is staffing! These plans seem to be coming together beautifully which is why I think we can safely tell you what they are, and ask for your prayers in our upcoming endeavors!

So the new YWAM base that Josh and I are tentatively planning on joining is . . . drum roll please . . . Colorado Springs!!!!!!!! Hooray!

We had been praying and talking to one of Josh’s amazing bosses up here who had decided she was going to help plant an SBS in CO! As we prayed, it became clear that this looked like what God had for us next! Since then, we have contacted the base down there, talked to them about coming on staff, and we are now in the midst of the application process! Things are looking good and if all goes well, CO will be our new home!

So it looks like after the SBS graduation at the end of June this year, Josh and I will take some vacation time to pack up our amazing apartment (a very sad loss). Then after our cute Hufflet arrives (hopefully at the end of July or the very beginning of August . . . we could use your prayers there too  ) we will be heading down to CO to be a part of the new staff training period, starting the last day of August! WOW!!!

SO, we could definitely use your prayers!!! If you are looking for some guidance in how to pray for us, here are some key things that you can keep in mind:

~ Baby – we definitely need a complication free birth and an amazingly healthy, laid back and punctual child !

~ Housing – base housing in the Springs is a bit on the pricey side of things so we will be looking for housing off base! If you guys hear of any good deals, let us know!!!

~ Moving – moving can be stressful at the best of times and it seems to cost quite a bit! We would love prayer for smooth sailing as we pack and head down and also amazing deals on moving trucks, etc.

~ Guidance – We will be helping pioneer this SBS from nothing! We all have amazing vision for this awesome school God is asking us to start, but we would like to be wise on all the details and hear from him on how we should progress and what the SBS should look like!

~ Support – this is the big one!!! The base in the Springs asks their staff to raise quite a bit more support than we have been living off of up here! It looks like we will need to raise at least another $600/month on top of what you amazing friends and family already give to us! As daunting as this looks right now though, we do know that when God calls he provides! So we know he already has the support that we need whether we can see it or not! So please pray for strategies and favor as we start sending out newsletters, etc.!

Thanks again for your amazing support and prayers! We appreciate them more than we could ever express!!!

Josh, Emily and the Hufflet

Hello all!

For once I am not tardy in updating all of you wonderful people! Josh and I just wanted to let you in on plans for the next year of our life! Hooray!

We have been praying a lot about our next step! We always just assumed we would stay in Montana forever but it seems that things may be taking a different turn than we had thought! About a month ago we heard that someone was going to be pioneering a School of Biblical Studies in another state! When we heard this, our ears perked up and we started praying . . . a lot! We met with this person a week ago and talked to them about their vision! As we heard their vision, we started to get even more excited!!! After praying even more and having more discussions, it looks like we will be joining this amazing person to start a new School of Biblical studies sometime summer of 2010! We will be releasing more details and the amazing location, probably in January when it is announced here and at the base! So stay tuned! Hooray! For those of you who know where we are going . . . shhhh until January!

In other news we will be having other fun things awaiting us in the summer of 2010! Some of you may already know but for the rest of you, we would like to announce the impending arrival of a Hufflet! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we are finally going to have a cute baby! Our due date is on or around August 6th and we are very excited! Here is a preview of what our child could look like:

Your guess is as good as mine why the internet assumes our child will be Middle Eastern . . . or a duck for that matter . . . WHO KNEW?!?!?!?!?

ANYWAY . . .

We just thought we would share the good news and ask for prayers as we are facing all sorts of transitions! Please be praying for me that I remain healthy in the -20 weather! And please pray that the Hufflet would stay happy, healthy, growing, and blessed!

Please also be praying for our transition to another base! It looks like we will be needing almost twice the support that we currently have! We know this is not a problem for God at all and we are trusting that he will provide for us! Hooray!!!

That’s all for now!

Thanks again for the continued prayers and support!!!

Josh, Emily and the Hufflet

Hello Friends and Family!!!

It is a beautiful Montana November and the snow is starting to fall! I am so ready for Christmas! Hooray! Here is the latest on our lives!

Josh is loving his time ,on School of Biblical Studies staff! He recently taught 1st Thessalonians and did a brilliant job of it, if I may say so myself! He is loving being a part of the lives of his students and helping them out whenever he can!

I on the other hand, am still in the amazing theatre dept. on base as well as the student library that I am helping manage at the moment! I am also getting ready to help run lights for the Nutcracker Ballet in Kalispell which I am super excited for! It is always a fun time to be able to help out the community in such a creative way!

In other news we at the theatre are currently running a show called “A Montana Christmas Extravaganza”! It is a backstage look at what it is like to run a Christmas variety show! It is based on true events which prove fact is stranger than fiction! Josh has the starring role as the uptight “talent” of the show and I am his adoring and slightly manipulative wife, with millions of costume changes into sparkly Christmas attire! It is pretty darn funny and full of Christmas carols and unbelievable scenarios! All that to say, if any of you are in Montana this weekend or on December 12th, come up and see the show!

Anyway, with Christmas just around the corner, we are getting ready to head to CO for fun festivities and such! For those of you in the area, we will be there from December 19th – 29th unless, God willing, there is a blizzard that keeps us there longer! So please let us know if you are around as we would love to hang out and party in Christmas style!

Please also be keeping us in prayer if you think about it! We would love to have a very safe trip down and back for the Holidays! We would also love to stay healthy! So far we have been blessed in the health department and we would love to continue walking in that!

Please also let us know if we can be praying for any of you! We love to know how you are doing and pray for you guys often, even though we are terrible at keeping touch!!!

We shall update again soon and hopefully I will have time in the near future to make our posts more interesting with pictures! Hooray!!!

Thanks again for your prayers and support!
Emily and Josh

The time has come and gone again for yet another update! Time has seriously gotten away from us as we have been in a whirlwind of activity and transition!!!

Most of you know that we graduated SBS on June 25th! SBS was one of the most amazing experiences in both of our lives! God truly spoke to us and challenged us like never before during our time in his word! We liked it so much, in fact that Josh has decided to dedicate this next year and perhaps longer to teaching the Bible! Yes, you guessed it, Josh has recently become SBS staff! Josh is in his first week of staff training as they await their students to arrive in only a few weeks! Josh is also studying to teach his very first book of the Bible as a staff person, 1st Thessalonians! He is very excited to see what God does in his life and those of his students this next year! Hooray!

I, on the other hand have gone back to my beloved theatre dept.! I am so happy to be back with my dear friend/boss Erin! We are currently writing our next play which will open on September 11th, here on base! We are trying something new this time to shake things up a bit! So this will be our first attempt at an interactive dinner theatre! We shall see how it all works out, but so far there has been a lot of interest! Hooray! On top of my theatre duties, I have taken over the position as librarian for the campus library, for the time being! I was more than happy to help out when I heard that our current librarian was heading home and the base needed someone to keep it running for the time being! So when I am not spending my time writing and casting plays, I am organizing and repairing books as well as training students in their work duties! Oh joy!

Currently we are both trying to reacquaint ourselves with being on staff, and trying to get back into the swing of things! Please be keeping us in prayer that we stay open to other things that God may have for us! We would love to go on more outreaches if the opportunities arise, so please be praying for that as well! We are also praying for a 4wheel drive vehicle of our very own before the winter hits! We have a vehicle that Josh’s parents have been kind enough to let us use to drive back and forth from our house to the base (as our current car is not 4wheel and will not be able to get out of our driveway in the winter), but it would be nice to have our own vehicle, as well as one that we will be able to drive to Colorado for Christmas this year! My mother will thank you beyond all reason (and we will too) if you would pray for this amazing vehicle to appear in our lives!

Thanks to all of you once again! You guys are amazing supporters and friends and we are very blessed to know each and every one of you!

Here is yet another long overdue update but it is well worth the wait in my opinion! Forgive me for the longwinded-ness but, it cannot be told in any less of a way! It all started with an almost empty tube of toothpaste . . .

A lot of times it is just cheaper for us to buy stuff like toiletries online and have them shipped to us! I intended to get a tube of toothpaste with my last online order as we were running out! The funny thing is that in the 6 or so years I have been with YWAM, I have not had to buy toothpaste but have always found it in our free store on base called the boutique! Anyway, I forgot to order the toothpaste and kicked myself about it, then went to the boutique only to find that there was none there either! So I was stressing about it (I know, not really a big deal) and I felt God ask me in worship to pray about it! So I prayed and asked him that someone would give us toothpaste!

Another part of the story is that in my spare time I really love to collect recipes and write them in a journal! It soothes me for some reason and I always hope that one day I will have the resources to be able to cook them! I then came across this great recipe for cabbage rolls and it reminded me of some tasty ones that my Grandma made for us, and I craved them but could not afford the ingredients!

Moving on, Josh and I usually don’t eat in our campus cafeteria for lunch, but take it to go so we can exercise over our lunch break so we don’t swell from all the sitting we do in SBS!   One day about 4 weeks ago now, Josh and I were feeling lazy and on a whim decided to eat lunch in the cafeteria! As we were eating, one of Josh’s friends on staff approached us and wanted to talk to us! He had previously rented a house about 10 minutes from the base until the owners moved back into it! The owners then decided recently to move out of state and needed a nice young YWAM couple to rent their basement apartment for them! He told us the living situation and the rent and we were shocked at how amazing it sounded! So we told him we would pray about it and get back to him by the next day! Less than 20 minutes later after much prayer and asking our parents to pray, we let him know we were interested and set up a time to meet the owners and check out the place!

The night before we were to look at the place, I started freaking out about cleaning supplies! You see, on base for our dorm rooms, all of our cleaning supplies are provided so we never needed things like windex or vaccums before! So I told Josh that we would have to buy a vaccum if we get this place! He smiles and says that they will have one for us! I thought silly Josh, landlords don’t usually provide vaccums for their tennants, get with the program! And he smiled and said that we would see!

How does this all tie together you may ask? Well I will explain! The morning that we were to see the place, Josh walks in from breakfast while I was still in bed and slips something under the covers to me by my head! I opened my eyes and pulled back the covers and lo and behold, A TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE! I sat up shocked and asked where he got it! He told me one of the guys in the room down the hall had a stack of new toothpaste and offered it to him!

That night, we decided to take our dinner to go so we could go see the place ASAP so we grabbed our bowls to walk into the cafeteria! Guess what was for dinner . . . . CABBAGE ROLLS!!! Can you believe it! Talk about God loving me!

We then drove to the place to meet the landlords and check out the place! The owners are amazing and had rented to YWAMers before so they were completely flexible with the lease and the rent they were asking was beyond belief! The place was GORGEOUS! Within an hour we agreed to take the place and randomly, completely off topic from what we were talking about, as we were heading out, the owner turns to us and says “Oh by the way, we have a vaccum you can use, I’ll bring it right down! A VACCUM!!!!!!

All this to say, God has amazingly blessed us with a brand new apartment near the base for an amazing price! It is odd because we have had amazing consistent support for the whole time that we have been here, yet it has technically never been enough income to pay for our bills! Yet God has provided every time, and the math is impossible to figure out, but we have never missed a bill, even though our income does not match our outflow! So this is the first time in our marriage where we actually have enough support to pay our bills with a tad left over to save! God is soooooooooooooooooooooo good!!!

So without further ado, some pictures!

The view from our porch (we have a porch!!!!!)

Josh in our garden (we have a garden!!!!!)

Our porch!

Right side of Kitchen!

Left side of kitchen!

Study attached to living room!

Right side of living room!

Left side of living room!

View from our back deck! (we have a deck!!!!!!!!!!)

Bedroom! (we have a bedroom!!!!!)

Bathroom!

Washer and drier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, Needless to say, we are so blessed by God! He has amazed us with his love and blessing when we, by no means, deserve it! Hooray!!!!

In other news, we have only 5 weeks of school left! Please keep us in your prayers that we can finish strong!!!

Love,
Emily and Josh

Hi friends and family!

It has been a busy couple of months so here is our VERY overdue update on our lives in SBS!!!

OUR 2ND QUARTER IS FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!! 6 months down, 3 months to go, 38 books of the Bible studied in depth and only 28 left for us to dig into!

(checked off books we have done)

(folders holding all of our charts and assignments)

(thumb and index showing the amount of Bible we have left to study)

It has been an amazing experience so far and we are loving it!!!! I thought it might be fun to have a short interview of what Josh and I think of SBS so far! So here it goes…

Q. Favorite book studied so far?

A. Josh – 1st quarter was Romans and 2nd quarter was Samuel (1 and 2 Samuel were studied as one book)! Emily – I can’t decide between Exodus (we had an awesome guest teacher), Song of Solomon (great teaching!!!!) and Samuel (I love the stories and people in them)!

Q. Hardest Book studied so far?

A. Josh – Leviticus! Emily – A BIG ditto on that! It gave us both a better and more amazing picture of God’s grace and patience though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Q. Favorite thing about SBS?

A. Josh – Learning the History of the Bible! Emily – Ditto Josh! I love the lectures and getting a perspective on the books from the view of who it was written to and the characters in the books!

Q. Least Favorite thing about SBS?

A. Josh - Not a lot of time for anything else aside from assignments! Emily - A little thing called chart insides !

Q. Thing you are looking forward to at the end of SBS?

A. Josh - Having a more complete Biblical foundation, Seeing the big picture of God’s plan for man, Seeing a deeper picture of God’s love for us! Emily - Having a deeper understanding of who God is and the plan that he has for us as his children!

Q. Advice for anyone planning to do an SBS?

A. Josh - Don’t procrastinate and be disciplined in your studies! Emily - A definite Ditto on what Josh said and It is not as scary as it seems, so don’t focus on the horror stories but focus on what cool things God has for you in this school! This school is definitely worth the investment of time and money for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of God’s word!

ANYWAY . . . This quarter has been awesome for the most part! Other than one psychotic cold of evilness that I (Emily) had, everything has gone smoothly! We were able to finish the New Testament (minus Matthew, which we will study last) and got through the Pentateuch and a few other Old Testament books! We also survived an enormous New Testament Test covering all of the NT books, that God really helped us through!!!

One fun thing that we got to be a part of at the end of the second quarter was teaching the book of Ruth! We were able to pick a character from Ruth and teach on their life to a handful of other students! We got to choose what audience our other students represented as well, meaning they could represent another ethnic group, or age group that we had to be able to effectively reach with our teaching! Josh chose a friendly Bible study group and chose to speak on Boaz and his integrity, and how believers should be counter-cultural as he was! I taught to a “Newlyweds group” on Ruth and some character traits we should follow in order to create better relationships with our In-law’s! It was a blast and a great way to end the 2nd quarter!

Third quarter starts up again on Monday, April 6th and Josh and I are really looking forward to starting again, after our relaxing spring break! We were able to really end this last quarter with momentum and are looking forward to picking up where we left off with our final quarter! Some prayer requests you all can keep in mind would be:

1. Revelation from God and better understanding of his word and character!

2. Health (no more colds . . . or anything else for that matter)!

3. Motivation to keep ahead on our assignments!

4. Support as our staff fees start to climb!

As always, you guys are awesomely amazing people that God has put into our lives and you are all an integral part of what God is doing in us as we are in SBS and in our everyday lives in YWAM!!! We want to thank you all once again for your continued prayers and support that keep us going and able to do what God has called us to!

Until next time, Have an amazing spring! We will update again soon!

Josh and Emily

Hello friends and family! We are terribly sorry that we have not updated sooner but we have been swamped like crazy! But anyway . . . MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(our festive water tower)

We have been enjoying a very relaxing Christmas break up here in the winter wonderland of Montana! Winter took its time coming this year as we lived in the balmy 40 degree weather and frequent rainstorms! We were afraid that snow would never arrive! But finally, the week before Christmas, it started dumping! And it hasn’t stopped since! You can always tell it is going to be a cold when you find ice crystals growing on the inside of your windows!

(brrrrrrr)

So, Josh and I have both successfully passed the first quarter of the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) with flying colors! Woo hoo!!! We have read through and charted 18 books of the Bible so far as well as giving our own inductive Bible studies on 2nd Timothy! We have learned all sorts of New Testament history, learned about the life of Jesus, and followed Paul through all of his journeys! It has been a trip to say the least! It is so amazing to be able to read the Bible this way! It feels like it is a totally different book than what I grew up reading! All the characters and stories have come to life and make more sense to me as we look at the text through the eyes of the original readers and authors, and finally apply it to out own lives!!! So now that the first quarter is done, only 2 more to go!

(my “color coded” Bible)

We also had the great privilege to volunteer with our local Salvation Army this December! Each year they gather boxes of toys that have been donated and set them up in shopping mall style! Then, families can come into the shopping area and pick out 1-3 toys for each of their children for Christmas presents! We were able to set up the thousands upon thousands of donated toys and inventory all of them to make the workload of the Salvation Army staff a bit lighter! It was so much fun and so amazing to see the generosity of our community and how much they give to make sure that everyone can enjoy the holiday season! If you haven’t donated to Salvation Army yet this year, I highly recommend that you do! They are an amazing ministry!!!!

Prayer requests =

Please be keeping us in prayer as we start the second quarter of SBS on January 5th! We will be heading into some more challenging assignments than we have had so far! We have gone through most of the New Testament and will be starting the Old Testament within a couple weeks of starting again! Please be praying for us as we approach the bigger books, that we take one day at a time and don’t get overwhelmed with the workload!!! Other prayer requests include:

1. That we would continue to enjoy the school work that we are given

2. That we don’t get burned out with the work but stay refreshed

3. That God would continue to keep us afloat financially

4. for our school staff, that they would be refreshed daily as their workload is much bigger than ours!!!

(What a “chart” looks like)

We hope you all have had a beautiful Christmas and pray that this new year would bring many blessings to all of you!!!! Thanks again, so much, for your constant prayers and support!!!!

Emily and Josh

Hello all!

Things have been interesting and quite fun in the past couple of months!!! We were able to go to Colorado and fundraise for SBS as well as spend some time resting and vacationing before the school starts!

While in CO we got to visit my brand new niece Ora as well as Judah (my nephew) and all of the Terbush clan! while there, my dad asked me to paint a cute table and chair set for the kiddo’s too which was oodles of fun!!!

Angro T. baby pants

Emu egg and Jaime

The table for the kiddo’s

Ora’s chair . . . someday . . .

And Emu’s chair!

Our fundraising time went really well = Thank God!!!! We were able to catch up with almost all of our supporters and raise all of the money that we need for the entire school! HOORAY!!!!!!!! There have been so many confirmations that this is the perfect timing for us to do this school! And I know that I definitely needed that because now that I have this amazing opportunity, I have no excuse to chicken out! So it is good to know that God is orchestrating this whole thing for us so we can sit back and trust him!!!

Another really cool thing that happened to us recently is that we were able to move into a nicer, bigger dorm room! While we were in CO, we asked that people would pray for us to be able to move into one of the new cabins on base next summer after they are built! But as people prayed for us, they began praying that God would even bless us with more space immediately! So we went home, and thought nothing of it but a few days later, the director of our housing committee approached us out of the blue asking us if we wanted to move into a bigger room! We looked at it and agreed! It feels like home now and not just a cramped room that we have to live in! I love it! Here is a quick tour of the room!

Our front door, approved by Josh!

Our bed and storage boxes/stairs, all of which Josh built!!!

Our basement/storage under the bed!

Our living room complete with harvest gold velvet cutout couch!

Josh’s Office!

The kitchen (minus the sink which lives in our bathroom)!

And finally, the dining room! The kit-kat clock was a wedding present from my dad!

Anyway, tomorrow is our first day of SBS and we would really appreciate your prayers as we start! Josh is super excited and I am getting excited but am slightly anxious of the unknown as always! So here are some prayer requests:

1. That we would get to know people quickly and not feel awkward (there are 50 other students in our class)

2. That we would understand the method of Bible study right off the bat so we can spend our time really digging into the word instead of worrying if we are doing our assignments wrong

3. That we would stay healthy as I especially tend to get sick when I am stressed

4. That we would have fun! This is an amazing time of being able to be with God and we want to be able to enjoy every minute of it

5. As my dad prayed for us before, that we would have a love for the subject! It is so much more fun to research something when you are passionate about it

Thank you guys so much for your unending prayers and support! This is going to be a really cool season for us so we will try to keep you posted as often as we can!

Hi guys!

Well, you know how in the Bible it says that we make our plans but God directs our paths . . . yeah . . . its true!

So, Josh and I had planned on staffing the Musician’s Summer of Service and taking a team down to Mexico, then doing the first 3 months of the School of Biblical Studies! So, we had all of our paper work filled out and needed just one more signature of the SBS school leader. We find him and ask if he would sign our paper and he responded by calling us into a meeting! So, he sits us down and asks what our long term goals are and if we are planning on stying at YWAM, Montana for much longer. Josh and I prayed about it and we decided that we are sticking with YWAM as long as God wants us too even if it’s forever! So, the SBS leader tells us that the SBS staff had been praying for us and want us to do the entire school! They let us know that if we are going to be in ministry for the long haul that we can never learn too much.

So, Josh and I talked about it and prayed about it and laid out a few fleeces, so to speak. We asked God if this was his plan, that we would be released from MSOS so we could head to Colorado and raise the funds that we need, and we also asked for more monthly support so we wouldn’t have that worry on our shoulders while we are in school! It turned out that MSOS had an overflow of staff and a deficit of students, allowing them to release us from the program and personnel worked with us on our schedule allowing us to be able to go to Colorado for 7 weeks this summer. We also got 2 new supporters so we are now able to cover our monthly bills with a few dollars left over to save! On top of that, SBS gave us some scholarships, as we are on full time staff, that really blessed us!!!

So our new and improved plans are:

1. We will be in Colorado from July 12-August 8 to raise money for SBS!

2. We will be back in Colorado for a second time from August 31- September 19ish!

3. We will be full time Bible School students from September 22-June 26 of next year!

We are very excited to know the next steps that God has for us (and a bit nervous too). But it will be cool to see what doors open for us after the school as well!

Therefore, if you are in Colorado during the summer, let us know and we can hang out! If you would like to send us any donations to help us through SBS, (we still need about $1500 total on top our our regular monthly support) feel free to give to us (all donations are tax deductable if made out to YWAM)! If you think about it, please keep us in prayer as our studies will be INTENSE!!!!

Thanks once again for all of your support and prayers! They really do make a difference in our lives! We will send out another update soon covering things such as FTPS graduation, etc.! Hooray!!!