our youth ministry - especially the staff - comes up with some creative ways of fundraising.

in april, we are going on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic. we are taking 14 students and 7 adult leaders including myself. well . . . this is a pricey trip as you can imagine, so we are trying to be creative in finding ways to raise money to keep the cost more manageable.

thats where the hut for humanity comes into play. Noah and i built a 'replica' of a Dominican hut and we are going to live in it starting oct. 11th. for every 500 dollars we donated, we will spend 1 night and 1 day in the hut. its just hanging out in the church parking lot, its going to be our home soon. its hideous and we are both a little surprised that administration is allowing us to keep this hut in the front of the church as advertising. we have an awesome church! look at this thing . . .

tiff and johns wedding

recently, court and i went to hilton head SC for courts sisters wedding. it was a destination wedding and it was awesome. we had soooo much fun. we stayed in a huge house right on the beach with friends and family. noah and steph nickel (great friends) followed us down on the long trip. we left right after youth group on a wednesday night and noah and i talked on our walkie talkies the whole time giving each other the strangest fight match ups between friends and people we never met and determining the victor. it made time go very fast. we couldnt make it the entire way without pulling over to sleep a little so we pulled off into a hotel parking lot that look fine at 5:30am but at 7:00 am in daylight it looked a little shady. oh well.

the wedding - right on the beach behind the house, gorgeous weather. the reception- right in the backyard, awesome sunset. it was a fun 4 days for us. the trip home seemed a little long but we made great time. at one point, a few of us were swimming in the ocean when a school of 30-50 dolphins started jumping 20 yards in front of us. kinda surreal. jordan yoder, noah and i were very tempted to swim out with them and then we realized ' these are wild animals'. heres a few pics . . .

baby pic

so you cant actually see the baby but you can see the belly that the baby is in. . . my sister took some awesome pregnancy pics for courtney and I and we think they turned out great. man my wife is hot! thanks jess!

this was our first project as parents . . . putting together our pack n' play!

Courtney had a staff meeting today where she was surprised to find that all the people she worked with pitched in and bought us this. Very very cool! Soooo . . . my wife is not very patient when it comes to opening and playing with gifts; as soon she got home she started to put it together. Now she is very handy but there was one part that she just couldnt figure out. I, however, figured it out with one hand (literally, i was on the phone with the other). I know, its a gift, im very talented!

I think our little baby girl will like this very much. since we tend to travel in and out of PA a lot she should get very comfortable with it.