Crossroad's Kids

This month has been exciting in the children's ministry at Crossroads. I've finally been able to leave the classroom (I've been teaching in children's ministries for 20+ years now!) and start a new role as greeter/coordinator. (Haven't come up with a good name for it yet.) A big part of my role is signing children in and out of class. I imagined that I would have alot of down time during class and could either read or make cards for kid's birthdays or parent's anniversaries. Well, I've been doing it for 3 weeks now and I'm not seeing any down time! We've had 4 new families visit over the past 3 weeks. Two of those families have come back a second time. (Two of the families came from the back to school outreach event.) Parents don't stop dropping off children until over 1/2 hour into the service! And our nursery is exploding so I've been carrying a baby or "driving" a crying baby up and down the hall in a stroller trying to calm him every Sunday. This past Sunday we had 40 children and adults in our children's classes (I think there was another 10 in the teens class.). 9 babies in the nursery!!! I began training a young lady to take over for me when I'm not there. Anna Diesslin was my assistant teacher 5 years ago when she was a senior in high school. Now she's back home from college and assisting me again. This past Sunday we were both carrying babies while we checked families in and out! All this growth is making it necessary to make changes in the nursery: more staff, different equipment and set up. And we still have 2 more babies on the way!!!

Exciting stuff! (I know, I'm using way too many exclaimation points in this blog post.)

Please pray for these new families: Nancy Ortiz and her daugher, Cami. The Hanley family with their 4 children. The Getter family (2 children), the LaTouche family (1 child and 1 teen). I'm praying that the added security and organization in the children's ministry will help in families feeling comfortable and continuing to come back. Also pray that other families that were ministered to through the back to school outreach event would come to church.

Another exciting thing that's happened is Jae's moved up to the youth group. We are now parents of a preteen!!! Scary!!

I will try to add some pictures from the kids' classes soon.

We are in soccer season again. Paul is coaching Daniel's team and several of the kids from last year are on the team again. We are again having the chance to spend time with Scott and Gordona and thier son Dillan who we started to get to know last year. We also have the chance to talk with my friend Jacqueline, Jae's coach's wife during the games.

Please pray for our housing situation. We are in the process of getting our house ready to sell and looking at buying a 2 family house. The plan is for this to add to our income (from the rental apartment). We saw a house on Saturday that would allow us to have a good rental income and have rooms to continue housing international students and keep that income as well. Most of the other 2 family houses we've seen aren't big enough for that. We're praying that God will make it possible for us to buy that house. But first we've got to sell this one! Paul is working really hard at fixing things up so we can get it on the market in the next few weeks. Time is really an issue since soccer takes up 3 afternoons a week. Paul's team practices for about an hour on Friday afternoons and we're at the soccer field from 1:30 til 5 every Saturday and Sunday for the boys' games!