big changes

by Alanna

It's pretty incredible how long it's been since I've written a life update on here.  Not sure if anyone much reads our blog anyway, but here goes.

We had a new baby =) Born April 2nd at 4:12 a.m. weighing 7 lb. 1 oz. He turns two months old today, and loves to smile.  He started sleeping through the night and rolling over at six weeks, and so far is a gem of a baby. He likes to be around people and have attention, and it is so easy to make him happy.  He is our third, and our oldest turned two and a half just last month.  Life is crazy but I feel sure I was made to live this way- in the crazy.  I need Jesus more than I ever previously realized, and it is a good place to be.  (I try to remind myself of this on the hardest days).

We are working on moving up to Minnesota.  My husband didn't get accepted to seminary, but we are moving anyway in the hopes of plugging into the church up there.  That church sends out a lot of missionaries, and they encouraged us to apply to their seminary again.  So in some ways it feels like a first step to the mission field, but in some ways like a scary unknown.  So my husband has been working lots, fixing up his mom's house to get it ready to sell.  She moved in with us yesterday.  We are hoping to buy a house together with her in the Minneapolis area.  So there are all these big changes coming up.  I have always expected to move away from my family, to live as a missionary in another country.  But moving across the country feels hard and scary, and I don't feel quite ready to leave behind the people here.  So I am praying that God will give me the perspective of this as a grand adventure.  Of joyous expectation for what God has for us there in the north.  Maybe new people to love on, new ministry to do as a family, a new church.

One thing I know for sure is that in all the changes, God is sovereign.  He knows better than me; He has a plan, and that "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?"