Tampa, FL (Feb 3-8)

Before going across the state from Ft. Pierce to Tampa, we stopped at the Atlantic Ocean.

The teens at Tampa were so much fun to be with! By Wednesday all the teens from the Christian school had bought their team t-shirt and they were really into the competition! We had a great turn out of 90 teens the first night with more than half being from the community! And we had a huge blessing of seeing 25 people get saved all in Wednesday night! It was an amazing first night of rallies!

By the end of the week there were 49 salvations consisting of teens and even a few adults! Praise the Lord for the work He has done!!

Taylors, SC (Feb 9-16)

Well, this was a bit of a different week for us. First of all, this week we did not have a Christian school scheduled so it was a week “off” for us. However :) a week “off” does not mean that we do nothing. We still had plenty of things to do.

Glenn had hurt one of his fingers back in November and it actually got worse as the weeks went on. So, he took this week to go back home and see the doctor about doing corrective surgery. And yes, he needs surgery. He is scheduled to have surgery Monday, February 18. This means he will need to stay home for a few weeks of recovery and a post-op doctor visit in March. We are all looking forward to being back together for the conference in Menomonee Falls, WI February 25-28, though! It will be nice to see Philip and Josh again as well!

Annaleese holding William and Janna holding Kate

So back to this past week...on Monday Paul brought into our classroom a little lost puppy!! We loved her right away and were thrilled with our distraction from school work! :) And then, Paul brought in a second puppy!! We were elated!! School almost went completely out the window!! We named the girl Kate and the boy William. We LOVED them!! The Van Gelderen girls took them everywhere throughout the day (and tried to do school work at the same time!) and Paul and Nathan even took them outside to “help” them wash the trailer!! Let’s face it :) we all loved these little puppies!! They were such good puppies, too! William could already sit on command (he did it several times) and Kate was “paper trained” in a day! We tried not to get our hopes up and figured that they had owners...somewhere. We called the humane society, the pound, and the police office to see if anyone was missing 2 puppies, but nobody seemed to be missing them. That night at Fellowship Baptist (the church we were staying at) there was a Bible Club. We tried to find a new owner for the puppies, but nobody could take them. So, we gave the puppies a bath and put them back in a rubbermaid for the night. They were so good all night long!!

William...isn't he adorable?!?

On Tuesday we called to have the humane society/pound come pick them up around 1:30. We played with lil Kate and William throughout the morning and took about a hundred pictures!! We found out by Friday that both puppies had been adopted, but the puppies were separated. We had hoped that they could have stayed together...well...we were hoping that we could have kept them...but that didn't happen, either.

Finally! An update!

I am so sorry for the long reprieve! Things have been so busy that I have not had time to update the last few weeks! The Lord has done so much for...ALL of us! I will quickly touch a little bit on each week that I have missed, but will try not to make this too long.

First of all, I need to say that we have said good-bye to some team members from last semester. Philip and Josh have gone back to college. This semester Leanna, the music teacher, has stayed to continue working with the Van Gelderen girls on their violin and piano. Glenn has also stayed for this new semester. And now we have Paul (Philip’s twin) and Nathan (Josh’s brother) on our team. So, it is a very unique situation where all of the last names are the same for 2 semesters! Usually, all 3 guys and the music teacher change...but not completely so this time!

We made a Pecan Pie and even put pecans in the crust for Glenn's b-day!

Jacksonville, FL (Jan. 16-19)
This was the week that I flew in from Kenya to meet back up with the Minutemen Team. I arrived on Wednesday. I was thankful that I did not suffer too much from jet-lag and was able to be a part of the ministry for the short time I was there.

Yes, we drink a lot of water. :)

Land O’ Lakes, FL (Jan. 20-26)
This was a bit of a difficult week for me. Over the weekend I came down with that horrible “bug” that was going around. On Sunday it peeked with a fever that gave me severe hot and cold flashes and my muscles were aching so much that it hurt to walk. The Lord really did answer prayer, though, and gave me great grace to be able to still go to both Sunday morning services (with my fever :/) to sing in the Minutemen quartet! For the last half of the second service I just went back to the place where we were staying on the property and crashed for the rest of the afternoon. Slowly throughout the week I was recovering and was still able to go recruiting.

Leanna's b-day!!! :)

Enjoying a smoothie near palm trees...in January!!

Ft. Pierce, FL (Jan. 27-Feb. 2)
This is a bit longer because I wanted to share this testimony with you! It is amazing!

WAR room in Ft. Pierce, FL

Hi, my name's Jordan. So lately I’ve been going through a really hard time. I’ve been kicked out of my house because my attitude been towards my parents, towards God. And I’m like, “Ok, I’m getting kicked out of the house. I’m going to go do my own thing, live my own life.” That’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be kicked out of my house. I wanted to do my own thing. Well, it turns out, when you’re on your own and you got to buy your own food, gotta pay your own gas, gotta do your own thing, it ain’t easy. It’s hard. It’s real hard. And I came to the Minutemen thing the 1st night. I came really just for a place to hang out. I didn’t really come because I wanted to hear anything. But I walked outside and Glenn stopped me. He started talking to me and he got me thinking about, “If you died right now, where would you go?” I was like, “I really don’t know. I don’t know.” But I didn’t really want to talk. I thought about it. It got me thinking so I came back the next night. I come back the next night and Nathan started talking to me about it and I really started thinking about it because if I die, where would I go, Heaven or Hell, you know what I mean? But I was at a point where I didn’t care. He was talking to me about my salvation, things like that and I did realize, I mean I have been saved, it’s just I got far away from God. I actually had hatred toward God and religion, and that’s why I’m goin’ through a hard time because all my anger and everything else towards...I hold onto a lot of things from the past. I have a real hard time forgiving people. And there’s stuff that happened to me in the past with certain pastors and things like that that got me kind of messed up and hated toward religion. It’s like, “I can’t trust you.” Well ok, you can’t trust them, but you can trust God. And I just have somethin’ real quick to say, Nathan told me to come in today this morning for the chapel service and he’s like, “Oh, watch out. You might get a flat tire or something like that. Satan’s gonna try to stop you.” I laughed. Well, my alarm didn’t go off, but finally I got up and I went to look for my keys. I couldn’t find my keys. I was like, “OK.” Whatever. I found my keys. I went to go start my car. My car wouldn’t start. I was like, “OK!” So I jumped my car, got it started. I came down here. I ran out of gas on the side of the road down here. I’m like, “Ok, something’s trying to stop me from being here. I know there’s a reason I’m supposed to be here.” I got out of my car, walked down here, and I sat through the chapel service. We talked for a good, I don’t know, 2 hours...way more than that probably. Tonight the reason I’m up here talking right now is because tonight I was supposed to be goin’ out with my friends to a club. I was supposed to be riding with them, but I just got a call from them that they got into a car accident on the way there. And I called them earlier. I’m like, “OK, I’m going to go to Minutemen. This happens only every 2 years. I can go to the club whenever.” But they just called my phone and said that they got in a car accident and 1 of my friends is in the hospital right now. But I was supposed to be in that car. If I made the wrong decision and I actually got into the car with them, I don’t know where I would be right now. Well, I know I would be in Heaven, but I mean, but I could be dead all because of a stupid decision. So basically what I’m sayin’ is just make sure like, I have a real hard time trusting people like I said, but you just got to go out there and trust God. That’s more than you can do. Just make sure you’ve got trust in Him. If you can’t trust, pray for trust. Pray that you can get some faith because I mean, that was my problem. I’m still battling, but it’s going to get better.