Baby on Board

This picture is for the folks.

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Wednesday.

It was amazing...

We saw the baby move around a lot. It was mostly face down and curled up at times, but we were able to see everything that we wanted to.

Perhaps the most amazing thing was being able to see its heart beat in real time.

Here the baby is being shy...or just tired of getting pushed and poked at by the nurse.

I think the baby has Annie's feet. Aren't they cute?

Here's a good side shot where you can see the back.

Here's the last picture we have of the baby. This one's pretty neat because if you look real careful at the head you can make out the ear and a little bit of the profile of the face.

Looks like the baby has its mother's good looks too!

Thanks for all your prayers for the baby and Annie's health. Keep them coming, we're halfway to Birthday!

This was a custom wine rack that I built for my work's fundraising auction.

John Barney, a woodworking fanatic and friend, donated the use of his shop and tools to help it become a reality.

At auction it brought in $300, but that included 24 bottles of wine. I estimated the rack to be worth $200 and the wine was $400. That's how auctions go sometimes, especially during tough economic times.

Check out this monster size carrot from the garden! Of course, this carrot was consumed moments after being photographed.

New Patio and sidewalk

Another townhome improvement project done!

This summer we noticed that the foundation blocks on the house were starting to wear away and that water was draining toward the house rather than away. After discussing our dilema with the neighbor, we came to find out that the neighbor two houses down did concrete for a living! After receiving a fair estimate, we decided to give him the work. He did a fantastic job and it even met up to the standards of Annie's dad who's a general contractor.

Now we have a patio and a place to hang out and entertain.

Salsa Time

We had a bountiful harvest.

The garden did very well this year and we had enough produce to do two batches of salsa. Everything in the picture is from our garden. We didn't put the squash and zucchini in the salsa, I just thought they looked good in the picture.

We're Pregnant!

We're Pregnant!

Here we are moments after the positive test at the end of August '08

As I type it's Oct. 6th and Annie's eleven weeks along. She's been doing very well so far and has avoided morning sickness or any complications.

We are so excited for this miracle that God has done! We are looking forward to welcoming a new Howard into the world around the end of April '09.

Casas Trip June 2008

So we finally made it to Mexico!

Our trip ended up getting pushed back because we didn't have enough people to make the full team needed for the build.

What ended up happening was we got put together with some other small groups from around the country to make one large team of 19.

This enabled us to take on making a, "double" house, twice as big as the one alloted for teams of 11 or 12.

Here we are standing in the roughed out foundation where the concrete was going to be mixed and poured. There's no fancy leveling tools, lasers and the like. We just nailed some 2x4's together and pulled it acrossed while people with shovels removed and added dirt where it was needed.

The concrete pour went very well. There was an assembly line of folks bringing sand, gravel, concrete and water to the portable mixer located just to the right of this picture.

My job was simple. Run the board over the concrete and make it flat. Sounds easier than it is.

Now this is trust!

Nailing the frame together was a bit like playing with an erector set. The Casas people had us cut and mark everything with magic marker so we knew excactly where everything went. It's an amazing system that allows everyday people to be able to frame up walls and ceilings...as long as they can swing a hammer.

With the concrete mostly dry from the pour the day before, we began putting up the walls. The design that the family was able to request, called for three rooms.

It's still amazing to me how smooth all of this went. Especially since most of the people on the build had little or no construction experience.

Here are the soon to be proud home owners, Victor and Margarita. They own the land that the house is being built on and went through an application process with their local pastor to get on the waiting list to receive a house.

Victor was a big help to us during the build. He kept our water jugs filled, ran off troublemaking teenagers and helped haul materials back and forth. Margarita was also very involved in the build. She, along with her mother, cooked our whole team two authentic dishes for lunches. One of which is pictured below.

This was a pork soup made with corn, cabbage and a red base that I wasn't familiar with. My favorite part of this meal were the freshly made tortilla chips. Warm, salty and oh so good.





Here's the house shown with windows in, tar covered board on covered with chicken wire that will accept the stucco that would go on the next morning. Notice the large stones underneath the house. Those were all brought in by hand by Victor prior to the build. He had created a semi-level surface for us with what appeared to be a back-breaking amount of labor. It was also important to get this house up off the ground because their land is located in something of a water drainage area.




Here's Annie doing what she does best. I call her the "Child Whisperer" now. She has an amazing gift of shepherding and teaching young children.

With the little bit of shade they could find Annie and the kids gathered for, "school time." She was reading to them from a children's bible until she started losing her voice. The kids didn't want to stop, so they passed the book around and took turns reading to the others.

This is the last roof section to go on and I put this photo in here to highlight one of the most important building materials used in the house. The walls and ceilings were all filled with R-11 insulation. This is a wonderful dual purpose material that will keep the house cool in the summer and warmer during the cold months of the year. Most houses in this area were not insulated as they are built with mainly brick and mortar.

The house is finished!! It was a three and a half day build. The windows are trimmed, stucco applied, rolled roofing on and secure and the inside of the house is insulated and sheetrocked.

It seems to be a miracle that something like this can happen in such a short period of time, with such a rag tag group of people. If it seemed to be a miracle to me, from a wealthy modernized culture, I can't begin to understand what Victor and Margarita felt.

Here's the team! The local pastor is in the back row in a dark shirt with Victor and Margarita next to him.

Praise the Lord for such an awesome opportunity! I know Annie and I are different because of what we saw and experienced in Juarez.

For the sake of The Kingdom,

Matt

Garden Pictures

Garden Pics from June 25th 2008

Here's a long view of the garden from our neighbor's yard into ours. The main part of what you see is all new ground that was tilled this year.

This is a closer view of the second garden we planted in the neighbor's yard. Tomatoes in the background, peas in the middle, radishes in the foreground. Their tomatoes are doing half as well as ours, most likely because we didn't have enough manure to spread on both gardens this year.

This radish was eaten moments after being photagraphed.

The onions are doing very well this early in the season.

These are the extremely healthy and vigorous tomato plants in our front yard. Pay no attention to the carrots next to them they have yet to be weeded.

The Garden

Last year was our very first year of vegetable gardening. Needless to say, I caught the bug.

The garden has doubled in size this year, due in large part to our neighbors that gave us permission to till up their front yard.
Last year the garden was 12 ft by 20 ft. With the addition of our neighbors front yard we added another 12 ft by 30 ft.

Yes, I did get a few strange looks as I bucked and struggled to hang on to the tiller all the while destroying a perfectly good yard.

Here's a list of everything we have planted:
12 tomato plants, 24+ pepper plants/both hot and sweet, 30+ onions, two rows of carrots, two rows of cucumbers, three hills of squash, two rows of peas, a small row of radishes, three different small rows of lettuce, watermelon, cantelope, and ten hills of red potato.

Pictures to come soon.


Why garden? Why grow more food than you can eat?

• Our neighbors are hungry
• We'll can and freeze more produce this year to use during the winter
• I find peace while weeding in my flipflops with dirt between my toes
• It's miraculous to see the process of seeds becoming something. When soil, water, and sun join forces to push life up from the earth, it blows me away every time.

Discipleship Groups

Monday April 7th marked the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. As a ministry of Grace Church in Wyoming, MN we are leading a small group that is purposefully named a discipleship group.
Normally when you think of a church small group you might envision a group of like-minded individuals getting together to study material, encourage each other and have snacks.
However, when one reads the Bible, you see Jesus modelling how to have a small group that isn't self-focused, but outward looking and growing. His purpose in working with His twelve disciples was to, at some point, send them out to lead their own groups that would in turn do the same.
In response to the Great Commandment and Great Commission to love the Lord and others and to go and make disciples, these groups are aimed at following Jesus and calling others to do the same.
Where did Jesus go? Where are we to follow him?
He hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, the mentally ill and physically sick. He came alongside people where they were and lived life with them.

Discipleship groups give us a vehicle to break from the "Holy Huddle" of church. With purpse and intention we can come alongside our neighbors, family, friends and coworkers around dinner tables and softball fields. We can have intimate community in living rooms, share difficulties and joys, pray for each other and hold each other up.

Jesus also went to the cross and we are to follow Him there as well. Being a disciple means placing our faith in Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross that paid an infinitely large debt that we owed because of our sin against a perfect, holy,just and infinitely big God.

Our small group will unashamedly point to Jesus. We will follow Him and call others to do the same.

Matthew

Casas Por Cristo- "Houses for Christ"

We have our first missions trip as a couple planned for June 30th-July 4th. Annie and I are heading to Juarez, Mexico to build a home for a family.
It should be a three day build, or so we think; I've heard that nothing goes as expected in Mexico.
The team will be made up of 11 or more people. 7-8 of them will be friends and family of ours and the rest of the team may come from anywhere else in the country.

You can check out the organization at casasporcristo.org

Pictures to follow after trip,
Matt

Welcome

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my blog. Thanks for taking the time to come and learn about me and my life. I trust that this will be quite a journey, so stay tuned.

Matt