Gritty and honest

http://www.michaelyon.blogspot.com/
Michael Yon is reporting some of the best, honest, and politically-free accounts of the job our troops are doing in Iraq. Reading his blog will make you proud of our men.

More Germany pictures 

Bike ridin' with the kids

The kids and I have been taking our bikes up to Bomar Lake near our house. It has been a ton of fun now that Jared can ride. We count the bunnies that we see on the way there and back. This last time we counted 35! Gotta keep going while the weather is still good.

Jared rides his bike without training wheels! After just one minute of instruction he was off to the races. I could not believe it! I was grabbing the back of the seat as he started to ride and after 3 rotations of the pedals he was pulling away from me and has not stopped yet. I have never seen a kid get the two wheeler down so quick. He and I have done several long rides already with some pretty good uphill riding involved. He is a real natural.

Cadence Intl. and Carver Bible team up

Tyler and I spent 3 weeks together this summer in Germany with a team of short-term missionaries from Carver Bible.

Nearly 30% of our nation’s Army is made up of African Americans. While certainly no ministries have excluded these soldiers and their families, none to our knowledge have been purposed in reaching them and this is exactly why Cadence International and Carver Bible College have teamed up.
Carver Bible College is an evangelical bible college that has as its motto “Training to Transform”. They are committed to teaching the word of God and are seeking to promote world missions in African American churches.
Jeff Easley quick-fact: Prof. Jeff Easley is also a member of the Cadence International Board of Directors.

Carver team leader Jeff Easley also had the opportunity to preach at the North chapel on Ramstein Air Force base. The team was invited to teach at the Gospel service (the gospel service is a chapel community of 450 that is predominately African American) mid-week bible study and both Keith Barksdale and Carlos Holiday had a chance to share. As you can imagine the KMC has a large amount of single military personnel and the chapel has an outreach designed especially for them. The team attended two of these meetings the second of which Mark Steven was able to share his testimony. Lourdes Zamy, our only female on the team, was quickly making friends and jumping into relationships with single military women and dependant wives.
KMC quick-fact: The Kaiserslautern Military Community is made up of 75,000 US military personnel and their families.

Cadence has a vision for reaching all people of color in our armed forces and this trip is just the first step in fulfilling this vision. After one of the services the team attended, the chaplain chased us down and expressed to us how much he appreciate the team coming to minister in the community. We had spoken to him about the possibility of sending someone full-time to work along side him in ministry and he was not only open to it but was excited about the possibility. So we are praying that this trip will be the start of something wonderful. It seems that the door most open is one that would be reaching the teens of the gospel congregation. Please pray that the Lord will raise up someone from Carver or someone associated with the school to go. We also have an opportunity for Carver to send a team back in December to attend the Malachi (Malachi is the youth arm of Cadence) middle school retreat so we are praying for funding and people from the school.

We want to thank all of you who have prayed with us in making this trip happen.

Estes Park vacation

We spent 4 days up in Estes Park last week and had a great time. The weather was awesome except for the wind storms at night that woke us up. The first night's storm was so loud that we could not really get much sleep. Amazing. We went hiking, fishing, sliding, miniature golfing, and drove up into Rocky Mountain National Park. Elk were everywhere, like cattle. It is always so good to get away for awhile. I have been reading a book by Baxter Kruger called "The great dance" that has been really stirring. I was getting up at 6am to get some quiet and read. You know I always seem to say to myself and out loud sometimes that we ought to do that more, go on vacation that is.