From Dothan to Birmingham and continuing to move towards missionary aviation

Family Beach Trip(Daytona Beach)October 2014

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope that you are all doing well and you are having a great holiday. This year may be different for us on the blog... hopefully we can do a better job keeping you all up to date on our adventures and all that The Lord is doing in our lives(with Mikayla and Maverick constantly on the move, we aren’t sure that this will happen).

We were blessed dearly by Calvary Baptist Church in Dothan and cannot express how grateful we are for our small group and many friends that we connected with during the 9 months that we were there. Mikayla is still talking about all her friends as if we saw them yesterday.  We miss you all very much and will never forget the memories we made and the impact that you have all had on our family. Thank you.

We have moved back to Birmingham, AL and hopefully for a good stretch this time. Back in August Michael accepted a position at Air Ops LLC in Bessemer, AL and one month later we made the move. He is working for a startup aircraft management and charter company building more flight time including multi-engine and jet time in the future. We took the job to make more money to pay off student loans quicker and be back at the Church of Brook Hills where we first met.

Living in Birmingham has been great. We are blessed to be in a great apartment and close to friends we love. We are starting to feel like we are home again and everyday is an adventure with Mikayla and Maverick. They both are growing and learning so much, it’s getting harder to keep up with them. Mikayla talks non stop and Maverick is constantly on the move and getting into everything. They adore one another and we couldn’t ask for more. 

We are rejoining The Church at Brook Hills and we have joined a small group of families that push us to dive into The Word. We feel so blessed to be surrounded by Godly men and women. The Lord has been constant in providing us with great relationships throughout the past 6 years that we have been together. We look forward to many more. 

Please continue to pray for us as we continue to move towards missionary aviation. We are slowly taking bites out of our school debt and are excited to see what The Lord has in store for our family.

Mav's first beach trip! March 2014

Mother's Day 2014

Easter 2014

Cow Appreciation Day July 2014

 Disney World October 2014

Daytona Beach October 2014

Halloween 2014 Pirate family and monkey

Christmas Tree shopping November 2014

And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” Genesis 37:17

So we have been in Dothan for almost four months now; we are adjusting well. The winter weather has been a little crazy. It has not been consistent at all, with really warm weather followed by sudden drops in temperature with passing fronts. Spring has not quite come full force yet. We are all struggling with some form of allergy over the last week as the pollen count is quite high in this area of the country. Please pray it's all related to outdoor allergies as our rental house does keep a lot of moisture in certain rooms because of old construction and subpar windows.

We just became members at Calvary Baptist Church and could not be more excited about it. We have connected with a lot of great families and feel very welcomed. Calvary has been under new leadership over the past two years with Paul Thompson and we feel the church body is being transformed to a more biblical model of how God designed the church. They are learning to live more radically for the Gospel and how to make disciples as part of their everyday lives. We would love to stay in Dothan up to leaving for a missionary assignment and have Calvary be our home church while away.

Katy and I have been prayerfully considering narrowing down our focus to one missionary organization in which to serve. We have come to the decision and are feeling led to join with Mission Aviation Fellowship upon qualifying for entry. We are very thrilled to announce this and feel motivated as ever to have one organization to focus and advance towards. This means I still need to complete some bible classes before application, and even bigger, we need to pay off our school debt. We have made it under 100k to around $96,800 of remaining student loan debt. We have been living as frugal as possible and have no other debt from credit cards, mortgage, or cars. We only have student loan debt which was pretty difficult to avoid. Please pray we can accomplish all this while in Dothan.

We have come up with an idea for an Etsy business; it may spread more by word of mouth than online. The plan is to make pendants and keychains that remind to pray for unreached people groups of the world that have not heard of Jesus at all. The pendants will feature a map of the location of the unreached people group and will come with a information card with items to pray for. Pray that the product will come together with quality and will be well received.

We just updated the look of our blog and our website www.discipleaviation.com has been updated. Please prayerfully consider partnering with us in our pursuit of the world's unreached through Mission Aviation Fellowship.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:14

Welcoming Maverick, our little blessing #2.

Our little guy started off with a little jaundice but is doing great now and is pink and happy now. 

The day we went home with our little aviator.

We rocked the jaundice baby look while chilling in the sunshine.

Bundling up for bedtime. One week old.

We are happy and so in love with this little guy. He eats like a champ, sleeps like it's his job and is a sweet little snuggler.

On top of everything, Mikayla absolutely adores Maverick. Here is the first time that she met him: