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Your Questions Answered

February 1, 2012 in Family Fun with 2 Comments

We are so blessed to have so many wonderful friends. The response to our plans to do some work overseas has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of you asked questions, so we wanted to address all of them at once.

You asked if we plan to sell our home. The answer is not right now. This is a temporary move for now. It is a better financial choice to keep it and rent it while we are gone. We need someone who can care for it and keep things in good shape while we are away.

Many were intrigued by my comment about home schooling the kids legally. I said this in this manner because home schooling is not legal everywhere. Home schooling is legal in Ecuador but is not legal in Spain. We will however navigate around that problem by only staying in the country for 3 months. Anything time we spend beyond that would require us to get a special kind of visa that would require us to put he kids in traditional schools. Should God call us to this country we will deal with the school issue accordingly and legally:-)

We were overwhelmed by your response to pray for us and some even want to support us financially. We have made that simple for you. You can either click on the “support us” tab at the top of this page or you can click here. Your donation will be tax deductible.

Please keep the questions and comments coming, we love to hear from all of you. God is good and is walking with us through this process. Our prayer is that whatever we do will only bring glory to God.

 

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Marmions Move to Ecuador

January 25, 2012 in Family Fun with 3 Comments

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A year ago our family embarked on an experiment that would lead us to abandon our ideas of the American dream and to join God in accomplishing His dream. Rob and I read Radical by David Platt and decided to encourage our whole family to participate in The Radical Experiment. We have throughly enjoyed reading the Word of God, giving up money for God’s purposes, serving those around us and praying for the world.

This experiment has now lead us to spend time in another context. We have been called to minister to the Hispanic community in some fashion. We will spend time learning Spanish and submerging ourselves in the culture. Here is what the next 18 months will look like: we will spend the next 6 months preparing then about 6 months in Ecuador, we will come home for a short time and then head to Spain for 3 months. We will continue to home school Elijah and Alexa legally during this time.

We have been reading and learning from Jim Elliott’s journals and Ecuador was just laid on our hearts. We will spend our time there learning the language with our live in tutor, Allie:-) We will also spend time getting to know those around us and seeing how God wants us to be involved.

Spain is a country we have all spent time in and have come to love the people. We will spend about 3 months there learning more about the spiritual needs of the people in the area. We feel very close to this country as we were in Madrid in March of 2003 the day of a terrorist attack and were involved in many prayer opportunities during that time.

When we return from Spain early next year we will spend time in prayer as a family. We will seek God’s face as we decide if and when we will return to either country to serve long term. We will have many needs as we prepare to embark on this journey.

We are going to need financial support to get us there and keep us there for the allotted times. We will continue to work our commercial photography business but we will also need to raise support. Our monthly budget will be $3,000 and our outgoing expenses including airfare and visas will be $10,000. This money will be used for living expenses and any ministry needs we may have. Including the money we expect to earn while abroad and funds we have already raised we are currently at 64% of our monthly need and have $1,100 a month to go. To see more about our support needs please visit the Support Us page.

We also have a great interest in raising a group of people who will pray for us every step of the way. Colossians 4:2 says, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” This is what we will need, a group of people who will devote themselves to pray for us.

As American Christians it’s easy to forget how Jesus wants us to live. He wants us to leave behind security, money, convenience and even family. We will be doing all of those things. The gospel is the most important thing to us and we will take up our cross and go with God. The journey will be good and bad but we are prepared to stay at the feet of Jesus and serve Him in any way possible. We want to thank you in advance for praying for us, supporting us and cheering for us. We will continue to blog about the days before, during and after to keep you informed.

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Marmions in DC

March 14, 2011 in Family Fun with 0 Comments

We took a long awaited trip to our nations capital last fall.  We had an amazing time!  Everyone got to see what they wanted to see.  We planned this trip like we plan most all our other trips.  It all starts with a family meeting.  We lay out the parameters to our kids and the planning begins.

Everyone made a wish list of what they wanted to see.  As Rob planned out the trip he took all those ideas into consideration.  A plan was born and we were ready to head to DC.

Madame Toussad’s was the first place we visited.  Alexa had a little fun with the display’s:-)  I think she may have been deep throat (a joke, she really was not the real deep throat).  Elijah on the other hand was not sure what to think of the life like figures of real people.

A great time was had by all, it was not very busy in DC, since we were there over Thanksgiving break.  We walked right up to all the exhibits.  The only place we had to wait in line for was the National Archives, it was worth the wait.  Our favorite place was the Air and Space Museum Annex out the by the airport, it is out of the way but well worth it.  They have the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the Concord and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird to name a few.

We had a great time and truly enjoyed the time as a family at our wonderful nation’s capital.  We would love to go back someday but there is much of this world yet to be explored so it will have to wait.

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Belgium Mission Trip

March 8, 2011 in Family Fun with 0 Comments

In October I had the honor of taking Alexa on her first mission trip.  I think she fell in love with mission work.  I was so amazed at how she “got it”.  She knows why we do what we do.  God was with us the whole time and we know events occurred the way they did for our benefit.

I have been to Europe many times but this was my first time in Belgium.  It’s funny most people don’t think of Belgium as a powerful country in Europe but they are very influential.  The NATO headquarters are in Brussels as are the EU headquarters.

We landed in Brussels and traveled to Deinze as a base for our week long project.  Our first day we were hosted by a lovely family that made an amazing Belgian meal for us.  We then started working on folding a packing brochures to be put in mailboxes and handed out at the market.

We learned a lot while we were walking the streets of Deinze.  It was interesting to see how people reacted to being approached by foreigners with the gospel.  It was a benign attempt as we were just asking for them to contribute a filled shoebox to donate to Operation Christmas Child.

This was the first time the church in Deinze attempted a project like this, their goal was 50 shoeboxes.  In the end they ended up with over 150 boxes! Next year their goal will be 300 boxes.  God opened doors for us to go and we were privileged to get to be a part of this project.

Continue Reading…

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4 Tips To Take Better Pictures Of Your Kids

April 14, 2010 in Family Fun with 3 Comments

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1. Bounce Flash.

All DSLR cameras and many point and shoot cameras offer a hot shoe, which is a little metal piece on top of your camera for mounting an external flash. When selecting your flash it is important to get one that will tilt upwards, or bounce. This allows you to shoot the flash up at the ceiling and the light will fall softly on your subject, instead of casting a harsh shadow behind them. The lighting in your pictures will also seem less “fake” and will look more natural.

2. Get Closer.

Many photographers are afraid of getting too close because they don’t want to chop off their subject matter. Most shots though would benefit from a closer perspective as it offers a few advantages. It eliminates ugly background clutter from your shots and allows the viewer to focus on the main part of the image. If you are shooting at a low aperture, like 2.8 or 4, getting closer either with your feet or zooming will blur the background for you and make your subject pop. By shooting at a wider angle you are leaving more of your background in focus, which is confusing to the eye.

3. Use A Reflector.

The most important part of your picture is the light you provide. The easiest and most inexpensive way to provide good light is through a reflector. They can be used both indoors with flash or studio lighting and outdoors with sunlight. Most companies make reflectors with multiple surfaces to meet a variety of conditions. We use a reflector like this, Westcott 40-Inch 5-in-1 Reflector, in our studio.

4.  Pick Your Background.

Every time you take a picture of something your are shooting what is in the foreground, your subject, and your background, whatever is behind your subject.  In your final prints the background is more important than you may think.  Take extra time to make sure there is nothing distracting and that your background is pleasing to the eye.

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