The Joy of Family

Last night we spent the evening with my side of the family doing what in the the past felt very normal just hanging out!   For some reason Ben and I have had to missed several Sunday evening dinners and not until last night did I remember just how sweet and wonderful the time with my parents, brothers and wives is.  I am fortunate to be a part of a family where we hold the same values and are able to share our common bond of Christ with one another.  I feel so encouraged when the night is over and I can recount many positive conversations.  I count it a great joy to raise my children alongside such wonderful family and friends.  I look forward to many more years of time with my family!

Time to wrap up

We've had a full couple of days!  We finished the last couple of days of our challenge.  Friday night we had beans and rice which we all happen to love, so not much of a sacrifice :)   I think they all licked there plates that night.  We are all certainly feeling a greater thankfulness for normal meals and groceries in the house.  Saturday is my grocery day all the kids put in their request of what they missed, Jack-bagels, Kate-Cheetos and little Lucy -big apples.  Sunday we packed up the boxes and took them with us to church, dropping them off was such a fun experience. 

There is a drop off line so that it moves faster and people don't have to get out of their cars, there was music playing, people running around in turkey costumes, funny little signs while you wait.  It was such a fun experience!  I hope my kids will walk away feeling the excitement of giving and participating in what God is doing in Cincinnati.

  As we move forward and talk about the last week with the kids I want to be sure that we all understand that we did our best to give a taste of others experience or feel in this world but we always knew that life wouldn't be like that forever. I pray that God will use this in my family's hearts, mine included to give us a heart for God's people and to not ignore what the Lord was passionate about.   

Baptisms across the city 

I was aware of at least three churches yesterday doing baptisms, which happen to be one of my favorite things to participate in as a Christ follower...I love it!

My morning started off watching a friend from Grace be baptised...and later with many other believers across the city. 

I have such a joy watching people come up out of the water, it's such a incredible picture of God washing us clean of our sins and new life!  I heard several stories of people who have known Christ for a long time and now deciding to follow through on his command and others who surrendered to Christ that morning.  Several times I was moved to tears to see people's faces as they came up out of the water.  Faith in Christ is simple in that he prompts you and all you have to do is respond. 

A few stories that I don't want to forget.

There was a gentleman who was at the 8:30 service who ignored the prompting to go and be baptised and got in his car and left after service, as he drove away he felt the Lord tugging at his heart to go back he turned the car around and went.  He was then baptised at the next service!

There was a girl who looked about 9 who told us she was baptised last year and she was here to now baptize her younger sister.

There was a young couple engaged to be married and she shared that she knew that she needed to surrender to Christ and be baptised because next year she would need to be able to do this in a marriage with her husband.

I was baptized in a hot tub at a summer camp by Ben a couple of years ago and I can't imagine anyone else that would've been more appropriate to do it.  I love that we serve a God who gives his people his power to do his work.  Ben and I have baptized several people who came to know Christ through his power in us and I hope that we get the privilege to do many more baptisms in our lifetime!

Great conversations with my children.

Lucy shared what she learned about Mary Magdalene yesterday at church.

"Mom...she poured perfume on Jesus's head he thought it was nice, but it wasn't.  The girl followed Jesus where ever he went."  I love 3 year old versions of stories and what they catch.

Jack in the car told me this.  "If I become president, I'm just saying if, I think I will conquer the world in like 4 years.  

Me: "What would you do if you conquer the world?"

Jack"Well help the poor and all the kids without moms and dads"

It's neat to see the Lord working!

Day 3 and 4

Yesterday...on the menu was pizza, homemade no toppings just cheese (this is a sacrifice for my kids and us).  Ben came up with a fun way to further our little challenge.  Right before dinner without the kids knowing he turned off the water to the house.  We sat down for dinner and tried to fill their cups with water from the fridge but "oh no, no water!" Conversation goes as follows...Kids what are we going to do, we'll have nothing to drink tonight...Ben's mom who was over comments well don't kids in Africa have no water in their homes?...What do they do?....We then proceed to tell them that the kids who may receive our boxes have to walk a half day sometimes to get water and even then it's not clean.  Ben's suggestion... Jack, why don't you go down to the Golden village (our neighbor) and get water for the family and of course take off your shoes while you do it.  Kate jumped right in, Jack was a little more hesitant but went also.  This is how Kate came back from the neighbors.

Today day 4 was a different story we started the morning off really rough.  Jack and Kate both opted for oatmeal with chocolate chips and brown sugar.  Ben made it and they both threw the most royal fits.  Ben only put 4 chocolate chips in, not 5 and Kate refused to eat.  Jack tasted his and did the same.  I was honestly a little shocked they should be way past this throwing fits stage, right.  But I think what I would've done most mornings is appeased them and said fine here are more chocolate chips, but not today.  It was sad to me that I hadn't help instill a more thankful heart for the things in front of them.  Now in the midst of this I am reminded how sinful I am also I don't want to stop and take time to have character building conversations and to gently remind them of where they could grow and change.  So in the end of the morning it really wasn't about the oatmeal anymore but what was going on in their hearts.  This week is showing us as parents how we still need to grow and change also.

Dinner tonight I made a vegetable soup that was actually a winner in Kate's eyes, how about that?  The other kids weren't fans by any stretch.  We told the kids that we and aunt Kerry were going shopping for our boxes tonight, Jack was pretty excited and wanted to know if this would be the end to our simple meals, nope not till Saturday buddy.  We all packed up and headed to the store.  Let's just say Meijers and all their customers didn't know what hit them when our two families entered the store.  Boy are our kids loud!  Thanks Kerry for the pics.  

                                                 Dear Africa we got your oil for cooking- Lucy

After all was said and done we ended up spending what we normally spend on groceries for the week with my $23.00 we spent earlier in the week plus the cost of all our boxes.  That felt good that a small sacrifice will really mean a lot to others in this world :)  Hopefully they can see Christ's love in the hands that deliver it!

Day 2

Grocery day!  Well I went to Kroger and had $30.00 wow that can go fast.  I knew if I shopped ads and went to several stores I could've maybe made the money go further but I really wanted to shop where I normally shop and truly feel how little money this is.  I made a very specific list including ingredients and a few basics. After 20 minutes I had completed my shopping ,spending $23.00 and the extra $7.00 left I will act as if we already spent that since we have resources at home we are using.  I walked out with 4 bags it was a little sobering to know that we could choose to eat like this more often and give more, something for our family to reflect on. 

I picked up the kids from school and the first thing out of their mouths is can we get doughnuts?  I wanted to say yes so bad it was actually a great day to do it.  I reminded them that we are saving money to fill our boxes; Jack let me know he wished we weren't doing this.  I know that this can be hard but it's for a greater cause, in the end I think we'll grow as a family and choose to be more purposeful with money.

The biggest challenge for me is to plan meals that don't consist of lots of ingredients and are simple and cheap.  We just did a pasta bake and some bread.  Kate, poor thing lately can't seem to be satisfied with much of anything, was the first to complain.  But after a quick reminder of no complaints and to fill your bellies because we will not be having a snack later they actually ate their dinners.  I think normally I probably waiver when it comes to dinner and let them make excuses for the things they don't like.  It seems so much easier with this challenge in front of us to require them to eat all on their plate.

Overall I am encouraged and pray that God will show us what we can learn from this week.


Side note:  Sam is 18 months and seems to always be conquering the world through climbing and speech but he can't seem to hold his own cup (I think it's laziness, he wants mommy to tip it back for him).  I have decided to today will be the day to learn to do it himself.  It's such a crack up every time he brings me his cup I just help his little hands do it himself and then praise him like crazy.  One of the times I said good job he replied with thank you, it just made me smile.

The challenge...

We were at church and had an opportunity to take a box to fill it for a family on Thanksgiving, great check the box we can do that.  Well I felt like maybe this was a good opportunity to challenge our family further.  What if we take more than one box and use this week's grocery money to fill more boxes?  This is nice in theory but the family would have to be in on it since this would change what we eat for most of our meals.  Ben and I asked them after church what they thought, without much hesitation they said sure (I don't think they really got the reality of this).  We intended on taking one box for a local family and 1 box to send to Africa, this will stretch us a bit but I know that we can still be comfortable.  Well somehow we ended up walking out of there with 4 boxes for Africa and 1 for a local family and I could feel myself tense up a bit and feel the stress of this.  I knew immediately after the initial silent freak out that this is a great chance to serve other believers so that they can bless the people around them!

We kicked off our first night of the week ironically with takeout pizza to make a point to our children that you look at this as normal but this is a month worth of wages for a good part of the world.  We read them several facts about some of the African countries.

-There is a food famine in a area of Africa that includes Somolilia, Ethiopia and Kenya a child dies of hunger or poor nutrition on average every 6 minutes so by the time we finish our pizza that would mean 3 kids. 
-Nearly 29,000 children under 5 have died, and millions are at risk, kind of alarming.


(So I am not about just finding a really grafic image to display my point but it's a little disturbing to me that his took 3 seconds to find this with the google search Somolilia children)


These were shocking but I knew just as I often do they will probably just go right back to life and forget most of what we were telling them.

The plan:
-Spend $6.00 a day on food till Saturday, I'm shopping today so that = $30.00 for this weeks grocerys.
-Plan meals that either reflect a country that is in need such as beans and rice. Or keep all my meals simple with little to no meat and cheap ingrediants.
-Talk often of how God can use our family to affect those localy and those in other nations.

Day one...I was packing lunches and Kate was being extremely picky I told her sorry Kate I just don't have that many choices of things to put in your lunch today.  Jack quickly told her "Kate we are not going to be able to have a lot in our lunches this week, remember were feeding Africa".  It was such a good reminder that they were listening and God may use this, this week to impact our family.
At dinner:  Tonight I served a really simple bean soup and cornbread which was an extra.  Kate couldn't help but comment how boring the soup was and lacked flavor.  Ben quickly reminded her that this was part of the challenge to not use a lot of ingredients and keep things simple, we need to have appreciation for the food on our table.  It was very encouraging to see them eat their soup withour complaint after that.

We are all well aware that we are not going to fix a hunger crisis or we may not even save a life but I feel strongly that this is part of our calling as believers to care for and pray for other believers around the world.  Our goal this week is to help instill in our family a posture of sacrifice and giving to help others who are in greater need than us.


Welcome to our challenge this week!

Today is what appeared to be an ordinary and a regular Wednesday morning and I'm not sure fully what happened other than feeling discontent.  Talking to Ben I couldn't help but feel really emotional over this recent burden I have.  I have this serious desire to live real genuine life with people.  I want to raise my kids together and help my kids see the power of believers coming together to live life and minister.  The model of community I have always seen in church today is to come together once a week and be with one another for a time of encouragement, but I am starting to feel that it's not enough.  I want real life together, where you can't hide because your closest friends are your neighbors.  I want to share meals, things and lots of time as families together who want to love the people around them.  I pray that the Lord will show Ben and I what this looks like or if this is even possible at this point in our lives.  Just    some of my thoughts it feels good to write them down.  Now back to my 1 year old with a poop filled diaper and my daughter who has watched far to much t.v. today...ugh.

By Faith

I have wanted to write a post for awhile but have not felt very inspired or motivated lately to do it.
 A lot is brewing in the Davis household.  First we have added 2 new members, Morgan and Jess.  These are two girls who are college age and have come to live with us.  They are both YL leaders and are neat girls.  It's fun to have them around for lots of reasons, having extra hands in the house is never a bad thing!  The other day Jess took Kate into her room, I think Kate was asking a lot of questions like "who's is this?" and so on.  It was fun to see what came out of that Jess must of told her how they share everything, Kate seemed to love this idea that they share everything and would be willing to share it with her.  Anytime they are home Kate and Lucy try their hardest to spend time with them, I am thankful for Godly young women to be a part of my daughter's lives! I look forward to life together with these girls.

Lately I feel like there have been several things that God has asked us "by faith" to do or start thinking about.  We recently started to attend Crossroads and feel like that took a lot of faith to move forward and to not be concerned about what some might think or others perceptions of Crossroads.  I can't say it enough this was tough since all I have ever known was the church we had been attending but God has been incredibly faithful and confirmed it in every way possible that this was the right decision for our family.  I think the switch has taught me that all believers are apart of the same "church" the body of Christ.  I have always had this constant weird tension that my closest family and friends who were believers that we all needed to share the same church in order to share community with them.  I'm finding out that it's nice if it works out that way but the bigger thing is that we share Christ and we are willing to spur one another on to love and good deeds.  We love where God has placed us right now, we are growing and changing daily and look forward to being challenged even more.

Well the other "by faith" things that are on the table, homeschooling and adoption.  Homeschooling is something since my kids were school age people have asked will you home school and I always gave a very quick "no way".  I grew up in a family that home schooled, I was only home schooled for 1 1/2 years because my mom and I were at each others throats most days.  Now why would I want to go through that same misery I always thought.  But now that I am a little older I can see how incredible my brothers relationships are with each other and the positive benefits it can have on a family.  My kids are in a wonderful school that we are more than pleased with so it's difficult to even picture them not attending there in the future.  This is something we are going to the Lord in prayer about and asking for that direction and strength if this should be where He is directing our family.

Adoption is subject you might hear about often if you are around our family.  We often talk about it, we love the picture of God adopting us as his children knowing how incredibly unlovable we are.  The thought and picture is so moving to me I sit here now with chills, every time my heart dwells on this subject my heart stirs and I feel like I could cry.  As I spend time in the word I can't help but see God's heart through Old and New testament for orphans and widows and try to picture what does this look like to have a heart for these people.  We know that we want to adopt it's all the details that can be so difficult sometimes.  This is sometime that we will continue to work through as a family and with the Lord.  On a side note we asked the kids last night what they thought of adopting and what that would mean for them since they would have to help out more.  Jack's response was great he said "it's not a big deal I've done this 3 times before what's a fourth".  I love my kids excitement over the subject of adding to our family, I look at that as a gift from God.






http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2011/11/reckless-abandon.html