A Year Ago

Almost a year ago to the date we were moving to Florida. We were thinking about it last week that we could not believe we have been here for a whole year! Time really must fly by when you are having fun exploring a new area.  We have really enjoyed getting to try out a new territory and to try out a new way of living. I cannot wait for the next year. I can only imagine all the fun times and many adventures are ahead. :-)

RBC work

Our family is not on the RBC yet, but- we got the chance to help out at a Kingdom Hall Build. One of our neighboring congregations is having a remodel, they invited the friends from local congregations. We were privileged to share in this work! I attached a picture of Riley and I at the build. We got to work in the kitchen! The job was so much fun/ we prepared the food and then served it and along the way met many new friends.
It was so wonderful to see all of Jehovah's people working together!

Memorial 2013

I have been missing from my blog for weeks! I am sorry. I will try to get back to posting some more pictures 😊

This years memorial was so nice! We got to have two Bible students attend. Riley's bible study Linda and one of moms newest studies Ruby! Both have been progressing greatly ( I'll save more details for another post ) Both of them even got a chance to visit with all of the friends! They enjoyed it very much!

We weren't able to get any pictures of our bible students :(... But I will get one soon.

Linda not only got to attend the memorial she also got to attend the special talk! Even though she had to leave early she still came and drove herself! I can't wait to share with you ALL the details....
Hope all is well with our KY friends and everybody else!
Until the next post.... (I will try to make it soon!!)

❤❤❤
Here is a picture of the girls before memorial 🎀

Early Morning Witnessing in Thomasville Georgia

This weekend (Saturday) we went to Thomasville, Georgia to meet friends we meet at out Special Assembly Day. The first picture is of Riley witnessing to a man at the gas station, on our way up to the Kingdom Hall. Early Morning service is something we have greatly enjoyed and have had much success with! We have met many people that listen and take the magazines. A few times as we are leaving the station we see them pull out the magazines and read them, which is so awesome to see.
The second picture is of a cool, old train station. You can't go inside the station, but you can look through the windows! :) very cool. The last picture was just a cool picture of the lil' town.
We enjoyed the association SO much! It was great.

Hello... Again!

Hello Friends! It has been a while. I apologize for the lack of updates and posts. We have been busy with some great things. First- the Circuit Assembly. I am sure you all enjoyed it as much as we did. The information was amazing and so enjoyable to sit and listen to :). Also, we have been enjoying the bible studies we have received. So far we have enjoyed getting great calls with people out in the field service. Riley's study has progressed so much, and is trying her best to get to her first meeting! Isn't that awesome. We are exciting for her to hopefully get to her first meeting soon. We also study with a family who is also enjoying their study and are progressing very well. This family has four kids and they a such a lovely family! I will hopefully be getting to capture some more photos to post. As of right now, I don't have any :( But, when I do I will be sure to share them with you as soon as I can.

Making Good Use of ALL Opportunities:)

Hello friends.. It has been a while. I just haven't gotten the chance to share with you something new. Now is my time to update you though:-)

Here we are out in service with our friends from Apalachicola. (**Hint Hint** Apalachicola is a little historic town that we meet some friends in when we were checking out the congregation.) We stopped for lunch in Shell Point under the gazebo. We met a nice lady there but she only spoke french- so we couldn't really comunicate with her. Thank goodness... Kendall (service buddy) got out her Good News for all Nations book and let her read the message in french! She smiled and said what we think  was thank you.. Any ways just a little experience I thought you guys might enjoy:)

Bea-u-tiful Beach Days

We checked out the beach as a tropical storm was rolling in and look what we saw:)

Say Hello to Harley:)

Yay! Harley is finally home with us:) This is so awesome..

You will be getting new updates often on our little puppy:)

I will post more photos when I can snap some more.... but for now there is a couple cut pics!

Jehovah's Blessings

We have truly been blessed in our couple of months of serving where the need is greater. It has truly been such a privilege! We really enjoy getting to know all the friends. Our service here has been very productive! Jehovah has blessed us with nine committed bible studies! Isn't that awesome? A few of them are working their way to getting to the meeting! That is just a brief little update I was sure you would be happy to hear!
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Along with the new service year comes a lot of planning.
Therefore a family got all of the pioneers together to combine all of our service days. We enjoyed god association and good Italian food:)

... A Day in Service in Florida

This Tuesday we went out in service as a family. We started driving down this road to get the houses- only there we no houses. We thought the ocean might be at the end of the street, so we keep on driving. Lets just say the road was not the smoothest! 

Since we have had a lot of rain the past couple of weeks, we had to keep checking to see if the puddles would be to deep to drive through. (That's dad outside)

 Riley was driving us out in service... And the journey continued... Finally the road got to rough to drive. We saw on the GPS that we were 1/3 of a mile so we decided to walk the rest of the way. (I know a lot of effort to see the ocean.. But hey- this is still all new to us!)

And we walked.. 

The Ocean!

 

So wish we had this palm in the front of our house!

(Effects Added :) )

 This is a Live Oak tree we saw... SO PRETTY!

  (...again- effects added!)

...... And that is what our service day is like!:) :)
(the next road had all the houses on it!)

Planting Seeds of Truth

Hello Everybody. I wanted to update you on a couple of our calls. Some of them have even progressed into bible studies, which have been so AWESOME! Remember the call that the young brother offered the bible study to? He gave that study to us since he was going to be starting school. Since then we have been able to conduct three studies with the family. They have four kids, I got to read some of the bible story lessons with them, and the oldest one loved it! They have enjoyed their personal study out of the Bible Teach book so much. We have had a study with them almost every week. This past week the oldest kid had to go to the hospital because his jaw swelled up. We went and visited him and the first thing he said was "I watched the video you gave me!" We had given him a video for him and his brothers and sisters to watch about obedience. His mom said that they loved the video. We brought his mom some lunch and a few magazines. She said "Great, I am so glad you brought me some things to read!" They were very thankful for us coming by. The little boy got sent home yesterday. We are hoping we can get to visit with them more this week.

On another great note, Riley got a bible study (Yay!) George handed her a call on a woman that he had been calling on for a while. The next time Riley went up and offered her a study from the Bible Teach book. She agreed. Since then they have had multiple great studies. She asked great questions like: "Where are the dead?" " Do you guys celebrate Christmas?". They studied with her 2 times a week!!! Then she said "Do you think we could not study as often? Like maybe once a week?" So now they have gotten to study once a week with her. She said that she was already in chapter seven in the book! She even uses Jehovah's name! They invited her to meeting although she didn't get to come to the meeting that week.. She said that she would try to come to the Kingdom Hall next week! Isn't that awesome? She is doing great and we look forward to more studies with her.

So there are a couple of our new experiences. We will keep you updated on how the studies continue to progress!

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We went to the ocean today! Alligator Point (the beach closest to us) was BEAUTIFUL! The water was so clear! It was amazing. All the shells had gotten pushed up to the shore and we found some really pretty shells. But the most amazing thing we found was what was in the water....

Are you wondering what these are?..  They are sand dollars! Believe it or not.. these sand dollars are alive! We all walked out into the ocean pretty far out there. I picked up some sand, and I thought I felt something like a shell in my hand. It was a sand dollar! Ends up we were standing on a bed of sand dollars. We picked up a total of 33 sand dollars (that was just grabbing a few considering how many we really saw) It was the most amazing experience! We set all the shells out on the wet sand and  came  back to them later and they had partially buried themselves, trying to get back to the water. 

This picture is a little blurry! This is the back side of the sand dollar. Those are its little legs! So amazing:)

 

No.. we didn't keep all of them:( we just picked out a few that we liked, then let the others go back to the ocean! I have never seen anything like that before. It was so awesome! 

Tell us what you think!

Exciting Anouncments!

We now have two new pioneers in the Crawfordville Kingdom Hall. We were so happy to here that "Jim Honeycutt is now a regular pioneer" at the meeting this last Tuesday. YAY! We were so excited to know we would have a new pioneer with us in service. Another younger brother in our hall decided he would be able to start pioneering, with Jim, this coming September.

 Our service here is going very well. We usually start our service day on Tuesday and Saturday with early morning witnessing. We get a chance to stop at gas stations and we have been having lots of good experiences. One presentation we use in early morning witnessing is taking out a couple of magazines and asking the person: "Which one of these interests you?" In many cases people have taken all of them and said they would read them all! One time a boy in our hall went up with six magazines, trying this approach, and the man took all of them! Another time a man even gave us a donation for coming and leaving the magazines with him. Lots of people here are very receptive to the truth, and we have gotten to get more and more RV's throughout are ministry.  The same younger brother that placed the six magazines had an awesome call this week. He had a RV he wanted to make and Mom suggested that he offer a bible study with her since he had been calling on her for so long. He wasn't sure about how to offer the study so she told him a couple of things he could say. He went up to the door and caught the man home. He told him he had something he would like to share with his wife if she was home. She wasn't so he decided he would share the same news with the husband. He shared a couple of scriptures with him and then offered him a bible study. The man told him what time he would be home. Then he asked for a bible. He said that his was so hard to understand and when Adrian shared scriptures from his bible, they were easier to understand. So sometime next week, Adrian said he would come and drop the bible off and show him more about the book "What Does The Bible Really Teach?" It was such a exciting call to end the day on.
Here is a picture of Adrian and Mom at the door talking to the man out in service

 I hope to let you know how the rest of the call turns out to be. It is such a blessing to work out in service with our friends!

Exploring the Springs

 This weekend we had tons of fun! We had some guests come down and visit us from Kentucky & we got to take them to the Spring in our county. We had a blast. First we started our journey with a boat ride, where we spotted lots of wild birds, alligators, turtles, and even manatees!

Manatees are most closely related to a elephant. They are such an interesting animal. Can you spot the manatee? :-)

This was such a cute little family of turtles. Your going to have to look really close at all these pictures!

Don't forget the 'gators! See him in the picture above?


After having a fun experience on the boat ride. We hit the water. It is super cold. It average around 66-71 degrees year round.. Brrrrr. Right? Didn't scare us off!

We had such a blast with our company. We can't wait to do it again!

Airplane @ My RV

This is what I saw in the front yard when I was making a RV....

It is pretty interesting right? I was surprised when I saw it! My call wasn't home & I sadly can't give you any updates, but I thought you would like to see what I found!

What a Blessing!

Our convention was this weekend. We enjoyed it so much! It was such an encouragement to all & can't wait for everyone to hear the convention talks. We took a couple of pictures, so you could see a peek at what went on:-)

Riley read her talk to us at the hotel room! We enjoyed some pizza while listening to it:-)

This is interesting.. We were surprised Friday, while heading to the convention to see this banner. The city of  Gainesville hung this right before you turned into the convention center parking lot. Pretty cool..

Friday.. The first day of the "Safegaurd Your Heart Convention!" Yay!

We got the priviledge to help one of the congregations help with there cleaning assignment & we got to meet lots of new faces. The convention was such a gift from Jehovah. We enjoyed every single part of it and look forward to our next convention. 

Rainy Days.... Don't You Love Em'?

Seriously! The rain hasn't stopped for a whole 3 days! We couldn't believe it. We ended up with a pond in our from yard- here are a couple pictures:)

You see our little pond?

Going to Return Visit.... or maybe not!

The rain went away- FINALLY & we got a little sunshine peaking through the clouds:)

Fiddling Crabs & Fishin'

We enjoyed an amazing journey this weekend. We went fishing, but, not with a boat. We walked out in the ocean about a mile when the tide had gone down. (Which was around 7:30) It was supposed to have been the best day to catch fish!

The crabs scurried around when we started walking, they were everywhere!

 Our friend that lives on the island told us that at certain times of the year, the road would look like it was moving because the fiddler crabs would be crossing the road. Why did the crabs cross the road?

Interestingly, they call them fiddler crabs because they look like they are playing the fiddle.

So Cute!!!

Turn your head- the pictures aren't flipping 

Where we were it wasn't really sand but kind of like mud. You have to shuffle your feet through the water so not to get stung by a sting ray. You'd think they'd be teasing. Not at all. Stingrays float right by you. That's why you shuffle your feet. If you step on a stingray they will come back and sting you! While shuffling your feet, if you bump in to one it will swim away. Another challenge is that you sink as you shuffle in to the mud. We were glad the water was only up to our knees at the most. One of the fishermen down here has gotten stung twice by a sting ray. 

Us shuffling our feet.

The professional fisher caught us some spotted sea trout, as for us we got bites but never got the fish to shore. We got some delicious fish the next dinner... 

We didn't get in to the house till 10:00pm. It was such a pretty site to see the sunset while in the water. 

Beautiful!!

Interesting Experiences...

We wanted to share some of our experiences in the new territory to everyone. We have had a good response to far. We are slowly trying to rebuild our call books, which might take a while! But that's okay, we are so ready!
I will start by telling you are early morning witnessing experience. It was pretty interesting. We have a small group that meets in the morning at 7:30 to hit the gas stations and local grocery stores. We were at a gas stop & one of the younger brother gets out of the car & head towards a man that is getting gas, he caught him right before he went into the store. He placed one Awake with him. As he talked to him for a minute he said that his ex-wife & mother-in-law were both a witness.
Meanwhile, my dad catches a man leaning against his car. He brought 3 or so magazines with him & said whichever one he finds interesting he can take. He took all three of them! We were sitting in the car & the man that the younger brother came up to our car door, my dad rolled down his window. The man says "Hey, you gave that man three magazines and a Watchtower! How come I didn't get one?" My dad asked him if he would like a copy of the Watchtower & he said he would love one. While we talked to him, he said that he studied with a brother once in the Crawfordville Kingdom Hall. We left him an invitation to the meeting &  said that if he would like to resume his study we would love to help him!
It was such an encouraging experience. We definitely saw how Jehovah's holy spirit was in our car group!

Here is our second experience. This will be interesting. When we first got here, we went into a neighborhood by the ocean. As you enter you will read a sign that says 'Aircraft Have Right Of Way'.

Neighborhood Entrance

At first I thought they were joking. Nope! As you go in you see that almost all the houses have hangers for their planes & there is a take off lane for the planes. It was my turn to go to the door, I snagged Riley to go with me. The woman was outside and immediately approached us. She was very friendly. I got through half of my presentation, then she said "I am so sorry, Just one second could I interrupt? My husband is about to land his plane!" I said "Of course!" Then her husband comes in with his plane and lands it right in their back yard! I thought- how cool is that! So I continued with my presentation. Then for a second time she said "Could I interrupt again?" Next thing we know her husband is flying his plane from out of their backyard! We got to watch him  up close. I got to share a scripture or two with her and offered the magazines on Religion and Politics, she seemed to be interested! I can't wait to go back to here and offer her the new magazines!

Trying new things.....

This Thursday we enjoyed some time at the beach. It was a beautiful day! The sun was shinning & the water was pretty warm, but refreshing. Since the water was warm we decided we would try something new...... PADDLE BOARDING! One of the brothers in our hall told us about a place that rented out paddle boards. So Thursday morning we packed up the truck and headed to St. George Island- One of the beaches we hadn't yet been to.

If you don't know what paddle boarding is, here is a simple explanation: A paddle board is just like a beginners surfboard, it is 11 feet tall, you rent that board with a paddle. So when you get out to deep enough water you stand up on the board and paddle you way around the ocean.

It was such a blast. We loved it- accept for when the waves took you down (although I have to say it was entertaining to watch them go down.)

Dad on the paddle board standing up!

We had to swim out a little ways. Which got kind of un-nerving when you had nothing to float on. Sometimes you could get back in to shore a little quicker by catching a wave.

Riley

Jaira

All of us got to get up on the board. It was so amazing to see Jehovah's creations.... So glad we got to share some pictures of our adventure with you.