This is the birth announcement I just finished cross-stitching for Nate. His name and birth date will go in the empty box in the center.

Restoration

God's been doing big stuff in my life over the last few weeks. Since 2003 I've had some great ideas about how I was going to serve God in Africa as a pilot/mechanic... but in pursuing those lofty goals, I let my relationship with God slip in a major way. I lost sight of the day-to-day, and that's too high a price, even when what I was trying to buy seems like such a great and noble thing. Since I lost my job in October, I've had all these questions about the future, about work, about whether we'd ever make it on the mission field. I haven't really gotten answers to any of those questions, but just about all of them were prompted by a wrong perspective on things, so the answers don't really matter as much as I thought they did. In point of fact, I've done some growing lately that I wouldn't have done if life had gone the way I thought it should have. And I'm crazy-grateful to God for that growth. Matthew 16:26