Three Fun Photos

Here are three fun photos.

1. Seeing San-ka Clause. (Notice Joshua's eyes are squinted shut so that he can't see)

2. Joshua and his "No-man" with a "Go Big Ret Hat"

3. Susannah smiling with Daddy.

schultesays.org

Today our blog address officially moves to:

http://www.schultesays.org

We are excited to have our own domain, but for the most part nothing is changing. I chose to move our blog to this address in order to help the "searchability" of www.casaviva.org.

By posting items not directly related to the ministry of Casa Viva... ie cute videos of Joshua and Susannah, I  was actually diluting casaviva.org's searchability.

Now we have our own domain name and *hopefully* casaviva.org will be found more navigable by search engines.

Thanks for following our family!

Miles + Joshua... sharing.

"We're Sharing!"

--At least for a few minutes.

In all reality they shared very well all night long.

Where Joshua Spends Most of His Time

As you may or may not know, Joshua LOVES trains... sometimes to the point of near obsession. Last week we set up our Christmas tree with a train around it. He'll watch it go around and around. Then he'll stop it and make it go again... super cute.

The cargo in this load happens to be... Baby Jesus and Mary.

3 Months

Back by popular demand a size comparison. Unfortunately whenever the camera is going off, Joshua wants a part of the action.

Thanksgivmas 2009

We started a tradition last year with Kristin's family... we call it Thanksgivemas.
It really is a great holiday and I think every family who can only gather for one of the two major holidays should adapt it. Thanksgivemas gives you the best of both worlds: An A++ Thanksgiving meal AND Christmas presents all on the same day.

Multiple Voices

Let me start off by saying: We are not church shopping.

We are very content with the community of friends that God has provided for us at Wheaton Bible Church. However we also have some friends who are pastors/preachers in the area and so recently we have visited a couple of churches to hear them preach.

Both of our experiences were absolutely amazing. Mitchel Lee a pastor at Community Fellowship gave a great teaching on a Psalm and how it shows the Psalmists' realization that he NEEDS to be meeting with the God fearing believers on a regular basis. Todd Wilson talked about how we can become disillusioned when we face trials. Both of these guys are absolutely dynamic speakers... not only are they dynamic, their teaching is overflowing with the Word of God. We absolutely loved hearing from each of them.

As we sat there in a new church listening to a different pastor I was reminded of the power of exposing yourself to multiple voices, multiple teachers. My church holds firmly to the more traditional approach where the Senior Pastor preaches 80-90% of the time. It seems that in many churches there is a rising tide of teaching teams where a group of pastors does the teaching not just relying on one individual. I attended such a church in college and absolutely loved the multiple voices speaking into my life.

It provided depth to my knowledge, the kind of depth that can only be found when you are not limited to hearing the Word of God from one point of view. Even when that point of view is absolutely rock solid there is great benefit to hearing it from multiple tongues.

Churches that I have seen using this approach are: Bethlehem Baptist (my mother in-law's church), Fellowship Bible (where I attended in college), Community Fellowship (Mitchel Lee).

I hope our church moves in that direction and we increasingly hear from Rob Rienow, Chris McElwee, Ted Conaris, and even some lay speakers.