Greality with the grand kids!

Last Sunday, after a wonderful time in Garden City, we made our way to Wichita to see some more friends......SCREEETCH!!!!!  I guess it was really more like WOAH!  Like with a trusty Dodge City steed.
We got a call from our daughter in Greeley, she is 8 months pregnant and having some flu like symptoms, yuck. 
Darlene encouraged her to go see the folks at the hospital to get checked out.  Thankfully as they took her vitals they found some issues, high blood pressure, preeclampsia and the baby had hellp.  Neither being good, and an impending delivery, we quickly headed for Colorado and straight to Greeley.  I think we covered a little over 400 miles in about 5.5 hours, we were "bookin" it as they say.

Conner Joseph was born at 1:30 am on the 31st!  He is amazing and weighs in at 5lbs, 2 oz.  He is 5 weeks premature and is in the NICU here in Greeley.  The day after his arrival, Lindsay was transported to St. Luke's in Denver to be under the care of a liver specialist. ( I'm sure there is a fancier name)  They are working on getting her back to liver health and hope to be reunited with little Conner by the end of this week.

Darlene and I, in the mean time are doing life with a 4 and 2 year old, including Halloween, preschool, well baby visit and of course doing bonding time with Conner a couple times a day.  Darlene in the morning and I in the evening.  How amazing to do skin to skin time with him, praying for his little body to be strong and healthy,  I have also been asking the Lord for amazing bravery and courage with a great bond with papa and above all a greater bond with Jesus during the course of his life.  I mean, who gets to sit, hold and pray for your 2 day old grand baby for an hour?  It is forcing me to slow my roll and dial into the moment, for this I am very grateful.

The out pouring of prayer and support have been very encouraging and helpful to Darlene and our family.  We shared with folks as we drove on Sunday, it is very sweet to know of our community and the prayers ascending to the Lord from Oregon to Romania and beyond!  If you are reading this, please know that we consider you a beautiful part of His community and we are a direct beneficiary.  In short...Thanks!
I thought you might enjoy a family pic of Jimmy, Lindsay and family, Conner is present, just not seen but by the Father :)

Blessings,
Joe

PS  More to come about our visit to Garden City, con fotos ( with photos)

Road Trip!

For the past few years, Darlene and I have been dreaming and thinking about some road trips.  We are starting that adventure today!
We sat down at a water side cafe on Lake Tahoe, just a few days before the forth of July and started a mondo list of Young Life club kids that we wanted to go and see.  We dreamed about having an old truck or 4x4 to pull a vintage camper.  That way we could just pull up and plug in, physically, relationally, emotionally and spiritually.  We felt like this would be a fun and impactfull way to see the country and old friends.

Today we are leaving for Garden City, KS.  We ministered there from the late eighties into the mid nineties.  We really loved our time and friendships in Garden, we also felt like it was possibly the most fruitful times of ministry in our lives to date.

Let me just jump in here and insert what I mean by fruitful.  I am not just talking about sheer number, I think this is a misnomer about ministry and fruitfulness.  I know there were several times in Garden, when the numbers were high, but our impact was low or minimal.  We had mistakenly focused on the wrong things, this led to a seasonal downturn in impact.  Fruitfulness should be measured by the fruit, first by the quality of the fruit. i.e. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.  Let me say, that none of the above mentioned from Galatians 2, have anything to do with numbers, also you have to get up close and personal to see if these fruits are evident in a person's life or ministry.  Second, I believe a fruitful ministry has on-going reproduction potential.  You may not see the increase right away, all seeds have different gestation periods.  But, the widespread potential must be there, otherwise you have sterile fruit.  Much like the plastic fruit that your grandma had on her kitchen table.  Looks good from afar, but has no aroma or reproductive ability at all.

Our time in Garden, did produce good, reproductive fruit, for which we are really grateful.  I really don't think we had much to do with it, other than for the most part we tried to pay attention to the "fruit" in our own lives.  Thanks be to God who issues grace sufficiently for our feeble attempts to abide in Him.

I will keep you posted as to how our travels and visits unfold over the next few days.

Blessings,
Joe