Check out this happy face...



You'd never guess that this was the girl most likely to cry at the thought of swimming lessons.  She loves the water (like the rest of our family) but at 6 still doesn't know how to swim and has constantly refused lessons, crying excessively at just the mention of it.  I just haven't been tough enough to force her to do it until now.  Our fun water excursions this summer were much more difficult for me as a parent having 3 non-swimmers to keep an eye on at all times and I decided something had to be done.  When I first talked with Paul about signing her up for lessons this fall she overheard and spent the rest of the day in tears until I finally convinced her that I had not yet signed her up.  After that we decided it had to be a secret until the actual event which was last night.  Rachel was excited all day knowing that she was going somewhere special with mom (much better than dreading it and crying all day albeit a little deceptive) but as soon as we pulled into the parking lot she began to suspect something was up and was in tears by the time she stepped out of the car and refused to willingly go in.  I had to carry her into the building and in the locker room I had to forcibly remove her clothes to get her into her swim suit.  Unfortunately, since I was trying to keep it a secret until the last possible moment I had quickly rummaged through the closet with all of our swim stuff and grabbed what I thought was her swimsuit and stuffed it in a bag without looking too close so she wouldn't see it.  That was a mistake!  I accidently grabbed the wrong thing - a top to a 2 piece suit a friend had given the girls and that was all I had in the bag.  Oops!  It turned out okay though because the desk worker at the entrance had evidently notified the swim teacher that she had a crier and the teacher came back to the locker room just then to see if she could help.  She couldn't stop the tears and after checking the lost and found she couldn't come up with a swimsuit Rachel's size but she did have an extra one of her own so with a few knots we managed to make an adult suit fit on tiny Rachel.  I told her that she'd have to stop crying or else I would have to leave and that was enough motivation for her to settle down and walk to the pool.  Once she was in the water she started to have fun and realized that there was nothing to fear.  That's all it took.  Now she can't wait to go back next week.  Success!

Rachel says we are no longer the Schultz family but now are the Short family.  In one day all the girls in our family went from long hair to short.  It's quite a change for us and I'll share the before and after pictures here but first I'm going to do a quick photo update from our spring and summer.  We've been so busy that I haven't had time for updating but here are a few highlights.

Paul graduated from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary with a ThM (he already had an MDiv and next will be his doctorate).



Rachel and Rebekah joined Awana this year and loved it.  They memorized so many verses and received several awards on the final night.



Rebekah played baseball for a 2nd year and even experienced playing in the rain.



Here's our growing boy who will soon turn 1.



We had a great family vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia with the rest of the Schultz family and enjoyed the amusement park and water park there.






And now the "before" picture...



We all donated our hair to Locks of Love so we ended up quite short after taking off 10 inches.



And even Riana got her hair cut too (although she didn't have enough for 10 inches).

As you know from my last entry, I have no problem dropping everything at the last minute to do something worthwhile.  In that case it was Great Wolf Lodge (okay so I didn’t really “drop everything”, I just didn’t have anything planned beyond the usual homeschooling).  The very next weekend we received a last minute call that someone had cancelled out of a pastors & wives conference and as missionaries we were being given the opportunity to take their place and network with the pastors there.  Once again we made a quick decision to pack up and go on an unplanned trip.  This weekend I went on another somewhat unplanned trip – not traveling to a far location but traveling down a different path.

Paul’s weekend was planned to be spent in its entirety at a seminar and mine was planned to be home with the kids.  However, I received an email from Paul on Friday night stating that the Saturday afternoon session was open for guests and suddenly everything changed.  Saturday morning my mom agreed to watch the kids for a couple hours so I could meet Paul there.  I had no idea what the seminar was called (still don’t) but I knew it was being led by the author of the book I am currently reading (Organic Church) and it was about something Paul and I have been discussing and trying to work out.  I had no idea just how much change that afternoon session had the potential to bring to my life.  I felt like I was hanging on every word.  I was so excited that I had to call home to say I was staying till the very end and wouldn’t be home as soon as I had said.  At the end of the day, when asked what I thought, I was speechless.  It hit me right where God has been leading me and working in my life, even to the point of one of the illustrations being the exact same as something I dreamed less than a week ago. 

Have you ever felt God was speaking to you?  Telling you to do something?  Do you long for a deeper relationship with Christ?  Have you ever been excited to see a friend’s faith grow?  To be an integral part of fulfilling God’s command to make disciples?  What if there was a simple and effective way to do all that?  What if it not only changed your friends’ lives but it also changed you?  What if you could start tomorrow?  Are you interested?  That afternoon session was about a simple and powerful method of doing just that.

It’s all about transforming lives for Christ from the inside out.  It’s about groups of 2 or 3 people coming together on a weekly basis to do three things:  confess sin, read Scripture and pray.  There are two requirements for these groups:  a desperate need for Christ and a commitment to the process.  It can be uncomfortable because it requires complete honesty for accountability.  It can seem like a lot of work because it requires reading 25-30 chapters of the Bible each week (yes, there is grace when someone doesn’t complete their reading – everyone just re-reads the same chapters for the next week until everyone has completed it).  And, it requires strategic prayer for the salvation of others.  It has the potential to multiply over and over as new people join and new groups are formed.  It is the bottom line for starting new churches as these groups grow far beyond any one person’s network.  Can you get excited about how far this can spread?  But even for just the individual who joins one of these groups it does no less than requiring that person to be constantly in the Word, to be praying continually, and to be growing spiritually.  Don’t you long to be that kind of a person? 

I’m excited about the potential, not only in my life but spreading so far beyond just me -- the potential to see people coming to Christ, growing in their faith, and bringing others to Christ who bring others to Christ, who bring others to Christ and soon whole churches are born.

The more I pray, the more I hunger for a deeper prayer life.  The more I read the Bible, the more I long to spend more time reading it.  I have a desperate need for Christ and I’m committed to the process.  How about you?