Walk Like An Egyptian.

One of our bands, Blue Sky Nine, is now in Egypt until March 15. They'll be playing on campuses and various other locations in Cairo, Alexandria, and other places, helping the campus teams reach their audiences and presenting the Gospel. We just received word today that the team made it safely into Egypt. They are in Cairo at their host’s local offices, getting ready to head to Alexandria where they’ll stay for a bit. Then back to Cairo. Most everything made it here safely, except for Scott’s guitar. Egypt Air is looking for it and will call them if/when they find it.

*Pray for health & sleep adjustment as they acclimate to being 8 time zones away from home.
*Pray that Scott's guitar is found!

-J

p.s. Another band, Giants of Silence, is back in the states from two weeks in Mexico. We'll update later on their trip!

Stress

Wow, this whole journey is so exciting. We are blessed with opportunities to hang out with friends and invest in what is going on with them personally. Although it is very fun, it does come with stress. We have been very blessed with consistent appointments, but it takes a toll on your body and mind spiritually. Long hours and pouring a whole lot more of trust into God then we seem to be typically use to puts us in a place we are actually not familiar with.

I am relearning all about what it means to follow Jesus with 100% of my life. I know consciously I am giving it all I have, but he knows there are times I just get into a rut of confusion, frustration, and doubt. I can relate to Peter when Jesus asks him three times if he Loves him. Sometimes I don't get the big idea immediately.

We are working so hard, and have been blessed with this opportunity to serve God in being part of his great commission. Please pray for strength and wisdom throughout our daily routines.

-T

Praise & Prayer

Praises:

*I'm praising Jesus for the presidents and a four-day weekend from work. It is perfect timing to have these two extra days to finish unpacking and putting our place back to a more "normal" state.

*I'm praising Jesus for an bonus check that Tony got this week which can pay off half the amount we owe on the school loan! We have a goal to pay off the car & school loan by June...and didn't know how that was going to happen. Jesus is totally providing, though!

Prayer Requests:

*We have one appointment tonight, four tomorrow, and are in the midst of phone tag scheduling more for next week. Pray that we can clearly share our vision and passion with what we'll be doing with Keynote on our appointments. Pray that we can actually get a hold of people to schedule more appointments.

-J

Home Sweet Winter.

We rolled in about an hour and a half ago, unloaded things, and was pleasantly happy when we saw that there's really not a whole lot to unpack. It's certainly colder here than Florida, but it's certainly more like home. Tomorrow starts craziness until June. Tony will be back at Tylerworks, and I will be starting a full-time special ed. aide position at the middle school. We'll be doing an online seminary course [New Testament Survey] 5 hours each week. Lastly, we'll be doing 20 hours of Ministry Partner Development [MPD] to build up our support team so we can get on out to Keynote in Indy! Yep, that's a minimum of 65 hours each week. Pray for sanity!


-J

Ode to Daytona Beach. Courtesy of Jen McKinney.

On our way...

So, we're on our way home now. We're trying to drag the Florida sunshine and warmth with us...but it's not keeping up with us. We stopped in South Carolina last night to see Alisha and Pam. We played a sweet game of VCR Clue. Yes, VCR. If you ever are wondering what to buy me....well now you know. Today we're in North Carolina with Carl. He took us to this awesome BBQ place. Some of the seats in the place are inside a bus....so we ate in there. I wish I had my camera - it was great! We'll be heading for home bright and early tomorrow morning. Please be praying for our safety because we're suppose to be driving into some good old Ohio wintery mix of weather on the way back.

-J

Lighthouses & Tree Climbing.

We made it out to the Ponce de Leon Inlet lighthouse this week in our free time. The lighthouse is over 100 years old and is the tallest in Florida and the 2nd tallest in the nation. We didn't go up inside, but had fun looking from the outside and walking around the park.

-J

The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. It's way up there!

The trees grew in crazy ways in the park. Great for climbing!

...and hanging!

Big boat.

Down At HQ.

On Thursday, we spent the day at Campus Crusade's world headquarters over at Lake Hart [near Orlando]. We toured around all morning and had a payroll/benefits seminar in the afternoon. It was a lot bigger than I had pictured! We saw a lot of different departments and even Bill & Vonette Bright's offices! Here are some pictures from the adventure:

-J

One of the Lake Hart Buildings at Campus Crusade's Headquarters in Orlando.

Down the hall...

Yay!

Paul, Jen, & Aralyn and the other Lake Hart building.

Nick & Debbie & their Global Media Outreach display. Every time
someone logs on to the site, Google Earth pinpoints their location.
It was really cool to watch it move around across the world!

Introduction to Your Ministry Day.

The people here at NST will be going into a bunch of different Crusade ministries when they are at 100% with their support. There's us from keynote, campus staff, athletes in action, global media outreach, and more! Yesterday, we broke down into our groups and had a bit of an "introduction" to our ministry....just talking about vision, some logistics, and some question and answer.

We went to Orlando Studio's Island of Adventure. :) We did feel some pain for the other groups...back at the hotel...in the conference rooms...listening to lectures. After all, it was about 73 degrees and sunny the whole day.

We did chat about a lot of different things, and our questions were answered...so we were working a bit amidst the play! The Keynote office in Indy has a big family feel, so it was awesome to have a fun day like that to just hang out and get to know each other more.

I only have a few pictures....our HR director, Carole has the rest. There are some pretty funny pictures. I'll try to get them as soon as I can.

-J

Are we there yet? No.

Ohh, nice car!

Hurray! We're here!

The Hulk. I think that Tony & Dan are riding in the front row.

Aralyn wanted to ride the Hulk!

She's really laughing. I promise.

Last Day of Homework

I was thinking about taking a nap, but thought that I should update this thing since I found out last night that my parents love the Runyon's blog more than ours. :) We can't really compete, though. They have two adorable kids. We have a dog, though....but they do as well. We can't win. Tony's parents' place are very gracious to watch Moses while we're at training. They sent us some pictures of him......not destroying anything, which is a relief to hear!



Yesterday, we were walking to class, and Tony noticed that there was sand squishing out the front of his sandals each time he took a step. It looked pretty cool....like he was shooting sand out from his toes. Later that afternoon, he laid down on the bed and stretched his legs way above his head...all of a sudden, he jumps up and starts shaking his head and yelling: ahhh! ahhh! Evidentially all the sand hasn't made its way out of his sandals and poured into his eyes. I really hope that you can visualize that story. I wish it was on video - storytelling just does not do it justice. You just have to work with me and visualize this funny moment!

Here's a picture from our first day of classes....how appropriate to post it on the eve of our last day of classes:


We miss you all! We only have a little more than two weeks to go......and hopefully winter is done in Ohio when we get back! :)

-J

One Down - One to Go

We finished up our first week of classes yesterday. Next Friday will be our last day of classes and we have one final test next Monday [the other class is project-based]. I feel like I am in overload with knowledge. We're learning great things, but it's incredibly fast-paced. Pray that our minds retain this knowledge! This weekend we're going to be working on a project that's due next week, a little reading, and making some notecards for the test. I'm sure that doesn't sound like a great weekend, but we will be taking many study breaks...especially tomorrow, there's a Settlers of Catan tournament going all day tomorrow! :)

-J