Moving On...

It seems like only yesterday that we celebrated our first monthly Life Church service at Forza. But it wasn't yesterday...it was September 13, 2009.

And it also seems like only yesterday that we had our first baptism service...but it was actually May 2, 2010.

However, it was only yesterday that we celebrated our last meeting in Forza.


Forza will forever be special to us. It will always be our beginning place, our starting point for publicly reaching out to the people of DuPont for Christ. We miss it already, but are so very excited about what God already has planned for our next chapter. This coming Sunday we will have our first service in our new location, Chloe Clark Elementary School. It will also be our first service with our expanded church family and I just can't wait!!

Here are a few images of our last Sunday gathering in Forza...


The last song...


The last welcome...


The last sermon...


The last Forza crowd...

And of course, I can't forget our last setup for Life Kids at the Rubber Room.


But all of this just means that next week, we'll have a lot of new "firsts" and that makes me excited!

"Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." Ephesians 3:20

Thanksgiving in Portland

Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving this year, we opted for an adventure in Portland! We went to Portland to celebrate our second anniversary in 2009 and loved it...so much that we decided to go back for another adventure. So Thursday morning, we headed for Oregon with our friends Mark and Tifaney.


Here we are in Portland!


But our first stop was for a Thanksgiving Dinner at Denny's. It felt just like we were in a holiday movie...the one where the turkey gets all burned up and the entire family has to go out to dinner instead =)

New York isn't the only place with a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade...

Portland Macy's has their own little version.






Enjoying the parade


Even Santa made it the parade!

And just for Mr. Darron, I took this picture...

That's a lot of Ralphie's! =)

After the parade, we did a little walking to Chinatown.


But it wasn't very exciting, so Derek started looking for a new place to check out.


Where to next, hon?

So we did a little walking and found this cool mural

It is a weird place, fun, but definitely strange...hmmm...maybe that's saying something about why we love it so much!


We jumped in line with some others for a delicious treat...


Portland's famous VooDoo Donuts!


The motto here is..."Good things come in pink boxes"


Look at all those crazy toppings!


And here's our very own VooDoo Dozen...when you order a VooDoo Dozen, they pick them for you, and we were quite pleased with their selection.

Once we had our donuts, we enjoyed a little Black Friday shopping around town. I especially enjoyed the shopping because Oregon is completely TAX-FREE! That's right, no tax on any purchase, yay! In the midst of our day we opted for a movie matinee and then onto a little more shopping.

Once night fell, we headed to Pioneer Square, along with 10,000 other people for the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.

Beautiful Christmas Tree


Here we are with the tree, although you can't see it very well.

You've probably heard about this tree ceremony...as it turns out, this ceremony was the target of a terrorist attack over a year in the making. Thankfully, the FBI caught on to it back in 2009 and had been stringing the plotter along. He had a van of explosives near the ceremony, but they had planted him with a fake detonator, and as soon as he attempted to set off the explosives, they arrested him. We had no idea that anything was going on until we heard it on the news back in our hotel room. Talk about scary! Every time I think about it, I get chills. Praise God that the attack was prevented and 10,000 plus lives were saved, including ours. We are so incredibly thankful!

Saturday morning, we were headed home and decided to take a little detour to stop at Multnomah Falls.

It is gorgeous!


I really wanted to make the short climb to the bridge, but it was freezing and I was getting wet from the wind blowing the falls as it was, so this was as close as I came. Maybe next time I'll get to make that climb.


And here we are with Mark and Tif for one last picture at the waterfall. I'm so glad we got a chance to spend a few days in Portland with such great friends...we have so much to be thankful for!

We Were All Snowed In

We woke up on Monday morning to this gorgeous winter, or should I say fall, wonderland...

Just look at that beautiful blanket of snow!


Then a sweet family of deer decided to join us

I have to say, I certainly didn't mind being stuck inside. This is what I saw to my left...


This is what I saw right in front of me...


And this is what I saw to my right...

Not a bad day, wouldn't you agree? =)

Veteran's Day from a Veteran's Wife

I copied this post that my friend Amanda wrote on her facebook page yesterday. Amanda is one of the very first gals I formed a friendship with after moving to Washington. In the short time that we've been here, we've gotten to experience some huge things in her life, like the birth of her third beautiful baby girl and her husband's deployment (those events happened simultaneously by the way). In fact, in the two years that we have lived here, her husband, Dan, has been gone for more than half of that time. Every single time I see Amanda, I am amazed. She's such an incredible military wife and mom to three beautiful girls. I am so thankful God has put her in my life and am blessed to call her "friend." She has shared her heart and thoughts on Veteran's day so beautifully that I had to share this with you.

In two hours it will be Veterans Day... I have been pondering all day the sacrifices my husband has made while serving our country. It seems like everyone knows someone serving in the military, or someone who has served, and someone's husband, brother, mother, sister, cousin, best friend's uncle, etc etc has been serving here and overseas... Everyone in this country is attached to someone in the military in some way it seems. That is a good thing, I believe. It should help people support the troops easier. It should encourage people to remember that living with the freedoms we have comes at a price.

Here are some of our prices paid... Dan has been serving for somewhere in the ballpark of 12 years now. Maybe 11, but either way, it's more than 10. It seems like some of the biggest moments in our lives have been moments we've had to celebrate apart. In almost seven years of marriage, he has not been home for at least half of it. He missed my college graduation (and my high school graduation, but that's an entirely different story!). Lucky for me, he WAS around for our wedding, but barely :) We had to reschedule it a couple times. He was gone when we found out we were expecting our first child. He missed Brooke's first birthday. He missed Brooke's third birthday. In fact, he missed her 4th and 5th birthday too. He missed Raelyn's first birthday. He missed her standing for the first time. When Raelyn turned two, Daddy was missing.

The sacrifices he's made keep going... When I had a miscarriage, he was over 1000 miles away training for deployment. When I found out I was pregnant with our third child (4th pregnancy for those of you keeping track), he was overseas. He missed Natalie's birth. He missed a lot of her firsts. He missed her first crawls, her first time pulling-up, her first tooth...

There are too many things that he has missed. I share this not to complain--not at all. I share this because he chose to make these sacrifices for me, for his girls, for you...and for every person in this nation. He chose to sacrifice what so many take for granted, to put his life on the line to help protect our country, and to do what so many other men and women in the military are also doing for this country, past and present.

In the heat of the "battle" (no pun intended), I sometimes wonder if the sacrifices are worth it. But...in the aftermath, and in the quiet moments of reflection, I know that yes, they are worth it. I am blessed to have a hard-working, sacrificial husband who provides for his family and allows me to stay home with our girls, even when most months it seems that there are more bills than money. He keeps sacrificing so we can keep living.

I love my veteran. I thank God for him and for all the other veterans and service members, and their families, who have experienced and are experiencing the costs of sacrifice. May we never take it for granted.

-Amanda Stryker Taylor

Our Canadian Road Trip

Last Friday we took a little road trip....


...to Vancouver, B.C. in Canada!

And we didn't go alone, we went with some great friends.

Let me introduce you to them...
Bottom Row: Jenna, Mykel, Keith, Mollie, Kyle, Terry
Top: Frank, Mark, Brad, Anndi, Bobby, Me, & Derek

One of my favorite things about going to Vancouver is that on the way, there's one of these...

...Chick-Fil-A!

The only Chick-Fil-A in the entire state of Washington is on the campus of Western Washington University, about 3 hours away from us, so I was so excited to get to make this little pit stop. My friend Mollie, who just moved here this summer from West Virginia, was just as happy as I was. Our group was split about 50/50 between Native Northwesterners and Southern transplants, Poor Northwesterners just can't truly appreciate the goodness that is Chick-Fil-A, but they were all good sports, ha! When we got to the food court on campus, it was right at lunch time, but there wasn't a single student in line for a yummy chicken sandwich...sad, I know. Derek and I were the first through the line and we overheard the girl working behind the counter's shock at 13 people being in her line, she couldn't believe it and started to panic a little. If only these students knew what a treasure they have...sigh....

Then we made our way across the border and spent a couple of hours exploring in downtown Vancouver.




It was a bit of a rainy day (surprise, surprise), so I sure was thankful to have brought my rain jacket along.

And I know Terry was glad to have hers, too! We called ourselves the happy rain jacket club since our jackets are so bright =)

But our jackets weren't the only spot of bright colors we got to see...

We spotted a rainbow! One of the things I love about the Northwest is that we see rainbows all the time. Sometimes it seems like the rain will never end, but then one of these little beauties appear and I'm reminded that it won't last forever after all.


Here's the other side of our rainbow =)

We got to see the Olympic Cauldron from the 2010 Winter Olympics

It really is much cooler in person. I remember seeing it on television and thinking it was rather unattractive, but now that I've actually seen it, I am much more impressed =)





Now, onto the real reason we went to Vancouver. It was the final stop of the Passion World Tour. Passion is a gathering targeting college-age students in an attempt to awaken a new generation to making the name of Jesus famous. Our night consisted of worship led by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, and David Crowder and a message from Passion founder Louie Giglio. It was really cool to be in Canada with 10,000+ others worshiping God in a culture that is so very far away from Him.




My favorite, David Crowder!


And here's the shot of our group again. I am so blessed to know each of them and to be able to call them friends, they really are incredible people!

We moved here two years ago with Kyle and Terry...ready to do our best to reach the Northwest for Jesus. We didn't have relationships or really even know anyone else in this state. We are so thankful that God has insulated us with such incredible people to do life together with here in Washington. I seriously cannot imagine being here without them, and these are just a few of the special people God has placed in our lives. I had no idea when we set out to move across the country away from everyone and everything we've known our entire lives that God had such amazing things in store for us. I'm so thankful He's got it all figured out! It makes me so excited to see what else He has planned!

"Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." Ephesians 3:20