St. Louis

This summer my family was able to serve at the St. Louis mission trip. The past couple of summers we have been fortunate to serve in Denver and this year was our first time to minister in St. Louis. We go with Global Encounter Ministries and serve with dear friends the Caldwell family. We also join Donna, Matt & Lindsay and Matt and Mallory. Just a few family members shy of having our entire family on mission together.

This summer Lindsay and I helped Donna on the administrative end of the trip, Todd was lodging site coordinator for the Ferguson site in which about 300 students and leaders stayed for the week, Matt and Matt and the rest of the Springhill band led worship and Mallory was the trip photographer.

It was an incredible week of worship, ministering and catching up with friends on the mission field with us. Between the 2 lodging sites, First Ferguson and First Arnold, we had over 600 people on the field, with 18 ministry sites and ministered to about 1,200 children. We witnessed students and children making the decision to become followers of Jesus.

We also found some time to do some family time while in St. Louis. We were able to take the kids to the zoo.

I love this picture. Jadon is reading so well and enjoys reading everything. It was fun to watch him walk through and read about all the animals.

Some of their favorite animals we saw.

Pictures from the Arch. I am so glad we did this. I wasn't sure if we really needed to go up in it with the kids. I wondered if they would enjoy and appreciate it, but I am so glad we did. They loved it and thought is was amazing to look out the windows and see how far up we were.

Haven fell asleep on our way to the Arch.

I had never been to the City Museum. I loved it and if I could I have would have gone back the next day. The kids loved it as well. I don't have pictures of this part, but after we spent a couple hours inside we went outside to climb around and at one point we climbed up to the highest point to an airplane. We then climbed through a little wire circular thing to a tall slide to go down. When you are walking through this thing you can see the ground below and you are up very high. I was so proud of Haven and Jadon. Jadon went through no problems, Haven said a couple of times she didn't think she could do it, but kept going. When she made it across she was so proud. It was good watching her struggle with being frightened and working through it.

This was at the skateless skate park at the City Museum. We all had fun trying to run up the ramps and sliding down them. Here the kids (and Matt K.) are sliding down one of the tall ramps. Haven learned a lesson here, it is not a good idea to slide down concrete on your belly. She ended up with a concrete burn all down her stomach.

And finally Grant's Farm. We loved it and went at a perfect time, about 2 hours before closing. We didn't have the huge lines and the crowds around everything we wanted to do and see. The best part of the day for us and the kids was bottle feeding the goats and seeing the Clydesdale's.