to HIM be the glory

Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T10:01:00.000-05:00

Many of our friends have tried to come up with a good spin on Valentine's Day for their whole families to celebrate. This year we are trying one of our own!

We decided to think of Valentine's Day this year as an opportunity to encourage the ones we love by thanking God and them for the example of Godly character that they live out each day. We thank God and Pops for his example of service and leadership. He is very committed to his job because he knows that it is a way that God has called him to serve our family by providing financially for us. He is equally committed to spending time reading the Bible with us and practicing Bible memory verses with us. We thank God and Meme for her generosity. She loves to give us special treats and take us out to eat. We thank God and Nana and Poppy for investing time in us. They love to read to us and play with us at their house. We thank God and Abby for her hospitality because she lets us play with her in her room. We are thankful for many other special people in our lives. God has really and truly blessed us.

Happy Valentine's day to all our loved ones!

Lesson: Learned

2012-02-13T13:12:00.002-05:00

Our verse for last week's challenge is from Romans chapter 5. It says, "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Although our temporary experience of mild hunger fails in comparison to what much of the world experiences as suffering, we prayed throughout the week that the Lord would use our experience this week to produce in us endurance, Godly character, and hope.

Energy levels ran low all week and irritability ran high across the board in the Carroll family.

We struggled to remember to ration certain items, especially milk. Lily got close to the bottom of her soy milk after 3 and half days which is when I realized I needed to be giving her more water to make the soy milk last the whole week. Somehow it still didn't connect that I should be doing the same with the cow's milk that the rest of us drink and I had to start cutting back on the use of that after 4 days. We did make it through the week without running out of any particular item. In fact we had a few items that we didn't even touch from our shopping trip! Our adjusted total for the week came to $45.31. We ate oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, grilled cheese and apple slices for lunch, and soup for dinner that was made of chicken, rice, and some frozen veggies. We gave up snacks and desserts (which in our house is usually some kind of fruit) and stuck to smaller portions sizes so that we would have enough. On our last day we got to eat pasta and tomato sauce which was a nice change of pace after eating the same things all week.

So much of the weekly ministry that we do has some kind of food component. Sean had lunch with our pastor one day. There was food at our small group bible study and Friday night youth group. We do breakfast with an elderly women who has become family to us each week. We also usually have a big family dinner with extended family members weekly. I was impressed that on a normal week all the extra bits of food is just part of the routine and normally goes unnoticed. I'm still not entirely sure to make of it. Shouldn't we be more conscience to not waste things that are such precious comedies in other places? What can we really do to help people who don't get three meals a day, let alone snacks and dessert? These are just a few of the questions that are getting bounced around here at the Carroll house after accepting this $33 grocery bill challenge.

We do want to praise the Lord for working in us. We did see our kids grow in endurance this week. It was a very difficult challenge for them but we are still confident that God will use it to teach us more and more!

Please also check back with our friends the Straleys and here what they learned through their week long challenge experience.

Challenge: Accepted

2012-02-06T11:32:00.002-05:00

Our dear friends, the Straleys recently put out a challenge that you can read about on their blog. They are missionaries living in the Dominican Republic and they have challenged their blog readers, the majority of whom are their family and friends living in the US, to experience a tiny bit of life as a Dominican by spending only $33 for one week on groceries. Please do take the time to read about the challenge so you can understand their hearts in putting this challenge out there. Just click on their name in the first sentence of this post!

We eagerly accepted this challenge because we would love to gain some perspective and learn whatever lesson God has intended for us. Today I attempted to shop on the alloted $33 budget. I came home with a gallon of milk, a half gallon of soy milk, a box of cherrioes, some rice and beans, oatmeal, apples, bananas, pasta, one can of tomatoe sauce, frozen mixed vegetables, some chicken, and a dozen eggs. These items seemed like the bear essentials that would get us through a week. My total bill came to $52.60. Well over the challenge price. I'm not disappointed. I am excited to see what lessons we learn this week, it will still be a challenge.

Sean suggested we try the challenge again next month. In fact he suggested we try again each month until we really see what its like to live on $33 a week for groceries. Please join me in praying that we would keep our hearts and minds open to hearing from God on just how blessed we are to live here in the US with such vast resources, with so many family to support us, with so many opportunities to make our lives better. God is good and he is faithful to answer our prayers so expect to hear back from us soon on what we learned!

Give Thanks

2011-11-25T14:00:00.001-05:00

    Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name;
        make known his deeds among the peoples!
    Sing to him, sing praises to him;
        tell of all his wondrous works!
    Glory in his holy name;
        let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!
(Psalm 105:1-3 ESV)

We have way too much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! God is good and has showered us with blessings! One thing that I am particularly grateful for this year is that God has always been faithful to bless us for following his will for our lives. He has asked us to do some things that don't always make the most logical sense. He has also shown us each time how doing his will makes plenty of eternal sense!

The Lord led Sean and I to get married at a younger age than most of the world gets married these days. After getting engaged, many people suggested that we wait to get married at least until we had both finished college. This advice still makes a lot of logical sense. If we waited until we were finished college we would have been far less busy as a newly married couple. We also would have had the opportunity to have jobs that were supported by our degrees and we would have therefore been much more financially secure. Somehow we just knew that waiting was not right for us. We have now been married for 6+ years. These six years haven't been easy but the Lord has begun to teach us how to love each other in a way that honors and glorifies Him and at the same time allows each of us to feel more satisfied and secure in our love for each other. This has been a huge, challenging blessing to learn and pursue. I am so grateful that God has taught us this and that we know have so much more time to learn and grow in our love for the Lord and each other!

God also led us to start a family at a much younger age than most of the world starts a family these days. We were once again advised by many people to wait til we had a chance to work and pay off debt and be more financially stable before we started this next phase of life. This advice also made a lot of logical sense. But again we felt that this just wouldn't be right for us. I felt so blessed to welcome my twin boys into the world at the young age of 22! It has not been easy to do this so young. Many of my friends still haven't started having babies and we are now on Carroll Baby number 4! We have been overjoyed to pursue raising our kids in a way that honors and glorifies God. We have much to learn but we keep pursuing this lesson as well.

2 years ago the Lord led us to take our 18 months old twins on a missions trip to Peru with us. Many people didn't understand why we would want to bring our children to a third world country with us. It didn't make a lot of logical sense. But by the Lord's grace we were able to bring them with us and have felt so blessed by that time serving in missions together. We had unique opportunities there to connect with the people we meant. It wasn't easy. There were definite bumps in the road. But the Lord blessed us for responding to His call with an enthusiastic yes!

There are many more adventures in store for this Carroll Family. We have been practicing listening to the Lord and doing what he says. I don't know where he will lead us next but I pray that we will again respond with an enthusiastic yes to whatever the Lord would call us to do and wherever the Lord would call us to go!

So, this thanksgiving, I am grateful for my wonderful husband who has been by my side learning each lesson along the way, for my beautiful children who are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of another sibling with us, for the new baby that God is knitting together in my belly, and for the eternal perspective that God has given me to seek first his kingdom even if it doesn't make the most logical or worldly sense. Thank you Lord!

Family Photos- October 2011

2011-10-27T19:40:00.000-04:00

www.hbphotography.smugmug.com

Click on "Customer Portraits"

Many, many thanks to my dear friend Heather for her wonderful work.