All those sleepless nights

Hi Everybody!

Well, here i am, sleepless in L.A. again. I've been having a hard time sleeping at night lately. Now, i'm having a hard time falling asleep. I think it's partly due to excitement of the road ahead. We're about to journey back to Lake Charles and then on to our vacation in Canada and Washington/Idaho. So this has got my mind reeling. Also, i've gotta load that container starting tomorrow and i'm a bit nervous about it because i'm all alone and it's all up to me. Although in many cases, i'm glad to be alone because when i mess up (which i will) no one is around to see it :) Like today, i got a tire changed down the street at a mainly hispanic shop. They all spoke spanish and i felt a little foolish. I need to be more bold and try to put some of my 3 years of spanish from high school into action. But yeah, they changed the truck tire and i brought it back to the warehouse to put it back on the truck. When i was done reinstalling it, i stepped back from the truck and realized that i'd installed it the wrong way out. The large box truck looked like it had one "monster truck" wheel because it stuck out from the truck instead of being tucked away underneath it. I did have to get Dess to come and help me take it off and switch it around, so she's the only one who knows that i did it. Man i felt silly.

Honestly though, i do enjoy working alone. It gives me peace and a feeling of accomplishment because whatever i do in a day i know that i've done. Also, i get to be hands on with work again around here because there's no one to manage. I've been preparing pallets and cargo for the container to the Philippines, i replaced the tire on the truck, i've prepared and loaded some pallets into a container for Port Mercy and lots of other odds and ends. I'm having fun. One thing about working alone is that i've got time to think. Lately i've been finding that i've been getting attacked in my thoughts though. I've been having doubts, worries, frustrations and anxieties that i normally wouldn't. It keeps me praying and seeking out God during those times though.

I have had good times working with other people too you know. Just in case any of you are reading this blog and think i only like to work alone, it's not true. I've enjoyed working with people like Dan, Jason, Matt and others. I'd probably enjoy working with my Dad and brother too, but we don't have many opportunities for that these days. Work seems to be a good bonding experience for me. I enjoy learning from the knowledgeable and teaching the less knowledgeable.

I think i'm going to sign off for now and try to get to sleep again. I just gotta shut my brain down or something. Oh well, as long as i'm productive in my sleeplessness i guess it's all good.

signing off,

joel

Yeah Vacation Is almost here!!!

Hey Guys,
It has been too long!!! Too Long for Vacation coming, too long since seeing the family, too long since anything really.

Things in Los Angeles have been good but hard. I can see this is not going to be a cake walk like I thought it was going to be. But being an on fire for the Lord person for the past 4 years I have come to realize that the really good things GOd has for us are not easy to come by and the process, well as the bible puts it, a refining fire. YOu would think after being in one place for so long (example: Friend SHips) that you wouldn't have to go through a fire after soo much time. Yeah right I can see it coming now and even feel it these past 4 weeks. New enviorement + new people + new job = Fire. Didn't they teach you that in school.

SO yeah this is what I have always wanted to do since being part of the food minstry with Friend Ships. This is the big DOG. This is where the rubber meets the road. I am going to be in charge of the churches coming and getting food. Seeing if they are reaching the people, building the kingdom, and showing people CHrist. Praying with the churches. Making sure every group that receives food from us is prayed for. We are talking about having classes for those that don't know how to reach people for Christ with food. So this is what I have always wanted to do.

It is funny how God works because for so long when I was in the food ministry at Lake CHarles all I wanted to do was be apart of a huge food minstry. Every day I would think about it and kind of not be satisfied where I was at. But what happens BOOM!!!!! EXPLOSION . . .. I get satisfied where I am at, Thanking God where I am, and what does He do bring Joel and I to Los Angeles where I have always wanted to be. Funny how that works. But Praise GOd because He knows best.

So I am in the food ministry Joel is hands on in the warehouse shipping things to other countries for churches/organizations that want to help the poor or shipping items to Friend SHips in Lake Charles so that the warehouse can be fully on the food ministry.

So that is where we stand. But in the mean time Joel and I leave on vacation in a week and a half. We are so pumped. The awesome cool thing about this is that God is making the time ZOOOOOOOM by. I mean ZOOOMMMMMMMMM baby. Because Joel has to get a 40 foot container filled for the philippines by saturday. SO time is flying because we are on a schedule.

Yeah. SO this blog was kind of crazy because I am pumped what GOd is doing and where we are going to go for vacation.

Love you all. HOpe to hear from some of you who read our blog. Matt Craven you should at least comment once if you are still reading our blog. We would love to hear from any of you.

Blessings blessings from Christ,
Dess

Back in Business

Hi Everybody,

Well, you may not be checking out our blog as regularly as you used to because we haven't been posting much. We've been moved out to L.A. as a part of Friend Ships and the computer is really old and the web server wouldn't let us use blogger for complicated reasons. So, we finally realized we could use Internet Explorer to post our blogs, so we're back!!!

All is well in our lives. As i mentioned, we're in Los Angeles for a little while. We've been here for 3 weeks and we've got 1 more week to go. From there we will be road tripping back to Lake Charles and then flying out of Houston to Canada for our much deserved and longed for vacation. 4 weeks of Canadian bliss and then 3 weeks of more relaxing in Washington with Dess' family. How exciting is that??? Very exciting!!! We can't wait.

This week is going to be a busy one for Dess and i. We've got a lot of work to do around the warehouse, cleaning up and preparing for filling a container which will be sent to the Philipines. We've also got meetings and the usual day to day stuff to do. It's so cool to realize that we'll be on vacation within 2 weeks.

For anyone in Canada who may be checking this blog and would be interesting in seeing us, drop us an email or make a comment and we'll be sure to get in touch. Home sweet home.

Okay, well, i can't write long right now, i just wanted to touch base. We'll try to get more in depth in our blogging... but no promises :)

joel

OH Yeah we are here

Hey Guys.

We had an awesome adventure. It was off the hook. The only bad part is that our family wasn't too happy about what happened and we are so sorry that you were sad we were not there but as you heard we will be coming.

God was so awesome during the whole thing. He was there every step of the way. We could not have done the journey without him.

At 10:30 we made the decision to meet the ships in the canary island at 2pm we were heading for the airport in houston. Our flight left the US at 7pm and we were in London around 10:30 am. Then we met our connecting flight and went to the canary island. Our plane had problems so we were late because they gave us a new plane. Then we met the ship and no one but the captain, facility manager, and the facility manager wife knew that we were coming.

We suprised the whole ship. It was so nice because we were able to encourage them and be a breath of fresh air to all the crew.

It was so hard because Joel and I were on vacation mode but we had to switch to spiritual warfare mode. It was so hard. The enemy was really breathing down everyone's necks on the ship. But as the bible promises He that is in you is bigger than he that is in the world. And God was bigger than anything satan could throw at us. We had women prayer meetings everynight. WE would pray most nights but twice each woman brought one praise and worship song so we could "Get our praise on" The last night we prayed was new years eve and we prayed for our friends and family members that didnt know Jesus as their personal savior. It was so good. THere were so many tears of just crying out to God for those we loved.

THere is so much to tell but when we get in person we can tell you the whole story. But can I tell you how good God is. He brought us through every step of the way. Being out to sea was so pretty. The sunsets and rises or 360 degrees and the water was the color of deep deep blue. It is undescribable. Some people were having personal problems but GOd always gave Joel and I a word of encouragement for the person or someone else had a word of encouragement from the Lord. Isn't God sooooo good.

Well we love you. And miss you and can't wait to see you.
We have new photos check them out on our Flickr sight.

Blessings,
Dess

We're BACK!!!

Hi,

I want to let you know that Dess and i have returned. That's right, we're back in the U.S. from our adventure in the Canary Islands. We flew into Tenerife de Santa Cruz to join the Spirit of Grace on her return from Israel. It was amazing how fast it all took place. I want to make sure that you know how sorry we were that we had to drop all our holiday plans. I read my mom's blog and got her reaction over a couple of days of posts. I'm glad that you accepted it graciously. All of you who were put out because of this, we're sorry. But we know that it was God's plan and that we had to do it. It's exciting because we've booked a new flight for coming to Canada on February 17th. From there we'll fly to Washington/Idaho on the 17th of March. We're already looking forward to our "next" vacation although Dess and i have agreed to not count down each individual day. Instead we're going by weeks.

Well, it's late here and we haven't had a good nights sleep for quite some time. We've both been working the 12 to 4 watch, which means we work from noon to 4pm and from midnight to 4am every day. This was our sailing schedule. Since this is our first night back in port we actually get to sleep the whole night through!! Miss you and glad that we're back in touch.

peace

WOW and WE LOVE YOU!!!

Okay so this will be our last blog for a while.

At Ten Thirty Louisiana time, Joel and I were asked to go sail with the ship coming back from Isreal. They really need us and we jumped at the chance. So in 20 minutes we will be leaving for the airport to fly to the ship.

Our Vacation has been delayed which is really sad on one hand but because of what we are doing we are excited and will get the chance to see our families when we get back.

Prayer Requests:
1. That we can reschudule our vacation with the right timing and low fees
2. We will meet the ship in a timely manner with our luggage meeting us at the exact same time as we land in our destination
3. We will be an encouragment and a breath of fresh air with the Spirit of God to the crew .
4. We will stay in Praise and Worship of God as we go into this new Chapter
5. We won't forget anything
6. Hahaha We won't get sea sick.

We love you families and friends. We will see you in God's timing and not our own. The best part about this adventure is that it is God planned. To put our families at easy I will tell you my dream I had before the ship left for Israel

I dreamt that Sondra pulled me aside and told us how faithful Joel and I have been and that not matter what we would be on the Isreal Trip even if they have to fly us.

Isn't God so awesome to fulfill the dream He gave me. So we are totally in God's will and timing.
We love you guys can't wait to see you when we get back.
Our blessings to ya'll

To the ends of the earth with Christ,
Joel and Dess

The Past Few Weeks

These are the baby sisters.


Be afraid be very afraid.















They don't look so afraid














SO we had a fun night babysitting Elise and Nathaniel.

The Boys dressed up like Pirates and the girls were the Pirates Booty. (Booty is non your rear end) We were captured by the pirates. We had a blast while the parents were away.

A lot has happened since last we blogged. Joel and I did weekend duty two weekends ago. Which means you work all weekend so that you can cook and clean for the crew. You get days off for the work you do. Joel and I kept the days off so that the next weekend we could go with our Church's youth group to Galveston. The only probably is that the Monday after weekend duty Joel got his wisdom tooth out. So Joel wasn't able to work all week and was not able to attend the conference. But I had a blast with the kids. 19 teens went and 6 adults.

The speaker was awesome and the musical worship was off the hook. (Off the hook means it was awesome) There was about 10 other youth groups that came. On Saturday we had a ton of time to do what we wanted so I took a bunch of the kids down to the pool of our hotel and a group of us spent all afternoon swimming in the pool with beautiful weather. We stayed at the Hitlon on the seawall of Galveston. A uptown Hotel. I felt like a princess in a castle, it was wonderful.

At the end of the weekend the youth or adults could be baptised. There was only two that wanted to baptised which were from our Church. Brandy and Megan were batpised. It was amazing to be apart of that. I had such a blast at the confrence and I fell totally in love with the teens. There were times I wanted to beat them down but 99 percent of it I loved them to death. It was off the hook and it showed me a lot about myself and about how teens aren't as bad as I remember them. When I was a teen I was a punk and didn't want anything to do with God. These kids totally showed me the opposite. Yeah they had their ear stuck to a cell phone for a lot of the time and they hated turning them off their cell phones each service (we had 4 different services) But they totally had a willing and open heart toward the gospel which is so much more than I had as a teen.

I was also nicked name the chaperone of chaperones. There was one chaperone that I became close friends with that would turn on his cell phone during the services. So I kept him in line and gave him the evil eye. Yeah it worked, he didn't turn on his cell phone during the services for the rest of the time. He was like "What. They need to do what I say not what I do" So he made fun of me the rest of the time and called me Mother Teresa.

All in all it was fabulous and I totaly saw God through the whole thing. The best part of all was that I got to love on the kids like no other which is my favorite thing to do in the whole world. Love love love.

Well that is about it. I love ya'll

Oh I almost forgot 20 more days until Joel and I head north to see our families. We can't wait. We are so excited.

WE love you Butlers and Wendles. We'll see you soon.
Check ya'll later!!!