Emma and Josie and Addie have grown up so much!<\/p>\n
Emma is in 1st<\/sup> grade.\u00a0 She turned 6 this January!\u00a0 I have a 6 year old, is this possible?\u00a0 By the grace of God she is still alive and seems to be mostly healthy.\u00a0 She has learned so much in school.\u00a0 She\u2019s reading little bits and writing stuff that blows my mind!\u00a0 She was so little not too long ago\u2026\u00a0 BEST of all Emma knows that she needs Jesus and that God sent Him to die for her sins because she can\u2019t pay for them herself.\u00a0 I think we\u2019re off to a good start\u2026<\/p>\n Josie is quite the 4 year old.\u00a0 She is ALWAYS busy playing dress-up or My Little Pony or \u201cI\u2019m Momma and you\u2019re Addie, now go get ready for a nap!\u201d\u00a0 She has officially decided that \u201cvacations\u201d are the coolest things in the world.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll ever be able to top last summer\u2019s trip with the Munden\u2019s\u2026\u00a0 The BEST part of this year in Josie\u2019s life (by far, whether she realizes this or not) is the fact that JoJo knows that she is a little sinner who needs Jesus.\u00a0 She knows that He died so she didn\u2019t have to, and that it is hard to obey.<\/p>\n Addie, has been a little ball of sunshine and fun!\u00a0 She is at that point where everything is VERY new.\u00a0 She walks, she talks, she pinches her older sisters, and she is OFFICIALLY potty- trained.\u00a0 Also, she has blond curly? hair\u2026 it\u2019s awesome!\u00a0 She has had a big year too.\u00a0 3 tubes (in 2 ears, you do the math\u2026) She broke an impossible allergy to dairy and eggs (we blame God for fixing that) and has what appear to be OCD tendencies, which definitely promise to be fun later in life\u2026 You and I should still keep praying for this little girl to be able to understand enough English for us to be able to communicate to her who the really important Person in her life will be.<\/p>\n Josh and Tamara have had some pretty crazy times.\u00a0 Our ministry \u201cstyle\u201d lends itself to near insanity fairly regularly.\u00a0 As you have noticed by the lack of updates from us, we don\u2019t really seem to have much time to sit and type up notes.\u00a0 We realize that this is a deplorable practice and want to rectify it.\u00a0 Honestly, we do\u2026<\/p>\n Tamara is absolutely AMAZING!\u00a0 I am beginning to realize that there truly is NO way I could be involved in this ministry without this woman by my side.\u00a0 She has proven herself of immeasurable worth over and over again in her ability to pick up the slack where I have left off, her flexibility as I make mistakes as a husband, in ministry, and she is the mother of my 3 girls.\u00a0 All three of whom are healthy and wear clean clothes and generally smell really nice.<\/p>\n Tamara\u2019 s primary role in the ministry here is keeping me in the ministry here.\u00a0 Most of you reading this 1) have been married long enough to know that that is a big deal and 2) know me well enough to know that she stays pretty busy in doing so.<\/p>\n Since we have already shown that she has no \u201cspare time,\u201d I won\u2019t glibly throw that phrase out, and instead say, \u201cTamara manages to spend about 15 hours a week in the school office, managing the student database, and handling transcript requests along with more minute details that I doubt that I\u2019d even recognize if they bit me in the face, under the eye\u2026\u201d\u00a0 She also manages to be involved in the youth group ministry at Cascades Baptist Church as Sr. High small groups leader.\u00a0 She really enjoys this and has seen God work some really cool things out in those girls\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n Josh\u2019s primary role in the ministry here is in the Business Office (accounts payable clerk) which in itself should bring a smile to your face as you imagine Josh counting, the necessary proverbial beans for 180 students and 40 or so staff as well as the operational expenses required to keep a building of this size running.\u00a0 He is constantly reminded that the Lord uses the foolish things, and the cracked pots, and the timid to do His work for His glory.\u00a0 He is also very glad that God gave an amazing brain to the guy who invented computer based accounting\u2026<\/p>\n Josh\u2019s \u201csecondary role\u201d in the ministry here is the one that allows him to keep in contact with the students (read \u2018future potential tribal church planters\u2019) who are what really drew us back to Jackson, MI instead of Papua New Guinea.\u00a0 Josh (with Tamara, too) is the Campus Life Coordinator, we get to facilitate and (you guessed it) coordinate activities that foster student\/staff involvement.\u00a0 Strangely enough, students from all over struggle with the idea that teachers and other staff are in Jackson, MI because they want to be able to invest in those future potential tribal church planters.\u00a0 Our ministry here is to design events that encourage that revelation and the ensuing relationship.<\/p>\n What Tamara and I really enjoy however is the evenings.\u00a0 We have a policy that goes like this, \u201cIf the door is unlocked, come on in.\u00a0 If it\u2019s locked and you NEED us, give us a call.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What this looks like practically is that we have students at our house 5 out of 7 nights a week; doing homework, talking about classes, crying over broken relationships, watching movies, playing games, eating dinner, baking cheesecakes, you get the picture\u2026\u00a0 We question our mental stability most evenings after curfew comes around, but as the semester closes and students head back to their \u201cother\u201d homes, we are reminded why we do this to ourselves.\u00a0 We have been allowed the privilege of making some incredible friendships with students that we could not have known before they arrived, students who needed to see that ministry happens in the context of relationships, which are (I believe) most truly represented in real life.\u00a0 \u201cWelcome to the crazy that is my life in ministry with my family and the knowledge that every day some tribal guy somewhere is dying without ever having heard that there is a JESUS WHO DIED FOR HIM!\u201d\u00a0 \u201cCome on in and figure out how you can be involved in reaching that guy\u2026\u201d \u00a0THAT is what we do.<\/p>\n So, that\u2019s the latest from us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emma and Josie and Addie have grown up so much! Emma is in 1st grade.\u00a0 She turned 6 this January!\u00a0 I have a 6 year old, is this possible?\u00a0 By the grace of God she is still alive and seems to be mostly healthy.\u00a0 She has learned so much in school.\u00a0 She\u2019s reading little bits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-family","7":"category-ministry","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joshua-mathew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}