Lessons on God's Will

I have learned so much about God's Will the past few weeks as I talked with men far more wise than I. I thought I would share some of the quotes, thoughts and Scriptures I have found of God's will with you.
1. We follow principles, not people/places. It is very important that we know these principles be Biblically based. We should always follow principles as we seek God's will for our lives. That means God has already told us to share the gospel, go to church, read His Word and pray. That is God's will no matter where where we find ourselves geographically. More than just blindly following what a man says, we ought to "search out the Scriptures whether those things are so".2. "God's will is revealed five minutes at a time." We need to be sure we're doing God's will

First Anniversary

To all of our loyal readers... Probably just my mom, mother in law and anyone else that may read these, I wanted to take a post to show you some pictures from our recent One Year Anniversary. Yep, that's right, she didn't kill me... yet. We made it 1 year!

If you remember, we stayed at the Fairmont in San Jose, CA for the night of our wedding. I wanted to make this anniversary special, but obviously on a tighter budget now (having a wife is really expensive!) :) So, I found that Dallas has a Fairmont. I booked a room and here is a little story of our trip.

So, upon arriving at the Fairmont Dallas, we checked in and got to our room. It was a little smaller than the Jr. Suite we had on our wedding night. I took a moment to tweet that it was not quite as high in the building as I would have liked and it was a little smaller than the room I remembered from San Jose.

Within 10 minutes our room phone rang and the lady on the other end introduced herself as the PR rep for the hotel. She said she saw my tweet and was wondering if we would mind switching to a better room. Of course we agreed and we moved from the 5th floor to the 18th floor. The new bathroom was as big as the old room! She finished by saying, "Happy anniversary, thanks for choosing the Fairmont Dallas." Check out the view!

Later that evening we decided to take a walk downtown to the west end. After dinner we were on our way back to the Fairmont when we saw this! It was so beautiful and very relaxing just wandering through this little area a block away from the Fairmont.

The next morning, the actually morning of our anniversary (3/6) we went out to get back in my Jeep... as you know, I'm always up for saving a buck here or there... This was one of those times when I should have splurged for valet. We parked in a public parking lot with no camera's and a sign posted, "not responsible for lost or damaged vehichles". That should have been my first clue. Here is a picture of my Jeep mirror... Only $80 worth of damage to each mirror! :) what a blessing huh?

After spending some time shopping and doing whatever we wanted (we can do that since it was "our" day) we went back home. It was our paper anniversary, so I got Steph a book and some other paper items, but this was "The Main Event". I had some "paper" set up to paint on, along with some paints, brushes, etc to do a little activity. It didn't quite work on the floor, by the fireplace, so I brought in the deck table and chairs. We spent the night painting and laughing and reminiscing of just one short year ago.

So, I'm not much of an artist, but that was my cup of coffee artwork. Stephanie's came out way better!

Here is my art savvy wife's picture. She did a great job.

I had to take a moment to tell everyone about our great fire that night. We have tried to have a good fire several times, but the wood here in Texas is so dense, that it is hard to get the wood started. We had such a good fire and it really heated up the whole house. We were so glad that we finally got the fire going, we had to share.

All in all, I can't believe that we were in Italy one year ago. We have had so many things happen in our lives in the last 365 days it is really incredible.

Las Vegas or Bust

What a great time we had while in Las Vegas, NV. We flew out in February to help the Gateway Baptist Church with their Missions Conference. Their theme was "Proving the Sincerity of Your Love". We led the music during the conference, preached to the teens and ate a lot of In-N-Out. Below are some of the pictures from our trip. Hope you enjoy.The infamous "U-Swirl" that I have read so much about on Twitter from @rach72892 which is that purple loving Ellis girl (Pastor's twin daughters - Rachel and Rebekah)
Here is Pastor Ellis. What a man of God. I don't know of any other Pastor with a heart as big as this man's. He is a lot of fun and doing a great job in Las Vegas.

This is a picture of the final night of the missions conference. Each member of the church held a candle representing the Gospel. We must all do our part to lighten the world.

Here was after each candle was lit in memory of a missionary the lights were turned off and each person blew out their candle showing that if we don't hold the Light high, we fail God. Powerful message.

No trip would be complete to the West Coast without a little In-N-Out... In our case, 4 times in 6 days. We actually went there twice the first day. :)
So, once again, these pictures are out of order, but this was the most amazing dish at the international Philippino dinner. Living in Texas, we don't get a lot of ethnic foods.... The food we miss the most is the food. We occasionally talk Aimee Jackson into giving us some, but Gateway Baptist has a few Philippino families and they made really good food. We loved it!

My wife, and the Ellis Twins practicing before the closing service for the song they sang. Stephanie had a great time singing in a group as she has not been able to do so lately here in Texas.
I had to put this picture in because this is Rachel and her "little friend" I can't even remember his name right now :) but I've known these girls since they were just little things, so of course I had to give this young man a hard time. It was one of the highlights of my trip... I don't think he or she enjoyed it all too much, but I did... :)
We got an afternoon off one day to do a little sight-seeing in Vegas. We decided that, since it was so close to our anniversary, in which we went to Venice and Rome, Italy, we had to go see The Venetian and Caesar's Palace. Here is a picture of us near the fake Rialto bridge. It was great fun to see how they pulled certain parts of Venice right into the strip of Las Vegas.
No trip would be complete unless ending on this note: In-N-Out (again). I talked Mrs. Ellis (the only one who evaded my picture taking) into taking us here once again on the way to the airport. We had a great time and sure love the Ellis family. What a wonderful time we had.