Joshua’s House

I’m leaving on a trip to Oregon soon.  So, I’ve decided to take the time between now, and when I get back off.  I’ll still be working some on Joshua’s House, but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear some more news before the 4th.

But, even though I will be taking a short furlow, I will not leave you now with no news at all. I have been in a few classes/meetings this week and things are looking positive as far as getting some more materials for Joshua’s House.  Horray!  I am really excited to see what I end up with.  New volunteers are still slowly trickling in, and that’s always exciting.

Some sad news is that the DVD I thought I would be able to use for Joshua’s House is a no go.  At least for now.  There are some copyright issues that I’m running into, but I’m not giving up on it yet.

The last bit of new is that I may be going through some major life changes that may affect Joshua’s House.  Don’t worry, I’m not about to stop working on this ministry - the goals, vision and mission will all stay the same.  The thing that would change would be the way the goals are reached.  Pray as God guides me though all of this.

May God bless you all!

I have been spending the past few days working on figuring out all this new sound equipment. I feeling somewhat confidant about the hardware (i.e. mixing board and mics), but the software is a little bit over my head. I was talking to someone at church who is quite familiar with the Cubase software, so he is going to meet with me on Tues or Wed to give me a crash course–Hooray!

Tomorrow I will be spending much of the day preparing for some Joshua’s House presentations that I have this week. I will be attending a graduate class to present Joshua’s House and to recruit some help. I’m really looking forward to it, but I have to admit I’m a bit nervous. Pray for me as I prepare for this presentation.

In the next few days I’m planning on having a dedication service for the equipment we have here at Joshua’s House. It is my prayer that it may always be used to bring glory and honor to Him.

That’s pretty much it for the news. I’ll keep you posted as more happens!

Today there is quite a bit of good news to share.  I have spent a lot of time this week working on getting things here at Joshua’s House more organized!  We now have an online project management system set up, the computer files are ordered in a usable way and I downloaded Picasa from Google to organize and manage images for the website.  Things feel way less out of control and that’s a good thing.

I have also been working on a presentation for a class I will be attending next week and the following week.  It’s a master’s level education class.  I am going to be sharing with them all about Joshua’s House.  Some of their assignments go really well with things that we need;  so after I present, the professor is going to encourage them to tailor their assignments a bit so that we can use them for Joshua’s House.  That’s so exciting!

But there’s still more!  Today I went to the post office to pick up all the new Joshua’s House recording equipment!  Yay!  I really have no idea what I’m doing, so I have a lot of reading ahead of  me and a lot to learn!  But I know that God will help me!

So, anyway, that’s all the news for today!  God is still blessing!

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Joshua’s House’s first big purchase to arrive in the mail. Our recording equipment is on the way! This is great! I talked to a few people who are in the audio business to make sure I would get what I needed without spending money on unnecessary features.

After I spend a little bit of time getting used to how to work all of the equipment, I can dive into Joshua’s House’s numerous audio projects! How exciting! Just so that you know what we got I’ve included links here to all of the stuff we got, and all of this for under $300 including shipping!

• The Mixer
• The mixer comes with a light version of Cubase audio software.
• Two Microphones V63M (along with the appropriate cables)
• Two Mic Stands
• Headphones
• Two Pop Filters (it’s the MPF-7)

So these are the new tools that Joshua’s House will soon receive to continue work to get the website up and running so kids can learn to build a close relationship with their Lord and Savior!

This time, I’m actually talking about my personal growth. Over the past few days God has really been challenging me to push forward and to trust in Him more with Joshua’s House. So, that’s what I’m trying to do. It is still a tough to figure out how to spend my time each day - do I work on the audio scripts? activity creation? stories? finding more volunteers? community service projects? research? fund raising? or any number of other things. As you can imagine, this list of all the Joshua’s House to do’s can get quite overwhelming at times. However with God leading, things will be okay!

One of the things I’m learning is that I shouldn’t wait for all of the circumstances to be just right. God calls us to act first, then He makes the rest work out alright. For example, before the battle of Jericho, the priests had to put their feet in the water before the Jordon split open for them to cross. (Joshua 3) It’s kind of a scary way to work things, but I really think God knows what He’s doing. If that’s the case shouldn’t I trust Him more?

One of the “scary” things I’m praying about doing is making Joshua’s House’s first big purchase. Most of the money we have received so far is strictly reserved for the non-profit filing and paperwork. However, we recently received a $200 donation that was to “be used wherever needed most.” This is just about the right amount to buy the recording equipment we need to start working on our audio material (i.e. Audio dramatization of NIV Bible, reading words/directions for non-readers, story audio). Anyway, if we can work on some of these things, it may be eaiser to help people understand Joshua’s House a little better. I just pray that God will guide and lead me.

Pray for my faith to strengthen. I’ll keep you posted on how things are going!

You’ve probably already figured this out by now, but I thought I would post about it anyway: Joshua’s House Blog has a new look and feel.  I hope you guys like it.  Give me some feedback and let me know!

So here I am, sitting in a wonderful inn on a fun farm.  This is where I’m staying with my husband’s family for our summer vacation.  Needless to say, I haven’t been doing as much work for Joshua’s House lately.  However, despite the vacation, I have been keeping up with volunteers and things of that nature.  The DVD arrived, and I have been looking diligently through all the pictures, and more things continue to pour in from volunteers.  All of this is quite exciting.  I’ll be on vacation until Thursday.  I’ll do my best to keep plugging away until that point.  Starting Friday, however, I’m going to hit things hard!

I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer as well!

Click here for printable PDF version. 

Take a look in a concordance with your family. See how many times the Bible talks about feasts, and more specifically the feast that Jesus is preparing for us in heaven when He comes to take us home. (Here are a couple passages to get you started: Luke 14:1-24, Matthew 22:1-14.)

After you and your family have discovered all about feasts in the Bible, it’s time to plan your own feast. Give everyone a specific role in preparing for the banquet. Then, give everyone in the family an opportunity to bring one person. They shouldn’t just pick someone they know really well; and like a lot, but each person should pick someone who needs encouragement, even if they barely know the person, or don’t really like them.

On the evening of the banquet, after you’ve eaten, spend time talking about the banquet God has prepared for us. Plan some fun activities too, like a skit or music or anything creative. Make sure to let your kids be involved in this process, and be sure to include things they are learning in church, family worships, or their own personal time with Jesus.

Be creative and have fun. Don’t forget to ask Jesus to guide you in this process every step of the way. Let us know how your banquet turned out and how your family made it uniquely theirs.

It has been quite exciting over the past couple of days as I have been receiving stories, pictures and all sorts of stuff from our volunteers.  This evening I am really eager to be receiving a DVD with all sorts of historically accurate photographs of Bible times people, and things.  This is going to be a HUGE help for Joshua’s House. This DVD was put together as a resource and I’m so happy to be able to use it for Joshua’s House!  Thank you to all who helped make it possible for Joshua’s House to use it from the person who told me about it to the people who tracked it down, even the people that created it (even though I do realize that it wasn’t created for Joshua’s House.  Thank you also to all my volunteers!  I am so excited to see how fast things are moving and I couldn’t do it without you!  Thanks for letting God use you all.

I am thrilled to see all the blessings God has in store for us as Joshua’s House continues to grow!