In early September, Judy and I (along with our son and all of our pets) will be moving 10 hours north to Houghton, MI.  We have accepted a pastoral call in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Our assignment will include pastorship of a small church in Houghton, two companies near the area, and the establishment of a campus ministry at Michigan Technical University.
Although we are very honored by the call and will enjoy this new line of ministry, we are also hesitant to leave our friends and colleagues at CAMPUS.  This year promises to be one of the best years for CAMPUS with a great Missionary Training Program, a revived student group, and a more dedicated staff.  We’ll miss being a part of it all.
On Thursday we will meet with the conference office to discuss our transition which will start in a couple of weeks and will go through November.  CAMPUS is also working out the final details to get Pastor Steven Conway and his wife from NJ/NY to replace our current position.
For those living in Ontario, we’ll be your neighbors separated only by Lake Superior.  Same thing for those in MN.  We’ll probably be closer to your conference office than to ours.  We are in the process of getting rid of our cars to buy one with 4WD along with a snowmobile.  They get close to 300 inches of snow in a year sometimes.
Make plans to visit us!  Especially in the winter.  Our new place will have it’s own sauna for Andy and Dave 🙂
There are snowmobile trails with campsites along the way.  So we’ll be our own vacation land…call us Little Maine.  And in the summer…Scuba Diving.  You can even preach at our (little) church…es 🙂
CMX is the airport code.  I know some of you are already looking into getting tickets to come and visit!
Keep us in your prayers, as it may be a difficult experience finding out who our friends REALLY are (the ones that visit us way up there). 

We may be going there very soon…

(His face expresses our sentiments exactly…)

We’ll update by the end of this week.  Pray for us!

Last Sabbath, July 30th, 2006, our Alanna got rebaptized in the Jordan River (in Petoskey, MI).  It was preceded by a beautiful testimony time where Alanna shared her story, and family and friends shared tributes/exhortations.  What a story of conversion and recommitment!  I’m sure all who were there were touched and inspired…

We love you and are praying for you, Alanna!

Grandpa Pipim and the baby…can you see the resemblance?

A snapshot of what happens during feedings…

“I’m still hungry…”

“…I’m waiting…and nothing’s coming out of my thumb.”

“I may have to resort to eatting the scraps from my bib…Momma, will you hurry up and feed me, please?”

~After eating, nothing beats a bottle of refreshing milk.~

“That was great…I think I wanna knock out…right…here….”

Since Imanuel turned 4 months (July 4th, 2006), we began mixing rice
cereal into his bottle for one meal a day.  We did that for about
3 weeks and then decided it was time to add another meal.  We did
that for a couple days and quickly found out that the baby was getting
seriously constipated.  So, a couple days ago, on July 29th, we
started the baby on 1 meal vegetable and 1 meal rice cereal.  It’s
worked out great. 
The baby loves eating food from a spoon!  The only times he gets upset is when I don’t feed him quickly enough!  I’ll try to post more pictures later, but here’s one to enjoy:

As for the rest of our lives, God is blessing also.  I’ve picked up part-time work with CAMPUS and GYC as their “administrative assistant”.  Believe it or not, that’s been fun.  I bring the baby along with me wherever I go and he’s been adjusting well.  I enjoy multi-tasking (being a teacher and all…) and so it works out great.  We’ve rearranged the entire CAMPUS office and we’ve also set up a GYC office in one of the rooms.  You guys will have to come see it sometime.  Very exciting.  🙂
On another note, today, for the first time in my life, colporteurs came to my door!!!!  Actually, it was kinda set up, but it was still exciting!  I was taking my jog/walk around my neighborhood with the baby & puppy when I see Teddy pull up next to me.  He’s the magabook leader for the group that’s in Ann Arbor this summer.  They were doing our territory so I told him to have some students stop by and I’d buy some books.  Sure enough, 2 of them came later that evening.  It was Alexandra and another boy.  They apparently were the highest sellers so they got to come canvass our house.  🙂  I got the 3 magabooks that I didn’t have (“Angels Among Us”, “Plants that Heal”, and “Foods that Heal”) and gave them both a donation.  It was so super-hot and humid that their shirts were like soaked through with sweat!  Poor kids.  They are working so hard that I didn’t even ask them to canvass me.    I’m so glad we got a magabook program in Ann Arbor.  Last year, Israel and I had prayed that God would give us an opportunity to minister to our neighborhood.  We’re so thankful that they came!
Well, I’d better hit the sack.  Israel left for ASi today (in Dallas, TX) so for the next few days, I’ll be taking on the baby, the zoo, and the house…oh yeah, and work!    But, God will get me through it…He always does.  (I think I’ll ask my mom to come over…)