We had a great time at our Mission Conference. It was tremendously encouraging and also challenging. James Zenker was the speaker, and he brought some great messages. Josiah and Jonathan did a great job singing in the choir. We were able to be in the parade of nations representing the country of Brazil. This picture shows Josiah with a few of the other children who were part of the parade of nations. It was neat to see the many nationalities in our church.

We left our conference and headed to New Hampshire. We arrived there Thursday evening after a very long trip. We enjoyed being a part of the conference at Victory Baptist Church in Londonderry, NH. The church people were very kind to us and we enjoyed seeing some friends we hadn't seen in a long time, and also making new friends.

We were supposed to leave there early Monday morning and travel about 12 hours. Late Sunday night Judson got sick, and we were up most of the night with him. We still left pretty early, and our 12 hour trip became somewhat longer, but we made it. We had a meeting in Illinois, so we stopped by to spend the night with my parents. It was nice to see them even for just a short time. Unfortunately, we seem to have shared our germs with them, so they are still recovering from our visit. (Sorry Mom and Dad-Hope you are feeling better.)

We were supposed to be leaving tomorrow for a conference in Alabama, but decided it would be better to wait until we are all healthy. If we are able, we will go on Monday instead.

I leave you with a video clip of the boys' choir singing in church. Jonathan is right in the front row. Josiah is up and to the right of Jonathan in the row second from the top.

I've Been Tagged

Shannon tagged me, so here are seven random things about me!

1. My middle name is Noel, but not because I was born near Christmas (I was born in July). My dad’s middle name is Leon. Noel is Leon backwards!

2. I am notorious as a vicious hide and seek player. (There are two stories that go with this.)

My grandpa lived in an apartment above my dad’s store. When my mom went to work with my dad, I would go upstairs and stay with Grandpa. I was probably about three years old at the time, we would play hide and seek. I always giggled and easily gave myself away. One day, however I remained very quiet and still and my Grandpa couldn’t find me anywhere. He called and called, but I didn’t give up! He began to panic and went downstairs to get my parents. They finally found me, and Grandpa was not too happy with me. I don’t think we played that game anymore!

When I was a little older I was playing outside at our house with my brother and two of my cousins (who were all about 4 years older than me). It was my turn to “seek” so the boys all went and hid. I then decided I would go inside and have a piece of pie. Quite some time later, when I never found them, they finally came looking for me and found me inside having a great time. They probably didn’t let me play with them again.

3. On the first day of first grade, my teacher put me on the wrong school bus to go home. I wondered why I didn’t recognize anyone, and why they were only dropping kids off in town, when I lived out in the country. The driver didn’t realize it until he had finished his route, and there I sat! By that time my brother and sister had gotten off the bus at home without me, and my mother was frantically trying to figure out where I was! Several calls were made and I arrived home safe and sound.

4. In college, some girls in my dorm gave me a fish as a present. We named him Zebedee. We weren’t supposed to have pets, but my fish was nice and quiet, and he lived in my room for a year, and no one knew he was there! (Shhh…don’t tell on me!)

5. I met Jeremy while we were both playing in the orchestra during college. I didn’t even bring my flute to college with me, but Mr. Yingling found out that I played, and “strongly encouraged” me to have my mom send it to me. The rest is history!

6. Jeremy and I took a trip to Brazil to visit his parents the summer before we got married, and he proposed while we were there, but it almost didn’t happen! When we arrived in Brazil, two of our suitcases didn’t arrive with us. One of them came a few days later, and thankfully that is the one that had the ring in it, because the other suitcase never came and was never located!

7. On our first anniversary we spent a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN. We went tubing for the first time, and I got sunburned so badly that I got physically ill, and couldn’t hardly move. I was out of work for a week, but I did not enjoy my week off!

An Update on our Busy Life!

Since our last post, we had a meeting at Faithway Baptist Church in Leesburg, VA which just began in March of this year. Jeremy spent time helping the pastor back in February before they had their first service. It was great to see some of the people he invited then, still faithfully attending the church. It's exciting to be around a new and growing work.

We had a great time this last weekend in southern Georgia. We spent Sunday evening in Thomasville, GA at the Victory Baptist Church. We were made to feel very welcome and enjoyed visiting the church.

Now we are looking forward to being a part of our mission conference here at our home church which begins with our mission banquet on Saturday. We are praying that the Lord will give us a very special meeting. On Monday evening (10/20), the preschool choir will be singing in the service. Josiah and and Jonathan are both singing in that choir. Jonathan is very excited about it as this will be his first time to sing in "big church." The services will be broadcast live on templebaptistchurch.com so if you can, tune in and watch them sing! The service will begin at 7:30 pm Eastern time, and the choirs usually sing near the beginning of the service. It's always fun to watch them sing. You never know what's going to happen!

Washington DC

This is definitely the longest post in the history of this blog, but please bear with me! There is much to share!

Last week while we were in Woodbridge, we stayed with a church family, the Waldschmidts, and Mr. Waldschmidt was kind enough to take us into Washington D.C. on Saturday and give us a tour. We never would have found our way around if we hadn't had such a good tour guide!

The Capital Building

Library of Congress

The Supreme Court Building

We parked and walked to the Lincoln Memorial and from there around the war memorials. Josiah and I counted the steps from the top of the Lincoln Memorial down to the reflecting pool...87 in all!

Another benefit to a personal tour guide was that we all got to be in the pictures!

Josiah found a friend

Jeremy got creative with his photography while we were at the Vietnam Wall. In this first picture he was just taking pictures of the names, but after we left I was looking at the pictures and realized that right in the center is the name Ronald R King. For those of you who don't know, my dad's name is Ronald King! Of course this is not him, although he did serve in the army during the Vietnam War, but never was sent overseas. I thought it was kind of neat that this name happened to end up in the picture!








I really enjoyed visiting the World War II Memorial. This was not here the last time that I was in Washington DC many years ago. It was moving to see some older gentlemen there and know that they probably served in WWII, or were very close to some who did.

This is looking at the memorial from the top of the Washington Monument

There was a pillar like this with each state inscribed to honor

the soldiers who served from that state. My grandfather served
in WWII and he was from Illinois.

This large column represents the battles fought in the Pacific.
There is also one for the Atlantic. Under these columns specific
areas where battles where fought are inscribed.

There are 4000 stars like these to represent the more
than 400,000 Americans who died in WWII.

The Korean War Memorial has a wall similar to the Vietnam wall, but it is much smaller and instead of names it has the faces of soldiers who died in the war. There are also some statues of soldiers.





Thursday we had a free day and wanted to do something fun as a family, so we decided to go back into Washington DC. We felt like we knew our way around enough to brave it on our own!
We started at the Washington Monument. We wanted to go up to the top, but we didn't have the time earlier. It was very cold and windy as we waited in line, but we really enjoyed it. The monument is 555 feet tall. The elevator ride to the top takes only 70 seconds.

The view from the top is spectacular!

After that we went to the National Archives. It's hard to believe you are looking at the actual Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. You can't get many good pictures inside because you can't use a flash.




OK, I know this isn't a really good picture, but I wanted to try to get a picture of this portrait of the signers of the Constitution. There is a plaque that tells you who each person is. The man to George Washington's left in the forefront is Rufus King! I must be related! You can see him a little better in the second picture. He is the only bald man in the picture, so he must be a part of my family!



Next we visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The boys liked looking at all the animals. We didn't have alot of time to spend here, so we didn't see it all. I was a little disappointed that everything I read promoted evolution (although I probably should have expected that.)

I think this was the boys' favorite thing. They picked out Nemo and Dory right away!

And this was my favorite thing!! The Hope Diamond...over 45 carats....WOW!

It was a full day, but we enjoyed it and the kids did great. We definitely got our exercise! I am convinced that you could easily spend a week or more going through all the museums and seeing everything. I hope that someday when the kids are bigger we will have another opportunity to visit again.

National Museum of the Marine Corps

This is the National Museum of the Marine Corps. We were able to visit here one of the days we spent in Woodbridge, VA for the mission conference of the Heritage Baptist Church. We only had a few hours, but we could have easily spent the day here. There was much to see, and it was very interesting. I love to visit places that stir up your patriotic emotions!

This painting was in the art gallery of the museum. It caught my attention, and I stood and looked at it for a while. I could just imagine what was being said.

This is the actual flag that was raised at Iwo Jima.

This was a replica of the famous Iwo Jima statue...but this one was made of legos!

Here's our little tank next to a big tank!

We didn't know it when we arrived, but the Silent Drill Team was performing at the museum, so we were able to watch them. It was amazing! I had never seen them before. I put a video of it at the bottom of this post, so check it out! It was cool and raining, but we didn't mind standing in the rain to watch them for a little while.

When their leader drew his sword, it got Josiah's attention. He asked me, "If they mess up is he going to kill them with his sword?"


Afterwards, we were able to pose with a few of the Marines for a picture. The boys liked the guns!

High fives from Judson!

There was also a Marine band performing. We enjoyed listening to them for a while.

We are proud of our country, and so thankful for everyone who has served our country. God bless America!