Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!



Thanksgiving is just the start.
Give thanks to the Lord our Savior for giving His life for us.
Enjoy the time with loved ones, for you will never get the time back.
Appreciate the gifts that God gives us daily.
And love, as He loves us.

My Baptism Post

You've seen these before.
The excitement

The tears

The emotion

The joy

The proclamation

But I treasure each baptism I shoot, for each time it's new people making a statement before all that they choose to follow Jesus Christ. And that is cool. This baptism just happened to take place at lifechurch's youth group, called Switch (hence all the kids in the pool and background). I started serving at Switch a couple months ago, and was really excited about this baptism. Because although you've seen these emotions before, you now get to see them on me! Instead of using all my excuses and staying behind the lens, I decided to make this my baptism! I wanted no one other than my sweet husband to baptize me, and it was a special moment indeed. I was the only adult to be baptized, and the crowd around the pool was exciting (something that just doesn't happen on a Sunday morning..) Here are the photos as captured by John Harms.
My excitement and tears, joy and emotion.









This photo was captured by summer, and I absolutely adore it.
1. It is full of emotion. 2. It is shot by my best friend who rearranged her schedule last minute *I understand I didn't put the word out soon enough, sorry... to come to my baptism.

These are two of the girls in my switch group who also got baptized.

I love this man. He is so supportive of me in every way.
And my love, summer dawn :c)


Here's a video captured on Ray's phone...

Thank you God, for being the merciful and forgiving God that you are. Thank you for loving us so fully. Lord, may I be a light to others, and share your love with all..

The Final Ghana Post

Allright, this should be my final post on our Ghana trip! Thank you for staying with me through it all (they are super long posts!), but besides sharing these pics with all of you, I'm also using this blog as a journal for me to look back on, so I include details I want to remember :c)

I'm actually starting this last post with the very first picture of the trip. We had just landed in Accra, and we had to get off the plane with portable stairs and walk into the airport. I pulled out my camera for a picture of the Akwabaa sign (welcome) and realized I got this- a foggy looking picture- due to the humidity! I thought it might be rough the whole trip, but we never cooled down enough for it to happen again :c)

This explains all the humidity! This beach is in Accra, but wasn't very busy except a few tourists..

I like the horse :c)

A good sign

This was a chruch revival that went on several nights while we were there.

Here's Ray reading the Word in the backyard with the chickens and a breeze. Because of all the difficulty in getting around town, we stayed home about every other day, which made for some good reading time.

I thought this was funny, because even though there was a more modern broom with a handle at the house, everyone still preferred this little palm tree one!

How homey does a clothes line feel?

I actually got to do my laundry in buckets and hang on the clothes line, but with my luck, it started to rain as I was washing (then I apparently didn't ring them out well enough, because it rained on them while they were on the line as well..)

I learned 2 things about chickens-they have a funny stance in the rain, and they don't just crow at dawn. They start at midnight and don't stop until they go to bed at 6pm.

But the reason I had to do laundry in the first place is because I basically ate dirt when I fell on one of my runs.... yeah, I'm that good.

And this picture is sad. Why? Because Ray and I played Spider solitaire every night (after we got electricity, that is).. and we started competing on who could win in the least amount of moves.. yep, the coolness just oozes out of me.

While Sammy is hard at work weed-eating with a machete and bamboo stick..

Ray is making faces..

and I join in..

and Ray's mom just laughs at the fact that I take pictures of everything.

But see, everyone loves my camera! well, maybe..

This is the pastor and his wife. They were so kind to both of us. They even got us some traditional African outfits!

Besides buying us gifts, the pastor also took us around town, including to Aburi Gardens.

It was beautiful there and he let me loose with my camera!

and told us the history on many of the plants, including this cocoa plant!

On our last Wednesday there, we got to meet the kid that we have been sponsoring for the last 3 years through Compassion. It was such a blessing to meet Eric and his family in person.

We were first greeted with this beautiful young girl and some flowers :c)

Then they gave us gifts (the fabric around Ray's neck)

Then we headed to Eric's school. This was the scene when I showed up.

And this was what it looked like about 2 seconds after the kids saw me and the camera! I wasn't prepared for the onslaught and didn't' have my wide lens on!

They are so precious, I couldn't stop taking pics..

But this Obroni (white person) certainly made for a distraction to their studies.
Aren't they fun? They were literally cracking me up!

and they are oh-so beautiful.

Then it was time to get back to class (you can see the stick in the teachers hand to enforce that)

Once Eric arrived (he was off-site at a city wide race), we got to go to his home and meet his family and neighbors. (see the silly bands Summer?)

It's crazy! As much as the other kids smiled and carried on, Eric was super camera shy.

His mom gave us bracelets as a gift, and after everything was said and done, we decided I was more well-liked than Ray.

So, after saying goodbye and flying 10 hours over the ocean, we arrived back at the states in the frigid Washington DC. Because we had a 12 hour layover, we decided to get out of the airport and explore the town. The weather was quite a shock after sweating for 2 weeks in Africa, so we cut our tour short when we couldn't feel our toes anymore..

The walk along the Potomic was chilly, but we got to see the Watergate.

As we approached the National Mall, the sky was absolutely amazing!

As much as I enjoy palm trees, this scene makes my heart melt.

The Lincoln Memorial







This was the sunset on our plane ride back to Oklahoma, the perfect ending to a great trip!