New blog layout

I've been having some trouble with the last blog layout that I had on here, some of the images were hosted on other sites and then the owners photobucket account expired...making the blog look ugly. So, this is the new layout for now until the older and better looking one is fixed :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!!!!

Pumpkin Carving Season...

Gotta love that pumpkin placenta

Leah taking out her aggression on a poor pumpkinHaving a little too much fun with the pumpkin innards
This Jack-O-Lantern is a little too happy...

October

This month has been an interesting one for sure. It started out so unusually cold and snowy for an october that we were all wondering what kind of winter we have in store for us! Thankfully the cold has subsided and it's back into normal weather in the 50's.

Leah enjoying her first trip to work in the snow!

Last week both Leah and I got the swine flu. It wasn't much worse than the normal flu. I worked after having it for two days...not saying that it was the greatest idea but hey, I worked nonetheless. Speaking of work, Leah is still working at the bank and work has picked up for me as well and i've been working normal amounts instead of a couple days a week which is really nice for a change.

Two weeks ago our pastor's wife Christina(youth group leader) asked Leah and I to join the staff of our church's youth group "Catalyst". We accepted. It has around 100 kids everyweek and seems to really be thriving. Kinda crazy that a town of 5000 people has a youth group of 100. I went to Billings with the youth group last week to a youth conference. It was a lot of fun and much better way to get to know the kids than just the wednesday night format. It was a good conference and the speaker "Reggie Dabbs" was excellent, as was the Tim Bach Band that did the worship for the conference. Leah and I are excited to find a place in the youth team and see what kids God will place in our lives.

I also got to see Emily Carpenter in her home town. It was a short visit, but it's always nice to reconnect with old ywam friends.

What good is a trip without a little vehicle trouble? Oh yeah, and this baby was shooting flames out of the tailpipe...which may or may not have started a small grass fire in the median..

Fall has fell...

A funny thing happened on wednesday this week, I walked outside from working inside someone's trailor house and it hit me, the cold that is. I noticed that it started raining, but it didn't quite sound right. Like the rain was almost bouncing. Oh, that's because there was snow mixed in with the rain. Just last week it was in the mid 80's. The tops of the mountains are white again, the leaves can't fall off the trees quick enough, and the slow descent into winter has begun here in montana, signaling that we have around 8 solid months before we feel the warmth of the sun again.

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Leah and I have started going to a small group on wednesdays for married couples (that's not the focus of the group though) and it's been really good so far. We have been going through the book of Phillipians and going through one chapter per week. This last week we were in chapter two and it was talking about how as believers we are as to "shine like stars". I got to thinking about what that really means and the best I could come up with is that there are alot of stars in the sky. And they are all shining into the darkness. It seems that alot of times we (myself included) don't shine like stars into the darkness of our world. In fact alot of times in my experience through work it's usually the christians that display the least Godly like conduct. I think that this speaks volumes to people that aren't christians and reaffirms to them why they don't need to become a christian. That leads me to the next point, how do we shine like stars? Of course we aren't perfect but I think a smile and a nice attitude goes a long way in showing God's love to someone. I think that something we as christians forget often is how we behave in public and in business has a huge affect on peoples view of christians and even God.

14Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe

How many times do I complain or argue (at least in my head) daily? The lack of these things in my life will lead me towards being a pure, blameless child of God.

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My friend Billy met up with my DTS leader Andy in a tiny little nation called Bhutan and got to spend time with the underground church there. In my dts over three years ago Andy had just started going to this country and felt that the Lord was calling him to go there every year and invest in this country. In the last four years the number of christians in the country has at least doubled. That is crazy! God is so good.

Click here for a video about bhutan!

http://acontextforhope.blogspot.com/2009/09/global-revival-fire.html

Anyway, just thought that I would write something on here since it's been almost a month, man time flies when you're having fun.

Until next time,

Kyle

Things are finally getting settled in, normal life is taking hold ever so quickly. Summer is winding down and that means less outdoor activities in montana. Leah is getting used to being a bank teller, I'm back to work installing flooring. It has been really good being married, it almost feels strangely normal to be married. Although there is a moment here and there where you look at your spouse and go...are we really married?!? Like for the rest of our lives? Haha.

All the events of the summer are over, and it's kind of a relief. My birthday was yesterday, it was a good birthday, but there's one thing about my birthday, it usually signals the beginning of cold weather coming. It was 90 degrees yesterday but only supposed to be 65 on sunday. Of course.

So...I bought a large Van for my flooring business. I get alot of comments about it being creepy and whatnot. His name is "Chester". Just seemed to fit ;) Can't seem to get away from these huge vans after spending hours of my life devoted to them at ywam maui. At least it's not green :)




I've gotten a bit more fishing in lately as work has been slower the last couple of weeks...that's always good! Been catching lots of small mouth bass. Tried my hand at fly fishing...I gave up after battling the wind for an hour.

Anyway, that's all for now! We're missing everyone out in ywam maui land!

Don't know what to title this...so much has happened!

Sorry that it has been far too long since I have updated this. Lack of internet access and free time in the last month has left the blog untouched. I know that interest in it dies quickly if it's not updated regularly so I'll try to keep up.


So, yeah, July 25th was a great day. Getting married is one of the most surreal experiences of your life and it really does feel like a blur...just like everyone say's it will. It was awesome and I really loved our ceremony. Our reception was at a really beautiful museum, and I could barely believe that it was for my wedding. Way nicer wedding than I thought I would ever get. Leah's parents went above and beyond what we expected. We were so amazed that so many of our friends and family could make it. We were really blessed and felt so loved that people would go out of there way to come to our wedding!

thanks Ben for the pictures!

We went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on our honeymoon. We were there for ten days at an all inclusive resort called "Dreams". It was an awesome resort that was located outside of town in a cove surrounded by thick jungle. It had a private beach which is really nice because Leah and I are quite the beach snobs after living in Maui with YWAM. We went on two "excursions" while we were there. An ATV offroad adventure and a zip line "canopy" tour.





The ATV's were a blast. We got to ride through little mexican villages, through rivers, and through mud puddles. Luckily it was the rainy season so there was plenty of water! At the end of the tour we had a tequila tasting with about ten different tequilas.


The second excursion was a canopy tour. It was a course set up of zip lines through the jungle. I think there were about ten different zip lines and some of them were about 100 feet up. You would zip line to a platform built in a tree, then they would hook you up to the next zip line and so on. We also rapelled down 90 feet! It was fun because it was the first time I had done either of those things!

I will put up more honeymoon pictures later this week and then some pictures of our new apartment!

New place to live!

If I counted up how many different places I have lived in my life...well I don't even remember some of them so that tells you something. Over 20 at least. BUT! This one is more special in every way because it's where me and Leah are going to live after we get married in july! I get the keys to it on tuesday and can start moving stuff in. It's crazy to actually have a place to live now, and to top it off it's exactly the place I was hoping to get. God is good. It's a little 2 bedroom apartment close to town, near our highschool and it's a nice little neighborhood. It's in a 4plex apartment house thing and we're on the ground floor.

Lake view..so classy.

Pow Wow

So yeah, I live on an Indian reservation in Montana. I'm also a flooring installer...one and one makes two and that lead to my Dad, my old boss Jon, his brother, and I installing carpet on the pow-wow grounds in Arlee, MT. We installed 16,200 square feet of carpet under two big pavillions used for dancing and traditional stick games. It took us four days and we were all beat today after doing so much carpet in such little amount of time. I've been keeping quite busy installing flooring, which is a huge blessing. I can't believe how busy I've been since home.

It's bigger than it looks, 75 across and 125 feet long!

Some Modern day tee-pees, haha

pics from sunday with the fam at kerr dam

Montana

I really am blessed to have live where I have lived in my life, spend most of my life between montana and hawaii. Definitely two good places to live. It's especially easy to appreaciate montana when it's this time of the year and the weather is starting to get nice again. Oh, and it's nice that it's stays light until after ten o'clock too!

Here's a few pics for all of you that don't really know where I live, most of these are taken a few minutes drive from my house. They're obviously not all my pics.

Memorial Day-2009

Great Grandma on top and Gramps and Grandma (not dead yet!haha)

I like this one..if I have a headstone one day I hope it reads somthing like this

Great Grandma and Grandpa

Great Aunt and Unlce

It's still hard to believe that these people are gone. My grandpa died a little over a year ago while I was in maui and it's still kinda sinking in, the idea of life without him. I know that he's in heaven now and that makes me so happy.

couple o' pics

the front yard

haleakala

swinging bridges bamboo forest

the entrance to ywam maui

the ocean in lahaina

launiupoko