A Wonderful Weekend at Home

Reed and I went to Boerne this weekend so that we could attend my cousin, Starre’s, baby shower!

We started off the weekend with the long drive and actually made pretty decent time, getting into my parents house around 7:30. We came in and within 30 minutes we started helping my mom and sister make pasta salad and quinoa salad for the shower. We ended up chopping, mixing and boiling until 12:30 when everything finally started to get finished. All of us immediately went to bed afterwards so that we could be ready for the shower the next day.

The next day we went to Starre’s shower…she is expecting her baby in October and our whole family is so excited to have another baby in the family :) Here are some pictures from the shower…

Starre opening some of her gifts

My sister, my grandma and me. Grandma Lu wasn't doing too well earlier (4AM) that morning so it was a blessing that she made it to the shower and was feeling okay.

My sister-in-law, Elizabeth, me and my sister, Kristen (we were missing Kassie and Rachel).

When we got home, this was the first thing I saw…(this made my heart flutter at what a wonderful daddy Reed’s going to be someday :))

And here are some other random things from the weekend…

Me and sweet Addison!

Then we went to this AMAZING, like best pizza I've ever had, place called Rochello's

All in all, we had a really really fun and relaxing weekend. We love our family and cherish the time we get to spend with them. Next big family shindig will be when Ben and Kassie (and Grace, Jonah and Oliver) come down in July!

Oh Frasier

This was our kitty the other night...

Sad thing is I was petting him right before he meandered over to the toilet and all I could do sitting in my bedroom was sit there silently in shock because if I shooed him or scared him he'd relapse and not want to come out anymore.

Needless to say, we leave the toilet covers down now.

Lovin' It

I’m sorry I haven’t updated in a while…lately I’ve been coming home from work and avoiding the computer at all costs. It’s kind of subconscious cause I don’t even think about it. I guess I’ve just really been enjoying my evenings at home with Reed :)

Lots of things have been going on in the Milliken house (apartment). Lately God has truly been stirring our hearts for the homeless. Serving with OurCalling has become more than something that we do to serve God, getting to know and pray with our homeless friends through this ministry has become knitted into the fabric of who we are. I don’t know if we could ever be separated from it now. For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m answering Jesus’ call to go to the places that I was afraid to go to. To be an instrument of His provision in the lives of those who are truly needy. I think I’ve gotten really good at fellowship with people who are really REALLY similar to me…but I haven’t really ever ventured to truly love someone who was different.

God is so good to send us signs of His will and for me, I have His word to encourage me and spur me on to really love someone who is an entirely different situation that I am…

God taught this to Peter in Acts 10:13-28. Peter had a vision of God telling him to kill and eat, yet Peter was trained all his life to know that only certain things were clean to eat…BUT God was good to tell him that “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This was a foreshadowing of what would happen next as Cornelius, an Italian centurion, called upon Peter. I think once he met Cornelius, it all clicked that although these people, just as the food, were not “clean” people to consort with based on his prior notions that he has not right to call any man unholy or unclean.

28And he said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.

I’m serving some beautiful men and woman who have messy situations (some much more messy than others) but at the end of the day, when Jesus’ washed Peter’s feet (John 13)…those feet were really messy too.

Stuff

I am not the biggest fan of "stuff". I don't know why, but I'm not very sentimental. So I LOVE getting rid of it.

I must admit though, that I'm really lazy too. So a lot of times, I put off getting rid of the "stuff" I don't want to use anymore, not cause I want it or it's hard to give up, I just don't have to time to give it away.

I was reading this blog post by Heather Hendrick (read here) and it made me really count the cost of my laziness...her family was able to support a child in Africa for OVER A YEAR. All by getting rid of the stuff they NO LONGER USED. Not the stuff they still use, or want, like the stuff lower than that that they don't like.

Anyways, it made me realize that I need to follow those God-given ambitions to let go of the stuff!

One of the big things Reed and I have decided to give away is our china....

I know...crazy....BUT we really don't need to be china people. We can live with normal plates on special occassions and hopefully we can make it up to our guests in other ways so they know they are still special to us. We just figure we could give food to a kid who's hungry. The decision basically went like this through our heads...

Pretty dishes (REALLY pretty by the way) vs. Feed a human being

It really was no competition.

p.s. it was also kind of freeing and semi-addictive.

p.s.s. it was also really hard to make that decision about expensive things that people we love gave us as a gift. But I guess following God's path is going to be expensive and costly. We love our family and are SO grateful...like SOOO grateful they gave us those. We are blown away that we had nice china that we didn't have to buy ourselves! But in the end...it's just stuff...that will one day return to dust. Souls...they are here forever. So we're hoping to invest our money in those guys.

NOW, onto the challenge...Anyone have any idea where we could sell this never-been-used china (that is still in the box) and get what it's worth? We would like to maximize the amount we can give since it is worth a lot (at least I'm pretty sure). We would love ideas :)