Matthews Family Herald

Hi Friends,

It's been a very long time since we have posted here!  A lot has happened!  We don't have internet at home and so making posts here and uploading photos is still not very easy.  If you keep in touch with me by Facebook or email or otherwise it will be a lot easier.  We still have not forgotten about this blogsite and hope it will one day be easier to get back to posting regularly here.

We still live in East Texas.  The rent house I was going out to look at is the same house we live in today.  We joined a nearby church and serve by working with the children and participating in worship there through occasional leading and special music performance.

It is so great to live near to various family members!  I am telling you.  Family is so important.  Extended family.  The nuclear family is like a castle.  The extended family is like a moat and wall of protection.  It's something we really need and was intended!

I am working in the criminal justice field while attending full time college (criminal justice major). 

We participate with our local homeschool group as I have mentioned. 

We have a new daughter, Rebekah, born just a month ago!

We are planning a trip back to Missouri here within a week in order to pick up a car we left there and the remainder of our things.  We hope to see lots of friends as we close up that chapter of our lives.  We close the chapter but will always want to stay connected to those we knew and lived with and near while there. 

Why did we leave Missouri and our life there?  Looking back, I think going to Missouri and attempting that way of life we began there was something we just had to do.  I don't think I would have gotten it out of my system unless we did it.  I felt that as time went on, making that life work and accomplishing those goals out there had become the way of life and purpose; not the purpose of growing the Body of Christ and working for the Lord as we raised our family.  I felt an ever increasing struggle to either pursue the work God was placing us in, within our local church and within the greater global church, or putting everything into doing what it would take to live as we were trying to live.  These conflicting efforts, combined with the hardship of the lifestyle and the challenges we faced, made me feel like God was bringing me to the point of needing to decide; build a farm or build My church.  That's the choice I felt I was coming to.  Fulfill your desires or fulfill God's. 

God's desires are mine as well now and I have the peace that comes from being in His will once more.