Summer Mercies

Author: Sarah

Front of House

Hello friends and family! Big news in the Gogel family. Lots has been changing around here for the past month (not just my belly size, which is growing increasingly rapidly!) Holiday World is open and in full swing! Which unfortunately means so is Braden's schedule. He works 8 or 9 hours a day, Tuesday-Sunday. However, some weeks (like this one), luck has it that he even has to do trainings on Monday - leaving him a grand total of 0 days off this week. But we continue to remain so grateful to the Lord for his provision of this job for Braden and I. It was exactly what we need, right when we needed it. He might not love the hours, but he does have a passion for the job. It is wonderful to get to see him pushed to learn more about the job and to know that there will always be continued room for growth. One of the last things anyone wants to feel like they are doing is working a dead end job with no tangible way to further your own personal growth or the companies. He loves talking about what he is doing in the park and ideas he has about improving it. I must confess, I don't share the same gusto for Holiday World as my husband, but I imagine he feels the same way when I talk about working in Disney World. =) 

Backyard

As for the home, we have moved in and begun a life. Have I ever mentioned that I strongly dislike moving? Moving box after box, furniture after furniture, and trying to organize it by room, wishing that you had been more clear on what you wrote on the box so you could unpack certain things first. Lord knows how long it took us to find our stapler. lol. But we were so blessed to be helped by Braden's family with all of it. They basically painted our whole house, including the ceilings, (all the walls were yucky) - I couldn't be around paint fumes and Braden was basically always working. What a relief and gift it is to be so close to family. But now almost every box is unpacked (save the office - we are still waiting on a desk) and it looks like a habitated home. The yard just about killed Braden and I. There was some pretty massive overgrowth happening (video). When we trimmed our bushes we got about 6 full feet of our driveway back! There were random trees and shrubs that had sprung up all over the yard from lack of care and the trees needed to be trimmed up - the branches drooped so low you would get whacked in the face if you were mowing. We had so many branches and trimmings that we filled up 2 full trailers to be haled off. Whew... it was a pretty long day.

Here is a video walk-though of our house so you can see what the inside looks like. 

Braden and I working on bushes - You can barely even see the storage shed!

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As for what the Lord has been doing in our lives - lots! Braden has had to be very disciplined in how he uses his time (as he really does not have all that much of it) and is learning so much of what it means to serve the Lord by being the sole provider of the home. He has a big weight on his shoulders now and I have never once heard him complain about the hours or the work that the Lord has given him to do. He is happy to do it for our family. I love him so much for it! As for me, I have also had to learn discipline with how I spend my time... because I have so much of it! Not having gainful employment (with no really prospect on the horizon) has been really hard on me. I have always thrived of finding my usefulness and purpose in the things that I do. I was always so busy, that I had to fight to find the time to be cleaning the home, or preparing dinner, or spending some extra time in prayer with the Lord. Now I have so much time that I often find myself wasting time. But the Lord has really helped me to see that this time is such a beautiful gift of preparation before our baby gets here! I have begun to attempt to become very organized (which, ask my husband, is not me at all). I have created spread sheets for recipes that I have, monthly calendars of meals for the month, monthly grocery lists so that I will only have to make one trip to Evansville a month (this is where the cheapest grocery store is located - I love Aldi). This will hopefully make meal planning abundantly easier when the baby comes. I can just plug in the recipes to the calender and have the grocery list ready! A lot easier said than done... it is taking forever, but it will be worth it. I also plan to do some serious freezer cooking, so that we will have at least several weeks worth of meals once the baby comes before I have to get back to cooking every night. There is so much to do to redeem the time, and I pray that He would continue to show me this.

Never-the-less, I still have maintained a certain level of discontentment with being here. It is something that I have been praying through for weeks. This is because I am well aware that my discontentment comes from a glorified view of myself and 'what I should be doing' and not what the Lord has actually given me to do. Yesterday, I had a surprise visit at my doorstep. Two young people, Peter (21) and Mary (24) showed up. I won't lie, when I first opened my door, I thought they were Mormons, and they were just about the last people I wanted to be chatting with at that moment (Amanda Smudde and Elizabeth Wurm were going to be stopping by within an hour or 2 and I wanted the house clean). It turned out, They were Christians with a passion and mission to unite the faith as it was united in the book of Acts. Peter said that they were coming to Dale from Evansville because the Lord had told them to tell us to "make way for the Holy Spirit, for he is coming" or something to that regard.  I was struck by their genuine desire to tell people this simple and beautiful message. And it reminded me, Dale isn't a small town with not much to do and where I can be of no use. It is a small town filled with people who need the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ just as much as the students on IU's campus. I was choosing to ignore this because there was no Campus Crusade or Clear Note Campus Fellowship (plug in ministry here) constantly calling me to this. There is no pre-established organization to make our ministry easier here. Anything we do will take serious thought and initiative. I invited them in and we chatted for at least an hour or two. What amazing work they are doing in Indiana. They had such wonderful stories of how God was using their ministry!

This morning I was reading in my time with the Lord, a devotion by Charles Spurgeon and, wouldn't you know it, June 3rd's devotion is on being content with who and where we are. He spoke of people who work for the King in scripture, like potters and gardeners, who do not have the most glamorous job, but are needed to serve the Lord all the same. They are still part of the community of people who serve him. The quote that really struck me was, "The place of our habitation is fixed, and we are not to leave it on a whim or just to suit our fancy, but to seek and serve the Lord in it, by being a blessing to those whom we reside with" (Spurgeon, Morning and Evening). I feel like I have often lived life on emotional highs of serving God and am prone to whimsical notions and ideas of glory for how my life will look. How little have I consulted the Lord in these matters. What a beautiful lesson I am learning right now. Praise God for his mercy to me and for the missionaries he sent to the doorstep of Dale, Indiana yesterday.

Wonderful Devotional - I recommend it above all others

Well, this is getting a bit long, thanks for staying with me (if you are in fact still with me, haha). To finish, here is a youtube video of the ultrasound of our baby! The quality didn't download amazingly well, but you can hear the heartbeat for a moment, get to see us find out we are having a boy, and get to see a bit of movement! 

And check out a few baby belly pictures!

21 Weeks

23 Weeks