Commissioning Service

What a fantastic way to say goodbye! The commissioning service was such a wonderful experience for our family. thanks to all those who participated to make it so great! We worshiped, heard testimony and had a great message from Glenn. It was so nice for our kids to feel so officially blessed by being sent off so formally. Thank you PFBC . Also the S.A.L.T. class provided the terific food for the event! AWESOME! This will be a memory we will treasure for many years to come.
For those of you who couldn't make it. We had a few people stand and speak of how Garrett and I have impacted their lives. That was a very humbling time and many tears streamed down our cheeks as the realization of this season of life has come to a close! Israel Valdavenos led us in worship and as was the fasion in the College group, we started off with just Israel, Garrett and I and ended the time with a few extras. Garrett Hall on drums and Brian Monroe on piano. Thanks Brian for knowing us so well to just come on up and join in!! That was awesome!
The best part by far was when we all got in a big group and had a time of prayer! Nothing could have made us more ready than to be surrounded by prayer like that! Thanks to you all!
What a great day!

Crunch Week!

This is it! We will be running around getting all the things done before leaving! We are all in good spirits and there are just a few things left to do, like pack and try to sell a house! We leave August 6th. Only one week from today! Happy birthday Garrett!

Visits, Illness and Preaching

We have been up in the Sacramento area all week spending time with Garett's side of the family. We took the kids to see the State Capital and Sutter's Fort. Garrett remarked at how funny it was that it seemed so incredibly long to get there when he was a kid, but it was a mere 20 minutes from his house to the State Capital. The kids did the trip like pros of course. We have been on the road now for 3 weeks. No one seems to be too tired of traveling or living out of a suitcase. Our energy is high and we are now getting some rest.
Garrett's Dad and Mom threw a wonderful going away part on Friday. What a wonderful time we had with many people we had not seen for a long time.
The kids have been swimming non- stop, so by Friday, July 20 we had 2 kids with swimmer's ear. Sophi sat with the boys at the emergency room for 3 hours on Saturday just to get the beloved antibiotics. Boy, has it be a long time since we've had those. They feel like and extra family member always nagging in the back of your mind....."did you give them their meds?"
Garrett and Sophi took off in the evening on Saturday the 21st to spend the night with his Aunt and Uncle in Atwater (just north of Merced). Garrett was invited to preach at his Uncles church on Sunday the 22nd. Marjo (Garrett's mom) and Larry (his dad) would bring the kids up the next day for church.
What a wonderful time we had with his Aunt Babara and Uncle Paul. These 2 people have been such an inspiration to us as a couple in ministry. Their spiritual connectedness to the Lord and their commitment to each other has been such a blessing to watch. Thank you for your example Paul and Barb!
I know it was a great honor for Garrett to get to preach in his Uncle's (and spiritual mentor) church! He did a fabulous job by the way. The spirit really moved through him and many people came up afterward to let him know the way God had spoken to them through his topic on the "Man born Blind" John 9. I think we even recruited a few people to come over next summer to work with us on the english camps! How super exciting that is!
We had a wonderful fellowship time after church with Garrett's Dad and Mom and Aunts and Uncle. It was neat to get to interact with family as adults and no longer kids!
We left Atwater midday to come to Merced and hang out with friends from College. It is so crazy to realize we are all getting older and our children are the ones who are entering Junior high and they are the kids. When did we go on and grow up?
Praises: We are really starting to relax and let out our breath. We feel like we have been holding our breath for about 2 months. Our minds are starting to clear from the frazel of moving and planning and raising support
Praises: We seem to have a great support base. If everyone follows through on the commitments they have made we should be in good shape! Hurray! Thank you everyone!
Prayer: Our house has not sold or rented! God seems to be paving the way for this trip in ALL areas except this one. What will he do here? We have no idea what he is up to, but we do know he wants us in Lithuania and we know he is the one in charge, so we will contiue to trust him to do it all in the right time! So mostly we need prayer to continue to trust that God knows what he is doing and not worry about it!
Prayer: For our family and the transition as each of us will face sadness and frustration at one time or another.
Itenerary:
24th on the American River
25th and 26th San Fransisco to see relatives
27th, 28th Back to the Central Valley
29th Back to Southern California
Up till the 4th of August we will be getting all the last minute details for leaving put together
August 5th at 4pm in the Santuary is our Commissioning service. Hope you can come!
August 6th WE ARE OFF TO LITHUANIA!
It has been an exciting ride so far.................................

Movin movin movin

We are on the go again. Currently we are spread out all over the place. 3 in the central valley and 3 down South. We are all heading up to Northern Cal to reunite by Monday July 16th. We had a fabulous trip to Yosemite where we were caught in a Summer Storm! We all got soaked and laughed a lot. Garrett, Sophi and Boaz have been in So. Cal all weekend doing a wedding and shipping all our belongings off to Lithuania. phew! Glad to have those two major events on the other side of us! Maybe this next week at Garrett's parents house we can get down to some serious relaxing. Heaven's knows we really need it. This moving across the world can be quite draining you know!
Our house is still our biggest prayer request. It has not sold or rented yet and we are out of money to keep paying the mortgage sooooo.........it will be interesting to see what God has up his sleeve because he has been paving the way for us in every other way. Sooooo.....we wait and watch. God is truelly amazing!

Sick

We have all gotten that darn flu that seems to be going around. If everyone hadn't had it then i would have thought that I was pregnant. I felt nausia every morning for a week. What a weird flu. I got it again on Monday July 2. Garrett and I split up to get more done. He took the Uhaul to my cousins with Boaz and Hevenlee who have had it already and I stayed behind with Ezra and Sonshyne so we would not pass it on and so I could get some rest. Kim and Doug Myers were so wonderful to put us up. Our house is completely empty. It is a strange familiar feeling. Feels like we have done this before.........ah, yes, we have! I know the excitement will come, but I am so exhausted I can not think straight! It feels like too much! We have been doing a good job of taking the evenings off too but the stress of it all gets to be overwhelming. God is amazing through this time to keep us calm and keep us going. He is good! He comes through all the time!

Yard Sell No More!

We had our last yard sale June 30th. If I never have a yard sale again it will be too soon. The only good thing about it is that the prices were so low that our stuff practically walked away all by itself. At the end I pushed everything to the edge of the street and put a FREE sign up. Boy did the stuff walk away then. People really couldn't seem to believe their eyes that there really was something for free in the United States with no strings attached! By the end I talked a young man into taking all the clothing that was left to sell at his yard sale the next weekend and then I paid him $5 to take the last five boxes with him as well! Whew that was it! Boy was I wiped out! I had had the flu the day before and most definitely should not have been going full speed ahead, but when you are moving out of a house by Monday you do not get to have a sick day! All 3 yard sales were successful enough to ship over all the stuff we are keeping, so hurray! Monday will be a time to unwind! Must get out of this house! Still no word on a renter or buyer of this house yet. What will God do?

Trying to get going

We are in the crazy process of getting out of our house. It is incredibly hard to live in a house with 4 kids and try to move out at the same time. We have worked really hard at remembering they are still kids and take the evening off to hang out and play. It has made it a slow but tolerable process.
We have our yard sale this Saturday and Sophi is sick, then we leave July 2 2007 to travel up through California to say goodbyes to family for a few weeks.
We still need our house to either rent or sell, it looks like we will pay the mortgage on it in July even though we will not be in town for the month. Thank goodness Matt is still around. He has been living with us this summer, home from school.
It looks like we may have a house in Lithuania all ready for us to rent when we get there, that would be cool. I will give you the link to the pictures of it if we get it! We have discovered flikr.com or something like that.
Well it is time to rest up before we have to do some more cleaning and moving!
for now, the gillilands

A New Beginning

This is our first official act of keeping in touch! We'll see how good we are at keeping this current! How exciting to be in charge of our own communications via the internet. Who would have thought!
sophi