Happy 8th birthday Gregory!

The other day we celebrated Gregory's 8th birthday.  As always I had to look at photos from past birthdays, so many fun memories with so many friends around the world.

Gregory is an amazing boy.  He is tenderhearted, encouraging, smart, incredibly smart, a thinker, a dreamer, dancer, worshiper and evangelist (just not on tv) :-)

One of my favorite characteristics about Gregory is how he loves to encourage people.  He regularly encourages those around him, adults and kids alike.

He still loves astronauts, Mars, planets, astronomy, all things space related.  He especially likes the Apollo missions.

He is an incredible mathematician and an amazing reader.  He loves to show off his math skills (still working on humility with knowledge).  He loves reading biographies and the goofy boys books that are in the library (like Big Nate books).

His love for history continues and is stretching to have an interest in travel as well.  Recently he has been enjoying the "Where on Earth is Carmen San Diego" tv dvd series.

This boy is such a easily lovable boy and is turning into quite the thinker and dreamer.  I love you Gregory!

Happy 8th Birthday Gregory Thomas Cook.

Youth for Christ Update

We are nearly 2 1/2 months away from starting our adventure with Youth for Christ in Iowa, so I wanted to give a bit of an update to our friends and family.

Over the past couple of months we hosted a couple of dessert parties.  These were a great opportunity for us to share "our story" and how God led us to join with Youth for Christ.  We also were able to share a video of the building that will be the YFC building in Hawarden, Iowa.  Below is the link to that video!

 Youth for Christ Bldg in Hawarden Video

As for our support raising...we are doing great - with just a little ways to go!  Our monthly support goal is $1366/month and we have raised about $1166.  Our cash budget was $6000 and we have raised somewhere around $12000!  WOW!!  Praise God!  This has been an amazing stretch of our faith and an increase in our faith.  Tom will start drawing a paycheck from YFC on 1 July, and we'd really like to be able to say we met our goals, so we will keep praying towards this.

In a little less than a month we will be closing on our house!  We are waiting on our VA loan to be approved still, but we are confident it will all go through without a problem.  It has been a HUGE blessing to be able to live with my parents in ND.  So many great memories for us and the boys.  I am not even sure I want to start with listing it all because with so many words people could get bored ;-) 

Here's to the next few weeks of extreme busyness!  Looking forward to posting more answers to our prayers in the near future.