Steve and Jenny Valentine

John Piper states "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him". Piper's statement came to the forefront of my mind while reading a Puritan prayer from the Valley of Vision that said: I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused -                 I have asked amiss and do not have                 I have prayed from lusts and been rejected                 I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness.    Go on with thy patient work,                 answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. So am I satisfied when God says no? For a God who works all things together for the good of those who are called a...

From the moment that we decided to give up everything in order to move across the world, we have experienced a variety of emotions. After all, we had a baby, were appointed to serve as missionaries in Poland , began raising up financial and prayer support teams, sold our home, sold almost all our belongings, traveled the States to continue raising support, and moved into a one bedroom apartment! So what seems fitting to say about our emotional condition over the past year is this: we are completely and utterly dependent on God, our Savior, to sustain our every breath through each new day and the many things we will experience in the midst of life’s ever-changing moments. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts that we can (and want to) press forward into what lies ahead for our family. We are often uplifted by songs and hymns. We want to share the words from a couple songs with you. It is our hope that you find great encouragement in these words below...

Not long after Jenny and I got married we made our first important purchase together, we bought a filing cabinet. We didn't go all out on our first filing cabinet but decided to stay simple and buy a nice two drawer cabinet that would fit nicely in our apartment. Within about a month of owning this filing cabinet we learned a very important lesson, files placed on top of the filing cabinet remain on top of the filing cabinet unless acted upon by an outside force . A consistent pattern began to develop and can still be seen to this day. Papers, bills, and other important documents get placed on top of the cabinet until one, or both, of us get frustrated enough to deal with the pile.  real life depiction  Sometimes this process of removing the stack on top of the cabinet is instigated when we realize that if it were to fall on one of our kids we might not ever find the child again.  Recently, as I sat on the couch starring at the Tower of Babel-like stack of papers o...

Olivia Noël, like most third borns (trust me I know, I speak from experience...not that I'm bitter or anything mom and dad, haha!) has gotten the shaft in regard to keeping up with her many milestones on the blog as I did so well with the other two. So allow me to play catch up from the past (nearly) 6 months worth of fun facts and (LOTS of) pictures of our little love bug, "vivie", as she is so affectionately known around here! This is a major gush post (you're welcome grandparents) of this cutie pie and has nothing to do with work purposes...enjoy! 6 Months Old -Sold and Moved out of the house we brought her home to -Took her first real road trip (nearly three months long!) -Began sitting up on her own This is a dress I wore as a baby 7 Months Old -waving Hi -"singing" when you sing -flashing adorable smiles to everyone 8 Months Old -reaching for things while on her belly -rolling around -l...

This has been a hard week for our family. We have endured sickness (4 times over), financial pressure, the ongoing process of raising support and keeping up with many hours of online missionary training.  As if that wasn't an exhausting list already, I just spent the last several hours in the emergency room with our youngest who fell down a flight of stairs. And about that... She is OK!  But we are tired. We are weary. We are emotionally drained. We are in need of good rest (as that has not been happening with several sickies here, myself included!) But I can't go on without saying that  we are thankful that the Lord has  sustained us through this hard week.  We aren't promised a life here on Earth without trouble, fear, doubt, persecution, pain, weariness or strife. But we have a Strong Tower that we can run in to in order to endure the storms of life. This verse started going through my head this evening, along with one other as I walked out of th...

2015 has arrived. This is the year we have talked about for a while now, the year we have been telling people of when we will move to Poland (Lord willing!)  It is exciting, unknown and we are hopeful for what the Lord has in store. This first week of 2015 has been exciting...I got another year older (yay 31, my "golden" year!), we reached our 50% goal of financial support (now on to 100%!), we got passport pictures for the kids and Steve (to renew his), bought our carry on luggage and Steve is officially done with his role of Director of Mobilization with Converge. And we're only a week into 2015! In the midst of it all, I find myself seeing glimmers of hope in what could be deemed a busy time, I wanna soak it all in and take time to reflect. Just to highlight a few things... *We reached 50% financial support-this was all the work of the Lord, absolutely no way we could have done this in our own strength. I mean we began the month of December at 33%...end...

All along this journey of raising support, we have thought a lot about leaving. Leaving our family. Leaving our friends. Leaving our church. Leaving where we have called home for the past (almost) 6 years. Just leaving. It’s hard to even begin to imagine what life will be like without all of the above. In all of this time processing our own thoughts and feelings, a mix of sadness, excitement and sorrow; I am very aware of those we leave behind. I can’t articulate what “they” (those who stay here while we leave) are thinking and feeling because, well, I am not them. But what I do know, is for those who stay, they deal with a sense of loss, sadness, excitement and sorrow as well. In their own way. Different than how we feel it, but none the less, they feel it. As we have talked about this, we want to be sensitive to those around us that are walking alongside us, helping us move toward Poland, a move that will take us far away from them. We want to stay connected....