The IHOPers are coming, the IHOPers are coming!

This weekend some of our great friends, the Offutts, are coming with their worship leader, Luke Wood and some of their band mates to do a worship conference at our church!  I am so excited! 

YAAAAAAAAAY!

moving

So we are moving again.  I think it might be a sickness.  It seems like we are doing this once a year now.  This move is local, which makes it much easier (and cheaper). Thankfully we have wonderful friends who are going to help us to move the bulk of everything next Saturday.  It feels good to move.  

 

There have been an enormous amount of awesome memories in this house, and some sad ones as well. It feels good to start fresh.  We are also moving back to the east side, which feels good. I never quite got used to being a west sider.  We are going to be right next to church and right next to the girls school.  

Well, we are off to move the girl’s mini kitchen to it’s new home.

Have a great day!

Hi

Kinda dropped off the planet.

Sorry.

I’ll give the nutshell.

Flew overnight to Alaska, 6 hour layover in Anchorage, 45 minute flight to Kodiak Island.

10 days with, mist, fog, glaciers, giant boats, overly excited teenagers, Philipino church, Frontier Baptist Church, and homeless mission called “the livingroom”. Sun set at midnight and rose again at 3am.  Learned to love eye masks. Adopted 4 teenage girls. (relationally speaking) Prayed for 8 people to be filled with the Spirit and recieve their prayer language.  All 8 got it.  

Flew home.

Shared testimony of people recieving their prayer language with a friend, she prayed with me and recieved her prayer language. Shared testimony at church, two more came up and recieved. Shared again the next day, two more came up and recieved (one of which was Paige’s best friend Maggie) Led worship on Saturday night, led on Sunday morning.

Monday morning, got in a 15 passenger van and drove with 5 friends to Riodoso, NM to lead worship for the Assemblies of God district youth camp.  Lead twice a day for 5 days, rode on a zip line, slept in a bunk bed, climbed a mountain, learned to love daddy long legs, learned to avoid energy drinks (seriously), pet 4 horny toads, laughed ALOT. Drove 3 hours home to our church.

Arrived home at 6:00pm, lead worship service at our church at 7:00pm.  

Led worship the next night. Then led worship the next morning. Went to lunch with our pastor.

Took a long nap.

Still recovering brain cells.

Summer!!!

Well, Paige and Jaime, are officially out of school today! They are still wearing their jama’s at 1:00 in the afternoon and currently sitting on the floor playing Lucky Ducks.  (it’s a game where plastic ducks “swim” around a little track and you have to find all the ones bearing your shape) 

Ben has the day off and is currently asleep on the couch next to the duck game.  I slept in until 11:30 today! It is a wonderful day, needless to say. 

We have all been running around like chickens with our heads cut off lately.  The girls had the mad dash to the end of the year, projects, parties, end of year performances, young writer’s conference, etc. Ben has been busy reorganizing his new store. Ben and I have been doing tons of training and team bonding for our Kodiak, Alaska mission trip. And I am officially the new intern at our church, which has required me to be teaching, training, being taught, being trained, starting new services, organizing worship teams for old services, and starting and running a prayer ministry for the church. 

That is technically my new job.  I have been asked to start and run a prayer department.  I am very excited for this task, but it’s going to take a good bit of time, training and work to get it all running.  A big part of kicking it off, is we are going to be starting a prophetic worship and intercession service on Friday nights to tarry for revival in the church and in the city.  This is by far, my favorite thing that we are working on.  We are putting together four worship teams and I have been put in charge of training them all on how to work with prayer leaders, and how to sing spotaneously as a team.  It’s going to be so much fun.  Our church is really growing, and we are seeing a slow and steady increase in the presence of God each week.  People are getting healed, prophecies are coming forth, and there is a general stirring going on in the whole leadership and much of the church.  It’s a great season.  

I got to film two tv shows on Tuesday.  That was a very interesting experience.  Our pastor has a tv show that airs twice a week.  He normally films it every other Tuesday, but this week he was out of town with Randy Clark.  So he asked me and his wife to do the show and talk about revival.  It was alot easier than I thought it was going to be.  I was pretty nervous the day before, but when I got there, it was pretty relaxed. The camera man told us we were doing so well we should film a third show.  We will have to see about that.  

I got to take care of a sweet little 10 month old baby girl last night while her mommy taught the prophetic training at our church.  She had been teething all day, and just wanted to snuggle.  She ended up falling asleep in my arms for about an hour.  It definitely made me miss our baby, who is having a total blast in heaven right now.  Just nuzzling her sweet little head and smelling her sweet babiness.  It was a precious hour.  

Anyway, this was kind of a ramble, but I thought I should write and let everyone know we are doing great.  God is moving, and we are loving this season of our lives.

Yea for summer!

been forever…i know

So to all of you who still check blogs, here is an update.  I have barely sat down at the computer the last few weeks.  We have been ridiculously busy.  I’ll try to touch on the highlights

Paige and Jaime have two weeks of school left and then they will be free for the summer. They and we are very excited for this. I just plain old miss hanging out with them.  Everything has been so busy.

Ben is happily working managing his new store.  His employees are wonderful and he has even found a few Christians in the mix. He invited the assistant manager from the store across the street to visit our church and she came last week with her whole family!  It was really cool. He has been on call alot, and we are learning to get used to his phone ringing with important questions as sometimes inoportune moments. But all in all, this store has been a great blessing.

Ben’s parents have officially decided to stay in Albuquerque and live with us.  They officially declined the jobs in China on Monday.  We are all very excited.  It’s kind of a long story but, in short, there were issues with Debbie’s work visa, the job got a little fishy, and we desperately wanted them to stay (secretly they desperately wanted to stay too). So we are all feeling very peaceful and happy about the whole thing.  Ben’s parents feel like it is a total God thing and they are so glad to be living with us long term again. We are blessed like crazy, not only by their company, but also by their incredible care.  They bless our socks off and make the huge amounts of things that we have been taking on, alot simpler.

I have been asked to come on (in a way I am not yet aloud to disclose) at the our church. I am very excited about this and feel great about the timing.  It’s going to be mostly focusing on prayer and building a prayer ministry for the church, but will also touch worship and possibly be starting and running a new service once a week.  I’m super excited about it. I will say more as final decisions are made and announced.

Three weeks ago, I took a solo trip up to KC for a little prayer and refreshment. I was actually going to get final assurance from the Lord to go forward with the opportunities at the church.  I mostly just sat in the prayer room. It was wonderful.  I got to visit our pastors from Louisburg (a little town outside of the city) and stay with them for two nights.  I got to ask their advice on some things and actually got help them with a situation they were facing in their church. It was a blessing being with them.  I felt alot of confirmation on some things I had been praying through and just soaked up the atmosphere out there.  I also got to solidify the plans for a mini-onething that we are going to be hosting in July.  Luke Wood and a good part of his team are coming down (including some of our favorite people in the world, the Offutts!) and they are going to do worship, teaching and some workshops for the weekend at our church.  Organizing the dates has been a little tricky, but it’s all nailed down now.  We are totally excited to have them all down here! 

Bible study is still going strong.  We are about to wrap up our study on Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets.  It has been amazing.  Our Friday night worship nights have been growing, and we are loving the sweetness of those times together.  We have also joined another life group at the church which is now meeting at our house twice a month.  We are helping on the worship team every other week and having a great time getting to know all those people.

Two weeks ago we got to help our worship leader record a live worship album for the church.  It took place over a week with 4 live recordings.  And the funnest part about it was that Jason Upton’s sound guy, Sean, flew down to run the whole recording.  He is such an incredibly nice guys.  We had such a blast hanging out with him all week and getting to know him.  We even got to have a special dinner with he and his wife on Saturday night.  (at their request!) They are fantastic people and it was a wonderful blessing to get to know them.  They really spoke into our lives and encouraged the heck out of us.  It was awesome.

During that week of recording, on Wednesday, we had dinner at the pastor’s house to discuss the things I am not supposed to explain quite yet.  There was much crying (happy tears) and they prayed over us, and encouraged us, and welcomed us as their spiritual kids!  It kind of blew our minds.  We were so blessed.  And then to finish off the evening they asked if I would be able to go, all expenses paid, on Monday to Lakeland, Florida with the pastor’s wife to check out the healing outpouring going on out there and bring back the annointing and testimony!  So last Monday, I jumped on a plane at 6:00am and we went down to Florida for the whole week.  It was incredible. Then I got back Friday afternoon, led worship at 7:00, fell asleep around 11:00 and woke up this morning to go to Ministry Training at the church to prepare for the other amazing thing that happened in the last two weeks…

We were asked to go to Kodiak, Alaska on a mission trip in June.  They wanted us to come as intercessors, worship leaders, and to train intercessory teams.  We said we would love to, but we didn’t have any money to go. They said not to worry about it and it would all work out.  Well we got down the deadline, and didn’t have any money, but they called to tell us that it was all taken care of!  We are going to Alaska! So we have to teach two classes to the team on intercession in a couple of weeks and we have training just about every week up until we leave June 6th. 

Let’s see, what else…oh, I have to co-host a tv show with the pastors wife in two weeks on revival.  Being in front of a camera is definitely not my favorite way to spend a day, but she said it’s usually very relaxed and so I have nothing to worry about. 

Oh, and there is a church right outside of town that is wanting to set up a regional house of prayer. They would like us to do regular sets and train up all their up and coming worship leaders and teams. And there is a group starting a community, city wide prayer website and they want me to write articles and prayers for them.

I guess that about covers it.  I’m sure I probably left some stuff out, but that’s the gist. 

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

 

Happy Birthday Benjamin!!

Today is officially Ben’s 28th birthday!

We had a semi-surprise party for him on Friday which was a total blast.  We ate lasagna, listened to joyous little girls chase balloons around the house squealing with glee, ate icecream cake!, spent some time praying over Ben for his new job and his new year, and then played pictionary/charades until almost 11:00!  It was a super fun party.

That evening really made me appreciate our incredible friends.  We went from stuffing our faces, to singing silly songs, to speaking prophetic words over Ben, to dancing around the living room trying to get people to guess the book, “To Kill a Mocking bird” without even the slightest hesitation.

We love you friends.  We love your laughter, we love your depth and we love that you are all unique and wonderful just the way you are!

set up

do you ever feel like you are in the middle of a divine set up? view points aligning, relationships developing out of nowhere, opportunities presenting themselves in extremely obvious ways?  just curious, because we are finding ourselves in the middle of one.

Re-organizing, abiding, Yatzee Jr, and promotion!

Ben’s parents are feeling a lot more settled now. Mostly because Debbie has re-organized every single closet and cabinet in our house! I don’t know how she does it, but I’m grateful she does. I’m a little concerned for her though. I don’t know what she is going to do with herself now that she has cleaned out every nook and cranny of our house. Maybe I should buy her some good novels. : ) Ben’s sister and fam have returned safely back to Illinois, and Ben’s parents took off early this morning to go and visit them again! They are very loving grandparents.

I have been enjoying a season of God’s tangible presence. About a week ago, exactly a week actually, I spent the entire day sitting before God. I was feeling so dry. So disconnected. It has been a very busy month, and I was feeling my hunger for God starting to rise to starvation. I spent the day crying out for His presence and His voice. He faithfully and generously met me, and has been staying close and tangible every since. I love His willingness to abide with me. And I am so grateful I get to abide with Him.

I’ve decided that Ben is never going to sit down long enough to post about this so I’m going to do it for him.

Ben got promoted to store manager! He starts on his birthday March 31st. He is going to be at the Cottonwood store which is exactly 2 miles from our house. He is really excited and just a tinge nervous. As of this week, every single one of his employees has approached him privately and asked if they can transfer to work for him at the new store. Apparently he is going to be sorely missed.

The girls are enjoying their week off for Spring Break. So far they have colored eggs, made cookies, made banana muffins, played tug with the Elmore’s dog Ginger ( we were dog sitting), gone on a puppy play date with some dogs from their school, played Yatzee Jr too many times, taken alot of baths, ridden their bikes, had a picnic breakfast in the living room, drawn dozens of pictures and generally enjoyed having nothing important to do.

It’s been a great week! (and bonus, I can walk in my closet now!)

Thank you Daylight

The incredibly obnoxious simulated cookoo clock sound was screaming from the cell phone across the room. I squinted one eye lid open just long enough to realize it was still dark outside. I stumbled, sluggishly across the room and hit the snooze button. Three snooze buttons later, I finally peeled myself out of bed and groggily brushed my teeth.

It was definitely too early.

I stepped out of my room and was met by unexpected silence. If anything is true in a Shaffer house, (especially such an extraordinarily full Shaffer house) I am not the first one up in the morning. Ever.

It was definitely too early.

I climbed the stairs expecting to hear little girl giggles and the muffled sounds of cartoon voices. But there was nothing. Silence. Even from the grandparents room.

It was Definitely too early.

I opened the girls bedroom door and found Jaime, face down on her pillow, with blankie haphazardly draped over her tossled hair. Paige’s face was nearly pressed up against the window of her top bunk, and she was nuzzled down in the pathetic remains of her disheveled covers.

“Girls….it’s time to get up.”

No response.

“Giiiiirls…it’s time for school.”

Jaime began to stir. I sat on her bed and rubbed her back, trying to coax her fully awake.

“Come on honey, it’s time to get up.”

With tightly squinted eyes, a classic and notable three year old morning afro, and a waving hand desperately trying to escape the wispy strands, Jaime responded in a croaky voice.

“But Mommy, I’m sleeping.”

“I know honey, but it’s time to get up and go to school.”

Jaime peered at me as if I had lost my mind.

“But Mommy, I’m sleeping!”

Such discussions are expected with teenage children, even middle schoolers, but this morning, I got the profound priviledge of dragging my three year old from her cozy nest, and forcing her to get ready for school. Thank you daylight savings. Thank you for this terrifying glimpse into my future.

Style

We have been involved in some interesting discussions lately about worship and musical styles. In light of these conversations I thought I would ask our readers.

1) What is your favorite style of music?

2) What are two of your favorite worship bands?

(popular and obscure are welcome answers)