In a nutshell....

This has been one of the busiest years I can remember. We have had babies born, weddings, wedding showers & bridal showers, graduation, etc. We've had District Conference, Holiday Youth Convention, Camp Meeting, Youth Camps, South Texas Revival Conference. Several Community Days and outreach events. Hired an Associate to the Pastor - Dyron Adams. He and his wife, Tamberli, and their son, Zion, are in the process of getting settled into the routine of Wichita Falls & Life Tabernacle. They will, also, soon be welcoming a new member to the family, Malachi. He should be here the first part of November.

In February, Gene & I celebrated 21 years of marriage. We went to the Valentine Symphony in Dallas & stayed at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine. It was a wonderful, relaxing time.

I was asked to be over the music for Texas Women's Conference this year, so we flew Ronda in to play the organ. We sisters had a blast that week!

In April (I think), Priscilla, Gene & I went to Dallas to see Tony Bennett. Oh My Word!!! He was incredible!! AND.......

..... Kassie & Randy got engaged during the performance!! Kassie had no idea we were there watching from the balcony.

In May, Kyle & Jessica got married.....

..... we took senior portraits .....

..... and Cameron graduated!!!

Last week our family took few days off and went to Austin. We enjoyed the time away and had a great time seeing friends and visiting our favorite places. Mozart's .....

..... New Life Church .....

..... and The Domain.

We also went to the Round Rock Outlet Mall, Mellow Mushroom, Cheesecake Factory, drove through downtown, and through Pflugerville to see what all has been done there.

And now we are to August - gearing up for Kassie & Randy's wedding next month. This picture was taken at their Wedding Shower last week.

In the midst of all these events .... I have lost 50 lbs!!!!!

School begins next week. Chad will be a Sophomore at Rider High School, and Cameron begins his years of college at Midwestern State University.

We are excited about what God is doing in Life Tabernacle!! There is such an expectancy in the air. Every service is filled with the mighty presence of God. We have numerous visitors in every service, and God is changing lives.

What a great life!!

Gaither Vocal Band

The Gaither Vocal Band has hit it completely out of the park with their latest project!!!!

I have to admit - when I heard Guy Penrod and Marshall Hall were leave the group, I was not a happy camper. My first question was, "How in the world does Bill Gaither think he's going to build a better group than this one?" I even thought I might be done with the GVB. As much as I have LOVED Michael English and David Phelps through the years, I just wasn't impressed with a re-creation of what used to be. I figured we'd just be hearing a LOT of the OLD music again - not that those songs weren't good - but I get tired of remakes all the time.

Well..... they have totally surprised me with this latest release!! "Greatly Blessed" was released to stores yesterday. I bought it online last night and listened with awe to what has to be the most current, up-to-date music the GVB has ever done. The vocals are crazy!!!!

There's a ukelele on "Better Day," then they turn around and use "Canon in D" as the background to "You Are My All in All," then they have this Norah Jones-like piano sound going on with some unbelievable vocals on "Clean." They've done an easy-listening, jazz-like remake of the old song "That Sounds Like Home to Me." Beautiful!! And of course there's the good ol' southern style on "When He Blest My Soul." Even the OLD songs have a NEW sound! Awesome!!!

If you are a Gaither Vocal Band fan - JUST BUY IT!! Enjoy!

(just in case there is ANY question - this post is by KARLA)

January, 2010

Does anyone know where January went?!! I KNOW we just celebrated the new year a couple days ago and now here it is February 1!!! Wow!

Here are the happening from January, 2010:

We attended the beautiful wedding of Josh & Shelly Youngblood. Shelly was one of the young ladies in our youth group back in the day. She was a beautiful bride, and we are happy for them.
Cameron and Chad got their report cards for the first semester. Both of them did incredibly well. We are so proud of our boys and all they are accomplishing in their lives. God has BIG plans for them!!
Life Tabernacle was approved for our first daughter work!! Tabernaculo de Vida will launch this coming Sunday (February 7). We are so excited to see what God is going to do through our Spanish ministry. The miracles that have already taken place in this process are amazing.

Gene & I were privileged to attend Because of the Times in Alexandria, LA. We are always blessed to be a part of this conference. Everything is always top shelf - this year was no different. Govenor Bobby Jindal spoke to us briefly one night. The preaching and music was awesome!! And, of course, being with friends and family is what makes it even more fun.

During the month of January we have been focusing on prayer. We've had several different times of gathering as a church family to pray. It's been wonderful. Last week we had prayer revival at 7:30 each night. I loved the times of focused prayer. We are expecting great things this year.

To end our month, Life Tabernacle welcomed our newest member this year: Remington Keith was born January 31. He is such a cutey!! We are very happy for the proud parents, Zac & Amber.

Let's Finish out 2009!

I think it's a good time to go ahead and finish out 2009 so we can move into 2010. LOL! So... picking up where Gene left off, here we go.

In October we celebrated Cameron's 18th birthday.How can that be? I'm not much over 18 myself. HAHA!! It was so much fun! We surprised him a couple weeks before his birthday with a weekend to celebrate. Sis. Bernard & Lindsey came in on Friday and completely shocked him. Then on Saturday we had a party at our house & surprised him with a car from us and Grandpa & Grandma.I was quite emotional.... It was definitely a day he will never forget!

We were so blessed to attend General Conference in St. Louis. I always have so much fun seeing friends and family.
When conference was over, we took a few days in Branson with Wendell & Linda and Nathan & Ronda. We had a blast!!!! I LOVE laughing with family........there is nothing like it!

At the end of October, we had our Fall Blast weekend. We had somewhere around 400 at our annual festival on the 31st. It was so awesome! Bro. & Sis. Borlik, children's evangelists, were with us for the weekend.

In November....

We attended the wedding of Kristopher & Ashley Prince. Cameron was the bestman. It was a beautiful wedding.

Evangelist Mike Easter was with us for a week of special services. During this week we had a Community Day at Spudder Park. There is so much to tell about this event. God spoke to Gene through a man who was there - he told us to keep doing what we are doing; we will see the vision fulfilled; keep reaching out and they will reach back. It was just incredible. Also, we had a door opened to us in to the Police and Fire Departments of Wichita Falls. Can't wait to see what God does through these efforts.

Of course, once you get past the middle of November all the holiday celebrations begin. We had a great time through December.

We had the largest crowd ever at our annual Christmas Concert! They even had to put out extra chairs. Word is getting out in Wichita Falls!!! We had one church that brought their college & career group to our concert as part of their Christmas party. Another church dismissed their evening service to come to the concert.
Our family had a great Christmas time with Dad & Mom Holley and Wendell & Linda. It was quite different this year because there was so much snow! It was unbelievable. Not sure I'll be "dreaming of a white Christmas" for a while. LOL!

All-in-all, 2009 was a fabulous year. Life Tabernacle has grown and many things are happening! God is blessing! I'm so glad to be part of what He has planned for us this year. I hope you all are enjoying the wonderful move of God wherever you are. We're moving forward!!

ESL Class

Thought I would show you a picture of our class from last quarter with their Certificates of Completion! The classes started back up in the last month and it is exciting. Not only are we starting a church for those who speak Spanish, we are teaching them English. A special thanks goes to our teachers... (from the right) Betty Cash, Sarah Loveland (babysitter last quarter), Teresa Gaitan and Victoria Pena.

God is honoring our efforts and we have now baptized our first person who speaks Spanish only. He and his family are a great part of our church now and being taught the Word in our Sunday morning and Friday night Spanish Bible Studies. His son sang a solo in the Children's Choir this past Sunday night. We can envision this ESL class growing into a training center with many classes to meet this great need!

Children and Youth Events

Our children and youth are very important to our church family. We took a Sunday night to celebrate the accomplishments of our Sunday School classes and teachers. Promotion Sunday 2009 was a service led by the children. Praise singing, choir, offering, and special prayer were all done by the children.

The children who were advancing to the next class were promoted during the service.

Joseph Ouellette, our children's minister, was the speaker for the service and he spoke on the subject, "Who's your Granny?" A very moving message... although the title would never seem that way!

All of our teachers and their families were honored with a dinner and time of fellowship following the service.

Sharon Bivens and my wife were surprised by a visit from Danny and Tommie Kay Stephens, their youth leaders from YEARS ago! :)

"Preparing for the King" was an all-day event held on a Saturday for the young ladies to encourage them to dedicate their lives to the service of God and let their life show His glory. Kaspri Photography took pictures of the girls after they had dressed up for a banquet escorted by their Dad's or family member. My wife was their trial run for lighting and such — after a lot pictures were snapped, she put on a crown...

It struck her funny! As you can see below, she is a beautiful example of His glory (and I am a little partial!)

The End of August...

First day of school...

Cameron is a senior this year and Chad is a freshman. This is the first year since Chad was in the third grade that they are in the same school. It is amazing how time flies and the little children grow up. I wouldn't want them to stay little forever, but slowing it down wouldn't hurt! Oh, well, we are enjoying every stage and year that the boys go through. They are great guys and we are proud to call them our own. Perfect? No. But neither are we!

Chad's 15th birthday was August 30th and we had a party this year. The whole youth group was invited and the house was full! We had a great time...

Digital drums from Grandpa and Grandma... a gift to everyone in our house as well!!!! Silence is golden.

Alayna and Ashlyn, Andrew and Mandy's girls, had a great time tickling the boys! They are so sweet.

Back-to-School 2009

Here's a video that my son, Cameron, put together for our Back-to-School service this year! It is time for us to "Stand Out" for the Kingdom of God!

Our children and youth committed Sunday night to be what God has called us to be. We are looking forward to what God has in store for the 2009-2010 school year!

Homecoming makes the paper today...

Just wanted to let you see the newspaper article about our 1960's-70's Homecoming. It is great coverage and we are thankful to Sarah Johnson for getting it published. We are continuing to receive notes from those who attended letting us know how much they enjoyed themselves. We are so happy that it was such a blessing to everyone as it was to us also! You can click on these images and they will open in another window at a larger size enabling you to read the article. The first page is pictures about it and the story is on the second page...

"He A-wose"

This is the cutest thing I've seen in a long time, so I wanted to share it with you all.
(Thanks to Janet Anglin for sending it to me.)

Have a great day!