Bridge is our church start.  It's going well, but slow.  We shouldn't really be surprised, that's just part of being a church start in this part of the world.  But we are loving it!
So here is a typical Sunday in the life of the Barnwell Crew on their way to church.

Hi All!!
Kelly from Kelly's Korner is hosting a "Show Us Your Life" each week and this week was definitely one I could participate in, "Show us your ministry!"

I have 2 passions (ministries) I want to share with you.  Sharing Christ to the people of Europe and supporting ladies through the pain of infertility as well as educating people on the pain that infertility causes. 

I'll start with infertility.  My story is a long one, struggling through several IUIs, an exploratory surgery for endo/blocked tubes, moving on to adoption, adoption losses (2), considering IVF, a successful adoption and within weeks of that adoption a successful in-vitro (IVF).  If you are interested in the VERY LONG (ha!) version, I hope you'll read and be blessed and encouraged by my journey through infertility.   
After our first adoption loss, I got to googling "Christian Infertility" and through my searching I found a wonderful forum called "Hannah's Prayer."  It is an online community of ladies struggling through the painful journey of infertility and loss.  If you find yourself desiring support on the often lonely & painful journey, please come check us out!!  I have been a member for 5 years and now am co-director of this wonderful ministry!  Our website will tell you a little more about us and direct you on how to join our community.  We'd love to have you!!

That brings me to my next passion.  Being missionaries in Europe.

Jerry and I have lived in Europe for over 10 years.  We moved to Russia at the end of 1999 doing church planting.  Then moved to Prague, Czech Republic to do media for our region of Central & Eastern Europe and Jerry has been leading the media team for 6 of those years.  Recently our organization experienced a big reorganization and Jerry now leads the Forward Communications Team (still media) for all of Europe. We have lived in Prague for 9 years.  With this reorganization the decision has been made for us to make another move and we are in the process of obtaining a work visa to live in Madrid, Spain and hope to move there sometime in late Spring.

What do we do?
Our team creates videos, write stories about the work going on among our missionaries in Europe, take incredible pictures and have even shot a music video for a Christian Artist, Jeni Varnadeau.
That just touches the vast amount that our team does!!  Our old website gives more information on that too if you want to take a look around.  =)

So, that's my 2 passions.  Sharing the love of Jesus Christ to the people of Europe and supporting women on the difficult, painful journey of infertility & loss.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Today is the Super Bowl!!  What's funny is, I could really care less.  I am all about the social and food aspect!!  Ha!  I love any reason to get together!!  And I've got lots of it this week.  It should be fun!
Seeing as the Super Bowl is playing live, which is the middle of the night for us, we are dvr-ing the game and watching it Monday night to have a proper Super Bowl Party then.  I'm sure Jerry will get up and watch part of it in the middle of the night. We'll have our colleagues and church friends over for a game and fun foods night!!

On the menu:

7 Layer Dip
Sausage Balls
Sausage Queso Dip

Others will be contributing as well.  Fun fun!

On Tuesday I'll be kicking off a cooking/baking time.  Not that I am a whizz or anything, but baking is something that I love to do and thought it would be a great outreach opportunity through Bridge (our outreach/church).  It's just going to be a fun time to fellowship and share recipes.  My hope is to kick it off by sharing a recipe of my own and then each week someone brings a recipe to share and make with everyone.  I think it will be fun!  I'm still figuring out what I want to make this first week.  I've got to get busy on that!

Then we have some down time the next few days and then I host another party!  We have some friends/volunteers coming from Michigan and want to have some time with all the missionary ladies in Prague.  We are going to have an Italian Potluck on Friday night.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it!  More fun!!

Saturday night we'll be getting together again with these same ladies to meet some of their Czech friends that they have made from English Camps that they have put on the past few years.

I've got to remember to get out the camera during all these fun times!!

Yeah, that would be me!  I am cookie mad!!  I LOVE baking cookies.  I'm finding that I slightly despise cut out cookies.  I'd love to be better at it, but we just don't do well together.  I do love finding fun and different concoctions of cookies.  One of our all time favorites are called Sweet Dreams.  I found it in a B & B cookbook.  It's a variation of a chocolate chip cookie.  You add in some cinnamon & nutmeg (I changed this one ingredient, it called for ginger and I'm not a huge ginger fan) and then roll in powder sugar before baking and they are oh so yummy!! 

I digress.
I was in a mood to make some cookies.  I had some bananas that were getting brown and instead of baking bread or muffins, I thought I'd hunt down a cookie recipes.  And that I did and found this one.
Karis isn't a banana fan.  At all!  She has tried on a few occasions because she knows how much the rest of the fam loves them.  She just doesn't like a fresh peeled banana and sometimes doesn't like muffins or breads either, so I thought I'd make peanut butter cookies.  I haven't made them in awhileanut butter can be quite precious around here.  We can find it easily enough, but you have to buy about 20 jars for it to last long enough in this house.  That's why I call it "precious."  Somehow we ended up with crunchy peanut butter (my kids only do smooth), so I thought we'd use it up for cookies.

Funny thing, the Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies have been the biggest hit!  Even for Karis.  I'm thinking it's the chocolate!  Yeah, gotta be the chocolate!  But they do have a healthy aspect to them too.  Can't go wrong with oatmeal, right?  I, however, reach for the peanut butter more often.
Now I'm in the mood for some Sweet Dream Cookies!!  It's been too long!!

With Valentine's Day around the corner I thought we'd do a little project today.
We started our day with making heart elephants!  You cut out various sizes of hearts, make an accordion nose, glue it all together and Ta da!  Brennan lasted all of about 2 minutes.  He is NOT into art or sitting still for very long for that matter.  Maybe it's a boy thing.  My girls love it though and sat there for the longest time cutting and gluing and drawing!  What fun!!



I know so many families that do pizza and a movie on Fridays nights.  I thought that was a great tradition to start with our family.  It's nice that the kids are getting older and really look forward to and enjoy these kinds of things.  However, we could "do" pizza more than once a week or sometimes we get a hankering for it a lot sooner than Friday!  And my kids are all about Happy Meals right now, so Jerry went to Flora, that's our local mall with our closest McDonalds, to pick up some Happy Meals for dinner.

It ends up that the whole family isn't really together.  Brennan loves to watch the Spiderman movies, where Karis is scared of them.  So, mom or dad take Brennan to mom & dad's room to watch so Karis can't hear the movie and Karis watches something else or has us play games.  She is really starting to get into games.  I think I heard her say that daddy played Trouble, Candy Land & Shoots & Ladders, then went and played her V-Tech Tinkerbell game.  She's becoming quite the gamer!!  And Reegan bounces around between rooms!!  It's been the start of a fun family tradition for us!

I follow a blogger, Kelly's Korner, and she was sharing about Simple Pleasures.  I thought it was a great blog topic and thought I'd do my own!


My Simple Pleasures

♥  Doing devotions with my kids

♥  Hearing my kids ask questions about Jesus

♥  Happy Hour Sonic Vanilla Dr Pepper (that is really a simple pleasure to me now when I can't get one!)

♥  Watching my kids play together, no fighting, just having a good time together

♥  Lunch or coffee with a friend

♥  Playing in the sand at the beach (oh it's been too long since I've done this!)  This is high on the list when we get to Spain!

♥  An unexpected hug, kiss or "I love you, mom!"

♥  Stick to your fork cake!  This is a joke with my friend, Jill,  but you know that traditional vanilla wedding cake that is so moist it just sticks to your fork!  Ha!  Yum!!

♥  Having a break from a regular day by shopping by myself or reading at a coffee shop!

♥  My hubby bringing me a treat or present when I've had a rough day.

♥  When the Lord touches my heart with truths from His Word!

And my kids?

Today I asked if they wanted raisins for a snack.  Reegan told me that she wanted to eat them from the bag, that it makes her heart happy!  So, I guess her simple pleasure would be eating raisins out of a bag!  SUCH a simple pleasure!!  Ha!!

Brennan's would probably be Spiderman!  Of course, what else?

And Karis?  Pizza, mac & cheese, cake & grapes!  Ha!  The girl likes her food!!