I wonder what Christmas time must be like in other parts of the world. Would it feel like Christmas if we didn’t get to go shopping, bake cookies, or put up decorations and lights? Would it feel like Christmas if we didn’t send greeting cards or have a big feast with a turkey or ham and all the fixin’s? Would it feel like Christmas if we didn’t spend time with family in a warm cozy home with candles burning?

Reflecting on the very first Christmas, I realized none of these things we associate with Christmas were happening when Jesus was born. But God loved us (the world) so much that he sent his one and only son to be born in a dirty stable and be laid in a manger. Then He lived humbly as a human for 30 years, began his earthly ministry, and then gave up his life at the age of 33 in severe humiliation and death as a criminal even though He had never sinned. All this because God wanted to restore us to himself. What a sacrifice and what a GIFT! Hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating today!

We were blessed with Karen’s whole family flying to Sarasota from PA on Friday to be with us for Christmas! Her amazing mom even froze hamloaf, gourmet potatoes, carrot casserole, and sweet potato pudding and brought it in her carryon!!!! That’s love!!! It was wonderful! We’re so glad they are all here!

School’s over!! Where did 12 weeks go? We have adjusted to life at YWAM and love the Florida weather! It wasn’t easy, but God is refining us this year. Pruning is painful, however, it must be done for growth to take place. We finished our DTS lecture phase on December 15th with our big geography final and 9 Bible memory verses, and spent that weekend packing up everything we need for Christmas break and our outreach trip. We did 12 loads of laundry this week…whew! We also cleaned our camper up in preparation for Karen’s parents and sister, Kayla, to visit the YWAM campus this Tuesday to Thursday, after the rest of the family heads home. It will be fun showing them around our new home.

We were blessed to have a visit from Larry’s parents as well from December 2nd-6th. We had a lovely time with them and Larry’s cousin, Anthony, at their house in Sarasota, eating out and going to the beach. Then they spent some time at the YWAM base with us.

We are gearing up to leave for Dominican Republic on New Year’s Day for all of January and February. Please pray that God will radically move through us to bless the church there as well as to win souls and grow the kingdom of God! We will be staying in three locations and ministering in a variety of ways including feeding programs, playing baseball, befriending orphans and Haitian refugees, and teaching school children music, crafts, sports, and other practical skills. It will be the perfect trip for our boys at their current ages, and it helps that they like baseball. We will be leading worship on the trip along with a guitar player and Alicia Zimmerman, who is from the Ephrata area and was in our DTS. Our whole family is also participating in a drama that will be used in our outreach.

Above Photo (left-right top row): Jojo, Caleb (leader), Cameron, Grant, Blaine, Kiana, Karen, Larry
(left-right bottom row): Alicia, Kim, Amanda, Jordyn, Marilyn, Tori (leader)

The one mission location, where we are going in DR, wants us to build a wall or add a new floor to their school. The only way we can do this project is if we have $1,000-$1,200 in cash to take with us on the trip to complete it. If anyone feels led to donate to this project, please let us know in the next day or so because we will need to make arrangements to receive the funds this week before we leave.

Also, any donations to support us financially will need to be sent to a different address while we are gone. We will post that information as soon as we have it. Thanks to all our generous supporters. We appreciate you all so much, and we pray God blesses you abundantly for your thoughtfulness and for making this possible. We also thank our prayer warriors, because prayer is what continues to get us through.

God is so good! He is very active in our lives and in the lives of those around us. It would be difficult to tell you everything God taught us so far on our blog, but we will be happy to share if you have questions or want to catch up personally after our trip. We hope to return home to PA, in March, for a visit. That would be a great time to tell you what God is doing in our lives and in YWAM. It’s just too much for words right now but so good. It’s a learning and growing time for us. We have so much more to learn, but we look forward to going to the nations as God leads us in His perfect timing. We are willing to go where He sends us.

For now, our plans include a 3-week program in June at YWAM Orlando, and then flying our family to London, England in July, with a YWAM team. We plan to apply for the School of Worship in the Fall (it was postponed by YWAM for the Spring). Sometimes, we make plans and God makes adjustments to our plans. We know that God works all things together for good.

We miss everyone and hope you are well…Merry Christmas!

Love, The Weavers

Prayer Requests:
-Smooth packing (please pray that everything we need for 2 months fits in 8 suitcases)
-Open hearts and minds to God (for our team and those we are ministering to)
-Team unity
-That God will do signs, wonders, and miracles in the Dominican’s lives through us!
-Worship that blesses the heart of God-we never led worship before! It’s all new!
-Continued good health & protection
-Smooth travel & safety
-For YWAM to attain all the permits needed to occupy the buildings on the campus and proceed with all the work necessary to complete renovations and projects to get everything up and running. Praise God the water hookup and sewer were approved. No more running out of water in our camper, hopefully!
-Continued wisdom and direction to know God’s will for us and that we will glorify Him.

Anyone wondering where in the world the Weavers are? We’ve been in a whirlwind! Check out the song by Matthew West, My Own Little World, on YouTube.  We pulled out of our quiet neighborhood in our Ford Excursion towing our new home, a 37-foot camper, on Sept. 14th, two days after our goal (due to some unexpected delays). We ended up having three moving days with all the unique circumstances of our situation, but WE DID IT! ☺ Actually, “God did it!” We have months of stories & miracles to tell!

We can’t even begin to thank all of our wonderful family and friends enough for your amazing help to “push us” up and over the mountain to get everything wrapped up in order for us to be on our way to Orlando, Florida. It’s probably a miracle that we’re actually here given the many obstacles that almost stopped us! Our house sold at the “last hour” (we got an agreement on our house 3 weeks before moving)…God bless the Zimmermans! They are an amazing family, and the whole story is pretty miraculous. ☺ God ended up being our “realtor.” He’s amazing!

You all amazed us with your love and support while packing and moving! It continues to bless us as we receive our mail, when we find notes of encouragement and “love checks” of financial support (and online donations, which are so easy…we haven’t had time to get to a bank in the last 5 weeks)! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for every prayer, word, & gift! You (and the Holy Spirit) are the wind beneath our wings!

We are thankful for God’s protection on our trip…there were some pretty “exciting” moments…but God helped us through them miraculously! We can tell you the stories later! Also, we easily found campgrounds to pull into both nights. ☺ We thank God!

We set up camp in Youth With A Mission’s “RV Community” as they call it, a beautiful setting in a revived camp (which was shut down and closed for years until last year when YWAM purchased it). We have jumped right into a new lifestyle of learning and growing in our faith. We could have never anticipated what it would really look like to be in school as a family. There have been many adjustments, but WOW! Let us tell you we had an amazing first week learning how to hear from God! Have you ever asked God “What do you think of me?” and listen quietly? It might blow your mind what you hear or what picture forms in your mind! Tell us your personal stories if you care to share! ☺

Our first teacher, John Bills, encouraged us to do this as well as another new exercise called “Blank Page.” We asked God what He wanted us to pray for specifically and we sat quietly to listen for the answer. Then we shared as a group what each of us got. Some of us saw pictures, some got words (like a country, etc.). Then we asked God for more revelation and clarity about each item and narrowed in to begin to pray specifically for what God showed us. It was amazing to see how God showed pieces of the puzzle to each of us and how when we shared, it began to come together! We have intercession times weekly when we do this and it’s simply amazing…so encouraging to bond together in prayer for exactly what’s “on God’s heart” at the moment! This week they prayed for us after getting Isaiah 19:5-9 NIV. I didn’t know there was a verse about us in the Bible!

The day-to-day is always a challenge…always obstacles to overcome. When we arrived the heat was unbearable! We could’ve literally changed clothes several times a day because we sweated constantly. Thankfully, Fall is here now and the weather is PERFECT! Mornings and evenings are a little cool so we wear jackets or sweatshirts, but the temps get up to 65-75 degrees. Sorry to say, we don’t miss the snow back home…at least not at this point! We have been adapting to the five of us living in a camper day in, day out, but we appreciate your continued prayers for grace as we learn how to make this work. When we run out of water in the camper, we just don’t get to shower or wash dishes that day. When the bugs bite, we SCRATCH (Karen has black and blue bruises to prove it!) We do laundry every 2 weeks (8 loads) at the Laundromat. We are being stretched to the max, but we know that in all of this God is teaching and training us. It will all be worth it when we walk through the doors of our dreams to minister to others through music and other means in the nations of the world.

God is giving us a passion for Europe and New Zealand. A few weeks ago, our Thursday morning corporate worship and intercession time was focused on London, England. Please pray for God to prepare us to go there during the Summer Olympics next year to minister to people. There is a lot of spiritual darkness there and the team leaders are looking for worship leaders and prayer warriors to go for a few weeks in July 2012. Karen’s heart is breaking for the young people there because of all the rioting and violence going on…we want to bring them HOPE and “break the chains!”

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners

Our DTS (Discipleship Training School) outreach will take place from New Years to early March in Dominican Republic (for eight weeks). Our team of 11 young people (including 2 Lancaster County friends in our DTS ☺) will be flying into Santa Domingo…our first stop is in Barahona to participate in feeding programs and building projects. Then we will go to the YWAM base in Santiago as well as one other location which we are praying about. We will interact with orphans, Haitians, and mission staff.

We have a balance of $1,252 due on Wednesday, November 2nd for our mission trip costs. If all of our friends and family chose to make a difference in the life of an orphan or impoverished person through our trip and divided that up it would only be a donation of $2.50 per person! ☺ It only takes a small amount from many to make a HUGE difference in any mission focus. If you would like to help us reach the goal and help our team reach the poor, you can fill out the enclosed form or just donate by credit card online at

http://www.ywamorlando.org/studentpayment.asp.

Click on Payment For A Student/Participant and fill in our names: Larry & Karen Weaver
Select DTS from the drop-down menu and you can make a secure payment online with a credit card.

Thanks for even considering helping us financially to take our children to a place where they will learn what it means for someone to really be “starving.” How many times have you heard an American child say “I’m starving!”? I’ve heard it too many times and even heard it slip out of my own mouth a few times. ☹ When someone goes without food for four days it is said that they only “BEGIN to starve.” Aren’t we so blessed to have so much in America! Psalm 72:12-15 talks about God saving the oppressed from injustice. We can make a difference with a little! (20% of the world is using 80% of its resources.)

The kids are enjoying meeting all the new people and getting lots of attention from staff and students, especially Kiana who gets passed around and “fought over.” They absolutely love her! The boys do independent school work in the mornings during child care and we see them at meals. Karen picks them up at 4:00 to finish school. They are constantly filthy…it’s a sandy, dirty place being a camp and all, but they love riding their bikes and ripsticks on the property and playing with their new friends.

Daily we have class from 8:30 to 3:30 every day with lunch from 1-2. Then Larry goes to Photography classes 3 days a week and does lawn work or food prep. the other 2 days while Karen homeschools the boys. We have dinner at 6 p.m. and the evenings vary but include Monday family night at church, worship every Friday night, and weekly evangelism. On Sundays we attend a local church that is really great…challenging us to live radically different and sold out to Jesus as His disciples. Weekly we meet with our Small Group (Larry is in a group of all guys and Karen is in a group of girls), and we also have a one-to-one every week with our small group leader. We also have a new Bible verse to memorize and Geography every week. Everything is cumulative from week to week so we are challenging our memory and study skills…we’ve been out of school too long for this!!!! No, actually it’s really good for us and we are doing well thankfully, even though it’s a college course (and we thought we would never “go to college!” ☺)

God is continuing to stretch us and teach us, doing “soul surgery” in order for us to become more like He has planned for us to be. He is taking us deeper. It seems not a day goes by without us learning something so deep that it makes a lasting impact…it’s painful sometimes but fulfilling. We are encouraged. The people here are amazing, and we have an incredible community in YWAM. We can see how God is building a foundation in us that will take us to his dreams for us in the future. We are excited! Please pray for us! ☺

Praise Points:
-We wish we had time to personally thank each of you individually for your help with our moving sale, packing, meals, financial support, cards, childcare, gifts, prayers and words of encouragement. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts! God bless you!
-God’s provision regarding our house, camper, truck to pull it
-Safety on the highway while towing “our house on wheels,” despite severe swaying that could have resulted in a horrible crash, and during another instance when a tire blew.
-Health & strength and clarity to learn
-Fresh well water on campus. We go fill our water jugs 1-2x a week for drinking.
-healthy meals made with organic food and fresh vegetables, cooked for us on week days.
-good friends for Cameron and Grant (please pray for their spiritual growth and maturity).

Prayer Points:
-Living conditions including dirt, bugs, and port-a-potties
-Grace with each other adjusting to the tight living space of a camper
-Outreach preparation
-Family bonding and a good homeschool education for the boys, despite intense schedule
-November 2nd is our balance due date for the $1,252 we need for our outreach to Dominican Republic Jan-early March. Please pray for God’s provision and about whether God wants you to give to this mission. Thank you for your consideration. God bless you!

If you would like to support our outreach financially, become a monthly sponsor or be part of our email prayer team, please contact us by email. kweaver5@marykay.com

Missing our PA friends and family,

The Weavers
Larry and Karen
Cameron, Grant, and Kiana

Hi friends! Many of you may already know this, but we’ve been in Orlando, FL for two weeks now! Here’s a glimpse into our journey that started back in April 2011.

Isaiah 6:8
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

God is turning our world upside-down! It’s so good for us though, because we have lived in our “safe bubble” as Americans. As we have been seeking Him more than ever in the last year or so and reading books like Crazy Love, Radical, and When Heaven Invades Earth, we have experienced Him in ways we never have before! Life is more than work, church, and football. We know that we need to get outside the church building and spend time with those who don’t know Jesus. We are being stretched outside our comfort zone, but our faith is growing deeper. God’s been teaching us how to walk in faith and to step out and make a difference even when we can’t see the whole picture and when His direction is without human logic and reasoning. He is alive and active as much today as He was in Bible times. The Holy Spirit is still performing miracles and His kingdom is still growing! God is blowing our minds! He’s writing the story, so He can get the glory!

Our family is going on a mission trip…only it’s not just a trip but a year of immersion in learning how to be true disciples of Jesus Christ and developing our God-given gifts to use them in the BIG picture God is showing us for the future. Have you heard of YWAM (Youth With A Mission)? We received our acceptance call from their Orlando, Florida, campus for their first Photography DTS (Discipleship Training School) starting this Fall, which will precede our 8-week mission trip to a foreign country! Following the first 6 months, we plan to enroll in the School of Worship (also at the YWAM Orlando base) for 6 months. So, it looks like God is moving our family there for a year! We are so excited to learn and grow in the Lord and minister God’s love to others through music and photography and other ways of course! We are also excited about all the families living at this location and that our boys will continue to be homeschooled. (After waking up in the middle of the night from a dream Karen had about homeschooling and she asked God, “So why would we homeschool?” she was amazed to hear an immediate still small voice answer “Because of ministry.” Now a year later, we know what that means!)

We can see how God has been lining things up the last few years from homeschooling to changes in our businesses to dreams and vision for the future. When Larry’s marketing position was downsized in April, we felt God nudging us to step out of the boat and be open to anything. We heard clearly from God a few specific things which we soon began to understand. Larry’s passion for photography is being blessed by the Lord and he is now working full-time from home-his dream come true! It’s always been important to us to live for the Lord wherever we are and not leave God’s work for foreign missionaries to do. Our businesses have been vehicles for ministry, but have we really made an impact on the world? We see the past years and this upcoming year as a time of preparation for the ministry he wants us to step into. Even though we never dreamed of being missionaries outside of Lancaster County, PA, as surrendered believers we want to be exactly where God wants us. We are clear that He is leading us out of our comfort zone and doors are opening…It’s all happening so fast! When God moves, He MOVES!

God also takes care of the details! He equips when He calls. We are in a whirlwind of activity, getting everything ready in order to make our move in mid-Sept. Larry is wrapping up photo shoots in August, so if you need photos for Christmas cards, etc., please contact him this week to schedule a session. Karen will continue to serve her Mary Kay customers, shipping products by mail to help fund our trip. Internet orders are preferred beginning in Sept., but not required. Contact her by phone (717) 575-6857, or email at kweaver5@marykay.com if you have questions for her. You can ask about the other fundraisers we are doing if you’re interested.

As we pack up all our stuff, the words of the song, “This Could Be our Day,” ring in our heads. “Clearly it’s time to make a change…I know that it’s time for me to move…I’ve been given this minute to use. What we do here is just the beginning…New life is starting at every ending…We are part of a story unfolding…This is the weight of the world we are holding….This could be our day.”

Blessings!

Larry & Karen Weaver
Cameron (9), Grant (7), Kiana (11 mo.)

Thank you Char Photography for these wonderful photos!! It’s been a pleasure working with you the past two years!! I’m definitely gonna miss it!