pumpkins galore!

Yesterday we spent the evening carving pumpkins with our friends. Here are some pictures!
This one is mine...
Aelah sitting with Derek's, mine, and her pumpkins.

October so far...

October: We finally got moved in to our new "loft" and started preparing for a week long trip to Nova Scotia, Canada. Some dear friends of ours who were on staff here at YWAM New Haven recently moved back to Canada to start a community on their family's orchard. They have over 100 acres of apples, peaches, and pears. (Mostly all apples) Derek and I and our good friend Kendra took all eight students on the 18 hour van ride up. It was the most beautiful ride I have ever been on. Fall was in full force up north. And I finally got to go to Maine. The last northeastern state to visit. Canada was such a nice change of scenery, literally. And the apples....oh how I wish you could taste them. Honey Crisp are their specialty. They are so sweet and crispy...mmmm. Our team picked over 30 bins in four half days. Pretty good, huh?!? Each bin contains 25 loads of baskets holding 65 apples, so you do the math. Thats a lot of apples. I had so much fun cooking most of the day for the team and Ryan and Mare, our wonderful hosts. Derek and I look forward to going back soon. The ride home was a little quicker, only 15 hours. We are all definately tired of being in the car. The students were great though. No complaining at all. We arrived home on Saturday night late and the students had one free day before leaving again on Monday for Marietta, PA. We always take our schools down there every semester to visit the home of the Ehrman's. They have a beautiful old mansion that they, with the help of us YWAM'ers, have restored. We even tore up the brick sidewalk last spring and re-layed it. So a few other staff members went on that trip this week with the students. Derek and I are getting some much needed rest. There is a spot in our bedroom, right on the bed where we pick up a wireless signal, so I have used that excuse to not get out of bed much today. :) We that about brings us up to date... We promise to update more often, even if its just with pictures of the beautiful New England fall foliage. We hope you are all doing well. Please send us an email or give us a call. We would love to hear from y'all.
Love,
Derek and Rebecca

September

September was somewhat of a blur. We started the DTS, which is always exciting, but very tiring. We all look forward to about week 2 where we are getting into a rhythm and things start to settle down. Week 2 came and went with no hope for rest or rhythm. We decided to move our offices from the "Loft" to an open floor of one of the houses our leaders' own. For two weeks we packed up a 5200 square feet office space to move into a 1500 square feet third floor space. We were able to sell and give away quite a bit of our stuff. But we still had so many memories to try to take in before leaving. The last week in September was spent moving. So many van fulls of things to load and unload. Needless to say, we were running on fumes. Derek was the main mover, he spent every day all day long moving and packing. He got quite the work out. Some where in there I also flew home to IL for a three day weekend to spend some much needed time with my family. Jeremy brought Sarah, his fiance for those of you who don't know, home to meet the parents. Jacob and I had already met her and were so excited to see her again and get to know her more. It was such a great weekend. Lots of laughing as always. Then on the 30th was our 1 year anniversary. Can you believe it??? I know we couldn't. Where did the year go? So much change and exciting new adventures together. We spent the day in Mystic, CT. We started with a fun aquarium where we were entertained by a funny sea lion. Then we drove downtown to the historic city's heart. We visited Mystic Pizza for lunch. They took a walk down the beautiful harbor. Its full of cute little shops and the river is full of old ships and sail boats. We headed home for dinner. Derek made us a very tasty sea food dinner. We had a great time reminiscing about the past year and our future. What a great way to end a very exhausting month.

August

Wow, how the time flies by. I was talking to my aunt the other day and she was begging for more updates on here. I guess I never knew if anyone ever read them or not, but it was a nice motivation for me to keep going...I also never feel like there is too much new going on, but like she said, I am in it, so I'm sure there is lots to say. So here is goes, one month at a time.
August:
We returned home from the crazy summer of weddings back home in Illinois. Our friends and co-workers(if thats what you call co-missionaries) moved in to their very own home so we spent the first two weeks helping them renovate, paint, and watch their two young ones so they could spend about every waking hour working. They one of my very best friends Anne arrived from Germany, her home country. She and I were both bridesmaids in our friend Erika's wedding, which was August 18th. Derek was also in the wedding as one of the groomsmen. Our final wedding of the year. It was so wonderful to spend time with Anne, she is a very special person in Derek and I's life.
Right around the time of Erika's wedding I got sick again. This time I was determined to figure out why I seemed to be allergic to weddings. It seemed like every wedding I was in, including my own, I got extremely sick. And also at Christmas last year. So as soon as I started feeling sick, Derek and I went straight to the doctor. She started me on some medicine for heartburn and told me that she wanted to run more tests. We were leaving the next day for Erika and Sean's wedding, so the tests would have to wait for now. The medicine helped some, but I was still having horrible stomach aches and heartburn. One of my friends at the wedding told me about her similar problems. She suggested going off of dairy to see if that would help. It did! Also, I started doing research on IBS. I never knew what it was exactly, but little did I know that I would have ALL the symptoms. So I started following all the diet restrictions for that as well. Then I found that when I ate bread my stomach would swell up, so I did more research on wheat allergies, and what do you know, I had all the symptoms for that as well. So now I am on a strict no dairy or wheat diet. It helps you lose weight thats for sure. I am starting to feel so much better. I still take over the counter meds for heart burn, but for the most part the diet and vitamins recommended help tremendously. I am hoping to be able to get off the meds soon.
What a crazy packed month. I didn't realized how busy we were.
On top of all of that, we were also planning for our Fall Discipleship Training School to begin. Our students would be arriving Sept. 5 so we had lots of work to do.