Cold weather, warm home

Freezing rain falls freely on our home here in north Rome this frigid Saturday evening, as I sit warmly typing in our dark dining room. Raven has run to the store to get pancake mix for dinner (tonight is breakfast night!), Dustin is outside attempting to emblaze our fire pit with a monstrosity of flame and heat fulfilling his week long desire to dwell in our back yard amidst the stark contrast of this sudden winter coldness and the fiery heat. Erin Miller is off at a special needs camp for children, while Erin Potter is joining Andy at a D-Now at a local church singing and worshiping with the youth of that church. Renee is in the next room putting a puzzle together with a young girl from our neighbourhood. Brent is upstairs reading, I am downstairs typing, and all is well at 215 North Ave.
Our garden has seen its better days, and though we held out for the poor heads of cabbages struggling to prosper in the frosty air, we are finally ready to bid them farewell with the rest of the composting plants, and look ahead to our spring garden.
Over the past month our house has been constantly filled with children from the neighbourhood. Being the Christmas season, the children were out of school for almost a month and often spent their free days at our house, blessing us with laughter and stories and games. We have, however, discovered that while connecting with these children is undeniably important and indispensable, we must consistently take steps forward and never be complacent with the positive fellowship that we have been able to establish, and continue to establish, with the children, but we must constantly push ourselves to the next level. A very obvious step we could take, and have felt like we should take, now is making the connection with the parents of the children. While we know personally almost all of the children's parents, we have not pursued those relationships as intentionally nor intensively as we think we should, and therefore we are hoping to bridge that gap soon.
The artistic bug has bitten most of us in the house and there are paint brushes, pallets, acrylics and oils and canvases galore. One child from the neighbourhood saw this and is now so excited about the possibility of him being able to paint with us. Every time he comes over he asks if he can paint. While it is usually in the most inopportune times, we are hoping to soon transform the upstairs den into a room where children can paint and draw and colour and express themselves freely and artistically.
We are so blessed to have love and support from so many faithful followers of Christ and we are so thankful for friends and family and even complete strangers who love God and us so much, and consistently look for ways to serve in Christ's name. We often wish we had a schedule of community events, or daily activities in which we could invite others to join us, but we are reminded that the reason we don't is perhaps because we are not so much an institutional organization with a rigid agenda to follow, goals to meet, promises to fulfill. Rather we are just ordinary people trying to do things a little different. We want to love God, love each other, and love our neighbors. And learn how the fullness of that idea looks in the human experience. How do we love God as much as humanly possible? How can we love each other more and more every day? How do we show love to our neighbours?
Living together is gradually teaching us a small part of that answer, and with that answer we hope to do "small things with great love." Small things don't always make the news, or church bulletins, or newsletters, or even blog entries, but hopefully our great love will make an impact on the Kingdom of God we prayerfully wish to further.
Thank you for prayerfully loving us on this journey, may God bless you and use you to further His Kingdom wherever you may be.