Ben, Nicola and Amy's Visit

Last week my sister Nicola, her husband Ben and their daughter Amy came to visit. We had not seen them for two years so Amy had changed so much. It was great to see them. We only had a few days to show them a few of the sights around here. This is us in front of the governor's mansion here in Frankfort. We spent a little while playing at the park. Matthew and Amy had fun on their scooters.

I gave Matthew the camera and he took some pretty good photos, this is one.

Spring in Frankfort

Spring in Frankfort is really pretty. Here are a few photos that Anna-Marie took.

Frankfort Flood

A few weeks ago we had a lot of rain and the little creek that runs behind the church flooded. It came into the church entrance and up a couple of steps but thankfully the damage was minimal.

Anna-Marie's Spring Break

Anna-Marie went with a friend and her family to the mountains in Tennessee for a few days over Spring Break. Her friend, Bobbie, took these great photos so I thought I would post a few.

Mark's trip to Manaus, Brazil

The Lord has been incredibly gracious to me and allowed me to spend 8 days in Manaus, Brazil. A team of 9 from Buck Run went to build some benches for this church below. Manaus is situated in the north of Brazil, in Amazonia.

The finished product. The benches in the front were the ones we built. We finished 100 which enables an extra 500 people to have seating.
Here is the team, I am the bearded one in the back middle.

We had a few days to trip around and no one goes to the north without taking a ride on the Amazon. The Amazon (brown water on the left) meets with the Negro (black water on right) right at Manaus. Its an amazing thing to be bitten by mosquitoes on the Amazon!

Here I am heading into legitimate Amazon rain forest, what a privilege and joy. As soon as this photo shoot was over I scurried back to the boardwalk! This area floods in the rainy season and about half way up the trees were big black termite and ant nests. They know where the water level is going to be and build their nests just above it; amazing!

Here is the wonderful family that 4 of us stayed with for the week. Gregory and Sandra, their daughter Lurissa, and her husband. Sandra spoke very good English. Obrigadu (Thankyou) to this lovely family.

Buck Run Baptist Church

Below is a photo of us outside our new church in Frankfort, Kentucky. The church is called Buck Run Baptist church, and it is at Elkhorn Forks. We are privileged to be here for a year. I (Mark)am assisting the Pastor; Dr. York in all areas of pastoral ministry in the church. Dr. York was my preaching professor at seminary.
Here is my little office situated in Dr. Yorks office. They are not my books but his. The photo below this one is Dr. York preaching the morning sermon.

Here is a great photo of the inside of the church with Sereena in the foreground.

Sereena's Visit

It was great to have Sereena visit earlier in February. She game over here before the Shepherds Conference in LA where she was meeting up with Nige and some other pastors from New Zealand. Mark also went over to the conference to meet up with Nige, Russel and others. He missed most of the conference though as he had to go down to Mexico to renew his visa.

Sereena brought us over all these New Zealand goodies, thanks to everyone who pitched in.

Sereena standing in the door of our townhouse. We had had quite a lot of snow a few days before she came.

We took her down what we call "Deer Alley".

We also took her to the Capitol building in Frankfort.

A couple of photos Sereena took from the road.

Sereena and I spent a day out at the Creation Museum. It was great to have some time together and catch up.

Joel's 12th Birthday

I'm sorry that it has been a while since we have blogged. The computer I normally use has broken down. We had a very special visitor for Joel's birthday, our friend Sereena from Hastings. I will blog more about that later. Joel's birthday was the day we had to drive Sereena to the Louisville airport so it worked out well to get together with some of his old friends and play Lazar Tag and then take them out for dinner. He had been saving all his money for quite a while to buy an electric guitar, so the cake was a guitar cake. He is now the proud owner a blue Rogue Rockateer.