new member of the family

Ahhh-Ha...made you look. Some of you will be relieved, some disapointed but the fact remains, we got a dog...(not a small child).

Many of you may have heard stories about our cat, “Puppy”. You will be excited to hear that we have expanded our family by adding a REAL dog. (No, her name is not “Kitty”.) About three weeks ago we got “Joei” from one of Crystal’s friends from work. She is a golden lab/great dane mix, about a year old, and has LOTS of energy. She eats everything. We lose more socks to her than we lose to the dryer. We are training Joei to wear a “doggie backpack” so she can hold her own while we’re camping.

Puppy and Joei are still learning how to be polite to each other. Puppy thinks Joei is trying to kill her while Joei thinks Puppy’s swats and hisses are just in play. We are learning patience and conflict resolution. Please pray for them (and us).

suffering for the Lord

We’re leading a new community group at Doxology that has an emphasis on the outdoors. This is an exciting and perfect fit for us because we love any excuse to play outside. We are “suffering” for the Lord.
We led a small group rock climbing to Smith Rock in Central Oregon. Here Scotty is leading a route for us to climb.

A nice vew of the canyon, the area we climbed on is to the right of the river.

back to school

Scotty and Crystal working on Math homework together.

We’ve been keeping ourselves out of trouble by staying busy. We are both going to school full-time and working full-time:

Scotty is studying Business at Linn Benton Community College. He plans to transfer to Oregon State University for Spring term. His favorite class right now is Business Law. He is also taking Introduction to Business and Calculus. He is still building houses with Steve Oien Construction in Philomath, but he has to cut a couple hours in order to attend school. To make up for this he has taken a weekend job at Paul’s Place, the restaurant he worked at in high school. He really enjoys working there again as he missed some of his old friends.

Crystal is enjoying her first year at OSU. She is majoring in Communication and really loving it...you all know how much she likes to talk. She is still working as the bookkeeper at Bridge Builders International. In addition to bookkeeping she has been helping promote the summer projects that BBI will be hosting in Latvia. The projects are similar to last year, there will be the 2nd Annual Thomas Kinkade Art Camp and “teRiga”, a city service project with American and Latvian youth volunteers. More to come on these later.

Doxology

We have been attending “Doxology”, the new college-age service at Jefferson Baptist Church, for about nine months. Peter, Scotty’s brother, is the college pastor there. We have been a part of the core leadership team since the beginning of Doxology. Scotty is in charge of some of the operations of the service and Crystal sings in the band.
Doxology is a little bit different than what you may expect from a Baptist church. There is a strong emphasis on art and community. The walls display paintings, photos, poems and many other forms of art. The worship band plays mostly original music, and there is often interpretive dance and artistic videos as a part of the service.
There is a coffee shop after the service every week. It has a casual atmosphere where people feel open to converse with people outside their social bubble. There is also a small stage where musicians from Doxology have an opportunity to share their talents.

Crystal to Latvia

Crystal went to Latvia with Bridge Builders International. Returning to Latvia was a wonderful experience; it was amazing how familiar things were. This feeling of familiarity and comfort with the city and the culture made her more able to focus on the people and the ministry.

Crystal with good friend, Renalda, in Latvia.

Matthews Church, church that Hub partnered with in 2003

Streets in Old Riga.

Blackhead Sqaure in Old Riga at night.

Her time was mostly dedicated to the TeRiga service project. TeRiga is a practical service project that brought together Latvians and Americans from over 25 churches.

teRiga participant cleaning up at the most visible sight the city allowed us to clean.
Before and After shots of this sight below.

Before

There were about 100 Latvians and 12 Americans working simultaneously on 8 project sites. The work ranged from repainting play structures to clearing underbrush to major cleaning of a burned down market. TeRiga was seen and heard. Many people stood at the edge of the work sites and watched, by the second day many of these people began to approach the participants and ask “What are you doing?”. Their actions spoke for them and gave them the opportunity to share that God cares about people and Christians want to serve their community and share the love of God.

Latvian participants explaining their works to passerbyer.

Another part of the project was to bring the Message to people in the form of music outreach. As you may know Latvians are crazy about all art, but music is their passion. There were two music events, both in very populated squares or parks. Many local and international Christian musicians showcased their original music and used their music platform to share Christ. The cool part about all this is that the Latvians took ownership of the projects. The Latvians did all the communicating and up front spotlight time so the rich-Christian-American-trying-to-convert-the-world stereotype was broken. Many more people were reached this way.

British band performing in Blackhead Square in Riga.

During her time in Latvia she was able to connect with quite a few friends that made last year. These friends are involved in youth programs at their churches and even going on international mission trips. It is encouraging to see as we minister to the Latvians they are in turn going out and ministering to others.

Crystal with Anna (next to Crystal in white), a friend that was made in Hub's trip to Latvia summer of 2003.

Before

After

Scotty to Mexico

Scotty went with his brother (Pastor Pete) with the youth group to Mexico to build homes for a couple of families. This was Scotty’s first trip where he was in charge of the building of one of the houses. That was a challenge for him, but he left good about it at the end of the week and his crew said he did a good job. He is hoping to go back and do that more in the future.

still newlyweds

Hello from the newlyweds! No doubt our last 8 months have been quite the adventure. We are adjusting to being married nicely. We have been busy with work and school; we even took a couple classes together this last term. Scotty is working full-time as a framer for Steve Oien Construction in Philomath and Crystal is still working as a bookkeeper for Bridge Builders International (BBI).

Scotty and Crystal on the bus during our honeymoon.

We just moved from Lebanon to Corvallis a few weeks ago. Even though this means we are a half an hour away from Crystal’s family, it is nice that both of us are that much closer to work. This also puts Crystal closer to the band she has been singing with lately. This gives her more opportunities to sing at shows where she can also sing some of the songs she has written. The lead singer in the band just put out a CD with Crystal singing backup vocals. That is really exciting for us.