This year Elisha Scott Fowler’s voice joins ours in wishing you a very Merry Christmas and great years ahead and behind! This holiday season, we pray that God will continue to bless you with both provisions and purpose for the year ahead. There has never been a happier place for us than to be doing what He has called us to do, which has included being parents in 2014. These past nine months have made for quite the journey of growth for both us and Eli. Stepping into being a family has been one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for growth that Stacy and I have experienced. Eli is a huge blessing in our lives and one that we are so incredibly thankful for!
In addition to becoming parents, 2014 has found us learning to be homesteaders too. We added 12 chickens to the property around the time Eli was born and now receive 9-11 eggs a day. We sell a few dozen each week to cover the cost of food, and we do our best to keep them safe from the many dangers lurking nearby (even the most docile animals will kill chickens, it seems). We also put out a rather large garden this year, raising tomatoes, beans, okra, squash, watermelons, lettuce, spinach, herbs, and cucumbers. With the help of her parents, Stacy has managed to can peaches, tomatoes, ketchup, bruschetta, and salsa. We have also planted strawberries, blueberries, grapes, blackberries, and a couple apple trees in hopes of getting fruit from them in future years. It’s also been humorous to watch the many people and animals test their resolve against the electric fence we put around our many plants. As we ourselves have experienced, it can be quite shocking to accidentally brush up against the wire!
For me (Patrick), this year’s journey has included doing life one-on-one with a few individuals who have decided to take a more intentional, intense step in their faith journey. And due to my bias to help make good resources available and free to the churches of the world, I’ve been writing and distributing the lessons online each week (leaders.onechurchmedia.tv) to challenge these close friends to be better Jesus followers. My goal for them is that they engage the Bible more deeply and follow God in a more disciplined manner in every area of their lives. Each month we take a different focus. This month, the disciples are looking hard at relationships, next month we will deal with finances, and then we will learn more about the New Testament.
God’s big passion for my life has become helping each person that comes into our church or into my life to get active in the four big ways that faith growths: (1) daily personal time with God, (2) fully-engaging on Sunday mornings: worshipping, serving and giving, (3) getting relationally involved with other believers (in a small group) and (4) inviting people into a relationship with Jesus by investing in their lives.
This year we marked ten years of marriage for me and Stacy. Although the greatest gift of this milestone in our relationship was Eli, we also took a short trip to Gatlinburg (Stacy’s first time there), where we toured the national park and enjoyed life in the mountains. In the eyes of many of our church people, I’m an “ole married man” now and I am proud of that title. Stacy and I are truly“one”in the sense that I can’t even picture my life without Stacy in it. We make a great team and have had a great life together so far. I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
As Stacy and I continue our journey together and reflect upon our first year as parents, we want to extend a HUGE thank you to the many people who modeled family for us and offered thoughtful advice along the way. We have been blessed beyond measure by our friends and family near and far. The generosity shown to us and “Baby Joy” (Eli’s code name) in baby showers, cards, gifts, meals, encouragement, words of wisdom, etc. has humbled us. Each and every gift has been so appreciated. Again, thank you!! Please keep us in your prayers as we continue to learn and parent Eli, and pray especially that we can establish good, meaningful family routines and traditions.
Merry Christmas, and God Bless,
Patrick & Stacy Fowler
Recommended Reading from 2014:
The Big Picture – an overview of the Bible by Tommy Nelson
Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend
Too Small to Ignore by Wes Stafford
The Bible Jesus Read – Philip Yancey
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Jesus Is _______ by Judah Smith
Fatherhood by George Foreman
Love and Logic
Recommended Listening:
What Would Jesus Say To Robin Williams, Ellen Degeneres,
& Walter White
Discipleship leaders.onechurchmedia.tv
How Good is Good Enough? Andy Stanley
The God of All Encouragement by Jerry Falwell
Favorite Quotes:
Not all of us can do great things…but we can all do small things with great love. ~ Mother Theresa
Prayer is like a savings account at the bank. As you keep making deposits, the return keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it will be there for you years from now. I can assure you that as you pray for your family, you will reap great rewards as the years go by. ~ Mike Macintosh
One of the most ungraceful things you can do is to circumvent the consequences of your children’s sin. Children learn from discipline and have an internal sense of justice that needs to know they have paid their debt for their infraction and can move on with their lives. When you either let your children get away with their sin or promise them consequences but fail to deliver, you upset the scales of justice that tip within their souls.
Hate is not an option for a Christian, at least not when it comes to other people. We can hate sin, the devil, and the evil injustice in the world, but we don’t have the option of hating anyone created in the image of God.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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