PLEASE PRAY!!!

Hi all!
Two days ago, one of our friends who was 38 weeks pregnant went to the emergency room because her fever had reached above 102 for the second time that day . When she got there, they automatically hooked her and their precious baby to heart rate monitors. As the the nurses continued to give her fluids, they began realizing the baby's heart beat was erratic, so the doctor decided to perform an emergency c-section. Yesterday, Jonathan (the baby) seemed to be fully healthy and doing great. The mom on the other hand apparently had pneumonia, so she would have to stay in the hospital a little while longer to let her lungs get to full capacity.
This morning I received a call from a friend that Jonathan was rushed to Cook's Childrens last night because they discovered one of the ventricles in his heart was not fully formed. Today this sweet baby will undergo a major surgery, while mom is stuck in a Fort Worth hospital where they delivered Jonathan. And the Dad has two places to be at once that are an hour a part.

Please pray with us for this family. We know God is Healer, and we know God does everything for his glory. Best of all He is fully sovereign, and has not and will not miss a beat with this family.

We love you all! Thanks for praying!

Valentimes

Allison and I spent our first married Valentimes (intentionally misspelled as per the Stewart tradition) with some of our friends from Midland. Now neither of us makes a big deal about this particular holiday and because we knew we were having people stay at our house we didn’t make big plans. However, now that all is said and done I think I have to put Saturday in my top 5 Valentines Days of all time. Although watching Sweet Home Alabama, in the theater, with one of my roommates in college is pretty tough to beat. Our day consisted of the following:

• A large home cooked breakfast
• Josh and I went to the gym while the girls went shopping
• Outstanding lunch at Central Market
• Josh and I played Tiger Woods Golf while the girls put up curtains
• We all went to dinner at Blue Mesa Grill
• Josh and I played Tiger Woods Golf while the girls hung pictures and decorated our house
• We all played Jenga and went to bed

Good Times.

Crazy January

Hi Friends! So as my dear husband promised, I am blogging. It is not because I do not want to blog that I don't. I feel like I sometimes even think in blog, so currently I have about 4 blogs circling in my head. My problem with blogging is I would rather spend all of my time with people than in front of my lovely little computer. So for now I will work on what I am going to call "the discipline of blogging".

All of that said, the blog that is to follow these words will be a bit lengthy, not in words but more so in pictures. It is our crazy busy Chistmas/January from the view of our camera!

ENJOY!

Our first Christmas was a blast! We spent Christmas with most of my family at my Dad's ranch near Austin and then spent the weekend after Christmas with Justin's mom. Christmas was wonderful!

Do you know what this is? It is my ticket to graduation. It came with a letter saying that I am good to go and I will graduation in MAY!!!!

And I turned 23!! so fun! It began with breakfast at Mimi's with Justin, and then ended with a party at the Burgers'. So fun!

So maybe my birthday was January 8th- National Championship Game day as well! Go Gators~ The guys cheer 'em on!

All we had was Titus' 4 year old candle!

So Justin suprised me with a trip to Bass Hall and tickets to the Symphony that was in town. Really Bass Hall is AMAZINGLY gorgeous, everyone should go sometime. We had a blast, but the show was real short (like maybe 45 minutes) A few weeks later we received a letter from Ft. Worth giving us a set a free tickets because the show we had gone to was too short.

So we decided to go to the Ft. Worth Stock Show and Rodeo... partially to fulfill my desire to go the carnival at the stock show. We also went to see the animals in the Stock Show, and what do you know, they were no where to be found! Really, we walked the whole ground, never found the stock show animals!

The Muslim Population in Britain

I wanted to post this article after I read it for several reasons:

1. The numbers are pretty astounding - "The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years" (also consider that France has the most Muslims of any Western European Country)

2. They address some of the issues that arise from such massive growth amongst a specific group - “The implications are very substantial. Some of the Muslim population, by no means all of them, are the least socially and economically integrated of any in the United Kingdom ... and the one most associated with political dissatisfaction."

3. There are some eye-opening contrasts made with Christianity in Britain - "In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million. " "But while the biggest Christian population is among over-70s bracket, for Muslims it is the under-4s."

4. They have some interesting ideas of the implications of said population growth - "He said the greater platform that Muslims would command in the future should not be perceived as a threat to the rest of society. 'We each have our own set of beliefs. This should really be a source of celebration rather than fear as long as we all clearly understand that we must abide by the laws of this country regardless of the faith we belong to,' he said. " (He being the general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain)

Enjoy

Sam Storms on Edwards on Heaven

Last week while hanging out at the Burg's Vern and I, during our lengthy discourse, somehow wound up on the topic of heaven which reminded me of this sermon. It has been years since I listened to it but it is one of the best talks on heaven that I have ever heard. Sam Storms gave it at Piper’s Jonathan Edward Conference 6ish years ago. I listened to it on Friday while driving and it rocked my world all over again. If you have never listened to it (or even if you have) you should set aside an hour sometime during the next week and listen to it. It is that amazing.

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

I don’t know about you all but we definitely hit the New Year running. Our first married Christmas and New Year were awesome but time off went by way to fast. We have already moved into our new house and Allison has been back at school for a week…..ridiculous.

So as part of starting off 2009 right and preparation for our trip to France this summer we have instituted “study hours” at the house. Really just for me b/c Allison has to study all the time and she is a great student and very disciplined. (Did you know that she got a 4.0 her first full semester that she was married) So Tuesday and Thursday evenings are now study time. I am reading two books one on French Culture (Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong) and one on Islam (Answering Islam). I am also listening to lectures from an Intro to Islam Class on biblicaltraining.org as well attempting to learn French via Rosetta Stone. I say this so that you will ask how it is going and thereby hold me accountable to edumacating myself.

In parting I would like to leave you with an example of the French I have been able to learn, with the assistance of my wife: “Il dort avec les poisons” Translation “He sleeps with the fishes.”

Don't call it a comeback

“We must repent from our sins in sackcloth and ashes.” (Titus Burger, age 4)

As I meditated on the harsh rebuke that Allison and I received for not keeping our blog up to date the words of young Titus came to mind and seemed quite fitting. We would like to take this opportunity to apologize. We have no excuses just a blog with very few posts.

There is a temptation to make our attempt to regularly update our blog a new years resolution. However I am not sure if I have ever actually made one and I am positive if I did, or tried, I would not keep it. Therefore we will simply say that we are going to try to do better. It was an encouragement to know that people actually read it and wanted us to write more and our hope is that this, rather than a resolution, will motivate us to blog.

I am going to encourage Allison to post photos from events that she does and I will try to keep you abreast of what the Kitchens’ are up to. I would also like to post links to articles that I read b/c
1. I have nothing other than that to contribute to this blog and
2. I find them to be extremely informative and think that you will enjoy them as well.

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. We look forward to hearing from you.

Love
Alli and J