"My Birthday is November 24!"

Annie has been singing a song, " My birthday is November 24th" for a very long time so that she could learn when her birthday was. SO.....today we all said, "Today is November 24th!" She got very excited and said, "I am finally 6!!" Since we have been celebrating her birthday for a week now, she has been a little confused. :o) Of course now we are headed to my parent's home in Rock Hill, SC and we will celebrate it again! It really is the birthday that never ends!! I will upload pictures from her birthday lunch later.

She is looking forward to spending time with family and having Thanksgiving here in the states. (As we all are!) If I don't say this before Thursday, I do hope and pray that all of you have a wonderful time with family and friends and that your Thanksgiving is wonderful wherever you are in the world! We are so very thankful to live in the greatest country in the world and I for one am thanking God for it! Please pray for all the troops and those serving on the foreign field and are unable to be with family over the holidays! It really is hard to be away from family at this time of year!! Love you all!! Missy

Oh Happy Day!

Party at school! This started off the day and as you can see they were all excited about Thanksgiving!
















Annie and Isabella, the only two girls in the class.

She wasn't too sure what to think of this cow!

Annie showing off her Dora costume, you gotta love the boots!

Dora holding a plate with a picture of herself on it!

Annie showing off her party hat!

Annie, her teacher, Mrs. Sorenson and her friend from school, Isabella

Annie with her 6 candles!

Annie, the cow and all of her friends!

Chick-fil-a cow and 'Dora'

"I have never gotten this many presents!!"

"It just never ends! I love it!"

Annie's birthday party was a HUGE success! I have NEVER seen her so excited in all of my life. She was beside herself! She could not believe how much fun eating and playing at Chick-fil-a could really be! It was great! I am not sure what she loved more, her party or dressing up like Dora. It was a little chilly for shorts, but she insisted on that because that is what Dora wears! So...shorts it was! Thanks to everyone who came and made it such a great day for Annie! Her actual birthday isn't until the 24th so if you are wanting to send a card, she would love it! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Love, Missy

These are the pictures from the past few weeks that I promised.
The last football game
Annie during the football game,(doesn't she look interested?)
My friend Robin from college (we spoke at her church a few weeks ago)
Her family
Annie with her new friend Allie (Robin's daughter)

Big day for Annie!

Hi everyone! I am going to do my best to post some pictures from the past few weeks on here in a few minutes, but don't know if it will actually happen or not! ;o} If I don't, I am afraid they will never make it on here because the next week's pictures will take over and it will be too late.

Anyway, today is Annie's big day! She is having a Thanksgiving program in her class today and she is beyond excited! Then.... she will be having her FIRST real birthday party ever!! She cannot wait! I mean, Christmas ain't got nothing on the first birthday party at 6 years old!! The past 5 birthdays she has had a cake and the past 2 she has had a pinata, but never has she had a traditional birthday party with presents and all! She can't believe that her friends will all bring her a present. Once she learned that of course, she wanted to invite everyone she knew! :o) HA!! Our party is going to be at our favorite place on earth.....CHICK-FIL-A!!! We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate her 6th birthday than at her/our favorite restaurant! Annie still remembers that her first Chick-fil-a nuggets were eaten in the hospital cafeteria after she had her accident. That was the one thing she LOVED about that hospital! :o) So, I will have lots of pictures from her parties and I am sure you will see lots of smiles on her face!!

Love to you all!! Missy

Moon's empty trunk

Hi friends! I know it seems like I am hit or miss with these entries lately, but I feel like I am literally running everywhere I go! This past week was slam packed with getting people to one place and trying to stay warm and dry while doing it and this week is all about playing outside and enjoying this little bit of extra summer! CRAZY!!

Greg had his last tennis match last night. He has been playing on a local tennis league and his team was undefeated right up until the semi-finals last night. He came home saying it just wasn't the night for the Wood family since he tennis team had lost and I had entered my chili recipe in a cook-off and didn't even get mentioned! BOO-HOO! :o) We really don't care, it was probably MY chili that caused his team to lose!! :o} Oh well!

So, that is a little of what we have been doing. We are gearing up for lots of speaking engagements at different churches. This is our time to promote the LM Christmas Offering.This ONE offering is how the largest part of our financial support is obtained.

Over a hundred years ago this woman, (mentioned and pictured below) was writing back home to her organization and she was pleading with them to send more m's and more funds. She received the sad news that they could not afford to send more m's at that time and that due to building projects at churches they were not able to give more financially. This hit home to me because I just heard this the other day when I was at a football game. Someone said, "I think our church's Christmas offering will be down this year because we are building a new building onto our church." I had to think, 100 years later and it is still the same. The reason we take up a LM Christmas Offering is because after more than 30 years serving in China, she eventually gave all of her food to the poor and starved herself. She died on her way back to the United States to try and get healthy, with the only thing she had left, an empty trunk. Some women from her organization then decided they never wanted this to happen to m's again.

Please pray that our LM Christmas Offering this year will be sufficient to keep us all on the field and send all of those who are anxiously waiting to go and cannot, due to lack of funding.

Love you all!! Missy

8-0 Champions!

Saints won the championship!! It was a very fast paced weekend with a Disciple Now Weekend (lock-in for the youth at church) for Jerod, championship game for the Saints and a M conference in Wilkesboro, NC on Saturday night and Sunday. CRAZY!! We haven't run that fast in quite a while!! However, it all went GREAT!! I will add pictures later! Jerod enjoyed listening to the speaker at his D-Now weekend, they both loved winning their last game of football, (we pulled Jerod out for a few hours for the game) and then Greg, Alex, Annie and I loved spending time with Millers Creek Church in Wilkesboro. It was all in all a perfect weekend! As I said, I will add pictures later!! There are a lot!! Gotta start school, we had a snow delay today! (Which simply means we are starting an hour late! ;o}) I told that to Alex last night and he said, "Really? But I checked Jerod's Ipod and it said it would be 75 tomorrow!" So sweet!! Hope you all have a great Monday! I really do love you all! Missy

A precious woman

Okay, so you found out who she is! Yes this precious woman is the one and only Charlotte Moon whom everyone fondly gives a nickname to. However, I am not going to mention her nickname for security purposes. I have had people ask me what HE did, or what IT is, or where is that moon?

So, I figured with as many questions as there are about her, it was time to educate the world (or at least my faithful blog readers) about who she is. Over the next few weeks I am going to be telling different interesting facts about this courageous woman and all that she accomplished. I hope you will be as interested in her as I am. She truly is a fascinating person to learn about!

The first thing I will tell you, is that she was a m in China for more than 30 years. The second thing I will tell you is that at the age of 10 she told herself that if there was a single way to waste a life, being a m was it. Her story is already intriguing isn't it? I will add more later! Promise!

Love, Missy

Who is this woman?

The boys and I have been studying many famous people in History. We are learning many great things about our founding fathers and many other wonderful people who were famous for one reason or another. I found this picture of a very famous woman who was born in Virginia in 1840. I wanted to know if any of you know who she is.

The rules are: you are NOT allowed to google in order to find a similar picture or google the name of who you think it may be in order to find out if you are correct. You can only use your knowledge and this simple time in history to figure it out. We just want to see how many of you know who she is. Habib, you cannot play. You are just too smart and would ruin it for everyone! ;o)

Can't wait to see the results. I will give the answer on Monday the 9th! Please respond so it will make it fun! Love, Missy

Marriages

Please pray for the many marriages around the world today that are failing.

Love, Missy

Halloween pictures

Greg and Annie on the hay ride.

Greg and the kids on Halloween. Don't you just love their costumes? Just kidding! Greg isn't quite that creative. He won't even dress up as a Mexican let alone a storm trooper! Just to clarify, Jerod was a hobo, Alex was of course a football player and Annie was Mini Mouse.

Cutest mouse ever!

Jerod playing carnival games.

Alex getting stuck!

This little Mexicana was adorable! She was a kitty and my was she cute!

Annie was really confused about this trunk or treat thing. She didn't understand it at all!!

This is where my parents stayed! Just kidding!!

Annie was definitely curious about everything. Not scared at all, just curious.

So, maybe we need to feed him a little more.

This has been Annie's favorite house to drive by all month long. We had to visit it and tell them just how much she liked it. They were giving out chips, pop and Hershey's Candy bars!

Our last stop was Annie's teacher's house.

My parents were sweet enough to make the trip to see us again for this special occasion. It meant a lot to us all to have them with us!

We started out our Halloween night with a fall festival at a nearby church. They had lots of carnival games, a hay ride, a devotion and then they did trunk or treat. The kids really enjoyed it and it was a great way to spend our Halloween. Then we wanted to allow them the experience of door to door trick or treating since Annie really didn't know what this meant. So we went to a few homes on Main Street here in Wake Forest and she now understands what exactly this means. It is still strange to her, but she understands it! So we had a great time and it was wonderful having Mama Say and Honey (my parents) here for the event. Thanks for all of your continued support to our family!! Please read the post below because our people really need your prayers today! Love, Missy

Pray for our friends today

Hi friends! Pictures are coming of our first Halloween in the states! It was so fun and Annie thought it was really cool that people just gave you candy just because you asked! She also thought it was cool that it was OK to ask! We must confuse our kids so much telling them it is rude to ask people for candy and telling them not to talk to strangers and then having one day when that is all we do! :o}