The Jordans

Life with Colin

2012-04-19T15:50:00.002-04:00

Josiah's Birthday at Aunt Beth's

Carousel Ride at North Pointe Mall

Stone Mountain Adventures

Hilton Head Fun

Easter Fun

Just Hangin Out

Soccer Time

New Year, New Beginnings

2011-01-02T22:54:00.000-05:00

The year of 2010 brought a lot of changes for us in the Jordan household. A few weeks after the Summer Beach Project the Lord called us off staff and we made a very quick move to Augusta, GA. As 2011 begins we have several other new beginnings as well! BJ will begin working for State Farm this month and we also just found out that we are pregnant with our first little girl. This will definately bring on a new change for the Jordan household.

We have loved living in Augusta, with our new Church home, living near some old friends, and family members. However, the transition off staff was very emotional and a huge transition for us. We are looking forward to the new year and learning about ministering in the Church and in our new vocation. The boys are going to MDO twice a week and the boys enjoy it immensely! Last summer I began working for an online website, SavingsLifestyle.com, and I have enjoyed it too!

I plan on taking more time to hopefully keep up our family blog, especially since the last time I posted was the summer. This is one thing I love about the New Year, wiping the slate clean from the year before, and having new goals and vision for the upcoming year. I hope to share some of these later this week.

I hope your New Year has some great New Beginnings as well!

Back To The Beach!

2010-07-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

BJ will be heading back to Daytona Beach today to help close out the Beach Project! The boys and I are not heading back to the beach, because we felt like it would be a little too much to pack us all up for just a week. This will free BJ up to close out the logistics of the Project and to get some good time in with the students. The boys and I are looking forward to some adventures together in the upcoming week. I hope all is well with your summer and that you are enjoying time with your family and friends too! Also, I hope to have some pictures to share with you from the end of the Summer Beach Project after BJ returns!

Post-SBP Update

2010-07-02T20:16:00.000-04:00

I am sorry that it has been 2 weeks since I last updated you on what is going on with the Jordans! Since my last post in Daytona we have traveled back to the 'Boro and have been there for a little over a week now. Currently, we are in Atlanta for the 4th of July! We will be here for the weekend and then head back to the 'Boro. Then, we will be heading back to Daytona in a few weeks to help finish out the Beach Project.

We did have some fun times at the end of the Beach Project! One fun event was going to Sea World with the boys. I wanted to share some pictures from our time there:

Trey and I checking out the Stingrays!

Today, BJ took Trey out to watch the Braves play! Here are some super cute pics of their time:

There are some changes going on with our family, and I am hoping to be able to share more about them in the next few weeks as we learn more ourselves!

Hoping you and your family have a wonderful 4th of July!

SBP Prayer

2010-06-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

"Be joyful always; pray continually"

1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

One thing that we want to emphasis on the Beach Project is the value of prayer in a believer's life. One venue for this is our weekly prayer time on Sunday evenings. The students gather to pray for an hour as a project. There are other venues such as team prayer, and prayer within their rooms that are great for the students to learn how to pray. They also are learning that prayer is an integral part of a our lives as Christians. This past Sunday they had a great time of worship and prayer on the beach as a project.

Please continue to pray for the growth of these students in becoming lifetime prayer warriors!

SBP Picture

2010-06-13T22:10:00.000-04:00

Just to give you a picture of the students that are taking part of the Summer Project this year. It has been such a joy to be around these young believers as they are STRIVING to know the Lord!

(We are on the right hand side)

Here is a picture of us taken after the

SBP group picture:

Thanks for being a part of investing in the lives of these students.

SBP Sweethearts

2010-06-07T22:45:00.002-04:00

I wanted to share this sweet picture with you all. Josiah and baby Emma hanging out in a floaty last week. A couple of our babysitters thought this would make a cute picture. Of course it was staged, but they are so sweet!

Tuesday Project Dinners

2010-06-03T20:23:00.001-04:00

One of the aspects of the Summer Beach Project is the community of fellowship and learning from one another. There are several venues for this built into the Project, the Project Dinner being one of them. Every Tuesday, all of us disperse to different eating locations to have a great meal and an encouraging dinner. The different eating locations are: Dustin's Barbeque (similar to Sonny's), CiCi's Pizza, and we cater Moe's to the hotel.

We ate at Dustin's this week with two Georgia Southern students. It was delicious food and great conversations. Here are some pictures of our night:

Dinner with the boys, Katie and Mike

Kaitlyn (staff) eating with students

More students and leaders

Friday Socials: Beach Games at the SBP

2010-06-02T20:55:00.002-04:00

Last Friday evening we hosted our first Summer Beach Project Social...BEACH GAMES!! It was a ton of fun and there was a lot of team bonding going on as the teams competed against each other to be the best. I am sorry there aren't more pictures. We attempted to video some of the event but it would never load (Ugh!) However, here are some highlights of the evening:

Getting ready for some "dizzy bat" races

Josiah trying to participate in the "Strong Man" contest

Trey wanting to run the races with everyone

Each week one of the team's will host a Friday Social that is creative and fun. This is also a great opportunity to get to know other students on the project and to have some down time after a full week of work.

The First Day of the SBP

2010-05-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

Wednesday was the first day of the Summer Beach Project (SBP). There were lots of students moving in with a lot of stuff! We also hosted our first project dinner and meeting. BJ spoke to the students on our theme verse for this year:

STRIVE

"We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose I labor, striving according to His power, which mightly works within me."

Colossians1:28-29

Students checking in to the SBP

Helping move in a summer's worth of clothes and necessities. The students will be sharing a room with 3 others for two months!

Our first meeting with 144 college students

BJ speaking and challenging the students to "strive" to know the Lord more!

We are excited to see what the Lord will do in the next couple of months in the lives of these students. Tonight we will be hosting our first social, Beach Games, it will be both fun and messy!

Pool Party with the Project Leaders

2010-05-26T09:46:00.001-04:00

The last couple of years a couple from one of our partnering churches has hosted our leaders the night before the disciples arrive. They have an amazing pool and play area and our leaders took full advantage of them. The students were swimming, sliding and doing a little rock climbing. It was a ton of fun, with dinner from Dustin's Barbeque and we ended the night with some Praise and Worship together.

We are looking forward to the first year (disciple) students arrival today. The Summer Beach Project will officially begin as they arrive. Please pray for safety in driving and a smooth transition into their rooms and into the summer!

Arrival of the Disciple Leaders

2010-05-24T21:14:00.000-04:00

We are one day closer to the beginning of the full-blown Summer Beach Project. Today, our student disciple leaders arrived for a couple of days of training before the first-year students (disciples) arrive. It was an exciting day as they all arrived to prepare spiritually and personally before the start of the official Project on Wednesday. Between today and Wednesday there will be several leadership training seminars and at least a couple trips to Walmart to prepare their rooms for the arrival of the 2-3 disciples that will be in their room this summer.

The disciple leaders are students who have been on the Summer Beach Project before and have been asked to return to serve and receive spiritual training in leading others in the Lord. In each room there will be 2-3 first year students (disciples) that the disciple leader will be leading for the summer. This is a great opportunity for personal growth for the disciple leaders as well as practical training in discipling others.

Student Leaders checking out what other students will be on their teams for the summer.

Students filling out their paperwork and support information on their arrival to the Summer Beach Project.

Students finding their rooms and who will be in their rooms for the summer.

Please pray that the Lord will grow these students in leadership development this summer and for their own personal growth as well!

SBP Weekly Schedule

2010-05-24T11:34:00.000-04:00

Vince Alongi

If you have never been to the Summer Beach Project it is quite an event. Students work during the day and get training in the relationship with the Lord in the evenings. You can check out what a normal weekly schedule looks like for our students here. There are a couple of differences from this schedule:

Tuesday: Prayer training is now combined with Bible Study Training on Thursdays, and has been renamed Worship Training. Also, Project Dinner is now before Discipleship groups.

Wednesday: For the first month of the Project we will have Character Training on Wednesday nights. The staff men will talk to the men about what it means to be a godly man and the staff women will do the same with the women students. After the first month the students will have this evening free.

Sunday: We no longer have Life Management meetings. Instead we have filtered many of these talks into Theme meetings or we will have our Disciple leaders cover this information in their discipleship groups.

My goal is to get some pics of each of these meetings to give you more of a feel for what they are like. If you have any questions about the Project or a certain aspect you would like to see highlighted please let me know. I would love to share more about them!

Getting Ready For the Leaders

2010-05-21T14:21:00.002-04:00

The last few days the staff have been hard at work prepping for the students who will begin arriving today. Yesterday, they spent a bulk of the day job hunting for potential jobs for our students. Before they started we only had 80 jobs for 150 students, afterwards it was looking like they had about 30 additional jobs. Please be praying for the Lord to provide enough job positions for all of our students who need them. After all the staff's hard work we headed out to be refueled by eating at Aunt Catfish's, a favorite among all of our staff!

While the staff were hard at work during the day, the boys and I enjoyed time together at the playground. There is a firehouse playground nearby that the boys love!!

A small picture after some hard work (playing)! Thanks for journeying with us this summer! I am glad we get to share this experience with you all!

SBP Staff Arrival

2010-05-18T07:26:00.002-04:00

Last night the staff for Summer Beach Project 2010 arrived in Daytona! We all went out for a dinner of fellowship and encouragement before everyone gets ready to work for the next few days. The staff are from the campuses of: Georgia Southern University (GSU), Georgia College and State University (GCSU), USC-Aiken, Valdosta State University (VSU), and Augusta State University (ASU).

For the next few days these brothers and sisters in the Lord will be preparing and getting ready for our student leaders and disciples that will be arriving soon. The Team Leaders for the Project will be arriving Friday (May 21st), the Disciple/Room Leaders will arrive Monday (May 24th), and the Disciples will arrive Wednesday (May 26th). In all we will have 150 on the Project this year! That is a lot of people to think for!

BJ, as the Director of the Summer Beach Project, has the responsibility to organize, delegate, and coordinate with the other staff to host these students for the summer. Please be in prayer for them over the next few days that the logistics would go smoothly and that all their labor would be in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We Made It!

2010-05-17T08:29:00.000-04:00

We made it to Daytona on Friday and had a mini vacation before the staff arrive, so that we could get the boys and ourselves settled in our hotel rooms. We will be in Daytona for the Summer Beach Project from May 14th through June 24th. Here are a few sweet pics of the boys at the beach on Saturday. They are loving the sand! Not so much the water. The water has been really chilly.

The Mays are the only other staff couple with a baby on the Beach Project. Matt and Eileen are a sweet couple that minister at USC Aiken and they have one daughter, Emma.

The Mays took us out to the Bone Fish Grill on Saturday night. It was a fun night together and the food was delicious!

Stay tuned, there are many pictures and updates that will be coming in the days ahead! Please continue to join us in our ministry and family adventures at SBP 2010!

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-08T22:17:00.000-04:00

A friend sent us this video in celebration of Mother's Day. If you haven't seen it, I hope you enjoy! If you have, please, enjoy it again!

Sorrow and Joy

2010-04-20T11:07:00.001-04:00

This past weekend a couple that we are close to had their daughter go home to be with the Lord. Hannah was born with heart problems and at 3 months had a heart transplant. For the next 4 years of her life she led a full and healthy life. This past December she got very sick and was diagnosed with PTLD. Since that time she has been in and out of the hospital, getting better and then not doing well. Hannah as many of you know means "Grace or Gift from the Lord" in Hebrew and that is just what her life was a picture of, the grace of our Lord. On Friday she went from the arms of her earthly father to the arms of Her Heavenly Father, where she will experience no more sickness, grief, or pain.

As my own dad suffered with cancer his last few years the words from "On the Jordan's Banks" gave me great comfort and even thinking about Hannah they do so again:

"No chilling wind, nor poisonous breath can reach that healthful shore, where sickness, sorrow, pain, and death are felt and feared no more,

I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the Promised Land
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the Promised Land"

There is a mixture of sorrow for the loss of this precious little girl and friend, but also of joy that she is now in the Promised Land with our Heavenly Father forevermore!

Please pray for Glenn and Krissy (parents) and Manny(3) and Abby(1) that the Lord may be gracious to them and they would find comfort in Him!

Josiah's First Birthday Video

2010-04-07T17:11:00.000-04:00

So it took me a little longer than I expected but here is the final product of Josiah's first birthday video. I hope you enjoy!

Josiah's First Birthday!

2010-03-30T23:50:00.003-04:00

I wanted to share some quick pics of Josiah's first birthday with you all! I am going to try to load a video of his party in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I wanted to give you a taste of the fun!

Our first bite of cake!

Our first birthday toy (thanks to the Browns!)

To view more details of Josiah's first birthday party you can check them out on Simple Savings Mom

SBP: Team Leader Retreat

2010-03-29T08:02:00.000-04:00

This past weekend we were busy hosting a retreat for our team leaders for this year's Summer Beach Project. The Summer Beach Project is our annual training event that Campus Outreach hosts during the summer to train students to walk with God for a lifetime and equip them to reproduce their lives. This year we will have the largest project that we have had in years. A typical project has 3-4 teams but this year we will have 5 teams as well as guy and girls' Management Team. It was a great time of fellowship and training times to prepare them for this summer as well as preparing them for the leaders retreat that we will be hosting next month.

Our summer projects are set up into teams and each team is led by a girl and guy leader(students above). That leader's responsibility is to lead 3-4 student leaders(room leaders) who will be leading a room of 3-4 new students(disciples). Our desire is to equip these students to grow in leadership and to teach students to walk with the Lord by training them to study the Bible, pray, evangelize and have fellowship.

Please be praying for BJ as he is preparing these students and working on the logistics for the Summer Beach Project. We are looking forward that all the Lord will do in these students' lives as well as our own!

Almost A Year Gone By...

2010-03-23T07:49:00.000-04:00

Photo Credit: Brenda Starr

As I was getting ready to go to work yesterday I looked down and saw a picture peeking out from under some stacked papers of a precious little boy who will be one next week. That picture reminded me of how blessed I really am and how much I love being a mom of two precious boys. That moment seemed to bring so many other things into perspective. Time with these boys is far more valuable than all the money in the world, or any possessions we could own. So what picture brought all these things to mind? Here, let me share:

Here are a few more pictures from Josiah's first year:

I can't think of a better way to leave this post than with this precious picture and to say how thankful I am to the Lord for this sweet boy and all the joy he brings to our lives!

"Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him."

Psalm 127:3

Hawks Happening

2010-03-07T23:09:00.000-05:00

This past Friday BJ, Trey, and two young men involved in our ministry headed up to Atlanta for The Atlanta Hawks vs. Golden Warriors basketball game. Campus Outreach at Augusta State and Valdosta State were having their annual Winter Retreat there and were attending the Hawks basketball game. BJ and the guys were able to join these campuses for a fun event and Trey has been talking about it ever since! They left Friday afternoon and came back at 2 in the morning. Needless to say Josiah and I were fast asleep! Here are some pictures of the fun events:

Please be praying for us as we will be traveling starting this Thursday. We will be taking a trip to Raleigh and then to Augusta for a Missions Conference. We hope all is well with each of you and look forward to sharing more with you!

A Happy 30th Birthday Surprise!

2010-02-20T21:57:00.000-05:00

Last Friday was BJ's 30th birthday, so we headed to Augusta for a special birthday party. On the way we received another special surprise. Snow! It made for a very White ~~Christmas~~ Birthday, with more snow than I ever remember seeing in Georgia. The boys loved their first true snow experience as you can see in the pictures(sort of)! I think the parents had as much or should I say more fun than the children. It was a great day with family and friends and we are thankful to all of them!

The guys had fun together playing at the playground at the mall. And as you can see here Trey was trying to figure out what is going on! Snow! We don't see much if it around these parts.

BJ's parents house as we pulled up really did make me feel like we were having a White Christmas!

BJ and Trey at the birthday party getting ready to blow out the candles. BJ's favorite part of his birthday, Snow! Actually his favorite part was hitting his siblings with snowballs, especially his sister!

This weekend BJ is in Asheville for our annual Winter Retreat. He is administrating the retreat and ministering to students we are involved with. This year's speaker is Joe Naramore, the Regional Director for Campus Outreach Charlotte. He is speaking from the passage of Jonah for the weekend. Please pray that the Lord would use this retreat to draw students to Christ, establish young believers, and build vision for giving their lives away for a lifetime. I am hoping to have some pictures to share with you after he gets back.

Next week BJ will be hosting our area staff as they pray, plan, and prepare for this summer's Summer Beach Project. Please be in prayer for this time as they are making decisions and preparations for this 9 week event in the summer. As many of you know, we are both currently working part time jobs apart from Campus Outreach to pay down our debt. Please be in prayer as we are seeking the Lord and working to be debt free this year. Thank you to all of you for your prayers, friendship and partnership with our family!

Keeping You Up to Date!

2010-02-10T22:31:00.004-05:00

I just wanted to write and share what we have been up to recently. This past weekend BJ was in Macon for his third part of a seminary class that he has been taking through Reformed Theological Seminary. While he was there, he had an Area Leadership Meeting with two other men serving on the Leadership Team for Campus Outreach Augusta. On Saturday after their seminary class BJ met with 11 men that he has led or is currently leading since he came on staff at Georgia Southern. It was a joyous time together with these men celebrating what the Lord has done in each of their lives and how the Lord has used BJ and one another to invest and grow them in Christ. They had a camp out at a supporter's home in Forsyth, GA. Mrs. Futch housed, fed and fellowshipped with them as she did about a year ago with several of them. She has become an endeared member of our lives as well as the lives of these men. Here is a picture of all of them together this weekend:

(Clockwise left to right: BJ, Wyatt, Evan, Brett, Devin, Mike, Mrs. Futch, and Kevin)

In the meantime, the boys and I headed to Nashville with my mom. On Friday I attended an event, Savvy Blogging Dinner and Discussion with about 100 women who are blogging for business, many of them frugal/coupon bloggers. It was a great learning experience and you can check out a little more about it on my money saving blog, Simple Savings Mom. Afterward, we had a great time at a nearby mall, Opry Mills, before we left.

Trey almost eaten by a shark!

Hanging by the Rainforest Cafe!

It really started snowing in Nashville, but this was taken in front of Bass Pro Shop, kind of looks real though!

We love you guys and want to keep sharing our lives with all of you! BJ's birthday is this Friday so we will head to Augusta for a big shindig for his 30th birthday party! Hope you have a great weekend!