update on pics

Thanks Aunt Laura for my cute outfit!! I really enjoy wearing it :)
Dreaming of going outside to play...one of her very favorite things~
Striking a pose
Would someone please take me outside?
)Cheese!!!

Carla and the boys (left to right: Jackson, Hayden, Braelyn, and Colton) came to stay with us one Friday night and it was a lot of fun. Colton especially enjoyed putting bows in Braelyn's hair. And believe or not, she actually let him and LEFT THEM IN!! Only for her cousin :

This is the first time she ever "cheesed" like that for the camera! It was SO FUNNY :)
My Granny and Pop Hasty.....with some of the GReat grandkids

Sorry for the long delay in updating with pictures. Here are a few to start with and hopefully more to follow soon. Braelyn is 17 months old now. Hard to believe. The first year seemed to go by pretty slow for me, but since she has turned one, it's passing quickly. I am enjoying this time though. Braelyn is so funny and is such a happy girl most of the time, thank you Lord. She is getting a lot more teeth, and has to be reminded often that it's not ok to bite your Mommy :) And she is learning to say "sorry"...it is so cute. Sometimes I struggle with keeping a "stern" face when correcting her bc she makes such funny faces even when she's not trying to. She LOVES to dance and is able to put her CD into her CD player all by herself and push play. She can even change CD's. She also likes to fake sneeze and just say "achoo". And she will say "Hi" to everybody we pass in Wal-mart or at the mall. One of my favorite things she does sometimes is when I am putting her to bed at night we always pray right before I lay her down and sometimes she will reach her head up and give me a kiss while I'm praying!! It just melts my heart. She is kinda stingy with her real kisses, but will blow kisses to anyone. ok, gotta get to bed....will continue this on another day.

Get to know the persecuted church around the world

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share this, in case there are some people out there who are not aware of this great ministry and resource for the persecuted church. It is called The Voice of the Martyrs, they have been around since 1967. They have a website www.persecution.com . Please check it out. My favorite thing is they have a FREE newsletter that you can sign up for, once a month, that gives you updates on what is going on around the world with our brothers and sisters in Christ. When you read these updates, it really brings things into perspective AND it really reminds me that we are ONE BODY of believers here on this earth and we are called to pray for one another and bear one another's burdens. There are even links that you can go to on the website and are able to print and send a letter of encouragement to another brother or sister in Christ who is being imprisoned for their faith!! Isn't that amazing? I haven't done it yet, but I plan on it. Can you imagine how encouraging it would be to get mail from someone halfway around the world and hear that they are praying for YOU?? These Christians you read about in this newsletter/magazine......they are the REAL DEAL. They are risking their lives and they are losing their homes and jobs and loved ones because they LOVE JESUS!!! Their boldness and their faith encourages me, and convicts me of why I am not sharing Jesus with more people here when I don't even have to fear my life??? Lord, give us all boldness and opportunities to share and bring glory to your name.
So, PLEASE, share this info with others you know, sign up for the newsletter, and PRAY for our brothers and sisters around the world!

Open my eyes that I may see...

I was just browsing around on John Piper's blog, Desiring God, and found a GREAT sermon on why reading our bibles regularly along with seeking God in prayer is what really GROWS us in our spiritual walk with the Lord. John Piper puts it so simply that I just had to share this bc hopefully, if you are a Christian, you want to be growing in your relationship and your understanding of the Lord and who He is and what He wants to do in your life. It is hard to be disciplined to do these things, and we all fall short, but it is worth making it a priority. It's all about what matters most to you in life. And God reminds us that this life here on earth is like a vapor....it will be gone before we know it, compared to ETERNITY!! When you stand before God someday at the end of this short time here on earth, will you be able to stand there, knowing, by the grace of God, you lived your life in a way that brought glory to the Lord, and was pleasing to the Lord bc you had purposed in your heart to seek Him and follow Him with all you had?? We only have one life here on earth, only ONE! I became a Christian when I was 9 years old, in VBS. I was blessed to have parents that raised me in church. I went on lots of youth trips and was really involved at our church. I remember the first bible verse I memorized was Ps 56:3 "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee" bc I have always struggled with fear. When I went to college I started going to some different churches and started learning some things about being a Christian and about God's word that I had never known. God used different circumstances while I was in college to really make me lean on Him and depend on Him....and it was during these times that I grew the most and could feel God's presence. I signed up to do summer missions in Gatlingburg one summer and God REALLY opened my eyes to see more of Him and taught me alot through friends I made there. That summer is when I knew for sure that I wanted to be a missionary. I really didn't intend on sharing all this this morning, but I guess I just think back on my life thus far and I can see how God has grown me at different times, and the times I learned the most or experienced His power the greatest were usually tough times when I had to cling to God's word and hide it in my heart. I have experienced the power of God's word in my life, and I just want others to experience it too. Even when life is good, I want to be hiding God's word in my heart. I think it's one of those things that you don't realize what you are missing until you experience it. I am doing a Precepts bible study with my church right now, and I love it. I realize now more than ever before that there is SO MUCH I don't know about the bible and that I WANT to learn.....and there will always be more to learn and understand. As Christians, we never "arrive" and are done with learning. We should always be seeking to know God more and understand His word better.
We have been so encouraged at our church here in Bristol. So many people truly love the Lord and you can tell that they are spending time with God on a regular basis.......they know God's word, they encourage one another, they pray for one another. They are real and they are dependent on God. They have been such a blessing to us.
Ok, so, like I said, I just want to encourage you to make spending time in God's word and spending time communicating with Him a priority this year. He will transform you and He can show you and teach you things you never knew. I am going to post an excerpt from John Piper's sermon....but I will post a link to the actual sermon and you can read it for yourself. He just says it SO WELL. Praying God will use all this to glorify Himself in your life and mine. Here's the excerpt:

Jesus put it like this in his great prayer for us in John 17:17, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth." "Sanctify" is a Biblical word for making a person holy or godly or loving or pure or virtuous or spiritually wise. And these things I want for myself and for my children and for you. So what then should we do this year? If we are sanctified by the truth, and the Word of God is truth, what should we do?

If a doctor says, "You're very sick and may die of your sickness, but if you will take this medicine, you will get well and live," and you neglect to take the medicine - too busy, the pills are big and hard to swallow, just forgetful - you are going to stay sick and you may die. That's the way it is with sin and spiritual immaturity. If you neglect what God tells you will sanctify you and make you mature and strong and holy, then you will not be mature and strong and holy. Reading, and meditating on and memorizing and cherishing the Word of God is God's appointed way of overcoming sin and becoming a strong, godly, mature, loving, wise person.

Psalm 119:18. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." This verse combines prayer and the Word, and we need to see how, so that we can combine them this way in our lives and in our church. There are three things that we learn from this verse.

• One is that there are wonderful things in the Word of God. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." The word "law" is "Torah" and means "instruction" or "teaching" in this psalm. There are wonderful things in God's teaching to us. In fact, they are so wonderful that when you really see them, they change you profoundly and empower holiness and love and missions (2 Corinthians 3:18). Which is why reading and knowing and meditating on and memorizing the Word of God is so crucial.
• The second thing we learn from this verse is that no one can see these wonderful things for what they really are without God's supernatural help. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." If God does not open our eyes, we will not see the wonder of the Word. We are not naturally able to see spiritual beauty. When we read the Bible without the help of God, the glory of God in the teachings and events of the Bible is like the sun shining in the face of a blind man. Not that you can't construe its surface meaning, but you can't see the wonder, the beauty, the glory of it such that it wins your heart.
• Which leads to the third thing we learn from this verse, namely, that we must pray to God for supernatural illumination when we read the Bible. "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law." Since we are helpless in ourselves to see spiritual beauty and the wonder of God in the teachings and events of the Bible without God's gracious illumination, we should ask him for it. "Open my eyes."

Here's the link to the entire sermon: it's printed out so you can just read it.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1998/1024_Open_My_Eyes_That_I_May_See/

Happy New Year!

aaron, me, martin, sarah, laura, daniel & joanna......missing a few still
Caryss & Braelyn
Cheese!

Christmas in Bristol....before Christmas :)



This is one of the kids' pics at Mamaw's house(my mom). From left to right: Mattie, Colton, Hayden, Jackson, and Braelyn
Christmas at Aaron's parent's house
Showing off all my teeth....all four of them.



Hello everyone! Hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to see what God has planned this new year. We had our care group meeting with our church last night, which is just a group that meets once a month for dinner and fellowship at someone's house. It's the same group all year long, so we are getting to know people a little better. We look forward to these times of fellowship each month because we are always so blessed when we leave. Anyway, we were given some questions to think about and I wanted to share them with you.
1. What is something new that you want to do for someone else this year?
2. What is something new that God could do in you and through you this year?

Also I just wanted to share some things I want to do this year. First of all, I want to try and have some people over for dinner at least once a month just to fellowship and build relationships. Secondly, I want to try to call a friend once a week "just to talk". I am really bad at planning ahead when it comes to inviting people to our home, but I want to do better. Finally, I am going to read the bible through in 2 years or less. It is a chronological study bible, so there is a lot of extra information to read along with the bible. Maybe I will do it in less than two years, who knows. I'm not following a plan, bc you just read it like a book, from beginning to end.

Braelyn is trying to talk a lot more these days. She tries to say cup, cracker, thank you, no, bath, puzzle, and lots of other things I haven't been able to decifer yet. She is a really good eater and can use her spoon pretty good, sometimes :). She really likes watching Elmo's World on Sesame Street, Clifford (which she does try to say, oh, and she says "melmo" for elmo) pretty cute. And she gets excited when Wheel of Fortune comes on and she will try to say the letters like they do. She tries to mimic a lot of things we say and do. For example, after she drinks from her sippy cup sometimes she will set it down and say "ahhhhhh". Just bc she saw me do that one time. :) She is very observant.

On a random note....we are setting records here in Bristol. 10 straight days of temperatures below freezing!! I am enjoying the snowy scenery everywhere. I always say, if it's going to be cold, I at least want to see some snow. So, I guess it's been a good winter so far. I'm curious to see how much more snow we will get.

Elf Yourself Video of the Disco Jones'

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Another snow in Bristol!

Merry Christmas Everyone!


We thought we would be getting less snow when we moved to Bristol from VA. But so far, we have been surprised. We think we got about 8 inches this past weekend. I think that's more than we ever got in VA. I love the snow. It is so beautiful. I wonder if I lived somewhere else where it snows all the time if I would appreciate it as much and think it was so beautiful still. Plus, I don't have to get out in it. I can just sit inside and enjoy it. Here are some pics. Enjoy!

Snow Day! New Videos

Here we are at our first snow day in Bristol. Enjoy!!

Snow in Bristol

So, I was reading in a book by John Piper called "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ"and I wanted to share some of it. This was at the end of a chapter and part of the ending prayer. I just thought it was SO GOOD.

" Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad in you. Waken our slumbering souls from the sleep of listlessness. Take away the lukewarmness of our hearts. Fan the flame of zeal for the glory of Your name. May Christ so dwell in our hearts with his indestructible joy that day by day we are conformed more and more to His glad image. And so may we be a place of refuge and eternal refreshment for a hopeless, joy-seeking world of people who do not know they are starved for the glory of the gladness of God in Jesus Christ."


This dress was Caryss' and it looks so cute on Braelyn. Thanks Laura for sharing all her clothes! We really enjoy them. And it always makes us think of you guys :)
Our first snow in Bristol. It was such a beautiful snow and fun day. I was so thankful we were all at home together and could get outside and play. Braelyn had a lot of fun just walking around...trying to walk around I should say. But she definitely liked it.


I think Braelyn actually looks like me in this picture. When I first saw it, it was the first time I had been able to see myself in her. We got her a little doggy ornament for Christmas and she likes to walk around with it.

New Videos

Here's Braelyn just laughing and laughing when I was hitting my head and saying "bong". So Sonya grabbed the camera and here it is for your viewing enjoyment!


Here's Braelyn eating some delicious stuff and saying all her new words for mommy. More video's to come!



(Sonya speaking now :) I was so excited to be able to put her hair in pigtails and she actually didn't try to pull them out! I don't think she could figure out that they were on the sides of her head. She is so much fun and I am loving dressing her up in Christmas outfits. The first one of her top teeth is finally starting to push through. She could appropriately sing "all i want for Christmas is my two front teeth :)"

i also wanted to ask whoever reads this to pray for a couple of families here in bristol that experienced a great loss just a few days ago. I don't know all the details, but long story short, two mothers were killed after a tree fell on their vehicle. One mother had 7 kids and the other had 10 I believe....some were adopted, one was even still nursing. My heart just breaks to think of the devastation and loss of these children and husbands and families altogether. just say a prayer for them now as you read this please.

We have some more pics and another video, but will have to post that later.
Have a good week.

A lot to be thankful for.....

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever." Psalm 136:1

I just wanted to share all that I am thankful for and give God all the glory for it.

Thank you Lord for saving me, for making a way for us to know You. For my family and that I was raised in church. Thank you for Your word, that we have access to it and it is not forbidden in our country. Thank you for our warm home, more than enough food to eat, more than enough clothes to wear, for cars that run well. Thank you for aaron's job, that he finds fulfillment in it and that he can earn money for our family. Thank you that I am able to stay at home with Braelyn, that she is healthy and full of life. Thank you for our health, that we have access to doctors and medicines. Thank you for you Holy Spirit, our helper. Thank you for friends that encourage and push us closer to You. Thank you for allowing us to see you answer prayers. Thank you Lord for leading us to a church home here in Bristol. thank you for putting mature believers in our lives to show us how to live and encourage us when we struggle. thank you for prayer, that we can approach you with confidence, knowing you will give us grace to help us in our time of need. thank you Lord for pastors who are not afraid to preach your truth and who challenge us and teach us. thank you Lord for blessing us financially so that we can be a blessing to others for Your glory. Thank you Lord for the freedoms we have in our country, that we can worship you in freedom every Sunday without fear of persecution. thank you Lord for your unfailing, unconditional love for us. thank you Lord for caring about us, for being patient with us, for drawing us to Yourself. You are wonderful Lord. You are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our lives.

"One generation shall praise Your works to another, And shall declare Your mighty acts."

More Fall Fun & Halloween

Still celebrating fall here in Bristol. I was so excited to get some pictures of Braelyn in the leaves. This is at the park beside our house. It was so beautiful. Most of the leaves are falling now :(. But hey, on my way home tonight I saw THREE houses with Christmas lights on!!!! I was shocked! Yes, today is November 7. And I was shopping today and there were people everywhere. It was like we just skipped November completely and it's Dec or something? Crazy. Braelyn had a good Halloween. She was a Pumpkin during the day and then we tried out the Tigger costume. I think she really enjoyed it. She enjoyed seeing the kids come to the door for candy all dressed up. And by the end she was wanting to help put candy in their buckets. Recently, her new favorite thing is to help me unload the dryer :), which actually makes doing laundry a lot more fun. I don't even have to bend over to unload the clean clothes anymore. We will have to try to put a video up of that. And I guess the tigger costume was appropriate because now she is trying to learn how to jump. It's so cute.....she bends down and then stands up real fast and gets excited! Oh, she is just cracking me up everyday with something new. We are so blessed.









Most of the time, she prefers to ride this sitting on it backwards :). And going backwards.