Backpacking, still in our hearts.

Hello one and all to another post, yes it has been awhile.  In this post I would like to share with you all some awesome new news I have learned coming out of the Christian backpacking community.  It is awesome to say the least.  While I was not personally there I had known about the event in advance thanks to a good friend whom I have never met named G (names changed to protect the innocent).  He just recently emailed me to give me the news and, well, lets just let the email from the conference speak for itself:

"For many years there have been followers of Christ who have been seeking to see God glorified through being beacons of light in the traveller scene. For many years the desire for these followers to be more unified and connected has been an idea, a hope, a dream. The hope of a larger movement has been growing for years

In the past few years this dream has grown beyond an idea, to a small baby in its motherʼs womb. Its growth has been the promise of life to come, the promise of something bigger. There have been many people who have been a part of nurturing this young movement and preparing it for birth...

On Friday March 21st the International Backpacker Ministry Conference began. For three days over 45 people from all over the world, from 12 different nations in North and South America, Europe and Asia, gathered together in Amsterdam. For three days we engaged together in workshops, seminars, prayer, worship and fellowship. Those who attended the conference came from a range of different backgrounds. Some people have been doing backpacking ministry for years. Some people would like to be involved and some people have just discovered the existence of this type of ministry and want to know more.

Regardless of our nationalities, where we currently live or our different backgrounds one thing remains the same: we all love God and love backpackers. We all want to know Jesus and want to make Him known."

 

This is truly an exciting time for those involved in this ministry.  Even now there is a team from this conference who are also preparing to head out to Scotland next year to do work among the backpacker/travellers there.  Please keep them in your prayers.  God is moving to see many come to him.  Thanks to everyone for reading.  God bless.

Tolerance...or faithlessness?

Hi everyone, I know it has been a long time since I have put an update on here, and if there are any who read this blog from time to time you might be wondering about how we are doing, well unfortunately this is not going to be an update, maybe later.  Sorry.  Actually this is where I make a stand as a concerned and saddened Christian living in this falling nation today.

I just finished reading an article on line about what could probably be pushing this once great nation over the edge into oblivion.  Today, this very afternoon on November 14 in our nation's capitol church there was a prayer service where Muslim and Christian came together to pray to their false god of unity under faithlessness.  To think that all religions will and can be united under a common banner is to deny the very difference of what they believe.  But the worst part is that this was not done in some out of the way town, this was done in our nation's capitol, our head.  When Jerusalem had reached the height of their faithlessness to God and burned their sons and daughters on the alter of Molech, and sold their virgin daughters into service to the Asherah, the One true God of the Universe destroyed the city, and sent them into bondage and dispersion.  Are we any different today?

This is not a long post just the voice of an outraged and zealous Christian at just how far we have fell.  Prayer is our only hope now.  Even Franklin Graham took notice and said this on his Facebook page,
               Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.–one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America–will host a Muslim prayer service to Allah. It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins. Jesus was clear when He said, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).


I leave you with this word of encouragement as even now 67,000+ people have liked this on his Facebook page,
                    Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.
Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace (Romans 11:3-5).

There are still those who have not bowed the knee, Praise the Lord!

5 plus 1 equals 6

Yep, you guessed it.  This is the first picture of our new baby boy/girl.  We don't know yet what it is but there is a very clear face and ear and belly.  We just wanted to share it with everyone.  Please be praying for us during this time and for this new little miracle of life.  Thank you all so much and God bless you all.
The very excited Bierlys, especially the daddy.

School, Work, and other activities

Greetings to all of those who like to keep up with the Bierlys.  It has been a busy year since it's start and it looks as if it is going to be a busy year altogether.  Where to begin...

So for those who don't already know we started this year off with a move to Pennsylvania.  But I will not dwell on that as it is old news.  Long story short we have settled in and are trying to etch out a place for us as it looks like the place where we will be for the foreseeable future.

Well with the start of the summer we have had a few new beginnings as well.  First has been trying to figure out what needs to be done for William to prepare him for First grade.  The idea is to have him reading and writing and practicing his math through the summer.  So far this has sorta worked.  We even joined a summer reading program at the Jersey Shore Library to help with this.  The other night we went to one of their activities and saw a fun magic show.

Josue and Gabby are more or less just continuing in their regular routine of play, bug, nag, annoy, and basically just fill the shoes of any other regular 4 and 3 year old.  One big step however has been the rather successful potty training of Gabby.  He still has occasional accidents but on the whole he has done very well.

Lia is busy getting books and supplies ready for William to start first grade and still carries out her Pampered Chef parties so if you know of anyone who wants to buy good quality cook wear then Lia is the lady to call.  The rest of the week she has her hands full trying to find stuff for the boys to do, or stuff to tie up the boys when they get into stuff they shouldn't do.  She is an amazing mother to keep up with these little Tarzans.  Here Nate thought one of him was bad enough, but three!

Nate on the other hand is having some of the bigger changes.  He still works for the post office but because of not working as much as he would like he has had to look for another job.  Back in April he finally heard back from the hospital in Williamsport and is now finishing up his orientee training working as an EMT with their pre-hospital service.  It is a lot different than Living Cross in Los Lunas.  But if two jobs were not enough he is also going back to school!  That's right, classes start in august.  He is going back to Moody Bible Institute (online) for his bachelor's degree in ministry leadership.  Thanks to previous schooling he has done he is able to knock a whole year off of the degree program with transferred credits.  He is very excited.

And to top it all off Lia and Nate are going to be the volunteer Youth leaders in the church here.  It is a very small youth group but still needs someone.  We are both very ready and excited to jump back into ministry and this just fell into our lap.  It was really an answer to prayer.  Please keep us in your prayers as we juggle all these activities that we might still make the time we need for God, and also for each other.  We hope that all of you out there are doing well and that God is keeping you along this journey.  God bless you all.  

Fossil Hunting

Here are some pictures of our recent fossil hunting expedition.  We hope you will enjoy them.  It was amazing to climb around on rocks trying to find these remnants of our earth's history.  And once we found them, explain to our boys about Noah's flood and how so many things got buried and destroyed.  It was a lot of fun.  At least, that is, once we found something. 

We spent around three hours looking and found nothing.  Then right before we left we broke open a rock and found this amazing tree branch.  and we just kept finding more pieces of it all around the rock.  It was exciting.  Of course the two older boys enjoyed using my hammers to just pound big rocks into smaller rocks, and Gabby's idea of fossil hunting was to throw rocks into a puddle.  He had fun though, and got good and muddy in the process. 

Three are ones that we collected.  The other two are of what we believe looks like a tree trunk, however it was too high up for us to get a good look at and it was too big for us to unearth.  Lia had to sit on my shoulders just to get a good enough shot of it.  the first one is when she took a picture not sitting on my shoulders.  So it was pretty high up the cliff face.  These were all from the Red Hills area along highway 120 between Hyner and North Bend, PA.  I hope you enjoy these pictures.  May God bless you and keep you all.  

Life

Life is precious.  Being made in the image of our loving and amazing GOD makes it so.  But everyday more life is snuffed out, sometimes sooner than we think it should.  15 dead in a Texas explosion, 3 dead in the Boston marathon bombings, 7 dead at the hands of a lunatic abortion doctor now on trial for murder, and the number continues to rise.  Will our legislative governing body really be able to stop such insanity by controlling our morality?

Let me ask you all what is sin?  Is there an absolute truth to the universe we live in and if there is, is there an absolute right and wrong?  If there is no absolute right or wrong then there is no absolute truth to the universe in which we live, if there is no absolute truth to the universe then there is no such thing as sin.  Evil is evil only because there is good to oppose it.  How can you have Darth Vader without Luke Skywalker to oppose him?

We use Newtown as a battle cry, sort of like a "remember the Alamo" kind of thing.  "Remember Newtown, and ban our guns".  We plaster the eight year old boy from Boston all over the paper to rally others to our cause, and everyday we turn a blind eye to the thousands of unborn, partial born, or accidentally completely born HUMAN babies that are brutally MURDERED all for the sake of convenience.  And don't anybody feed the excuse of rape, incest, or threat to the mother crap.  several years ago Everet Koop former surgeon general made it perfectly clear when he said that over 90% of all abortions are performed on a matter of convenience.  Over 90%, and yet we have "interfaith" (whatever that means) prayer gatherings to pray (to whose god?) for solace and comfort in this time of chaos and sadness.  And meanwhile homosexuals all across the country are fighting for their right to live in "legalized sin" in open defiance of a God they don't even believe in.  Meanwhile in a small west Texas town dozens of people are still buried under ruble from an explosion but not everyone is involved in search and rescue.  The police are actually doing their job in trying to stop looters!  People are hurt and dying and all the sick and insane can do is steal from them.

Father God, please forgive us if you can, or should I say, if we even want you to.

Our Decision

Dear friends and readers of our blog.  We want to thank all of you for praying for us and keeping us in your thoughts during this time of fundraising and mission planning.  It has been a challenging time and through the past three plus years we have learned alot about God's leading and guidance and alot about ourselves.  There is no harder thing and yet no greater thing than to be lead and taught by our Creator, Brother, and King.  Over the past three years we believed that God had called us to go to the backpacker peoples.  To this calling we still believe on day God will take us as we firmly stand on our belief that God has called us to this mission. 
However, we have also come to realize that now may not be His time.  During this past year the fund raising we have been doing has not raised enough support for our living in the UK.  So with heavy and yet expectant hearts we have decided to call off our mission and leave it now in our Father's hands while we see where He wants us to be now, or as a very wise friend full of years of life experience once told me, we have decided for now to "bloom where we are planted."  Please keep us in your prayers as we seek our next steps and we look forward to keeping in touch with you all.  God Bless you.
Sincerely, The Bierlys