Good Morning Class

Hey Everyone,

We hope that this finds you well. There is a lot to catch you up on in the lives of the Mabry's. We have been super busy since our last post. Camp is going great. We just had nearly 200 guys at the Be Strong Men's Conference and God did an awesome work in challenging us with what it means to really be pastors in our families. We are getting geared up for the Marriage Retreat (Oct 19-21), which only has a couple spots left and we leave this morning for our annual staff retreat at Cades Cove.

In addition to the goings on at camp, Zach officially starts today at Liberty University Online as an online professor in the School of Religion. We are very excited about this, for several reasons. As you know, Zach is kind of a nerd, and he loves the academic world. And the class that he is teaching is about a subject that he really loves. He's teaching on apologetics. Plus, this is a huge answer to prayer in that it will really take a large strain of us financially if he continues to get classes. Please pray that he is able to discipline himself well in order to honor the Lord in his work, and that LU continues to assign classes to him.

In even other news, Rock and Parker have started school together too. Yeah, he's still not even 3 but we decided to get an early start and Parker loves it. He's mastering very complex topics like: colors, squares, the location of his right and left feet,  the numbers from 1 to 10, and multifaceted use of the Greek participle.... okay, I lied... he's a bit shaky on his right and left.

We are so thankful at the way that God is working in our home. Please pray for us. And if you feel led to support Zach's upcoming trip to Orphanage Emmanuel this December, that would be awesome. We still need to raise $900. Thank you so much for your support.

Under His Mercy,

The Mabrys

Stay-Cation

This summer was unbelievable. We had more students come than ever before and saw God work in awesome ways.

I'm not going to lie, it had it's difficulties. This was our first summer with 2 kids and it took a little adjusting. We really do our best at SWO to safeguard and protect our families and our family made a bunch of little adjustments that helped a ton. However, it has been really awesome for us to just hang out with each other for this past week during our "staycation".... (that's like a vacation's poverty stricken little brother).

Everyday, we've had a lot of time to just hang out. We've made use of a good friend's pool and have worn out the local playground. It's been good to slow down and just enjoy our time with each other. I (Zach) have been thankful for the time I've had in the mornings to just sit and read God's Word without feeling like I need to prepare to teach anything. I've been going through Genesis and it's been awesome to see how our Lord worked in the lives of the patriarchs. It seems like everyday I'm blown away by how God has seen fit to extend His blessing to man... without any good reason for doing so. I mean, He chose Abram out of nowhere and said, "Hey, I'm going to bless you more than anybody else, go where I tell you." No reason, just blessing.

It's been cool because every night when I tuck Parker into bed, I've been telling him the stories that I've read that morning and then tell him that what God requires from us is to trust and obey. It's really that simple. God calls us into covenant relationship with Himself and asks only that we believe and obey. How could we turn that down?

Anyway, we'll hopefully do a better job at keeping this blog updated. We want y'all to know what's going on and as always if anyone out there feels the Lord leading them to support the Mabry's financially just call Tim in the office at camp 828-321-2210. We could really use it.


Looking to the future

Zach was hired on with Liberty University Online this spring as an Adjunct Professor, but hasn't yet been assigned a class. Please pray that he will actually be given a class. This could be an awesome ministry opportunity as well as providing support to our family.

Also pray for the ministry here at SWO, we've got students coming in next week, and it won't be long before the Be Strong Men's Conference (http://www.swoutfitters.com/sw-outfitters/programs/year-round-retreats/mens-conference).


With love,

The Mabrys

Crazy Spring

So we did the math and this March there was only one day that we either didn't have students at camp or camp wasn't somewhere. Crazy! But we can't complain, because this just means that God is opening more and more doors for us to be partnering with churches in the spread of His glorious Gospel.

Since we had students at camp and Zach's days were pretty long Rock and the kids headed off to visit the Mabry's in Cincinnati along with Grandma. They spent nearly a week with Nathan (Nae Nae), Rachel (Rae Rae) and their 3 kids and loved it. The only difficulty in the trip was the ride there and back. Parker is not the biggest fan of road trips.

In other news, we finally sent out our support letters. Please pray that there are some families that would feel led by God to help support us financially. With our new house and new kid, we have found ourselves in position where we need to raise more support to make ends meet. But we trust that the Lord will provide. Along that line, it looks like Zach has gotten an additional job that we're really excited about. Zach has been hired on with Liberty University's online program to be an online professor. He still has to submit a lot of paperwork and go through a 10 week training program, but it looks like this will provide a really awesome opportunity to promote Biblical/Theological training (which Zach is passionate about) and generate some additional income in the process. We are very excited to see what the Lord does with this.

The Mabry 4

This is our first family picture! It was taken on the night that we celebrated Parker's birthday. I look at it and get so excited thinking about what our boys are going to be like as they get older. I wonder what they'll look like and what their personalities will be like. I wonder what God's plan is for their lives.I pray daily that God would use my children to glorify himself. This is one way that we would love for you to pray for our family. Pray that God would bring our children to a knowledge of Himself, and that our children's hearts would be sensitive and obedient to Him. We love you all and thanks for praying for our family!

Hey Everybody,

This is the new Mabry family blog. We thought this would be a good way for us to to keep our loved ones up to speed on what's going on with our family. These past few months have been very eventful for us. We started building our house in the spring of 2011 and we were able to move in on December 10th, 2011. For those of you who don't know, we (Zach, Parker, and myself) were living in a 250 sq. ft., one room apartment. So, living in a house with rooms, walls, and doors is pretty awesome. 

Also, in January we welcomed our new son into the world. Sam was born at 1:24 pm on January 11th. He weighed in at 7 pounds and 5 ounces and he was 19 1/4 inches long.

On February 10th, Parker turned 2. Man it's crazy how time flies! I can't believe we have had him for two years. I am so thankful for the the laughter he brings in to our home. He is our little comedian.I hope to update this blog weekly, but we'll see if that happens! I'm not the most tech savvy individual. I've been fiddling around with this blog set up for quite a while now, and I'm still a little confused! We love you and hope you'll use this to keep up with us and pray for us!

-Rocky