God's Creation

Jer & I were talking about how beautiful the surroundings are here, but without our family it's just not enough to make us stay in the long run. I think this is because a family is a blessing from God. We are both blessed to belong to a family that loves us so much and that has shown us that love from childhood. Many people in this world do not have that, it is strange to think that, but it's true.

We are so happy when we get to take pictures now because we feel like you guys are with us! It feels like you're just on the other side of the camera ;) We love sharing these exciting times in our lives with you guys! Thanks for shipping the Kodak Tony! :)


fragrant plumerias, a beautiful hibiscus, and sandy feet,

typed with love,

Kat & Jer

Verse of the day:

Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Beach park, our house, our life : )

We went to Waimea today for my appointment at the Waimea Women's Center. We got a tour of their Labor & Delivery center, it was soooo cozy! Our trip there was along the Hamakua coast, and it was hard to keep your eyes on the road cause all you wanted to do was look at the gorgeous ocean views! On the way back we did some site seeing and stopped by this beautiful jungle, beach park, and the last one is of our house that we can hardly wait to get filled with our lovely people!

Aloha, bare feet, waterfall sounds, and ocean views, typed with love,

Kat & Jer <3

Baby bump :)

Here are more pictures of our fun day:) Hope you guys enjoyed them! Now that we have a camera and a new memory card, we'll be able to document our outings better:)

Fun in the sun in Hilo:)

Today was a gorgeous day. We had so much fun, we went to the Lili'uokalani Gardens, Coconut Island, and Reeds Bay. It was a blast! We took lots of pictures for everyone to see and we had a great time doing it. We know everyone has been waiting for pictures.....so without further ado....

Fun day!

Jer and I had a fun day today. We went grocery shopping made pizza at home, and ate some grapes while we watched the Laker game. Haha. I set up my first appointment to the Waimea Women's Center and I can hardly wait, it will be a beautiful, green, lush drive. It's next week, on Wednesday. I'm already 30 weeks, and I'm so excited because that means I'm closer and closer to not only seeing my family soon, but seeing my lil baby soon too:) Face to face! Wow, what a privilige to be a parent, what an honor and responsibility to raise a little person/soul! I'm in love with my baby already and I know I will get so emotional when I get to see him:) He's my little love in my tummy that wiggles and kicks, and swims and makes me smile.

Well we are off to bed now, thanks for reading and we'll continue writing these little bloggy blogs, so keep coming back. I know we've slowed down a bit, but we'll try to keep them coming at least once a week. So leave a comment if you want. :) Chao!

Overwhelmed...

Lately it seems that a lot of things have been trying to get us down...its been like a rollercoaster with highs and lows. Something great happens, then something not so great. Well this time it has to do with the new place. The fridge stopped cooling (and eventually broke). We didn't have much food in there at first, and nothing in the freezer so we didn't notice it wasn't cooling enough until the weekend (We moved in on a Monday). We had just bought some groceries to put in there too, and that's when we noticed that they didn't feel cold. We called the property manager on her cell phone and waited, but she didn't call back. Finally after a few more hours of waiting Jer called her again and told her what was going on with the fridge. She said that she would call in the repair man to come in tomorrow, we were frustrated because she said this isn't an emergency (to her it isn't!) I later called her back after she spoke to Jer because I was so frustrated that she acted like it wasn't a big deal, and to top it off she said "It's your responsibility to make sure the fridge worked when you moved in." Also, she said, "You can borrow a cooler from one of your neighbors." (Which is really dumb.) UH HELLO LADY! We JUST moved in a few days ago....

She then said well did you have any ice trays? I said no I didn't fill out the ice trays since I didn't have anything in the freezer in the first place! Plus, who says "Oh let me fill out the ice trays to make sure this fridge works.?!" First off the fridge looked new, it was purchased in June 08, and it seemed cool enough when we moved in.

Then I was gonna do some laundry but I couldn't because the washer has a 3 prong system and the outlet was a 2 prong system. (What?! That's what I said, it doesn't even make sense!) Well anyway, we told her about that too and she said she never noticed it before....so what did the people that rented before us do? Buy an adapter or what? I don't get it, but we decided that it's her responsibility to fix this so she was compliant.

UGH! I'm just venting, so anyway thanks to our sweet little Japanese neighbor not all of our food spoiled, but we did end up throwing some away. (He let us put the perishables in his little fridge.) We told her if we could get reimbursed to these and she was a little hesitant about it, she said "I will ask the owner..." Uh, no you need to reimburse us lady, this is unfair! We told her how this is included in our rent and stuff. So anyway she finally complied and said she would deduct it from our rent.

Today we got our new fridge! Yay!! No more stupid Kenmore, we got a Hotpoint from GE and it works! hahahaah! The freezer even has freezing cold air coming out of it! hahahah (Within 2 hrs of pluggin it in:)

So anyway, just thought we'd let you know some drama for your mama that's been going on. I was so sad/frustrated/crying and Jer felt so bad too. Now we have our new fridge, the electrician came and put a nice new GFI outlet in for the washer and also for the outlet behind the fridge.

Marla (a sweet lady from HR) called and she has some bananas for us! Yay!! We are going to go pick them up on the way to Prayer meeting tonight;) Jer finally has a night off after working 5 nights in a row! We're grateful for his job and the blessings we have gotten from it. It's hard right now but God is helping us get through.

We are in a beautiful part of creation, but that doesn't mean it's all peaches n cream. We still don't even have a bed, thank goodness we have a couch and that little foam pad we can sleep on.
All in all things are going well. I had a Dr's appt yesterday and everything looked good! I'm getting referred to a really cool birth center called "Waimea Women's Center" !!!! I'm so excited about this, I've heard nothing but good reviews about this place, they said it feels like a hotel not a hospital. It's so perfect there's OBs, midwives and everything medical in case you need it, but they will encourage & support your natural birth.

They even have waterbirthing options, whatever sounds best to you! ;0)

I'm getting bigger & bigger and I wear Jer's clothes around the house because it fits and its so comfy:)

Alright talk to you all later! GBU all!

Psalm of the day: Psalm 34:18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, And saves those who are crushed in spirit.


*Image from blog.escapethecity.org

Spiritual food

Last night we went to hear Pastor Steve Wohlberg speak at our new little Hilo church:) He had a great message based primarily in the book of Romans . He highlighted some beautiful pieces of scripture. I'll try to recapture the scripture references he gave (I forgot a pen so I couldn't write them down, but I remember most of them) I will be using the RSV, revised standard version.

First he started off with Revelation 14:12 which says, "Here is the call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus."

He talked about how the Lord wants us to keep His commandments through faith not works. He wants us to let Him be our righteousness, because we can never be righteous in and of ourselves. Romans 3:10 'As it is written: "No one is righteous, no, not one;"

Romans 3:20-21 "For no human being will be justified by the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe."

He made note how the Bible says that there is NONE righteous, not one. He also made note simply because we aren't righteous in and of ourselves we can still have righteousness by FAITH in Jesus Christ. Romans 3:23 "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the former sins; it was to prove that ....he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus."

How awesome is that! Grace is undeserved love, and that is what God has shown us. Steve talked about how we need to know our condition before we can appreciate this love God has for us, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Why did he have to die? Because the law of God is just, yet God is also merciful. Steve brought up a point I hadn't thought of before he said, how can God be just and merciful at the same time? The law states that the "wages of sin is death." So how can he allow us sinners into Heaven? He provided the way, Jesus! (He fulfilled the law perfectly for us, He is our righteousness and he died for us so that we can go to Heaven one day and spend eternity with God)

"Only when we truly understand our condition will we truly appreciate what Christ has done for us."

Here's a story pastor Steve used. There's a man that committed a murder. Six months later he has been "doing good", hasn't committed any more murders and asks the judge during his trial if he can let me go because he has been "good." What do you think a just judge would do? He is still guilty of that crime right?! Yes, he is. Likewise we too are guilty for breaking the law of love, the 10 commandments. (you break one you break em all) He also pointed out that we are not to stay in sin, because God forgives, but because of this we are to stay away from it. "You have to let go of the cookies in the cookie jar to let your hand free." Let go and be set free!

What would motivate someone to die for you and for me? Romans 5:6-8 "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man-though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." RSV

I felt so blessed to be in church with my hubby Jer. We had such an awesome fellowship with our new church peeps at the Hilo church. They are so cozy! I hope I captured the point of the message and that you gained some good spiritual nourishment from the Word. (I was inspired by this message to read Romans, my fave verse in high school was Romans 12:2, it's in my senior yearbook quote:)

Instead of being done & gone forever after this life. The Lord will grant us Eternal life, he will say "Welcome to eternity. And he will give us a big hug!" - Steve Wohlberg. (I love this!)

Dude! I love our new place!

Dude! Our new place is sweet. I can't wait till you guys come out! It's so beautiful here. Today, we went to the Farmer's Market and bought some fruit and took a drive to the ocean (which is a mere 10minutes away). When we came home we prepared some veggie sub sandwiches and ate them on our front porch steps with the fresh, warm, Hawaiian sun pouring in on us. Then, behind us, in our backyard, the rain began to sprinkle. The sky turned tropical gray and a beautiful rainbow formed above the trees in our backyard, high in the sky. I called Katia to come look, because she was inside making seconds (she's always eating). When she saw it her face lit up and she said that it was the coolest rainbow shes ever seen. I was stoked to show it to her. It's beautiful here. We love it. We just want some visitors, some love from the mainland, to come share with us in our joy, and soon to be son!

To top it off, we also have some fruit trees in our backyard, not to mention our nice, big green lawns that we want to play soccer on. We have a huge mandarin tree and a huge groove of banana trees. We like to eat the mandarins, but the bananas are not ready yet. Today, I planted a pineapple. My buddy at work (a fellow RT) told me how to plant them. You just twist off the top and set it (the bushy top) in the dirt. It should produce another pineapple in 18 months. If we stay here we can eat it=)

We like our new house. Its got cool wood floors. It's kinda an older style, like the 50's 0r 60's, maybe 70's I'm not sure, but it's cool, we're liking it. We have a carport to park in. It actually is more like a one car garage. It has a bathroom in it too, with some storage. That's where I keep my bike.

We got some nice furniture from some cool peeps we met at church. They gave us a cool rattan couch, chair and even a rattan dining table with 4 chairs. They are so sweet to us. We are very grateful for them. He is the head elder at the church. They are originally from Mexico. The other day they had us over and they made us the best burritos ever. Such nice people! God works through his people doesn't He? We are planning on returning the generosity to them and others when we get back on our feet.

Tonight, Brotha Steve Wohlberg is speaking at the Hilo SDA church. He's been here since Friday night, but this will be the first time seeing him since I work night shift and we've been busy moving. We are stoked to go listen to him.

Well, we have the internet again, and we are fully moved into our new house, so the blogs will be more consistent now. I am glad this is a good way of keeping you, our loved ones, updated with our lives out here on this ball of dirt in the middle of the Pacific.

Much love, peace, and Aloha from Brotha Jer,

Jesus loves you! and so do Kat and I=)

Cafe chillin

Today we went to Borders and hung out for a while there had a chill time reading some books & getting inspired by some home decor magazines:) We are getting ideas together to make our place cozy & tropical for when we get to have visitors!! It's a slow process but little by little we'll get things here and there.

This weekend will be fun because Jer is working evening shift (not night) which means he will be coming home at around 11pm instead of 7am tomorrow night. Yay! We get to go listen to Steve Wohlberg. He is a good servant of the Lord, and has a great message & ministry to share with people. We are really hyped up about listening to him speak, because he is usually very insightful and has good spiritual content to share.

Well we can hardly wait to furnish our beach shack:) Soon we'll be getting a camera & taking pics!!!

New Home!

We have officially moved! We are so excited and thankful, the church fam has been super hospitable and sweet to us by helping us out with this transition. We have some dishes, pots & pans, silverware, a bench, and even a dining table with 4 chairs! They have made us feel so at home. We have felt their warmth & coziness and are so grateful!! We love them!!! The Martinez fam & Watanabe fam have been the sweetest people ever:) The Martinez fam had us over for dinner the other night & it was sooooooo delicious! Yummy! They made authentic Mexican food, and there isn't really much of that here, it's mostly polynesian style food, so it was a real treat:)

Until later, love you all! Thank-you for your prayers, we appreciate them!

*We won't have internet for a little bit, but we'll try to get it asap.