Go into all the world

Well, here we are, three weeks into our first real deployment.  Week one was really hard.  But week two was better.  There have been a lot of tears from these three over missing Daddy, wanting to know when he is coming back, and just a lot of emotions for us all.  By far the hardest part for me has been seeing my babies' broken hearts, holding them in the day and night crying and calling for Daddy.  My own heart broke even more with that.  And yet, we are surprisingly good.  Tears bring healing and often emotional relief and peace comes even to these tiny hearts when we pray for it.  

And through all the tears and the broken hearts, we have had, and will continue to have, some wonderful teaching moments about what is truly happening while Daddy is on his "special assignment".  One of the bible verses that Cole memorized this year is Mark 16:15 " Go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone".  What a perfect verse for us to lean on in these months.  Cole and I had a long talk about this verse.  That THIS is what Dad is doing on his assignment and why he had to go.  That Dad was called to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ.  What a privilege Brenner has to go to a dark place where God is hated and he gets to bring comfort, counsel, truth, compassion and kindness to those serving and maybe even those who live in the area.  We talked about how we all need to have a heart for others and boldness in Christ and it was God's prompting that led us to full time Chaplain ministry.  And while for the last 15 months that meant applying Mark 16:15 to the base 6 miles away, the next 7 means applying it to a different part of the world that desperately needs the peace, love and mercy of Jesus.  

I miss so many teaching moments in my kids' lives, I am sure of it.  With busyness or selfishness, I know that I have not seen or not taken advantage of a moment to further explain something important.  But what an awesome 7 months I can have with the kids, encouraging them in their prayers for Dad and his ministry, for peace and the protection of life in the middle east, for wisdom for our nation's leaders.  Months where they can look back and remember that Dad was a part of something for our country and for our God that he was called to do, but that really we are ALL called to do these things where he has called us as followers of Christ.  I have a challenge now in front of me to be sure that we are living out that same verse to the best that we can.  

Chap, Chap, Chaplain

So for the last 14 months, Brenner has officed out of the Med Group here on base.  The idea was for the chaplains to be where the people are as much as they can and this has allowed SO much more interaction with people than I think he would have gotten at other places.  He has loved getting to know this group on base.  At the last Commander's Call for the group, the Col. asked everyone to attend so that they could say goodbye to Brenner.  He was so touched!  He had also prepared this song for them to show his appreciation and love for his job and the people he gets to work with.

Brenner is a man of many talents :)

One year and off he goes

So the Campbell clan has officially been in California for a year.

Over a year, 13 1/2 months to be exact, and I meant to write this post right after we hit our one year mark but I procrastinated.  A lot.  I love to share with everyone how amazing this change has been for us, how much we have grown, how much stronger our marriage has become and how we feel like we are both being used by God in too many ways to count just because we said "yes" when He asked us to trust and follow him.  But the first year here and the second year here are going to look very, very different.

The reason for my huge procrastination in writing a family update is because Brenner is deploying in less than a month and my heart just hurts to write that.

It is not a surprise, we knew that this would be coming, and yet when we got the orders it was still a shock.  And so, here we are, reveling in all that God has taken us through in the last 13 months, grateful for the challenges of changing houses, careers, states, and time zones, amazed at the relationships formed, humbled by the love we are shown by the Air Force community and honored to given the chance by God to do such great kingdom work for full time ministry.  And now we have to gear up for another challenge, a 7 month deployment.

While my heart hurts, I mean truly aches, at the thought of sending him off for such a long time, I am also very aware that once again, this is part of God's plan for us and there are specific reasons that this deployment is not only happening, but necessary.  Every major challenge that we have faced I can look back and see so many reasons why that had to happen in order to change me in some way.  Challenge and suffering and changes in our lives should change us into people more like Christ.  So this past year, with the challenges we faced with our move to California and new AF life, has blessed us tremendously and we are so grateful for each day we are here.  I can see why I needed to relocate, I already can pinpoint areas of change in my life that are for the better and areas where I feel Christ is shining more than he was.

And I really think that this next year, even though Brenner will be gone for so much of it, will still be a great year.  My prayer for us is to grow in Christ, to have joy and contentment in our hearts, and to be used well in our full time ministries.  This is not going to be a seven month countdown of when our life can start again, this will be a seven month journey imitating Christ and treasuring the season we are in.  Be sure to remind me of that on the hard days :)

Air Force Ball

I am definitely a little behind in all of my posts these days.  

So here, a few weeks late, are a few pictures from our first Air Force Ball.  

We had SO much fun!!  

This was the first occasion since college where we got to get all pretty and sparkly.

I found an amazing dress and even curled my hair...can't you tell?

The forces of nature were not in my favor that night so seriously, this is how my "curled" hair looked after 30 minutes of intense curling iron, hair gel and hairspray works.  

Oh well!  Surprisingly, it does not look horrendous after all I put it through.

The ball was in a hanger on base so it was fun to get pictures next to all the planes.  The one behind us here is the MC12, which is actually leaving the Air Force and going to the Army.

And a few pictures with some friends....

Such a fun night!  I forgot how fun it is to get dressed up with your man!!

Striking a balance at five months.

We have been in California for five months!  

While we still feel new and still adjusting to a lot, we also feel like we are home.
And I really did not know if I would be able to say that as we left our beloved town of Waco after being there more than a decade.  But we do feel at home and are loving the area where God dropped us.  

There has been so many things to adjust to that there have been a lot of moments where we have felt overwhlemed.  

I think if this had just been a move to a new house or a new town or a job change it would have been crazy enough.  But all those plus leaving family, changing time zones, changing entire careers and getting a whole new family schedule.....well, let's just say it has been wild five months.
But truly it has also been great.

Brenner loves his chaplain work.  He seriously was made for this.
Although I laugh as I write that because if you know Brenner, he was made to do a lot of things and always does them well.
sometimes that is a little annoying :)
His days are long as he tries to keep up with all the regular duties of his job, which includes a lot of unexpected things.  He has also decided to relive college intramurals by joining in on the volleyball and softball teams here...to which he told me last week "I'm getting too old for this, even though I'm still awesome"
HAHA!

Back when we were first married and Brenner had decided to start his own business, I was still in undergrad at Baylor.  Our priorities in life were us.
It was about our careers, our goals, what we wanted.
Funny thing is, we thought we knew it all and that we were right on track.
For years we lived like that.  And for years we suffered, even though we did not always know it.
God breaking us 5 years ago, both individually and as a couple was the most amazing and life altering thing.  I know I have talked about it here before, but we were people desperately needing to be broken of living for the wrong things.

Now, here in California, here in the Air Force, I cannot believe my life.
I cannot believe how much I have changed, how much Brenner has changed and how much our life purpose is different.
To hear and see Brenner pour out his heart and work so hard just to build relationships with the people that he meets amazes me.  His purpose has become so much more than just himself.
God has also blessed me with so many opportunities to serve and to know people.
In fact, I feel God calling me to so much that I am getting overwhlemed.
I think that He is making up for all the years where I said no and stopped listening to Him :)
We never could have imagined being used in this place where we have landed.

I guess that I will never cease to be amazed at the way that God orchestrates His plan perfectly.
And that is a good thing because I never want to think that I know better than God.  I want to be amazed at His work because He is amazing!  

But, like I said, every day has not been easy.
This transition has been hard and tiring.  Like really, really tiring.
There have been many days where we feel we are barely keeping afloat because of all the many things that need to get done.  Brenner's work days are often longer than they were and after the kids go to bed he is often having to do work for his projects still going in Waco.  My kids, who all have the love languages of quality time and physical touch, demand a lot of my attention which I give them because they are my number one priority.  Therefore most of the house, garden, chickens, yard work and email stuff gets done either really early or really late in the day.  Which makes our long days longer.
Each day is a struggle to find the balance of what needs to be done...but that is no different then anyone else.  We are all trying to do that.
And some days I think we did it well and other days are a colossal failure.  
But at the end of all those days, whether they end in peace or in tears, whether the kitchen is clean or laundry has piled up for a week, whether Brenner has spent the day counseling and helping marriages or hugging young airmen at a memorial service, we are so content and filled by our new calling to the Air Force.  We are grateful for the chance to make a difference here.
We are thankful that God is using us and redeeming our hearts after years of going in the wrong direction.

And, after about two years of wanting to update the look of the blog, I finally did it!  Hooray!

Settling into our house.

We have settled into our house and while there has been a lot of work to do, and still more to get done, we are enjoying it so much!  There are many little things about our new house that are advantages over our house in Waco, such as a better outside play area for the kids, a better driveway for riding bikes and sidewalk chalk, a playroom, and of course the great views.

One of the first things that Brenner did was add large hole chicken fencing around about 4 acres of our property.  There was a white fencing, but the dogs, chickens and kids could get out too easily for my liking.  And Brenner had the added fun of putting it in the weekend after 6 days of rain!  (insert sarcasm here!) 

Cole and Jake were happy to help him too :)

Having a great garage and driveway has been SUCH a blessing.  Part of the garage has become added play space for us, where we do our crafts, painting, play doh and markers.  I just don't have to care about what gets where and that makes it a more enjoyable time for all because messy activities should be messy!

The driveway is wide and flat so Cole rides his bike on and off ALL day long.  They also love sidewalk chalk now and in addition to the girls' requests write our names and draw pictures of Jake over and over, we also create racetracks, hopscotch, runways and battlefields.  Thankfully the Dollar Tree sells tubs of sidewalk chalk for only $1!

Here is a great example of how the kids clean up their playroom.

One other new change in our new house is that all the kids are sharing a room.  

The girls have always shared a room, but we felt strongly that all the kids begin to share a room when we were looking for houses.  Personally, we think that there are tons of benefits to kids sharing rooms that I will discuss on a later day.  It has been an adjustment and there have been some drawbacks as well, but overall it is going great.  The girls have been going back and forth sharing beds too.  They went through a phase of insisting on sleeping in the same crib together but are now back to separate cribs.  Silly girls!

And of course we love being in the country.  We are in a country neighborhood so there are plenty of house around, they each just sit on approximately 10-40 acres so the neighborhood is spread out.  Everyone has at least some sort of animal, be it chickens, horses, cows, sheep, goats, donkeys or turkeys.  And because we are across the street from a lake and there are ponds all over, there are tons of geese, ducks and even wild peacocks.  Neighborhood walk are really fun to listen to and hear all the animals.  It has given the girls a chance to perfect their animal sounds!

And here is the view from our front yard on a most gorgeous day!  

God is good. Always.

Last week we closed on the selling of our house!  

After 2 years of the house being on the market, it finally sold.  

And we are so grateful.  

But we are not grateful just because the house sold.  

We are grateful that God's plan was way better than ours.  

His always is.  

Always.  

We obviously wanted our house to sell as soon as we put in on the market.  We thought we had a plan for what we would do when it sold and we thought that everything would work out perfectly.  

But God knew that he was taking us in a different direction (such as California!) and it was not the right time to move only to have to move again.  

And so we waited.  

Sometimes I was more patient than others because attempting to keep a large house organized and ready for showings with 3 littles running around was pretty impossible.  But God also knew that a mom with 3 littles always needs more practice with being patient :)

So we left our house in Waco unsold as we moved across the country, trusting it would work out.  

Which of course it did.  

God is so good because He knew what we needed and when.  

We are so grateful that His plan is perfect.  

We are grateful the house sold, but we would continue to be grateful that God's plan is good even if it remained unsold.  Because all things have a purpose and a plan.

God has a way of taking our plans that we constantly make and throwing them out the window.  

Anybody else feel that way?

Married while still in college?

Twins?

Major career change?

Move across the country?

I never expected these things and yet each one has resulted in blessings and great growth.  

God is good.  

Always.  

And THAT is why I am grateful.  

And so we now say goodbye to our house. 

Our first house together that we moved into when we got married.  

The house where we brought 3 babies home to. 

The house that was our home for a decade.  

Here is a picture of how the house looked when we moved into it:

I think the house changed as much as we did while we lived in it.  

So long Austin Avenue!

Leaving Waco, leaving home.

We have arrived in California!  

There will be lots more pictures for me to post from our last days in Waco and our trip around the country.  But over the last week of driving, between the dozens of book readings to the kids, the hours of kid CDs that we listened to, the 95 recitations of Itsy Bitsy Spider and Wheels on the Bus that I sang with the girls and the 500 stickers that ended up all over us and the car, I was able to reflect and give thanks over our years in Waco.  

And when I began to write down all the things that happened in my life over the years there, I was overwhelmed with emotion.  

Overwhelmed with thankfulness.  

And overwhelmed at saying goodbye to this chapter of my life.  

I met Brenner on my first day at Baylor.

We graduated from college.  

We bought our first house on Austin Avenue. 

Brenner started his own business. 

I went to graduate school. 

I got my first real job.  

Brenner found a career.

We had our first baby. 

Brenner went to seminary. 

Brenner joined with Air Force Reserves.

I became a full time mom. 

We had two more babies. 

We said yes when the Air Force called for more. 

But even more than those events, we have been through so much. 

We struggled through the early years of marriage. 

And our marriage grew into an amazing partnership.

I was sick.  

And I was healed.  

We learned the trials of parenthood. 

And we found being parents is the greatest joy in life.

Brenner's business grew. 

And we learned great lessons through hard times when it didn't.

We thought we were going to lose our twins. 

And our faith and trust in the Lord became stronger.  

  We fought God on where He wanted to take us. 

And we have been blessed beyond measure when we obeyed His calls.  

 We searched for a home church. 

We found more than a church, we found family.

We made a lot of mistakes. 

And we learned to give a lot of grace. 

We tried to live up to the standards of the world. 

And we learned that the ONLY thing that matters is whether or not we are reflecting Christ.

Waco and our years there have formed who we are.

I can't imagine more happening in our next decade than what happened in the last!  

We met amazing people who we will have relationships with for a lifetime.  

We are grateful that God placed us in a community as unique as Waco to start our life together and to prepare us for this next phase.  We wouldn't have listened to God and followed His call to the Air Force if we hadn't been through the crazy, hard and wonderful years.   

It was so, so hard for me to leave.  I have lived in two places: Virginia and Texas.  I never imagined myself living anywhere else, and yet, here I am, feeling at complete peace with having our new life in California.  But don't get me wrong, Texas will still be called home ;)

We are excited for this adventure and I can only hope that we will come to love this new place and every other place we may be sent as much as we love dear old Waco.  

California here we come!!

We are moving to California!

The Campbell family is going Active Duty Air Force and are being stationed to Beale Air Force Base in the beginning of January!

We are so excited!

This may come as a shock to many of you so let me give you a little background.   

Brenner has been in real estate here in Waco for over a decade now.  He started right out of Baylor developing houses, subdivisions and more.  While he has loved doing this, and will continue to do so in the future, he has also been called to do something else.  

Brenner felt God calling him to go to seminary back in 2008 when the economy was starting to take a down turn and he knew the things for his real estate business was going to change.  

I kind of thought that it was crazy but God's plans have never been the same as our plans and His have always worked out a lot better!

Brenner began seminary and joined the Air Force Reserves as a chaplain and has been serving in that capacity ever since.  He has still maintained a real estate business but has been a reservist serving periodically throughout the year at different bases around the country.  

About a year and a half ago, one of Brenner's supervisors mentioned to Brenner that he should consider going full time, Active duty Air Force.  We talked about it a little but then we basically got back to our lives and forgot about it.  

Then this past January, Brenner was in South Carolina for 7 weeks and it was brought up to him again.  This time, it was for real:  do we want to go active duty Air Force.  

We talked about it a lot and after A LOT of praying, we said yes!  

That was back in April. 

In July we received our official acceptance papers and have been waiting to find out our destination and report date. 

Well, last Friday we got word that we are going to Northern California, Beale AFB.  

It is about 1 hour north of Sacramento.  

Ya'll, we are SO excited!  

We will know more soon, but we will be packing up and leaving Waco sometime in early January.  

We are committing right now to one tour, which should be 3-4 years.  

Then, we will just have to wait and see what God tells us to do.

Here is a little description of the base and the area that we will be that we pulled off the website. 

"A fine example of what you make out of it. This base is tucked in the east-side of the Sacramento Valley. Located 45 minutes north of Sacramento, 2 hours west of Reno/Tahoe, 2 hours east of San Francisco and 2 1/2 hours north of Yosemite. The base has expanded its footprint by building a new shoppette in housing, expanded the food court in the BX and is completing a new CDC. The school on base is one of the best in the area. The housing on base has been attempting to get privatized for several years and appears to be on track to get moving this year. This base's facilities are getting better every year after being forgotten about for too long. The people who do complain are those who do not get out and enjoy what the area has to offer: 330+ days of sun, little humidity, hot dry summers, excellent farmers markets, hiking, fishing, gold panning, water sports, skiing and snowboarding just 90 minutes away, a large mall just 30 minutes away, easy airport access to SMF, museums, wine tours, the local Peach Festival, Reno Air Races, Old Sacramento, golf, tennis, a stable on base, a public 250 yard+ range just off base, hunting (deer, turkey and duck on base--boar, bear, and more off). If you don't like going outside or driving more than 15 minutes, I'd not recommend this place. But if you are the type that likes to get off your you know what and do something, you'll be impressed with what there is to do."

Please follow us and our journey here and on Instagram (@wacocampbells).

Seriously, we are so excited!  

He's home.

Brenner's back!

We are one happy family!

(although you couldn't tell it by the look on the kids' faces!)

Brenner got home on Saturday night and we are so happy!  

I am actually amazed at how well we all did being separated for so long.  

Brenner thinks I had it worse because I was taking care of 3 kids by myself.  

I think that he had it pretty bad because he didn't get to see his kids for 6 1/2 weeks.  

or his fantastic wife.

But we all made it just fine and it was another growing experience that has made us both appreciate what the other does to provide for our family.  

On a side note, Brenner's time was spent in chaplain training/school and he received the top graduate award!  It is a big honor and we are rte ally proud of him!!

Way to go hubby!

12 days.

Only 12 more days until this guy comes home. We are ready to have him home!