The Burgess Family Blog

Photos from this weekend, celebrating Pearl's 3rd birthday in Estes Park with family :) LET'S PARTY! A little sledding and snow-play, Some great (mostly horse themed) gifts, And a yummy horse-cake! Pearl enjoys us sing 'Happy Birthday' to her, Blow out those candles! Dig in?!?!? Yeah, let's get you your own piece on a plate, ok? There you go :) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PEARL! We had a great weekend celebrating with you!

Our youngest is 3 years old today. How did that happen? On one hand, Pearl has acted like a 3 year old for as long as we can remember, so it seems appropriate that she finally actually is 3. But on the other hand, she still seems like the "baby" because as the youngest, there is no baby to take that title from her. She is a bit older now than either Jesse or Winter were when they became a big brother or big sister, but seems younger in our minds because she hasn't had someone littler enter the scene and make her to seem so big! Unfortunately, Pearlie is not having a very good birthday so far. She had a virus a couple weeks ago that has recently come back to haunt her as an ear infection. Because she is an expert at refusing to take medicine, we've had a rough go of it. She has been bailed out by some not-fun-but-definitely-effective alternative ways to administer medicines, and should be feeling better very soon. But this is how she woke up this morning (yes, w...

Well I should probably write something on this blog once in a while! I haven't had much to say lately, it seems. This is a pretty slow time of year, so we don't have many fun photos either. Of course, we have a birthday in the family this week, so we'll have some photos after that I'm sure! This time of year is kind of the calm-before-the-storm in Luke's ministry. He'll be very busy, very soon. But right now, there's not much news to report. He's in his office a lot. On the phone a lot. The staff has been rearranging offices and cleaning up their storage garage (we got some free soda out of that deal, when they found it had been sitting around too long to sell anymore!) News with my own side if the ministry is also somewhat slow for now. We're planning some new things with our newsletter/support raising, but I'm not quite ready to unveil that yet. I'm enjoying my involvement with Compassion International , but it's not a real bu...

You've GOT to read THIS !

This weekend I did my first "event" as a Compassion International Advocate! Our new church (we've been attending the membership classes!) asked me to set up a booth during their " missions fair." It wasn't so much a "booth" as it was the middle section of a long table: But it got the job done! I had fun meeting people and talking about my interest in this great organization. I appreciate our church giving me the opportunity! As an "advocate," Compassion sends me profiles of children who need sponsors. I have several left after my event at church this weekend, and wanted to highlight a few for you: Kenneth is a 7 year old boy in Nicaragua. He lives with his mother, who is raising 6 children on her own! She works as a laborer, and the average wage in the area is equivalent to about $81 dollars a month. Kenneth is a "priority child," which means he has been waiting a longer amount of time for a sponsor. He and his mother really ne...

I didn't do anything for "Sanctity of Life" month or Sunday this year. Come to think of it, I didn't really mark it last year either-- something about being too busy unpacking and repainting, I think. But I recently came across this article and it sparked some thoughts. (The piece is really lengthy and not exactly about what I am going to say here, but still it is intriguing and has some good points. It's an excerpt from a speech given at Wheaton College about how sexuality needs to be viewed and taught differently in order to reduce the number of abortions.) The immediate gist I got from it was that Christians need to step it up to both teach and support one another on this issue, "thus to have no occasion for abortion." This statement caught my attention. No occasion for abortion? What would that look like? I feel like I have the right to comment on the issue of abortion because, as you probably are aware, I have indeed experienced an unplanned pregna...

I was listening in on the kids watching The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe this afternoon and something caught my attention: The older two children go to the professor and tell him of Lucy's crazy story about another world inside the wardrobe in the spare room. He asks them what they think of it, and Susan replies, "it's logically impossible!" The old professor inquires about the character of their sister, however, and Peter and Susan admit that Lucy would never tell a whopper like this. So, the professor concludes, she must be telling the truth! I have heard skeptics' arguments, and sometimes feel myself, that some of God's ways and the interpretations of His Word are "out there," or "a stretch." Maybe one can think something is possible, but it doesn't seem very probable? Or maybe it even seems "logically im possible," as Susan says! But I don't think faith is merely blindly believing even when you don't understa...

Do you remember when I asked for prayer about a decision before me, the opportunity to be an "advocate" for Compassion International? Well I am still not sure but I just got booted into it, and wanted to let you know! I was hoping to "feel out" my church on the situation, and find out if they'd be willing to listen to me talk about this sort of thing or if they already had enough of it going on. The answer? Instead of the timeline I had in mind, they asked me to represent Compassion at an upcoming Missions Fair... in less than 2 weeks! The easiest way for Compassion to get me the materials I will need is for me to go ahead and be an official advocate, since I was all but done with the application process anyway. So! Not what I expected, but here I am. I will write more on my thoughts about it all in another post soon, but for now here is my first official word as a Compassion Advocate: Please read this , I thought it was a really interesting story and would like...

25 below 0, to be exact! (before windchill) While most of the rest of America was hit hard by a big winter storm this week, here in WY we just got our usual for this time of year-- a polar blast of really low temperatures! This is part of the storm, but we also get times like this just anyway. Almost the exact same time last year, we had some 30 below days while Luke was down in Colorado enjoying nice weather and doing his winter instructors training. I stayed here and the home appraiser came to march around our house on the coldest day of the year to tell us it was indeed worth what we were planning to pay for it (we "closed" on Feb 4). We had some below 0 times in the mtns of Colorado too once in a while. And of course we experienced weather like this occasionally while we lived in Montana too. So all that to say that while we definitely don't like being this cold, we can't really be surprized by it, haha! They don't cancel school or anything for just cold like...