Celebrating the Miracle of Life
Life is so different now that we live here and yet, it’s kind of not. We still “work from home” and are together as a family most of the time. Adjusting to life at Shiloh has felt both natural and completely overwhelming all at the same time. We are truly enjoying this new adventure and praising God for giving us the courage to follow His Spirit’s leading. Thank you for your continued love, support, prayers, and generosity!
When we were in the thick of workgroups life felt exciting, overwhelming, and nauseating. Having found out we were expecting our third child in the midst of starting a new job, in a new town, in a new house, during what you could say is “one of their busiest seasons of the year,” meeting/hosting/feeding lots of new people, all while feeling pregnancy nauseous was quite a task! But now that we’ve been here for 6 months, I can’t wait until next year! I want to meet you all again for what will feel like “the first time” because this year was just a beautiful blur! We hope to connect with you on a deeper level and remain connected between those summer mission trips!
Speaking of baby #3, we enjoyed finding out with all the parents and kids on the ranch that Shiloh will be welcoming its newest baby boy to the ministry in February! Celebrating this miracle of life with all the kids has been such a joy for our family. None of us can wait to snuggle him as soon as he gets here! In addition to baby Stark, new life has been abundant on the ranch in unexpected flowers, watching caterpillars transform into butterflies, and 5 new baby goats! We live in wonder and amazement of God’s diverse creation, always pointing us toward hope, joy, and worship of the Creator himself.
After work groups wrapped up with a 4th of July bang, the rest of the summer was spent enjoying friends/family visiting and seizing the opportunity to take kids on time off back to Quincy to ride bikes at an indoor skatepark, penny pinch $5 at a discount store and play at the Washington Park splash pad…which are a few of Harvey’s “favorite things back home.”
August brought Harvey starting Pre-School at Tri County Christian in Macon (which he loves!) and us celebrating our 11-year anniversary. Fun fact, our marriage love story is quite similar to our ministry one. We met and married in 9 months. Then ten years later, we came to Shiloh for a video project and 9 months later we moved here! If you saw the Shiloh trivia on Facebook, it was a fun tool that Kevin and Ryan designed to implement a 13-week social media campaign leading up to open house. Be on the lookout for more reels, posts, pictures and video content they’ve been working on. The ideas are endless!
This year’s Open House was special to see the event from a different perspective, because that first video project we came to Shiloh for was collecting interviews at last year’s Open House. Hosting and showing visitors our home during the event, then spending time at the bike rally made for a long, fun day! Thank you to all who traveled to the ranch to share that time with all of us!
So far, we’ve experienced a few “all hands-on deck” projects that have been fun and interesting new experiences! Picking and pitting cherries, butchering chickens, shucking/blanching/cutting and freezing donated corn, and recently making 200 quarts of applesauce from an apple tree on site! What useful skills we are learning as adults, as well as, giving our boys as they grow up here! We can’t wait to start a garden in our yard next year!!
One of the many amazing things Shiloh does so well is to fill in the gaps wherever anything is needed. One of those places recently for us has been the opportunity to help at the on-site Shiloh Christian School. While the Penfield’s are on time off, gaps need to be filled, and Kimber has been able to grade PACES, help kids study, take them on library outings, teach electives and provide hot lunch. All of this has been very life giving and enjoyable for her! Ryan is the official PE teacher on Wednesdays and Fridays. He has enjoyed encouraging and challenging the SCS students through tennis, basketball, physically helping around the ranch when need ed, and now on to frisbee golf thanks to a donation made by
generous folks like you! Recently, we had a dear friend mail us a children’s devotional book called “The Ology” after we shared with her our desire to have a consistent devotional that would apply to both our bio kids and the placed kids when they come for time off. It’s a systematic theology book that helps Harvey’s age through teens understand basic but essential biblical truths. When the “big kids” are here, we give each a bible to find specific scripture and read it, taking turns doing so for the verses that coincide with the short lesson. It’s inspired some deep questions from the kids and led to meaningful conversations about how Satan was cast out of heaven, the spiritual warfare going on during Jobs trials, how imputed sin has been passed down to every single person since Adam and Eve’s original disobedience, and because we are all born with this sin invasion, we are all separated from God at birth and in need of the Jesus as Savior. We are grateful for these discussions and pray that any time we get to
spend with Shiloh children draws them closer to Jesus, as we strive to become more like Him too.
Grace and peace,
The Stark Family
Ryan, Kimber, Harvey, Gibson, Baby Boy #3