Sterling is Hilarious

We've caught Sterling in many hilarious moments lately and luckily caught them on film. This first one was the other day at our team leader's apartment (Mike and Erin Ackerman). They have a one year old son and Sterling decided to climb into his bouncer toy. It looked so funny because he's way too big for it, but he just jumped and bounced happily :)

On Friday night we got to have dinner with a Japanese man named Tom who lives in our apartment building. His condo belongs to Paula, who also owns ours. He is a Christian and studying for his PhD at USC in mechanical engineering. He made us rice balls and egg for an appetizer, then we had oyster spaghetti and salmon fillets-- it was really good! We had a very interesting group of people eating together. Paula is the older lady who owns our condos, the other man is Ricky and his son Victor who are from Brazil. We were a multi-cultural group all connected through Paula, but we had a lot of fun together!

We didn't get a very good picture of Sterling in his cowboy outfit, but he wore his boots to church on Sunday. We went to Steve and Stacey's church, which is Real Life Church. Everyone in Los Angeles seems so trendy and fashionable and it was really funny and cute to see Sterling in his boots and tucked in shirt. The church meets at a movie theater, so Sterling was just wandering around checking everything out.

So I had to put this on here, even though it is going to be very embarrassing to Sterling one of these days! He loves to try on our shoes and on Sunday I had on my dress shoes so he started walking around in them! We were at Steve and Stacey's, so of course Steve thought it was hilarious...He's getting back at my dad for taking a similar picture of Jake a long time ago!

Also on Sunday we celebrated our friend Beth Defazio's birthday. For dessert we had Mochi, the Japanese ice cream, and Sterling thoroughly enjoyed it. Needless to say he was mad at us when we took it away and stripped him down :)

Little Tokyo

This weekend we went to Little Tokyo, which is only a couple of miles from our house. We went with our whole team and it was really cool. We had a formal walking tour with a Japanese man explaining all the historic sites around the area. It was interesting that their used to be 30,000 Japanese people living in the area, now there are only about 1500, although many of the shops and stores remain. We ate Japanese food for lunch (chicken terryaki, sushi, miso soup, rice) and even got to have a traditional Japanese dessert called mochi (pronounced MO-Chee). It is rice and beans ground into a paste and wrapped around ice cream- it was actually pretty good and even Luke gave it a try!

This is a huge parade float that cost over $250,000 to create and send to America from Japan. It is a Samurai warrior and at night it was completely lit up.

This is a fire tower that stands right at the front of little Tokyo and is a replica of ones they had in Japan a long time ago.

This is a Buddhist temple we got to go into. The tour guide explained that in Japan, people only go to the temple for weddings, funerals, births, and other special days, unlike Christianity, where we go every Sunday to church.

Sterling playing.

Here are some of the latest pictures of Sterling playing: a couple are with his friends Owen and Brayden, riding a carousel with his mom at the mall, playing with some random kid in the mall play area, and building a tower at home. What you don't see is the very next second he was knocking that tower over, which he thought was great fun! Sterling continues to be a very exciting, loud, aggressive, stubborn (I know that is hard for most of you to believe); but he is a delight and a joy each and every day! He also continues to be full of energy and life; which we love (most of the time). He does have a few words that he is working on: shoe, eat, more please, ball, dog, tree, banana; of course most of these are some form or another of the word, but he's getting there. It's fun to listen to him, because he totally gets what he is saying and so do we.

Leadership Summit

This past weekend I, Luke, was able to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. For those of you who don't know Willow Creek Community Church is in South Barrington, IL; which is pretty close to Chicago. It's a huge church with lots of awesome things happening. Bill Hybels is the senior pastor and I'm convinced he is one of the coolest guys in the world, as well as Willow Creek being one of the coolest churches in the world! It was an awesome weekend. I was with some of the guys from MSGF, our new team, and we viewed the conference vai satellite here in LA. This conference is designed to help leaders lead; "this event is dedicated to raising the value of leadership on behalf of the local church." This was the 12th Summit, and I'm sorry to say this was only my 1st. I hope to attend many more in the future. There were literally tens of thousands of people, or leaders, in more than 200 locations and some of those locations were overseas. We heard from people from very different professions; pastors from some of the most influential churches in America, a professor from the Harvard Business School who is also considered one of the world's foremost authorities on competitive strategy, a businesswoman who successfully led one of the world's largest and most revered technology companies through a severe industry downturn, a film director who is more concerned with eradicating poverty worldwide than he is making films, an expert on leadership/management practices, an x-president who did a pretty good job while in office and is still working hard to help communities all across the world, a man who is one of the most admired public leaders in the world who has served this country as U.S. Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There names are Bill Hybels, Carly Fiorina, Floyd Flake, Marcus Buckingham, Michael Porter, Colin Powell, John Ortberg, Richard Curtis, and Jimmy Carter. It was a great time of learning and being challenged to new levels of leadership. I hope we are always learning more and growing into better and more effective leaders for God and his glory.

Weekend pictures

As you can see, Sterling had a big weekend. He was able to play with his friend Cade. Cade is about 3 years older than Sterling but he's great with Sterling. Sterling was also able to dance with his mom, which is pretty special; plus he was able to try Jamba Juice, which is an all fruit smoothie place. It's a signature California style drink, and it's pretty good.

Cool Sterling

We took this last night when we were walking on Hollywood Blvd. We put these on Sterling and he actually liked them! :) I think he thought he looked pretty cool. He cried when we put them back on the cart!

Exploring Los Angeles

This is Sterling and Luke playing on our porch one morning. We've realized that Sterling can fit through the little spaces between the bars of the gates, so we have to watch him closely or he'll end up on the neighbor's porch! We all like sitting out there and enjoying the fresh morning air (as fresh as is possible in downtown LA).

We have sliding door closets in our house and Sterling thinks it is so much fun to open and close them constantly, as well as take things out and try them on. So here he is in one of his favorite things- Luke's basketball shoes. Cute!

We got to go to the ocean on Saturday and Sterling loved it! We all did actually, but we weren't sure what STering would think. At first he cried when the waves hit him because it was SOOO cold, but then he got used to it and never wanted to leave. We went to Zuma beach, which was about 45 min from our house, but Santa Monica beach is only about 20 minutes away also.

The other morning we wondered why Sterling was being so quiet, so we peaked out and saw him reading his books all by himself! He was talking and laughing and it was really cute. He was being so good!

Last night we went to Hollywood Blvd with our teammates, Jay and Caitlin. This picture is in front of Grauman's Chinese theater, where all the stars put their hand and foot prints. (And this is where they talk about going in "That thing You do!") It was pretty fun. And a little peice of trivia for Zack- Did you know that Gene Autry is the ONLY person on the walk of fame that has a star for all five categories of radio, TV, movies, records, and directing? He was pretty amazing evidently! They even have a whole museum out here for him!

Our Apartment in CA

We have settled nicely into our apartment here in Los Angeles-- we live in the downtown area, pretty close to West Hollywood. Our apartment is nice, it's really small, but perfect for what we need. We live in between the hispanic area and the asian area, so there is very little English spoken anywhere! We have a pool on the top of our roof (yeah!) and from there on a clear day we can see the "Hollywood" sign up on the hills. We have two kind of not pretty couches :) that someone gave us, which aren't my favorite, but they were free. And Sterling's bed is in the dining room area between the kitchen and the living room. We are all doing well and liking everything so far- we've joked that we're going to be going through culture shock as much living here as we did living in Bangkok- it's so different from Indiana! Love you all.

Getting Ready to Leave

Well, Sterling and I getting ready to leave in the morning, so I wanted to do one more post before we move to CA because I don't know about getting the internet there. Luke just arrived last night and he's starting to get unpacked and settled in. These pictures are from this last week. We got to see Nathan and Jayme Rector, and the picture is of Sterling with their daughter Cameryn. The other pictures are from swimming on Sunday, petting the goats at the fair, and playing cards at the fair. We've been having fun, and now we're looking forward to our next adventure in California!

Fair Week 2007

These are just some random pictures from the Putnam County Fair, the highlight of my family's summer! Sterling has gotten lots of close up encounters with the cows and he loves it. He has been petting the goats and running around everywhere. One of the pictures is my sisters showing their cows, another is my dad and Sterling in their flannel shirts together, another is me and Kara reluctantly posing for a picture and this first picture is Luke and Sterling enjoying an ear of corn from the garden together.

More Colorado

Here are a few more pictures of Colorado. We got to spend time with Luke's aunt Francie and uncle Rosy and Sterling loved getting to climb and hike with them. He had a blast. The next picture is Sterling with some of the friends he met at MTI. They were so nice to Sterling even though he was a lot younger than him. The bottom picture is our entire Tokyo team and we all got to be together for training, which was awesome! We are so excited about working with this amazing group of people.

Grandma and Grandpa Chase and Farming

These pictures are from when Steve and Linda came to visit us (before we left for Colorado). The internet was so slow out there, I could only get a couple of pics at a time, so I'm going to try to catch up now that we have a week of the internet here at the church. The pictures were taken at the park, where Sterling had so much fun playing. The other pictures are from different times he was out on the farm, just having fun. The little red overalls used to be my brother Kyle's! The dog that Sterling is with is named Spike, and they are good friends. Sterling feeds him rocks and grass and flowers, and Spike is pretty good natured about it all :)

Sterling; 16 months

Here's another photo of Sterling we got.

Sterling at 16 months

We had a friend of ours, Bill Hill, do some family photos for us, and here is a cute one he got of Sterling.

Weekend in the Mountains

Once again, I had trouble getting pictures on here, so here are 2 out of many that I wanted to get on, but couldn't. We had a big weekend- we went to the zoo on saturday, then visited the Will Rogers memorial. The two pictures below are looking up at the memorial and us on top of it. On Sunday we drove a couple of hours west to visit luke's aunt and uncle, Francie and Rosy. We had a great visit, and Sterling even got to hike and be a mountain climber during the afternoon- he loved it!

MTI days

Well, for whatever reason, the pictures aren't showing up while I'm typing this, so I'm going to have to go by my memory on what all the pictures are :) The first one is Sterling and I with Caitlin Greer, one of our teammates. There is also a picture of Sterling with Owen Parsons (Nick and Rachel's son) and Andy Rodriguez, another member of our team. That picture is from when we went to the playground last Saturday morning. The picture of Luke and Sterling is at Garden of the Gods, and the last picture is Owen and Sterling getting into mischief together at the water fountain. They have proven to be accomplices in getting themselves in trouble constantly! :) Read below for more details! :)





We are having a great time here at MTI...Now that we have ALL had the flu and are over it! It was a miserable weekend for us as Sterling had it first, then me, then Luke. But we are better now and are having a much more enjoyable time :) Yesterday Luke's aunt Francie and friend Candy came to visit us and we went to the Garden of the God's together. There are pictures above; it is an area full of huge red rocks jutting out of the ground. It is truly amazing and beautiful. We have been learning a lot while we're hear-- today we did a simulation of being taken hostages so that we could work through stress and conflict. It was very interesting and challenging. We 've also talked about how it will be entering a new culture and how to manage the stress that it will bring. We've also talked about how to maintain spiritual vitality while we're on the field (without many other Christians around). Those are just some of the things we've dealt with; it is all going to be very helpful training for the field. In our free time we are getting to know our team better, playing games, getting coffee together and playing with all the kids. We miss you all, and hope this gives you a better idea of what we're doing here!

Well, it has been extremely difficult to get pictures on here because the internet is slow here. We have taken many pictures, but I'm only going to put this one up for now because it's already taken me so long to do this! Luke and STerling are down playing in our room waiting on me, so I have to do this quickly. We are doing well here, it's beautiful as you can tell. The training is really good, and sterling is adjusting fairly well to having to be in childcare from 8:30-4:00 during the week. We take him out a lot in the mornings and afternoons and let him run around outside. He just got sick last night in the middle of the night, which stinks because the flu is going around here, and we are all living in close quarters. He seems much better this morning. Hopefully i will be able to post more pictures soon, if I can figure out a better system than this! We love everyone and we miss you all!