Starting the house!

Hello everyone!

It once again has been too long since my last update. We have finally started work on rebuilding our house. We have our basement dug and are waiting to receive the rest of our permits. I'm going to try to remember to post a picture of the progress of the house on the blog tomorrow for everyone to see.

While we are very excited about this recent development, it is still very stressful dealing with the city and going through the process. Your continued prayers would be much appreciated by me and my family during these next 15 months.

I hope all of you are well and enjoying the last weeks of summer...well the last weeks for me since I am going to be starting my senior year of college! Almost done and out in the real world...yikes! Good thing I have God on my side.

In him,
Alyssa Gino

God Gives Us Peace

Hi this is Joelle. I wanted to share something on my heart. Sunday we were studying in Matt. 5 and talking about The Beatitudes. Something hit me as we were talking about them. Someone in class said that we never focus on "Blessed are" but more on the attitudes. I started really started thinking about it. We are blessed when we go through trials and it stirs us up. One of the hardest things that I struggled with after our house burnt to the ground was after we moved in our rental. I walked around a home I didn't recognize. I felt so empty. Nothing was familiar. I was thankful don't get me wrong, but I hurt inside. One day I woke up crying, tears just rolling down, and I couldn't stop them. I had no control over my life and no idea what was ahead of us. I felt so misplaced. I never could stop crying that day. My heart broke for Kendra when I picked her up from school that day and she said Mommy are you going to always cry now. So that night Mike came home early from his mountain bike ride and found me in bed and Kendra roaming the house. The next morning I wasn't any better. I knew I couldn't do this on my own. So I cried out to God and asked him to help me trust in him and to give me peace with whatever was to be. I didn't want to try to make since of this anymore because it really didn't matter. Everyone tried to give me reasons why this happened and it was making me crazy. So I gave it COMPLETELY to God and he gave me peace and I was able to have joy in it. I really don't think I really understood the true peace and joy that God gives until that day. I'm so BLESSED to have a closer relationship with my God who grants us such peace and joy that we could ever get on our own. I think it is impossible. I want to leave you with this....

Worry compromises your joy,
cramps your peace,
and confines your freedom.
June Hunt

Finally An Update!

I'm sorry that it has been so long since I last updated. I know that those of you still checking for updates despite my lack of them are still curious to know what is going on with the plans for the new house.

We are waiting for the go to turn over our soil to begin the process to start building. We are also waiting for the approval to build a second story house from the city and neighbors, which I believe will be happening this week. So far we have had very little complaints about the second story so it should be approved without any trouble at all. Right now we're trying to get the price per square foot of the house down from the estimated quote so that building the new house is more of a reality since the original quote given was too high for us. We have been so blessed by God because he has provided us with a family who is doing their best to help us rebuild our house for a price we can afford.

If you would like to see what our new house is going to look like you can go to jamesglover.com and look for it in the plan room.

Meanwhile Ryan and I have settled in to the rental house. I was allowed to paint my room so it now looks more like me. Perhaps I'll take photos of it and post them on here in case anyone is curious. I'm so blessed to have been living in an apartment on campus during the fires because it has allowed me to make this room in such a strange and unfamiliar house much more comfortable.

I hope all of you are well! God has blessed us all so much, and I hope that each and every one of you feel how much God has blessed you as well! He carries us through all our struggles, and I have no doubt that he will take care of us all because he has provided for my family in our time of need more than I could have ever thought.

God bless you all!

In Him,
Alyssa Gino

my heart was touched today

I haven't really shared anything personal on here, but I truly feel the need to right now. I finished my semester on Friday so naturally I've had some time to think. Well, as some of you know, time to think isn't always a good thing. Two days after the fire I threw myself back into school and my hectic schedule. Fortunately, that kept me busy and for the most part helped me keep my mind off of what happened. The days that were harder I had two of my closest friends at Chapman pounding on my door to take care of me. Seriously, they pounded. They refused to let me be alone.

Now that Christmas is coming closer I find it easier to start feeling sorry for myself. I have yet to be angry, maybe confused, but not angry. I want my house, I want my things, but most of all I don't want to lose my memories. Then I think of other people who are struggling more much than I am and want to know what my problem is, but we then I know we all struggle.

My best friend, Jenny, made me a CD of a bunch of random songs. Most of the songs pertain to being strong, talking about friendship, basically songs of encouragement. I've loved working my way through them these past couple of nights, and tonight I skipped to the last song and was caught by surprise. I'm not positive what the actual title of the song is but some of the lyrics go like this:

Every blessing You pour out I'll turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

and then later on in the song:

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

I've loved this song for years now and have been looking for it since the fire. Tonight was the first time I've heard it in over 2 years, and I can't even express how grateful I am for these words. I believe the lyrics speak for themselves and for anyone who is struggling with anything right now. I wanted to share this with whoever is still looking at the blog because I find it so amazing how God works.

God bless!
~Alyssa

Moving In

Hey! I don't know how many of you are still following this, but just in case I wanted to give a quick update.

Many people are unsure of when we are going to move in to the rental. We should be moving in within the next 4 weeks. The earliest would be January 1st and the latest January 19th. I'm hoping we'll be able to be move in the first week of January, but who knows?

Rental Home Update

Sorry it has been so long since my last update. School and family has been keeping me very busy. The rental home that we were planning on moving into December 1st is no longer happening. Instead our family has found a rental home up our hill. This will be closer to our house so my mom can be closer for when we start rebuilding. Also, the house will be furnished and will make our stay much more comfortable. The only problem is that as of now we wont be able to move in until January 1st, so we wouldn't have a house of our own for the holidays. Keep us in our prayers because this holiday season is going to be incredibly difficult.

Today we're decorating Colleen's house and my family helped me decorate my apartment so we're trying to get into the holiday spirit :)

Janett and Tim stopped by today and dropped off some things from our other church family. Thank you so much to everyone. It was so kind of you all to think of us. All of your generosity warms our hearts. Your thoughts and prayers keep us going.

God bless!
~Alyssa

Hard finding joy today

Today was a hard day. I guess we are going to have days like these. I was given many coffee cups with almond joy in each one representing that through our lives that we have times of joy and sometimes we have times with no joy, that cup was black. Well today was a black cup day with no joy and it's hard to say but it's ok to feel no joy in our lives at times. It doesn't mean we are losing faith, it just means that life throws us unfortunate things and it is ok to mourn them. So continue to pray for us. The holidays are going to be really tuff but we will get through it. Funny thing yesterday, I called AT&T to forward my phone number to my cell and the lady helping me told me that she lost her home in a fire too. We started talking and she said that the hardest thing is not having your home to come home to. It takes along time to make a home feel comfortable. It was exactly how I was feeling and it was such a blessing to chat with her. Alyssa and Ryan are out of school in two weeks and they will be staying at Alyssa's apartment on campus but it will be very quiet there and they both love to come home especially Alyssa, so please keep them in your prayers because we can't get in the rental we found until the beginning of January. So we are going to feel a little displaced until then. Colleen has been such a sweet heart through this and opening her home to us. We are beyond blessed to have such amazing friends and family. Please have patience with us, you might run into us and we might just be having a black cup day and we might not seem ourselves.