Our Great Marriage!

Want to know why our marriage works? There are lots or reasons but the single biggest word that I can think of is intentionality! It does not just happen effortlessly!

We intentionally pray together!
We intentionally pray for each other!
We intentionally encourage each other!
We intentionally praise each other!
We intentionally brag on each other!
We intentionally go on dates and make time for one another!
We intentionally dream together!
We intentionally hold hands!
We intentionally tell each other how much we love them!
We intentionally share our fears!
We intentionally share in each others interests!
We intentionally give each other compliments!

I could go on and on! But you get the picture..we work at our marriage! It is easy to get busy and let the work slide and that is when we find ourselves in a marriage that is not amazing! I woke up a few mornings ago to the notes on my mirror shaped in a heart in the picture above. They say things like....I love you...My heart still races when you walk in the room....You are Beautiful..You are a great Mom...

Now that my friends is intentionality!!!

My New Island!!

I have wanted an island in my kitchen for quite a while now but I couldn't afford one.....Eric's parents replaced their island top and gave us the old top but when we went to buy a cabinet to go underneath it was more than we could afford. We found this chest at the thrift store for $15 and it was in good shape except for missing a piece along the bottom. I sanded it down.



My good-lookin husband put a piece of bead board across the bottom and the back. I painted it black...replaced the knobs and scuffed it up a little with sand paper and.........






VOILA!! I am thrilled with it. We let the top hang off the back and one side and put bar stools underneath.

Daddy Dates

Since my kids were about 18 mos old Eric has taken them on "Daddy Dates"...they love them! He has done so many different things over the years. Each child gets to spend $5.00 and they get a few hours of alone time with their hero. He and Emily went a few days ago to the tractor supply store...Emily likes to dream about owning her own horse farm so they walked around and Eric listened to her stories about horses and all the fun things at the store. Then they went to get a sweet tea and a chicken sandwich. I love that he has consistently done this with the kids for the past 15 years! The night is all about the child not about himself....some of the outings have been interesting some have been quite boring for him but he NEVER lets them know...he makes them feel important and special! I love him for it!

Fathers Day

Oh how I LOVE my man! I am so blessed to have a husband who loves Jesus, loves me and loves my babies! He is an amazing father...he is crazy and fun, loving and kind! He teaches them to love Jesus not only in what he says but in what he does! I pray he feels honored EVERY day!

Friday

Thank you all for emails and even phone calls of encouragement. Today is Friday and we were not paid. Eric will have to make a decision tomorrow. All I can really say right now is that I do not understand! Eric spent the whole week mentoring kids and then today speaking to over 200 young men at a basketball camp where 17 kids trusted Christ...God is using him!!!! There are many things running through my head right now...most of them I feel like I am not supposed to verbalize but I will say...It is EASY to have faith and trust the Lord when you are getting paid in ministry....It is not so easy right now...for me anyway. After 3 1/2 years of this...I am VERY weary!

I love you all very much and appreciate your prayers and concerns!

How we got started in the ministry.

I love to tell our story. It is a story about how the Lord grew our faith, but I have been reluctant to write about it....why....because sometimes it is hard for me to convey tone in written word. So let me start off by saying this....EVERYTHING that resembles faith in our lives is from the Lord.....this is not a story about how awesome Eric and Michele Helms are...on the contrary....it is a story about the Lords faithfulness. I also want to say that there are so many who have sacrificed SOOOO much. Many have literally given their lives for Christ and many many missionaries have given up all their "worldly" goods to go and serve the Lord in countries of great poverty or persecution....in comparison.....we have NO sacrifice!

I started thinking that the Lord was calling Eric into ministry about 6 years ago....I didn't say anything because you have to be God called and not mama or wife called! 5 years ago Eric started expressing, much to his disbelief, he thought the Lord was calling him to some type of ministry. Now don't misunderstand.....he wanted to serve he just couldn't believe that the Lord would use him...he felt very unworthy....at the time he had been saved for 16 years out of a life of being a "thug"....as he describes himself....It took almost 9 months before Eric surrendered to the call to serve full time.

Oddly enough I thought that he would surrender and then suddenly all these doors would open....that is not the way that it happened....I will blog on that another time....needless to say my type A personality was put to the test!!!

While we were not sure exactly what the Lord wanted us to do...we knew what we were not supposed to do.....we did begin to pray that the Lord would make our path clear. While Eric continued to work his full time job in the corporate world we started getting everything ready....we decided on a name...Driven to Encourage Ministries...and we started getting all the legal stuff in order. It was a HUGE amount of research and work...but all along the way the Lord brought just what we needed to get the task accomplished!

We then started praying about how we were going to pay the bills......again my plans were very different than the Lords....His way required much more faith and dependence on Him???? Funny how He is about that??? Eric has such an awesome captivating testimony...I thought that churches would start calling wanting him to come and share with their people and we would get paid for that....but that was not the plan for us....God started opening doors slowly for Eric to mentor young men..which he loves...and also he started having the opportunity to share his testimony to some really small youth groups and Bible studies.....there was NO money coming in and Eric was still working his full time job. We both knew that he was supposed to quit....our only debt is our house and it has quite a bit of equity but it is small...with a small payment...we couldn't rent cheaper...so we didn't feel that we were supposed to sell it but we did entertain that thought.

After much much prayer...we decided to move all our retirement money over to an account that we could use.....it was not very large but after taxes and penalties we knew we could live on it for 18 months or longer if other money came in....so Eric put in his notice...............more tomorrow!

prom

This is a picture of Lindsey...16 with her daddy. The last dance of the prom is reserved for parents and their children. I love my man so much! I love that Lindsey loves and respects him so much! I don't know why the picture is cut off?? :(

March Newsletter

Below is our March Nesswsletter if you do not get our email version!

Attachments Name Type Save View Part 1 text/plain Save Part 2 text/html

Eric Helms Driven to Encourage Ministries Until the Whole World Hears..........

We pray that everyone is doing well. Thank you so much for praying for us; especially for my trip to Haiti. The trip was mind blowing to say the least. The Christian Haitians are very rich spiritually....really rich. I walked away feeling spiritually poor! They have nothing and yet they rejoice in worship and life. I have a continual tremor in my spirit mentally, spiritually, and emotionally for Gods glory. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God led me there. Day 1....After traveling 16 hours through the night on a small van, we set up our tents on top of the pastor's house. I was asked to preach by Pastor Olistin in the evening worship service. The regular church was damaged so we had church outside in a field full of rubble under a wooden structure with no roof. 8 Haitians were saved! It was moving to hear them pray in their native tongue speaking to the same Father! Praise God!!!!....very cool. After the service we helped with rice distribution. Two aftershocks in the middle of the night. Day 2...... We dug footings with pick's and shovels all day alongside fellow Haitians trying to rebuild another church that had been damaged. Prayed with a Haitian through a translator.....very moving! Awakened by an aftershock at 4:30.....That'll bless you! Day 3 We poured concrete all day with fellow brothers. Even though we couldn't speak but a few words to each other, we felt a kinship not only to the Haitians but to each team member. In the evening we had church in a field next to the church we were rebuilding. It was funny because all day while we worked there was a cow roaming around in that same field. We tried to distribute rice that night but things began to get out of hand and we had to leave for safety reasons. Day 4.......We poured concrete until noon and then we went to an orphanage. We helped feed 100 children and then played games with them, soccer with the boys and duck, duck goose with the girls. It was difficult and moving as the children would move close and want to hold our hands or want us to hold them but the most difficult was when they would ask for water. We left and drove to Port-Au-Prince and witnessed the damage. Wow! That's all I can say. Jesus has given me a new set of lenses to look through. I pray that neither the world nor myself will ever take them off. Go on a mission trip! Christ tells us to go! Matthew 28:19 Things to Pray about: *Pray for the youth in schools and churches I will be speaking to; pray that they would come to Christ and grow closer to Him. *Pray for our financial needs. Pray for funds for new updated web site, new mission opprotunities, supplies for kids who recieve Christ. Part time office help. *Pray for opportunities to share His great news. *Pray that our new media projects would go well. Thanks is not enough to express our gratefulness to you!! Love you guys, Eric and all the Helms Web site: driventoencourage.org

Snow Days

About 2 weeks ago we had a nice snow for our area. My children, cousins and neighbors all got together to make a huge snowman. Below is my oldest boy being King of the Snowman!

The snowman was so big that they needed a ramp to get the body on and then they called my dad to come with his truck to get the head on. It was nuts!

But the finished product was awesome....a 12 foot snowman that was the coolest ever. So many people stopped to take pictures of it. It was so big that it took 12 days to fully melt even in 60 degree weather.

When Marshall was little and he would get in trouble he would tell us that "Bobby" did it.....that was his made up scape goat! It got to be a joke even as he got older. If someone broke something and no one remembered doing it then one of the kids would say that Bobby did it? So Marshall named the snowman....Bobby.........every day as he was melting the kids would wake-up to see if he was still standing and someone would yell.."Bobby lives"....Now we are waiting for the next snow and Bobby2

Menu week 1

Ok so we are at the end of week one of only spending $10 a week for 4 weeks so that I can help our daughter fulfill an amazing dream. I have had so many people say that I should write more about the things that we are eating. Well we will see how the last week is???? I may be asking for you all to have us over for dinner?? :) But for now there hasn't been a drastic change. I really was so stocked...the only thing that I didn't have much of was toilet paper. There was NO way that I could stay within my $10 budget and buy TP so I burned my CVS bucks on TP...I know...I know.....but I will build them back up again! I saved enough to still get a few items and rebuild without coming out of my pocket!


This weeks menu was:

Breakfast....

*Whole wheat choc chip muffins( you will be seeing these a great deal as my whole family loves them and we have plenty of stuff to make them)
*Cereal....we eat alot of cereal for snacks as well.
*Pancakes
*Eggs and pancakes
*Oatmeal...another thing my kids like to snack on.
*Grits

Snacks....
*Bananas
*Carrots and celery...dipped in ranch of course
*Cheese and crackers
*Blue corn chips and salsa
*homemade muffins

Lunch....
*Cheese roll ups
*soup
*Turkey subs
*PB&J
*left overs
*Ravioli...it might have been the kind in a can?? :(
*salad

Dinner....
*Breakfast...eggs,bacon and pancakes
*potato soup and grilled cheese sand.
*grilled pork,salad, mashed potatoes, broccoli,cauliflower and carrots and rolls
*Chicken and dumplings, green beans and mac&cheese
*Roast, roasted potatoes, green peas and carrots
*Pizza....ice cream
*Quesadillas, chips and salsa and cheese dip


That is it through Friday night. It will help my meal planning because Eric will be in Haiti all next week....he eats a whole lot! :)

February Newsletter

Below is a copy of our ministry newsletter. You can't jump on the links but you can read it.

Attachments Name Type Save View Part 1 text/plain Save Part 2 text/html Save

		Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
		WEB SITE TWITTER MAKE A DONATION

	Give hope We want to keep going "Until the Whole World Hears." 2 Timothy 4:2 "Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching." COUNT ME IN

Sweet Friends and Family, We think we finally have our email situation fixed. If you are one of those who never receives our newsletter then it is working! Also, we are working very hard to get our new web site up and running as well. We will let you know when to check it out. On January 12th we watched along with all of you , the heart wrenching images coming for Haiti. At the Lords prompting, Eric knew that he was supposed to GO. God willing he will be leaving February 20th to serve with a team from First Baptist Woodstock for a week. Please join us in praying for the entire teams safety. Eric is excited about serving Jesus by showing compassion to these precious people. What a joy to share the hope of the Savior with the hopeless. Driven to Encourage has grown every year. God has expanded our territory and provided in ways that we just can't understand. As we went into November 09, DTEM was running on 32% of our yearly budget. By December 31st we had many 1 time gifts on top or our faithful monthly gifts and we saw a 23% increase in a few short days! We were speechless at times! Every single gift is precious to us! One of our dear friends, who is out of full time work still sends $15 every single month. That gift is just as significant as those who give hundreds. God uses all of you to send us!! I can remember times when Eric and I could only send $20 a month to help other ministries. We were obedient but honestly sometimes I felt silly sending such a small amount. Boy has my perspective changed!! Not only are there NO insignificant gifts......but if everyone committed $20 a month....DTEM would more than meet our 2010 budget. We are overwhelmingly grateful that you are helping us make an impact all over the world. We are honored to call you friend! Thank you for your prayers and support to DTEM. Things to pray about: *After taking a break during the holidays, Eric is back to mentoring, teaching and training 50 men and young men every week! What an awesome opportunity to change our world!! Pray that the Lord would use him in a mighty way. *Pray for the kids in the schools that Eric will be speaking to this winter and spring...pray that the Lord would save many. *Pray for Eric's safety in Haiti and for us while he is away.

Love Notes

"I love you being pregnant"

My husband has been leaving me notes all over the house since we were married...I routinely find them in my drawers or under my pillow or taped to my kitchen cabinet shelves. One morning 8 years ago I opened a door to get a cereal bowl and found the above note taped to the shelf. It is still there....because I love it! I am glad he liked me being pregnant...because with 5 kids I was pregnant or nursing for 11 years of our marriage....crazy! I love that man of mine and I thank God every day for the blessing of such a great hubby and father! And on top of it all is is just so darn good looking!

Engaged

21 years ago my sweetie asked me to marry him! It was wonderful and so very romantic. He gave me a Bible and the inside cover said..."I love you! Will you marry me?" This morning I woke up to a note on my coffee cup that said....21 years ago I asked you to be my wife...2nd best decision I ever made!" Isn't that so sweet. Of course the best is is relationship with Jesus! And that decision makes him a better man. I can't imagine my life without him.

Haiti

Please be praying for us..... Our church is taking a team to Haiti in 2 weeks and Eric really feels like the Lord is calling him to go. The Lord has provided over and abundantly more than we need this month and we will gladly use that to GO...but I must be honest...there is a part of me that says.....what about next month...what if it isn't there then???? I know...little faith sometimes???!!! Oh how these people need the love of Jesus right now! What an opportunity to give it to them!