College

Friends, can I just start off by saying that summer has been CRAZYYYY thus far. (Little family update) Summer league baseball/softball officially ended today! 3/4 of our kiddos made it to the championship game. The tournament was full of underdog triumphs (including all of our teams). I love when God cares about the seemingly insignificant arenas of our lives to help teach valuable lessons. Even the small things give opportunity to glorify Him! I feel like our three teams WINNING the championship games was a testimony of just that. We do not always win in life but when we have these little victories it is thrilling to experience it! They played hard all year and never gave up! We are so proud of them!...Even Eliza, who didn't make it.

Now, continuing on from my previous post, at the end of Summer 2008, I began my freshman year of college in Springfield, MO. I started attending then, Broadway Baptist Church. I was welcomed with open arms into the College Ministry. Although I felt right at home, I was already homesick! I remember calling my parents, begging to move home. My dad told me I could move home immediately! Mom on the other hand, told me I had to wait at least until the end of the semester! LOL I attended Ozark Technical Community College to do my general classes and took one Anatomy class at Missouri State. I survived my first semester and decided to stick around. Over Christmas break, I remember one of my friends telling me I should set my eyes on a handsome guy in our church college class. His name was Jesse Webster. Spring semester started and I found myself going to a church meeting in Walnut, MS with Broadway in February. I had gone to this multiple times growing up with my own church. And I may have been attending this time mainly to secretly hang out with Jesse, even though he had no idea I had the hots for him;) Long story short, Jesse was apparently into me too and within a month I was going to watch Jesse at his first boxing match. Next, we were off to Silver Dollar City for our first date and the rest was history! I moved home for the summer, went on my first mission trip to Africa, went to Mexico with my grandparents, and my first "family" vacation with Jesse's family to his home state of New York!

Sophomore year quickly came! I moved back to Springfield with intentions to still apply for the Radiologic Science program at MSU. Because of the competition to get into this specific program, I decided to apply for the program at a couple of local Jr. Colleges in my home town area. I didn't get accepted into either of them and I wondered what my next plan was. Jesse and I, at this point, had been together for a year. We were talking about marriage and our future together. He was attending Baptist Bible College in Springfield and working for his dad's flooring business full time. We had no idea what we were doing but knew we wanted to be together forever! Jesse took me on a wild goose chase on May 3rd, 2010. We went on all kind of adventures that ended the day with a picnic at Fellows Lake, where he got down on one knee and proposed. Towards the end of May, I received a call from Rend Lake College letting me know that someone had dropped out of the Radiography program at Rend Lake College and I was the next candidate. Jesse and I talked it over and decided that I would move home to go through the program and we would do a long distance relationship until our wedding which was planned October 8, 2011. It was a LONG year and half of waiting and traveling back and forth. Some days I felt like I couldn't go on. But God saw us both through to the end. Jesse moved to Mt. Vernon in August of 2011. We rented a little two bedroom house where the laundry room was outside in a little addition. The house needed "new" flooring so we used some old carpet that a friend had torn out of a flooring job he was doing. I swear I shampooed that carpet 100 times and it was still gross. But it did the job. October 8th came and the wait was finally over. The moment I had dreamed of my whole life was coming true. I was married to my best friend! It was the most PERFECT fall day. The weather was beautiful and we were surround by all of our family and friends.

Jesse worked for Men in White painting from the fall that year until January of 2012. We took a leap of faith and started our own floor installation business. We didn't know how the Lord would provide through this avenue but we trusted that He would and boy did He! In ways that we could have only dreamed about!! I will get into those details in some later post!

I graduated from the radiography program in May of 2012. The college door closed that day and I swore I would never go back (unless of course the Lord leads in that direction)!

There are so many more details I could share but this will suffice for now. I'd hate to bore you all too much;) Until next time, I pray the Lord blesses you and keeps you, and all that you do, be done FOR HIS GLORY!!

xoxo, Kayla