Feliz Navidad! and Happy New Year!

What a crazy couple of weeks!

Sorry for the delay in posting, things have been exceptionally busy. I know that everyone can sympathize with me when I say the weeks before Christmas are crazy! The cookies, the lights, the crowds, the parties, the weather, the music.. all of it can get a little overwhelming! We were so behind getting everything ready this year. Lights on the house didn't go up until last week and we didn't get any shopping done until Tuesday!

I am glad to say that Shaun has finally fully recovered from his gum surgery two weeks ago. All swelling and infection is gone and his black eye has finally disappeared. Poor thing, people kept asking him if he was okay, a few told him he shouldn't talk back to his wife. :-) One guy said to him that he hated to see what the other "fella" looked like. IE: Shaun got into a fight, but looked so bad that it looked like he lost.

Due to his illness, I even filled in for him at his last youth group meeting for the year. I taught the kids on Christmas tradition and how sometimes we get so wrapped up in the gifts that we tend to put Jesus aside like the traditional gifts we receive. I even talked about how every year until I was a "grown-up" I got the unfortunate gift of socks and underwear from my grandmother. Thanks Siti!

Big news with the youth group: Cross Culture. We are moving it to Wednesday nights starting in the new year. This will be a great opportunity for the kids and for the Student Leaders. We kick off with a dance off and skate party next week. Great new about this for Shaun and I is we will now have our Sunday evenings back to rest! Yeah!!!

Speaking of Church, we are still continuing the growth of our 2 services. We are still experiencing those expected growth pains, but attendance and giving is still on target. The 11 is still much larger than the 9, but we hope that changes soon.

We held our first Christmas Eve service. It was simple and really meant a lot to Shaun and I. The people were so kind and it really helped us to feel like it was Christmas. I had the fun of calling all the kids up to front during the service and speaking to them and their parents. The funniest part was trying to hand 75-90 kids candy canes! The chaos was similar to what one experiences when they visit Sam Moon's for the first time. I also had the honor of singing with the worship team for the service. I really enjoyed serving with them. Adam, Matt, Laura, and Cindy did a great job. I was told afterward that I the only one moving when I sang... guess I've been singing with kids too long! :-)

We spent last Saturday in New Orleans visiting with Danielle, Andrea and ALL of their family. It was a very fun day and evening. I am so glad that I got to hang out with all of them and see Danielle. Miss you Chic!

We spent Christmas Day eating gumbo with Natalie's parents and family. This apparently is their Christmas tradition and they were so kind to include us. I brought some Lebanese food to them to bring part of our family to theirs. We enjoyed spending time with them and taking some time to just rest and relax. We know that many of our friends and family were sad that we could not come home, we were sad too. But, we will be visiting Texas the last week of January!

We are getting ready for this weekend. Shaun is up to bat in main service. He will be preaching both services. Be sure to check for the podcast. He using a verse that means a lot to our family: Joshua 1:9.

We are also getting ready to welcome Stella and Dennis to the Mississippi gulfcoast. They will be here on Monday. We can't wait!

Happy New Year!
Jess

It is Official!

Good Day All!

Well, it is official. We had and survived our first set of Sunday morning services. We had over 400 in attendance, close to 450! The kids area was back up to 100, despite the cold weather, we still managed to work up a sweat with all the singing and dancing that goes on back there.

I have been on full time at the church now for 2 weeks. I am still getting acclamated to this new routine. And for those of you who know me, I need routine! But, the transition has been a positive one. We redesigned the set for Mo Kids last weekend. Check out these pictures...

The great thing about 2 services is that it allows us to spend more time getting to know the kids, since right now, there are less of them in each service. I know that we will grow again soon, but it is nice right now to have 45-50 in there at a time versus 75-100!

I finally put my Christmas Tree up and Shaun and I wrapped up our semester at Liberty this week. No school for 2 weeks, yeah!! As many of you know, Shaun has been needing to have a surgery on a previously root canaled tooth for quite a while now. Well, he had the surgery yesterday. He is very swollen and not feeling so hot, but we hope to have him back to normal soon.

Today is family lunch friday at my former employer, Biloxi Elementary. I will be going there at lunch to help serve the kids for Christmas. Our home group actually adopted 2 of my kids from there, so I will be bringing them their Christmas gifts too. THIS is what I love about this time of year. Helping families who truly need help and making children's wishes come true. I pray that you enjoy the season through the eyes of a child as well.

In preparation for the annual Campbel Christmas card, I attempted to take the Christmas photo of the pups. Not much sucess, but some funny photos in the process. Since we will not be coming home for Christmas this year, we wanted to be sure that everyone receives a little something from us.

Enjoy the weekend. I hope you are all paws in for Christmas!

Merry December!

Hello All;

Well, I finished my time with Biloxi schools last Friday. They teachers and the Counseling team threw me a big surprise luncheon. They even bought me a cake! Check it out.

It is so me, it even has sparkly icing. Working for the schools has been one of the best things that I have had the opportunity to be a part of. I will still be used as a referral resource for individual and family therapy and Shaun and I will still be volunteering and mentoring in the schools.
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I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving week. We really enjoyed spending time back in Texas. Danielle was gracious and allowed us and the pups to stay with her. Her dog Dixie Lee and Preston are now the best of friends. Thanks Danielle! Speaking of pups, they did great on the car ride back to Texas. Check out this photo of Sebastian. They slept the ENTIRE way there. Even when we stopped in Longview for Taco Casa, which was closed!

I got to visit Target and Sephora... ahhaa!!! And believe it or not, I didn't purchase anything for myself at Sephora, just something for Shaun. I am still stunned myself! I also visited the shoe department at Nordstrom's and no purchases were made! Again: shocker! Dinner with Danielle and Steph and shopping: perfect evening! Steph even ventured into Sephora... sorry that we tricked you Steph. :-) No, they don't sell guitars there!

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We also got to visit the Boys and Girls Club, Alliance for Children, the Moore's and the Martinez crew. It was so good to see everyone! We are so blessed to have you guys in our lives. I am so proud of Maddie and Alec especially! They are fabulous kids and have such great hearts. God has big plans for those two! Check out how tall Maddie has gotten since the summer. We love you guys!

On the way to the Boys and Girls Club, we drove past the new stadium for the Cowboys. The Cowboys are doing a lot for the Clubs. We took a picture on the way to the Club. It is insanely huge! The Director of Operations for the Club gave us some stats on the new facility and the plans for helping the Club. Crazy good!

We drove to Wichita Falls on Tuesday night. We stayed with Grannie and Angie. They were so great to keep us and the pups. Grannie fixed awesome breakfast for us! And the food fest just continued after that... the reason for the delay in the posting of the blog is due to my food coma! I just recovered!My parents grilled us some mean burgers and some delicious brownies. Shaun's parents fried us fish and we had the best coleslaw in all of north Texas! Thursday was Jan and Gary's, turkey, dressing, Lebanese food, and I got the family recipe for kibba. Now THAT is a great day! We really enjoyed the food, but seeing the company was even better. I wish that we had some more time to see everyone that we wanted to see, we just ran out of time. So, next trip....

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Today was my first day working full time for Mosaic. It is still very different and surreal. Shaun and I really had some time to reflect and realize how lucky we are to be a part of Mosaic and work with such great people. Dustin and Nat are so good to us! It is still a mystery to me how God works. This time last year, who would have thought that we would be working full time for a church? A church that has grown and is still growing and more importantly people are serving and lives are being changed! God's grace is so sufficient! We begin holding two services this weekend! Please be praying for Mosaic, for the people who will be coming, and for our staff.

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I will let you know how it goes. Mo Kids still needs volunteers, but they will come soon. We start our new series this weekend. Check out the awesome logo! Thanks Jason!

More to come! We love you guys! Thank you for loving us! Christmas is coming soon!

Mo Kids take over!

Hello there!

I hope that you are enjoying your week before Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can soon!

I am excited to announce that I officially have 3 days left at the Biloxi schools. My clients are now in good hands, we hired my replacement Friday. And, she is the one that I hand picked for my position. I am meeting with her tomorrow to introduce her to the kiddos. SO, I can leave for vacation now and not have any worries there. Awesome!

A couple of weeks ago our microwave caught on fire... yes really: sparks and small flames. I have NO idea how or why, Shaun did it! So, we purchased a new microwave. The really pretty chrome kind that you can cook a turkey in (if I ate meat with parts of course). Well.. a few days later our washer dies.. once again, I wasn't there: Shaun did it. So, Shaun purchased us a new washer and dryer. Check them out!

That's right: He went off the chain and did it up right! They even have a sanitizing mode and a steam mode! I never have to iron again! And all germs are incinerated! How sweet is that? When I began reading the instruction manual for the washer, it hit me. Man, what changed in my life that I am excited about appliances?!? Really? Am I that old? Or is it that I cherish different things now? 5 years ago it would have been designer clothes for myself. Now, it is appliances that will help me serve my husband to maintain our home. Wow! Proverbs 31 woman watch out! :-)

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On a different note, Mo Kids took over the service this past weekend. I think that it went really well. Casey lead worship. He did a great job and it was fun to work with him, and we did Mo Kids songs. The kids stood on the Mo Kids stage and sang and did the motions and yes I sang and did the motions with my Garth Brooks wantabe mic. You try singing harmony, jumping up and down and doing motions all while wearing heels in front of 400 people! Coolest part was the kids and even the parents did it in the crowd. Rock On Brave Ones!

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After worship, Jason and Casey did the memory verse and then I came out in my scientist costume and got into my "time machine" to see which time period we would rewind to. It was the 70's this week, so out I come in a black afro wig, solid gold dancer sunglasses and a smokin leather jacket. Mind you several teachers from my schools are in the audience(no pressure). We then show my toddler pict with me and my mom (Thanks Mom!) and then flash Big Dustin's pict from the 70's. Too funny. Dustin and I then taught on Paul's gratitude in Romans 16. You can listen to it on our website: http://www.mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com/. It is also available through podcast.

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It was a great weekend! At the end we announced that we are going forward to having 2 services beginning Dec 7th, a 9 and an 11. So, we did a push for Mo Kids volunteers. We HAVE to have 32 NEW and ACTIVE volunteers in order to do this. So far, it isn't looking good! Please be praying that God moves in the hearts of our people and they step out to serve. Our staff is actually praying and fasting this Friday specifically for the 32. Join with us! The more the merrier! I will be speaking briefly this week to the church to ask again for volunteers.

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I love the volunteers that serve with me now. They truly go above and beyond and love the kids! They were so kind to pray over me before the service this past weekend. I can not tell you how much of an impact their words and kindness made on me. What a blessing! They totally rock!

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We love you guys! And we will see you soon.

Jess and Shaun

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PS: TODAY is Preston's 1st birthday. Feel free to send me some chocolate cake! There isn't a bakery in Ocean Springs or Biloxi (I can't believe it either!) so no good bakery birthday cake for us!

Big News!

Hello Friends and Family!



I have big news that I am excited to share with all of you. Many of you know how busy our lives have been and what a roller coaster ride we are on. Mosaic has grown at an extremely unexpected and amazing rate! We are a part of something very special here. With that being said, the time has come for me to make a decision with my 2 full time jobs. The Church is at a place where we are ready for me to come on full time as the Children's Minister, additionally I will be taking on the counseling responsibilities at the church. We are also bringing our Worship Minister full time as well. My last day with the Biloxi schools as their Mental Health Counselor is November 21st. It is a very exciting time for me. I am excited and scared, joyful, and sad all at once.



I LOVE my job at school and I love seeing the children heal and grow. I also LOVE my job at the church and seeing children learn and build relationships. Shaun and I moved here for Mosaic. We moved here because God called us here for this time, for this purpose. We are stepping out of the boat and looking forward. Please be in prayer for me. Pray for protection, for wisdom, and for confidence. We have been facing a lot, please pray for Shaun, pray for Mosaic and our staff, and pray for the Met our sending church.



This weekend is a very big weekend for our church. Mo Kids will be taking place in the main service. Dustin and I will co-teach and the parents will be encouraged to worship and pray together as a family. We will also be announcing that we will begin having 2 services beginning December 6th. We will be asking people to step out and serve in Mo Kids. In order to have two services, we have to have more volunteers in Mo Kids. So, this is a BIG weekend! Please be in prayer for the service and for those that God has planned to come and help us.



We started our new series this past weekend. I am attaching pictures. The theme is attitude of gratitude, rewind and remind. We were down in numbers this weekend, but not down in spirit! Check out these pictures!

We love you guys and are excited to see what comes next. We will be home to Texas in 2 weeks! Yummmy Thanksgiving food!

Update

Sorry for the delay in posting, but it has been a CRAZY 2 weeks!

As promised, here are pictures of Shaun's event for the youth. We held the event 2 Sundays ago and 70 youth came! Because of the event, this Sunday we had 45 teens at Cross Culture. Good stuff! A little background for the pictures.... Shaun's mom mailed us this costume: thank you!!! Shaun and I were supposed to go downtown for Halloween as Dorothy and the Lion, complete with Sebastian in a basket. Well, no one else in our group wanted to dress up, so we didn't get to dress up on Halloween, but the event at Cross Culture was costumes optional. Shaun pretended to be "too cool" for a costume during the event. When all the kids had gathered together for skate races and for all the birthdays, Shaun came out in the costume. The Teens died laughing! So, here are the pictures of the skate party.

We have had a crazy week. Monday our microwave caught on fire, yes caught on fire! Thursday our washing machine went out and we had to register my car yesterday to Mississippi. Talk about money flying out the window! Good news is that we now have a really nice washer and dryer. But, it is a sad day in mudville people, the honda now sports a Mississippi license plate. A moment of silence please for this and the fact that a tag cost $450 for one year here in Mississippi!!! Yes, my Texas friends, that's right: for 1 year!!! Needless to say, we are holding out on Shaun's car as long as possible, so his still sports the Texas tag.

Our friend from the Met came down this past weekend and he lead worship for the main service. It was soo good to see him and meet his girlfriend Jade. Eric did a fantastic job and it made me realize just how blessed the Met is and how blessed we were to get to be a part of it and serve alongside Eric and Dustin. The church is maintaining the 400 number each week. The kids area usually floats around 100. Sometimes, a little more, it just depends. With those numbers, we are pretty much at capacity as far as having one service. And as far as me trying to balance all of this! Good news is that we are continuing to see new people each week and each week people are accepting Jesus.

We start a new series this week in Mo Kids. It is called Attitude of Gratitude: Rewind and Remind. The theme is time machine, so each week I play the part of a scientist who invented the machine and I go back to a different era: the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, etc. I am attaching the logo that my fabulous friend and side kick did for it. This series will get us through the month of November and then it is onto Christmas!!!

Please continue to pray for Mosaic and for the Staff. We have all been facing challenges and continue to try to balance everything. Also, please pray for our sending church, the Met, because of their faith, we are able to exist and serve here on the Coast.

We love you guys and can't wait to come home in 3 weeks to visit!

Love,

Jessica and Shaun

The Show Must Go On....

Happy Thursday!

This week has been a blur! Shaun and I did go to Mobile on Saturday so I was able to get my shoe problem fixed! I now have a left and right shoe. They just opened a Texas Roadhouse there, so Shaun and I were able to eat something that was familiar and good. I even had a lovely margarita!

Church went really well. There was once again had over 100 kids. We are still short on volunteers, but I have an amazing and dedicated group! As promised, I am finally adding pictures of the new set. As you know the theme is the Show Must Go On. So, our Star Director from Hollywood: Mimi Larue Von Sheraton comes in every day to help direct the leaders through the week's new fiasco. So, yes folks, I am Mimi. Blonde wig, red boa, sparkle glasses, and a funny accent that sound Hispanic sometimes, British sometimes, and a little ghetto. You guys now that I have always had a flair for the dramatic, or so Shaun says! The most embarrassing part about the entire thing is that 2 weeks ago, my mic was too loud and the main service heard the entire skit! Someone even asked me: "who was the girl with the weird accent?" Yes we fit over 70 kids in this space including small group time each week!

Cross Culture is going well for Shaun too. We still have a small, but very dedicated group of attenders. We are into the second weekend of having live worship and it is being led by a student! It reminds me of my time spent with the youth at Colonial when they started worship. This Sunday night Shaun will be hosting a skate party with costumes optional. Thanks Mom Campbell for the awesome cowardly lion costume! He is going to come out skating in it. Yes fans, I will indeed be there to ensure that photographic evidence is collected of this!

My work is going well, crazy busy, but well! Several of my kiddos at school have had some really big moments and progress is occurring. Sometimes it is a little moment; but I'll take that too! I have even been able to transition some of the kids into seeing me as needed versus every week. That is HUGE!

This roller coaster of church planting is still a bumpy but fun ride. It is very weird to have church invade every aspect of your life and throw working with your spouse at the church into that mix and it gets even more convoluted and yet interesting.

Please continue to pray for Shaun and I and all of the leaders of Mosaic as we continue to grow and face some very challenging and difficult decisions. Also, pray for our sending church, the Met. They have been so awesome to us and we would not be able to exist without them.

Oh yea.. mark your calendars: We are coming home to Texas the 24rth- 28th! Family, Friends, Taco Casa, Italliani's, Chipotle and homemade Lebanese food are on top priority!

Also, mark your calendar for the second week in July. That is the week of our summer program for what some old timers call vacation Bible school. We will be calling it Mo Kids Extreme Week. Any helpers from Texas are more than welcome!

Love,
Jessica

PS: Shaun says that the blog is silly and no one reads it, if you disagree, feel free to email him and let him know that you appreciate it and want the blog to continue: shaun@mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com.

Update a little tardy...

Hello there!

I am a little delayed in posting this week! Let's just say it has been a fun week. Shaun did an AWESOME job on Sunday. To hear the sermon, visit our church website: www.mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com and click the link on the right side of the page.

Children's ministry started our new series this past weekend as well: The Show Must Go On. We also started our programming with children in Little Mosaics thanks to my friend Katherine! We had almost 100 kids this past weekend. I was too busy to take pictures of the new set, but stay tuned... they will be up next week.

Good news on the school front.. I wrapped up my last class and got an A (alleluia!!). I start the hardest class in the program on Monday. There is light at the end of the tunnel, I should graduate in May..yeah!! I just have to find a place to do my internship and get a supervisor. Shaun also finished up his course and starts his new one this week. He is almost done too, well, kind of.

That is all for right now. I have to get back to getting all my stuff ready for Sunday. Shaun and I are headed to Mobile tomorrow to go eat Italian and exchange my shoes. Last time I went, I purchased a gorgeous pair of shoes. Went to wear them this week, I have 2 left shoes! But it is a great excuse to get out of town for a little bit.

Pictures will be coming soon.
Love,
Jessica

104 Kids and Playdough?!?

Happy Tuesday!

Yes, I am posting a day early. I am trying to get everything taken care of first thing during the week.... we'll see how the rest of it goes.

I do have a 25 page paper due for school and I start the hardest class in the degree program next week, needless to say, lots of prayer needed there. :-) And, Shaun has a 25 pager due this week too.

In addition to that, Shaun is preaching the main service this weekend. He is super excited, but nervous. You know how that goes. All of you will be able to listen to him on Monday if you visit our churches website: http://www.mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com/. Or you can download the podcast of Mosaic Church from itunes. If you have time, please send out a prayer for this weekend and send a shout out to Shaun to encourage him. His email is shaun@mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com.

We wrapped up our series: The Quest in Mo Kids this past weekend. As my loyal readers know, Jackson has been on a quest around the world to see who Christ is and who he is in Christ. Last week, we had 103 kids and 460 total for church. This week, we had 104 kids and 404 total in church. Do the math people, 25% or 1/4rth of our church consists of kids ages newborn to 5th grade!

We opened up another room this weekend and it was already full! Below is the 1 and 2 year old room: Tiny Mosaics.And here is the 3 and 4 year old room: Little Mosaics....

No picture of the baby Mosaics room because they were all asleep when I went in there! The Preschool Program Coordinator, Katherine, starts this week. Thank god!! She is so prepared and will do a fabulous job! She will run the programming for newborns-4. That frees me up some to focus more on Mo Kids.

I thought that I'd share a few photos from this weekend's small group activity. Imagine if you will 70 or so kids in a room. Now, imagine 70 kids with play dough... SCARY, right? Well, it went off amazingly well. No messes, and it really helped the kids reinforce the lesson. People thought that I was nuts to try it... but the kids and the volunteers really enjoyed it. SO, to all the dough haters out there... can't we just give the dough a chance? :-) Check out the picts:

Now for the big news....

At the end of the Mo Kids service this past week, we had a formal time for prayer and salvation. Complete with live acoustic worship, thanks to Wade! We had 14 children put their faith in Christ for the very first time! HOW AMAZING IS THAT?!?! The volunteers were very clear in explaining and the youngest kiddo was 5! God is good! We also had 1 adult in Main service as well. Baptisms were Sunday night on the beach. We baptized over 10 people. 1 of whom was a Mo Kid and 3 who were Cross Culture Youths. To see some pictures, visit our website: http://www.mosaicchurchgulfcoast.com/.

We begin our new series this week in Mo Kids. My awesome friend and fearless helper, Jason designed the logo. Check it out.

The theme is determination. How timely is that?!? It also ties into our home group study on Nehemiah. I can't give away too much yet, but let's just say there could be a Hanna Montana costume involved...

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. Please pray for this weekend.

Love,

Jessica

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9