The craziness of the fall semester has begun!  But before I share all the fun beginning of the year events we have going on, and how you can pray for us, let me share a few fun pictures of the family.

So, Emerson surprised us by deciding she wanted to learn to ride her bike without training wheels like her sister.  With a little less drama than her sister, she did it!  Check out this fun video showing her riding by herself.  She is so tiny and low to the ground on her small bike, but she is riding nonetheless.

Before, the craziness of school started, Ed and I both got to have lunch with Kinsley at school.  She loves eating with us and telling us all about school.  I would say she is liking it, especially since she asked me Sunday if she could go to school that day 🙂

Check out this cool cat pushing her very own shopping cart at Harris Teeter.

And little man is loving being big enough to ride in a car outside – as you can tell by the screaming he does a lot of.  The best part of it for us (besides not having to hold him)?  Sisters who want to continually push him!

Now, on to campus news!  The craziness of the fall semester has officially begun!  We kicked it off with a team social, staff meeting (our first with NC State!), and leaders retreat in SC.  People keep asking how it is going and how we are feeling on this team so far?  My first answer is that it is definitely different.  We feel like new staff a lot, learning a new campus and ministry and team.  But it has been really refreshing to experience a good, healthy staff team and to be involved in a ministry that God is majorly using to change lives.

Our leaders retreat was in SC and we had about 130 students attend (not including the 50-60 more that will attend the makeup leaders training).  It was really fun training and planning alongside these leaders who will make a radical difference leading everything from worship team to prayer team to Bible studies.  Huge shout-out and thank you to my mom for watching the girls (since Kinsley had to stay and go to school) while Blake, Ed and I traveled to the retreat!

Then, Ed helped with move-in at NC State for two days and Campbell for one day.  We are really excited to see what the Lord does at Campbell in partnership with our church.  We are praying to have two guys Bible studies (one upper classmen and one freshmen) as well as a girls Bible study. We are so thankful for laborers in our church who come alongside us and provide labor, encouragement, and support as we work together to reach Campbell for Christ.

Last night, we participated in something called RecFest at NC State. We handed out sweet tea, fried oreos, and banana pudding.  We had over 800 students fill out contact cards wanting more info on one or more of the following things: What is CRU, Questions about Christianity, Small Group Bible Study, Fun Events or I’m an International student looking to connect with American students.

Today, Ed is on east campus at NC State hosting a table to get more contact cards and tomorrow night, we will load up all the kids and do the street fair at Campbell University, handing out cups that say “Redeemer Campus Fellowship” (what we are called at Campbell) and lots of other freebies to students in return for contact cards.

Again, our hope for all of these things we do isn’t to play games with the students, or to show them how fun we can be, or to provide good food, or even to relive our college days.  Our hope is to collect contact cards with their information that we will use to touch base with each and every one of them (Lord willing) in hopes of getting to know them better, give them information about Cru or Redeemer Campus Fellowship, and hopefully transition into a Gospel conversation.  Please be praying for all the other tables and events we have scheduled in the next few weeks as well as the conversations that will happen as a result of these contact cards.

And thank you for partnering with us to make all of this possible…we couldn’t do it without you!

This little man is almost 7 months old.  Crazy to believe he is 7 months old, especially when we think what a roller coaster ride these 7 months have been.  He loves his sisters and get a huge smile when they come around or talk to him, he has his bottom two teeth and will be getting his top two teeth anytime, he has been rolling and sitting up for almost two months now and is getting up on all fours trying to start crawling, and he is a sweet, sweet happy boy when he is fed and not sleepy.

We had his cardiology checkup yesterday with our doctor from UNC. She did an echo and said that while the hole in his heart is a little bit smaller, it is still there.  She also said that she sees tissue there, which is a good sign and means that there is something there to close the hole.  So, all in all, encouraging news and we just bide time waiting for the hole to close up sporadically.  If it doesn’t, she said that would probably never have to do surgery for it.  She also said that had they done a fetal echo in utero, they probably still wouldn’t have been able to detect the hole in his heart because it is so small and because of the way blood travels differently when they are in the womb compared to when they get out.  It has been very informative learning about congenital heart disease and made me very, very grateful that Blake’s is so very mild that it hasn’t affected him.  We couldn’t imagine life without him!

In other news, let me tell you my creeper story.  Uh, yea, I consider it right up there with the time the guy asked me if I wanted to be kidnapped.  And I still hold to the belief that crazier things happen to me because I have a blog and somewhere to write them.

Ed left last Thursday afternoon for a trip to Greenville, SC to visit with some current and potential ministry partners.  Because his parents were in town and could watch Emerson while he had appointments, he took her with him.  I stayed behind (the first time we have not done appointments together in our 8 years on staff…uhhh weird!) to get Kinsley to school and I had to keep Blake since he refuses to take a bottle.  Fast-forward to Saturday.

I load up all the kids and go to Kroger and Dollar Tree to pick up a few things.  In Kroger, Kinsley and I are looking at the clearance bins and I turn around when I hear a man talking to her.  An older man with his shirt half in and half out who was eating as he walked around the store was asking Kinsley if she liked candy and if she wanted a piece.

As I turned to look at them, he asked me “I have a piece of bite-sized candy – can she have it? I am giving it to all the kids.”  Here’s where I should have said no.  Instead, I said “I guess so.”  He says “Its not too close to dinner time?”  Again, a perfect out for me, but instead I say “No, its fine.”  I was too taken aback to think correctly in the moment – such a fine example of what not to do.

However, we immediately left and I rounded the corner and started explaining to Kinsley that we could not have that piece of candy because we didn’t know that man and if any men offer you candy when mom is not there, you say no and that it is really, really weird that he did that. And not to mention that he didn’t give the little kid that came by after us a piece of candy.

Then, we went to Dollar Tree and were checking out, the male customer in front of us was going on and on to the male cashier about how he was going to complain to upper management about the lack of female cashiers and workers.  He went on and on about how when he goes out to eat at restaurants (which he doesn’t do anymore because he is poor), he never sees female waitresses like he used to but everyone that works there now are males.

When I got up to the checkout, I told the male cashier (who was laughing and taking it all in stride) “Between Kroger and here, I am done.  I just need to go home.  I need to go home and stay home.”  In my head I was thinking “Go home and stay home because the creepers are out.”

Needless to say, we survived, and now I have another crazy story to tell.  Another day in the life of the Hetzel family. 🙂