12-15-09

We are all finished with our Freshman semester, yay!!!! And to top it off we passed all the classes!!! ;) We are so very excited to have some time off now and be able to enjoy each others company more! Most of our friends have headed home for the break so it has been really quiet around here. Just yesterday I had a group of girls over and we just baked up a storm! :) I now have more cookies and such than we know what to do with haha:) It has been really nice to have more time to bake and cook good meals (not ones from boxes although Denny says that boxed meals are made with Love haha). We both have really been enjoying time to sleep in and most of all no homework! :)We are also really excited to celebrate Christmas together this year. We are heading home for Christmas eve and Christmas to spend time with family but are ready to also start up some traditions of our own! Please pray for us not to get to lazy during break and have a hard adjustment going into the next semester! Please also continue to pray for safety and for guidance as we continue to look for God's leading for the next step. Also for God's provision financially, Denny got quite a few extra hours last week due to others being sick but is still only getting 20 hours this week! For some reason the finances have been heavy on my heart lately so please pray for God's calming spirit for us as we continue to learn to trust in His provision. Thank you all for your prayers and support! We hope you have a great Christmas however you choose to celebrate it! (Just don't forget the true meaning of what CHRISTmas is all about!) Love, Denny & Janelle P.S. We posted a new picture below! :)

12-01-09

Can you believe it's December already? We only have 7 more days of class left in this semester.Please pray for us as we have two exams, 2 two page papers, and a six verse memory verse due between now and next thur. We are very excited to no longer have homework to do and to be able to get some much needed rest and time together. Please continue to pray for strength and energy to get through these next 2 weeks. Also please pray for healing and continued health. I have been feeling exhausted and some slight stuffiness, but Denny has had a cough and has been stuffed up for over a week now. Compared to all the sickness that has been floating around school we are still doing really well! The thanksgiving dinner we put together for fellow students went really well! We had around 38 people and a ton of food! It was really great fellowship and I had a lot of fun in the planning. We got a note letting us know how much next semester is going to cost. We are going to need around $4000 after everything is added up. We will have to pay nearly $1800 by January 1st. We still owe $2000 on our loan to pay off this semester. Denny is hoping to get a lot of extra hours over the month of break but Meijer is threatening to lay off some people even before Christmas which isn't a good sign. (Denny is safe because he has worked there for over 6 years. But it might mean he won't get as many hours as was hoped for)Praise the Lord for providing up to this point, and please pray for continued provision! Thank you all for your continued prayers and support! Janelle *Below I added two new pictures, one of our little three foot Christmas tree and one of our new sink. Thanks so much to my dad who spent countless hours making it so life would be a lot easier for us! We now have a sink with running water in our apartment!!! :) Feel free to leave comments and let us know you are praying and reading our blog! :)

11-19-09

So, I was informed that it was about time I updated you all on how we are doing. So, here goes nothing :) We started the 5th and last block of the semester yesterday! Only 13 more days to go!!! Then we will no longer be freshman but will be Sophomores!!! We've both been getting grades in the 90's on every class!!!!! Only by the grace of the Lord, cause some days it's just hard to get out of bed much less put your mind to classes and then homework. Please pray for strength to make it through the last stretch without loosing steam. Thanksgiving plans are coming along. We have around 30 people coming right now but will probably be more the day of. We are so excited to see it all come together and have a good time of fellowship with everyone who comes! And I've already started scheming up some plans for a Christmas surprise for the children of the school. But we will see how that comes together. :) Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we enter the home stretch of this semester and as we start to search out God's will for the next step of this journey. Please also pray that the Lord continues to provide financially, He has provided extra hours for Denny for the holiday! We are also seeking his guidance on a summer job for me; I want to help out with the finances and it would be a lot of time alone at home if I didn't work. But I would love to have time to council at a summer camp if its possible too. So prayers on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for your love and support! And a special thanks to our college and career group from our home church for the wonderful "care package" we received! Thank you all for your prayers, Janelle

Our first update. . .

I thought it might be a good time to update to keep from going on for forever. Our 4th out of the 5 blocks in the semester started 10-27 so we are almost to the end! We start up a new class on Monday then another in 2 weeks. Please keep us in your prayers as we have a 12 page paper due in 2 weeks that is comprised of all the information we’ve studied in the past 3 blocks! This paper goes from grammar, to phrasing, to word studies, to information about the writer, etc. all based on only two verses. We are very nervous about this paper and will be sure to have many sleepless nights because of it! Over all everything is the same, by the grace of God we have yet to get sick even though many around us are. God has really been watching over us. Please pray for continued health! Denny and I have been working with the Deans to put together a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone who is staying at school for Thanksgiving. We have only had 3 other couples sign up so far but are sure there will be plenty more. We are very excited to see it come together and be able to serve our fellow students in this way! Please pray for guidance and a good turn out as we continue to plan. Well, that’s all I have for now. Thank you all for your love, support, and prayers! Janelle

The Bradley's

Dear Friends and Family,

I wanted to start this sight to let you all know how we've been doing and hopefully keep you updated on what is going on with us. Denny and I are living in Jackson, Michigan and both are attending New Tribes Bible Institute as full time students (I'll fill you in on how that is going later). Denny is working at a Meijer just a mile or two down the road, God blessed us in that Denny got the opportunity to transfer from the Meijer he was working at in Rockford. This was a huge blessing because he got to keep his seniority and even got a slight pay raise because of now working in the Produce dept.. He is really liking his job, the store is much more laid back (less stress and getting yelled at), and is liking the people he gets to work with! Please pray for his safety as just a few weeks ago a co-worker of his got mugged, beaten up, and his car stolen in the parking lot. For those of you who don't know what our plans are and why we are here at NTBI I will do my best to fill you in. Denny and I decided to attend NTBI after spending a day here this past February and really feeling the Lord directing us to attend here. We are both full time students which will give us a associates degree (I think that's right?! :) in Bible theology. We will be attending here for 2 years to get this degree. After that we aren't sure what God has planned just yet, we want to go into some type of youth ministry here in the U.S. but have been throwing around a few different ministry ideas and not sure where God will put us. But before that Denny will need to get another two years to get his Youth Ministry degree. We again aren't sure where we are going to go to get this next two years, but we know the Lord is faithful to guide us in His timing, so we patiently wait for His guidance. We've been attending NTBI for roughly 3 months now and have made many new friends we hope to have for a lifetime! Our classes have been anything but easy, but the Lord is always faithful and has brought us through them one day at a time. We have taken 8 courses so far; (Here is a brief summary of them) 1. Bibliography- the history of the Bible and credibility 2. Biblical Foundations- from creation to the cross hitting the high points :) 3. Genesis- word for word study of the book of Genesis (learned a lot of really neat things that you normally just skip over or never notice) 4. Acts and the Roman world- short two week class about the life and times of Paul and his missionary journeys 5. Hermeneutics- (currently taking) teaching us how to break every word and sentence down to understand it the way it was written then how to apply it to our lives today 6. Evangelism- (currently taking) teaching us how to understand the views people have and how then to witness to them in the most effective way according to their views 7. Exodus-Deuteronomy- (currently taking) a walk through these books to more clearly understand them 8. Prayer Practicum- (currently taking) (this is a once a week course for the semester) going through the right and wrong ways to pray and what the Bible has to say about it. Our day to day life is filled with classes starting at 8am to 12pm M-F then we each have a job around campus to help keep things clean and costs down. Then roughly 4-5 hours of homework per day and Denny working 20 hours on the weekends at Meijer (which has been a huge stress on him). We had originally decided that I also would get a job but after the beginning of class and seeing the homework load we decided it be best if I don’t work. Denny says it’s nice to have someone who isn’t going crazy and can get things done around the houseJ. God has really been blessing us through all the struggles we’ve been going through. Our marriage has faced many hardships but has come out even stronger ever time. Living here in this tiny apartment with no running water and using a bathroom down the hall has stretched us greatly but because of it has strengthened us. We love living on the 1^st floor because of the many people that pass by our door. We have been leaving our door open and most have learned that this means you may wonder on it and do whateverJ. We’ve made many friends and continue to make them by our ‘open door policy’. As far as our finances God has truly blessed in this area too. Our original payment at the beginning of the Semester was roughly $5,000 for the both of us to attend and live here. God has been faithful to provide through extra hours at Meijer, Family, and our home Church Grace Evangelical Free (www.gracerockford.com). Every time something comes up like Car insurance God is faithful to provide! Our goal is to pay off each semester before the next and we are well on our way. We only have $2,800 yet to go before January. Denny is going to try to work as much as possible during the Christmas break (Dec. 10^th – Jan. 10^th) to try to meet this goal. The School has also been helpful in this matter, every Mon. and Thurs. the married couples go to the cafeteria and can take any leftovers from the singles meals. And all we have to do is the dishes and clean up once a month. This has been a huge blessing and helped a lot with the grocery bill. We know the Lord is faithful to provide and have yet had to worry about our finances! Praise His Name!! We want to thank you all for your love and support and ask for your prayers. Classes have been very stressful and at times we just want to give up. Please pray for strength, encouragement, and energy for the classes to come. Please also pray for our safety as Jackson isn’t the greatest of cities to live in these days.

Thank you again for your love, support, and prayers! May God bless you all,

Janelle Bradley

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