Time to Make a Come Back?

Things are changing in the Spurlock household, and it just may be time to dust off the pages of 'ol blog...let's see what happens.

Colorado Summer!

Yep, we are thrilled that God is so kind to send us to Colorado for our summer! We will spend most of May, all of June, and almost all of July in the breath-taking mountains and landscape of Colorado! It's a privilege to help lead Campus Crusade for Christ students from all over the country in an adventure-filled Summer Project called SnowRidge at Horncreek! 

"Snowridge Summer Project is located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of south-central Colorado. Our backyard is a playground of lakes and mountain peaks that set the stage for this summer ministry opportunity that can change your life forever. Our unique and remote location makes it a haven for outdoor adventure."

"Campus Crusade for Christ partners with Horn Creek to give each college student and staff member ten days of camp & urban youth ministry training as well as two weeks of mid-summer mentoring development. This is in addition to running six weeks of camp. Students will receive leadership training, urban youth camp training, counselor training, personal gift discovery and development, discipleship training, bible study, evangelism training, vocational exploration, men-only and women-only sessions, and a variety of practical experiences to test what they are learning."

We will be co-directing in the area of Operations for this project. This means being responsible for all of the finances and budget, gear order for staff and students, and lots of logistical details. Thankfully, we are both detail and task-oriented people... you know, nerdy, love-to-make-lists- and-be-organized type people! :) 

This is one of many things we appreciate about the organization that God's blessed us to work for right now. Cru allows people like us to take on new responsibilities so we can continue to stretch our minds and explore new things. We don't reallllly know what we are doing but they are willing to take a risk with us! While being in campus ministry, we get to be trained in countless other fields like finance, leadership, operations, event coordinating , and so many other areas one might not expect a campus missionary to dabble in. We have so much to learn in life, and especially this summer, and are looking forward to a ton of training and development.

We love the outdoors, we love college students, and we love Jesus- all that to say, we are excited about our summer in Colorado! 

Friends from Afar

Life post-college is so different for friendships! Our friends are spread out all over not just VA, but the US! We miss so many people so often. Here are a few pics of some of our dearest friends from our college days at JMU. We got the chance to hangout one night between Christmas and New Year's as they'd all flown in for the holidays. The crazy part... there are 6 married's! We're getting old.... but we are lovin it! :)

Meet Jordan & Sam Ballard (formerly Miss Morris), Us, Eric & Anna Miller (formerly Miss Kewley), and Danny Christiansen (Laura Pruett missing from this pic!)
I missed the dye-your-hair dark memo...
Seriously, not even planned... don't know what that says about them!

A Very Merry Christmas

On the 23rd, we celebrated an early Christmas together and it was amazing! We exchanged ornaments, presents, and stockings, each of us loving every minute of it. We even had a little scavenger hunt around the house for our ornaments :) Making new traditions has been really fun for us, so if you have any fun ideas, please share!

Second Annual Brown Family Christmas at the Spurlock's! That's right, we hosted Christmas for Lindsay's family (parents and older brother) at our apartment in Harrisonburg again this year. We went all out decorating, cleaning, and cooking for their time here with us. It was a fun-filled, fully-gifted, tight-fitted two days and we loved it! Lindsay's parents, Lee & Lois (as Brandon likes to call her, LoLo) and her brother, Erik, gave us really generous gifts, one of which was a gps! Yay! Thanks again Mom & Dad Brown & Erik!

(Erik doesn't like to pose for pics... Brandon made him laugh good on this one!)


Christmas day, the Brown's left and we headed up to Brandon's grandma & grandpa, "Nan & Pop's" place for his family's Christmas. There, we had Christmas with his mom, Patti, brother, Tyler (Lindsay likes to call him Ty-Ty, just don't tell him that), his aunt, uncle, and cousins... a full house!  It was a great night of presents, laughter, home-cooked food, and fun. Thanks for everything Spurlock's, Wassell's, & Somerville's! 

And as always, we miss you Dad Spurs! 

Thanksgiving!

So it's been a while since we posted- sorry to all you blog-stalkers! :)

Thanksgiving was great and filled with lots of traveling... typical for us Spurlock's. We visited both of our families, first to Northern VA to B's mom's, and then down to Williamsburg to L's parent's. Here's a few pics of our families, whom we love dearly and thank God for!

Brandon's mom, Nan, Uncle Tripp & Aunt Jan

Brandon's brother Ty & Nan

Us, Lindsay's mom, dad, and brother

Unfortunately, we did not get to see Brandon's dad because he is cool and lives in England! We are truly thankful for him as well and hope to spend Thanksgiving with him again soon :)

We have much to be thankful for in this life. God has blessed us with countless earthly blessings, but the greatest of all is His love. Without the love of God, we have nothing... no, worse than nothing. This life is meant to be lived in relationship with the very One who created it, apart from Him, life is empty, vain, and cruel. We are thankful that His love exists, but moreso that we can experience it. We don't deserve His love and we didn't do anything to earn it, yet He freely pours it on us... simply because we trust in Jesus and what He has done for us!

1 John 4:10
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 3:1
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Psalm 40:5
Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You
If I would declare and speak of them,
They would be too numerous to count.

Psalm 69:30
I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.

The Great Outdoors

Last weekend, we joined some great friends of ours, Justin & Grace Davies,  and headed for the trails for an over-night backpacking trip. We got to the trailhead around 7:30p, soon after sunset. Hiking in the dark night was a new and fun adventure for the four of us, which included headlamps and a few missteps! We were hauling everything we needed for shelter, food, water, and gear... all on our backs for about 6 miles. Lindsay and Grace had never hiked with backpacks that were almost as big as them, so they were doing all they could not to fall over while tackling the trails. 

The weekend could not have been more beautiful. Middle of nowhere Virginia, in the mountains, in the fall, in October... absolutely gorgeous. God blessed us with perfect weather the whole time with not a cloud in site or a hint of humidity. The changing leaves reminded us of the creativity and beauty of our God, that He dashes the earth every year with what Lindsay calls "leaf confetti," just because He can and He loves us.  

Backpacking is a hobby we hope to continue in as long as God has us in such a beautiful location, accessible to all kinds of outdoor adventures! 

JMU v. App State Game

Two of our friends and supporters, the Brock's (pictured below, in the middle), invited us to join them at the intensely anticipated JMU v. App State game this past Saturday night. THANK YOU Brock's and THANK YOU JMU football team for the most exhilarating home game in JMU history!!!


We couldn't make it to the field until half-time, when the score was a discouraging 21-0, with App State feeling confident. As we arrived, herds of saddened fans filed out of the stadium after throwing in the towel. We like to refer to them as "suckers" as they left behind the better half of the game and what could have been the best Saturday night of their college experience! Now, we are not so prideful as to say we brought the luck into the stadium, but we will mention that as soon as we got there, the tides changed and the Dukes revived! JMU went from downcast to jumping up and down as our determined players scored touchdown after touchdown. It must have burned hopeless students when they got home, only to turn on the TV and see what they were missing. However, thousands of fans that stayed rocked the bleachers in praise and hundreds of those carried their celebration onto the field, as they swarmed to the 50 yard-line as soon as the clock ran out.

Final Score: JMU 35, App State 32.

Needless to say, us JMU Alum in the pictures above had a memorable and ridiculously exciting Saturday at the JMU Football Stadium. There was no where we would have rather been!



The latest Scoop on the Spurlock's... we love JMU!