Everyday at YWAM Orlando there is lots of praying, worshiping, training, teaching, learning, growing and of course EATING! Nathaniel and I want to make sure that while people are being filled up spiritually they are also being filled up physically...with fabulous food!

Making cookies is not necessarily in our "job description" as kitchen managers but these have been a big hit around here!

I found this recipe about a month ago and I've used it three times now - I love it!

I didn't have dark chocolate chips so i just used regular ones and it was still super yummy.

Dark Chocolate Chip Comfort Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, slightly softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
10 oz. dark chocolate chips
chopped pecans, optional

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In a small bowl, mix flour, cocoa, soda and salt using a wire whisk and set aside.
• In another bowl, cream butter, sugar and peanut butter until light and fluffy.
• Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.
• Add flour mixture to creamed mixture and mix until combined.
• Stir in dark chocolate chips.
• Roll cookie dough into 1-1/4 inch balls. (If desired, roll balls in chopped pecans.)
• Place on parchment paper covered baking sheet.
• Bake 10 minutes.
• Place cookies on cookie rack to cool.
• Makes about 30 2-inch cookies.

For the past few months Nathaniel and I have been running the YWAM Orlando Kitchen. This is kind of funny really since we have almost no cooking experience and we rarely cook at home for ourselves...

This sounds like a recipe for disaster but people keep telling us how great we're doing so we must be doing something right. I have found that for some reason I enjoy experimenting and trying new recipes for 70 people much more than for just the two if us...weird right?

So I thought that since we spend so much time cooking I should share a few recipes once in a while.

Todays recipe is....

JAMBALAYA!

(4 servings)

Things you need:

2 small onion, chopped
2 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 pound fully cooked smoked sausage, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup canned diced tomatoes, with juices
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
2 dashes cayenne pepper
1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
1 cup cubed cooked chicken breast meat
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

What to do:

In a skillet, saute onion and garlic in butter until crisp-tender. Add the sausage, broth, tomatoes, green pepper, bay leaf, thyme and cayenne. Bring to a boil; add rice. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Add chicken and shrimp; cook 5-10 minutes longer or until shrimp turn pink and rice is tender. Discard bay leaf before serving.

This is delicious! It's one of my favorite things to eat right now. Hope you enjoy it too!!

After moving across town and emptying all the old YWAM Orlando storage units and houses on the east side it became clear that we had a lot of junk (treasure?) that nobody needed.

So we decided to put together a yard sale!

Nathaniel was in charge of finding, cleaning and organizing all the junk/treasure to be sold. This was a much bigger job than he realized but he managed it fabulously. In just 6 hours we made close to $1000. Success!

(download)

Click here to download:

yard-sale-mqDBHvwAtzEDBnIuackv.zip (1.44 MB)

Sunday is our one year anniversary!

Nathaniel surprised me with a weekend in St. Petersburg, FL. The parents of some of our friends on staff have a beautiful condo here that they are letting us stay in for the weekend. It is right on the beach and the view is stunning.

Many of you that Nathaniel LOVES selling things online. Often when people on staff are going to throw things away, Nathaniel takes them and sells them on ebay or amazon or whatever. (for example, my friend Lisi gave him a big box of CD's, movies etc over a year ago and he has been selling them on at a time ever since...thank goodness the box is finally almost empty)

I often tease Nathaniel for this hobby because it seems so boring to me, who wants to take the time to list other peoples junk online when it will probably only make you a dollar or two?? My Husband does...

Well anyway, it turns out he has been saving each dollar or two and keeping it a seperate account (without telling me!) so that we would have some money to spend on our anniversary weekend! I was so surprised! Not only do we get to spend 3 nights in a beautiful condo on the beach but we have some money to eat out together and do some fun things that we wouldnt normally get to do.

In other words, my husband is fabulous and there's no one else I would rather be spending my one year anniversary with.

This is a picture that was taken at our annual staff retreat in August. This is most of our staff and all the wee-ywamers  (kiddies)

Staff retreat was a hug blessing to us. It's a fabulous time to relax and hang out with the people here that we love so much with absolutely NO schedule. Being right off the beach was really great. People often think that since we live in Orlando we must go to the beach all the time but we definitely don't. It's 45 minutes away and we dont go near as often as Sarah Jane would like.

Needless to say Sarah Jane was a happy little beach bum for 3 days!

Nathaniel would play sports every day all day if his schedule allowed so thats how he spent his 3 day staff retreat...sweating his brains out :)

Unfortunately staff retreat can't last forever and we're back at work now. There's things to do and people to be reached and we are refreshed and excited for what God has next.

So our trip to Canada was fabulous! We surprised Bethany (Sarah Jane's sister) for her 14th Birthday, definitely worth it!

We were able to spend lots of time with Sarah Jane's family, this involved many nights playing DUTCH BLITZ (one of our favorite games!)

It was so good to see family and we had alot of fun meeting with friends and supporters. We were blessed to find some new supporters and get a little bit closer to our monthly goal. Currently we are still about $500 short of our monthly goal so we're working on support raising from Orlando now.

It's been good to be back in Orlando. We were quickly reminded how hot and humid it is here the moment we set foot outside the Orlando airport.

We have unpacked in our new house (YWAM house, not our own house) where we are living with 5 single guys on staff. This is definitely a new experience for Sarah Jane but so far it's been really good.

If you would like to receive our newsletter please email Sarah Jane at sarahjanerinas@gmail.com!

We have exciting news...Sarah Jane got her Green Card!!

We havent been able to leave the Country in a year and four months and we are very excited to be able to finally come to Edmonton Alberta for a few weeks.

We're real excited to hang out with Sarah Jane's family (SJ is practically bubbling over with excitement...) and meet with friends and supporters.

We are hoping to build our support team while we are home. We are looking for people interested in partnering with us at as little as $15/month. We would love to meet you with and share with you what God is doing at YWAM Orlando and how we fit in there. Even if you are not interested in supporting us at this time we would still love to get together with you and tell you what Gods doing in our lives!

Another way you can support us is by donating things for our garage sale fundraiser! We will be having a garage sale on June 23rd, 24th and 25th and we are still looking for donations. For more information or to arrange a time to pick up or drop off donations email Sarah Jane at sjlane@ywamorlando.com.

Peace,

The Lanes

We have fnally moved to the west campus!! We have known for a while that we would likely move to the west side in the spring quarter. We knew it would be a big adjustment since most of the buildings are unfinished and there is no power or running water but we figured it would be fine so long as we didnt live in a trailer.

Many times in the past couple months I have stated that I would happily live on the west campus as long as we ddnt have to live on wheels. Anything but a trailer!!

Well guess where we moved...

Into a trailer. Yep, on wheels.

Initially I thought "of course, after months of holding on to my rights to live in a house and be comfortable I would end up living in a trailer" but the longer we live in our trailer the more thankful I am for it. The housing options on the west campus right now are either very packed dorm style housing or trailers. We have come to realize that in a strange way God has really blessed us with our trailer. We have our own functioning stove, oven, fridge and freezer and we have a shower!! I know it sounds like a silly thing to be excited about but on a campus with no running water having your own water tank is a pretty big deal! We are thankful to have our own space where we can cook and eat together and just to be able to get away from the craziness once in a while.

We realize to our family and friends at home this sounds like a strange way for newlyweds to live but we are loving it. Yep I said it, I'm enjoying living in our trailer. It's truly the grace of God because anyone that knows me knows that I absolutely do not like camping...at all!

God is teaching us about what things are important and what things are NOT, we're excited for this opportunity to grow.

Due to the crazyness of life here right now we are going to start writing newsletters every other month.This is a little bit of what you can expect in our April Update!

The Big Move

Yep thats right we're moving again! I realize this must sound crazy since we talked about our last move in our last newsletter but this is the life of a YWAMer right now.

Changing things up

Starting on monday Nathaniel and I will be participating in a Basic Leadership School (BLS)

The West Side

Still no power or water...but guess where we're moving...you guessed it, the west side! It's going to be an adventure thats for sure.

Stay tuned

This year we decided to have a laid back Valentines day. We celebrated yesterday with a lovely afternoon date. Usually on Sunday afternoons Nathaniel plays ultimate frisbee but yestersay he decided to take me shopping and out for dinner. We spent the afternoon wandering through my favorite outdoor shopping center, mostly looking at kitchen stuff :) We didnt buy Valentines day gifts but we did get a cool jar of chipotle spice for Nathaniel and a bright orange colander for me! We ended the day with some delicious mexican food.

Not a classic fancy Valentines Day but it was perfect for us.