Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

We have had this blog since September and I have been putting off writing an entry for quite some time, but Matt told me it was my turn to write something. I'm not very confident in my writing skills so bear with me as we jump into my first ever blog post.

For many of you who live up North you are aware that the holiday season is on its way thanks to the changing of the weather. Well here in Virginia I've been able to walk outside in jeans and a t-shirt and feel comfortable. Some evenings I'll need a sweatshirt, but the average highs during the day are in the 60's. I love it! Matt on the other hand wishes it would get colder, not because he likes the cold but because he wants there to be a new season. We have yet to see a flurry or any type of wintry precipitation. Even though the weather wasn't foreshadowing the arrival of Christmas, we knew what was coming with the arrival of Thanksgiving, seeing family, and finally helping with the first Saturday of tree season at the Martin's (in Lancaster).

When I was younger I thought it was crazy to get a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, but that's when I was younger. So this year Matt and I picked out our very first Christmas tree on Thanksgiving. There are a few reasons that we picked out our tree so early: 1. It was convenient, thanks to having parents who own a Christmas tree farm; 2. We wouldn't be back to the farm until Christmas, and there was no way we were going to buy a tree from a roadside stand; and 3. We were so excited for it to finally feel like Christmas.

After cutting it down in the dark and wrapping it we hauled our majestic 7 and a half foot Douglas fur the 247 miles back to our apartment in Petersburg, VA. We (when I say we I mean Matt) hauled it up the stairs, got it on our brand new tree stand, and set it in the corner next to our little living room table. It looked great! Thankfully we didn't have one of those Christmas tree explosions like Clark Griswalk in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Since it was past midnight and Matt needed to get up at 0500 the next morning we decided to wait to decorate it.

After going out and buying a few more ornaments, a tree skirt and a Christmas Angel we finally decorated our very first Christmas tree. We put on our fancy new LED lights and our ornaments we had from growing up. Oh! And we strung popcorn which, by the way, if you plan

stringing pop corn wait for it to get stale. It's so much easier that way. I love our tree, because it's our tree and it is the first of many new Christmas traditions that we will get to experience as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

We were made to be Courageous

"We were made to be Courageous "

Some of you may have heard this line on the radio in Casting Crowns' new song Courageous. I did, but before tonight it did not have too much meaning for me. Tonight, Sarah and I decided to go see the movie Courageous at the theater. For those who don't know, it is the newest movie put out by Sherwood Pictures, the same people who produced the movies Fireproof and Facing the Giants. Sherwood Pictures is a ministry of the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia and the movies they make keep on getting better. Courageous was an absolutely fantastic movie, and hit on so many solid biblical truths that I am surprised it was actually put into mainstream movie theaters. Typically, movies that have such an upfront Christian foundation are confined to the shelves of christian bookstores. But boy I am I glad that this one did find its way into America's theaters. It was such a powerful movie that I actually ended up in tears at least 4-5 times and the rest of the time I was choking down tears so as to not appear as too much of a sissy.


I don't want to spoil the movie, but the synopsis is that it addresses the issue of how fathers have missed the mark in our broken world and the profound impact that it is having on our youth and the world in general. The movie follows a group of cops and the struggles they face as fathers, husbands, friends, and as employees.The men together make a resolution to live as fathers and husbands in  a way that honors God, to have the courage to do what is right even when it isn't easy, and promise to hold each other accountable to the resolution. This movie really broke me down and reminded me of the importance of being a man of God. Many struggle with figuring out what exactly being a man of God looks like. I don't claim to have it all figured out, but the movie lays it down like this and I think they are right on:

I do solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children.

I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.

I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me.

I WILL bless my children and teach them to love God with all of their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength.

I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly.

I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy.

I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect, and compassion.

I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family.

I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged.

I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God.

I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word, and do His will.

I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfill this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory.

The men write the above statement on paper, sign it and frame it, and hang it on their walls as a reminder. They do this to show the significance of the statement and to magnify the importance if it in their lives. It isn't easy for them, and It isn't going to be easy for me. But just as the men in the movie portray, I know the significance of committing to live a life that follows this resolution. Towards the end of the movie, the main character is giving a talk in front of his church and makes the following statement: "Where are you men of courage? I believe every father should step up and answer the call and say I WILL!" I am resolving to answer the call. No, I am not a father yet but I think it is of dire importance that I do this now and not wait until the day when I am looking back wishing I had. Will you answer the call that the Lord has given us men? For starters, go see this movie. If it doesn't touch your heart in some way, you were probably asleep. 

      "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” - Joshua 24:15

Meet Tucker, our new puppy!

Yup, that is right. The Martins are officially the owners of a brand spanking new puppy. Ok, well maybe not 'brand new,' but she is new to us! We got her from the local Humane league this past Tuesday, and so far have been very happy with her. She is a 4 month old Hound/Labrador mix and about 20 pounds according to the vet check-up today. We decided to name her Tucker (no Sarah Pensyl, we did not name her after Marc's dog) and she is one of the most well-tempered puppies we have ever seen. She is extremely friendly and seems to like companionship; she hates to be alone. This has made the evenings interesting as we are keeping her in the kitchen with a baby gate until she is potty trained. She hates this. The first night she tried to pull the gate down and almost succeeded. Last night she decided to use the floor as the bathroom, but hey, that's why we keep her in the kitchen at night! She seems to be partially potty trained, but has had a few accidents the past few days (we are open to any suggestions/advice from you dog owners out there).   Sarah is in love with her (sorry Putz) and she provides Sarah with a great companion in the apartment during the day while she works.

As far as my Army training, the past few weeks have been going pretty well. We have had two tests in the past two weeks, both of which went very well for me. We have a new class every week, and are tested on that material at the end of the week. The tests are actually fairly difficult, with lots of memorization and wide ranges of concepts covered. Its basically been cram and dump every week, while trying to retain as much information as possible. A large amount of my studying time seems to be just learning what the 10 million different Army acronyms stand for. They have one for everything! Yesterday we learned one acronym, TAMMS - The Army Maintenance Management System. The! A letter in the acronym can stand for THE!?! I didn't think that was even allowed! Sorry, I am obviously tired of those things. But anyways... training is going well!

We have continued to go to the same church, Chester Christian Church (http://www.chesterchristian.org/) and  really enjoy the people we have met there. The first day we went, everyone made us feel very at home and we even got invited to dinner by one guy! It seems to be a great body of believers, and Sarah and I are really thankful for having found the church. We have also joined a small group from the Church, which we enjoy as well. Jehovah jireh (the Lord provides)!

All is peachy in Petersburg

So I am starting to realize that I am not a very disciplined blogger. It has been over a week since the last post, and a lot has happened here in Petersburg with the Martins and God has been showing up in a big way! First, I had my big Physical Fitness (PT) Test last Thursday which I had been worrying about for probably the last 3 months. Physical fitness is a big deal in the Army and especially for Officers, and doing well on this test goes a long way towards making a good first impression and demonstrating good leadership. Knowing that this would be one of the first things I would have to do here at BOLC, I had been working out fairly consistently this summer to ensure that I was in good shape. But I can honestly say that I was not working out as  often or as intensely as I could have. So I was a bit worried going in to it and not sure of how I would perform. Waiting in line getting ready to begin the test at zero-dark-thirty ( Army slang for being awake at an insanely early hour) I asked God to help me to praise Him and bring Him glory no matter what the outcome of the test was. I literally had no idea how I would do, but was really trying to focus on praising God even if I failed. He gave me a sense of peace about it, and I began the test just trying to do the best that I could. I truely believe that He must have given me some sort of miraculous strength and energy that morning because I ended up scoring the highest I have ever done! In the 4 years that I have been in ROTC doing monthly PT tests, I have never scored over a 250 out of 300 possible points. I did 68 push-ups, 78 sit-ups, and ran a 14:30 2 mile, and got a 271/300. I literally have never done that many sit-ups or push-ups before, and can totally attest that performance to the power of God. Praise Him!

That same day, God answered another prayer that Sarah and I have both been praying, and that is that I would find a fellow brother in Christ in my class. I stumbled in to a conversation about guns with a guy in my class, and eventually I asked him where he went to school. He said he went to Liberty (which immediately got me excited) and so I asked him why he decided to go there. He told me that he chose the school because he really liked the Christian faith and values that the school has and that he wanted to be in a school that shared his faith. Wow! God just smacked me in the face and said you are welcome. I was so overjoyed. It even turns out that he is married, and Sarah and I have begun hanging out him him and his wife. It is such a blessing to have found them, and we are really excited to have a Christian couple to build a friendship with down here.

This weekend, Sarah and I made a spur of the moment decision and decided to go with a good friend of ours, Joe Shenk, to help out at the Rockbridge Younglife camp for a men's retreat. We spent Saturday running a high ropes course for the men, and Sunday helping to build log benches for the camp. I spent the majority of the day Saturday 50 feet off the ground helping the men transfer between a section of the ropes course and a zipline, while Sarah kept to the ground and helped them get off the giant swing which marked the end of the course. We met a bunch of really cool men; some who were terrified of being that high off the ground and literally clung to me and made me push them off on the zipline. and a man who had lost his leg last year in a hunting accident and did the whole course with a prosthetic leg! I was blown away by his courage, and was in awe of his perseverance to not let his injury slow him down. God always end up touching my heart in some way when I make the decision to go serve in His name!

Well, there is much more I could write about, but this post has already gotten long and my tummy is telling me that it is time to eat. Stay tuned for more stories from the Martins!

A new chapter begins...

For those of you who were waiting to here about our move (probably only our parents haha) I apologize for the wait. I wanted to draw it out and add to the suspense. Just kidding. I've actually been soo busy that I havent really had even a few minutes to sit down and blog--I still dont like that word, blog.... it sounds like a sound you make when you are coughing--but here ya go. The move went really well and went without any problems. It was about a 5 hour drive, with 4 hours of it spent driving down the infamous I-95. The apartment is in a very nice neighborhood and has very easy access to a plethora of stores such as Wal-mart, Martin's (a grocery store like Giant) that I like for obvious reasons, restaurants, and a Goodwill (thats for you momma!). The apartment is spectacular! It is leaps and bounds above our last place, which, not to take away from this place, is not hard to do. It is fully furnished, has a full kitchen, 2 br, 2 bath, all utilities included, and even has a pool and fitness room next door for our use! Needless to say, the Martin's are living the big life. No more basement apartment with musty smell, mold, spiders, and dirt that appeared from nowhere. Thank the Lord for blessing us with such a nice place! We are very fortunate to have not gotten stuck in a hotel room!

As for why I have been so busy, I have the Army to thank for that. I started Active duty training here at Fort Lee yesterday in the BOLC-B Ordnance training course. BOLC stands for Basic Officer Leadership Course, with B denoting that it is the second portion after my ROTC training. I am now a proud member of Charlie Company, 71st Transportation Battalion for the next 4 months while I learn how to be a Platoon Leader in the Ordnance division of the Army. The first few days have been rough as we have had to report to work at 0430 each day and are there until about 1700. This is hopefully just for the first week as we in-process and sit through hours and hours of instructional briefings as they try to cram all of the basic information down our throats that we need to function as an officer on base. It feels a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose; it is a bit overwhelming to say the least. Sarah has been working diligently from home, continuing her work for the PSU Clearinghouse for Military families. She has spent most of her time so far by herself at home while I am off playing soldier, so I think she would really apprecaite a phone call or chat during the day from friends or family, if you have the time! 

I think that is all for now. God has been good and is with us here. One prayer request that I would ask is that God would raise up a brother in Christ from within my class for fellowship and spiritual encouragement. 

Praying like Habakkuk

As of late, I have been feeling slightly disconnected from the Lord. Actually, I have had this feeling often in the past. I often tend to get in the mindset that to be pursing the Lord, I have to either read the Bible or pray. The problem with this is that I then read the word or pray simply to fulfill my "obligation" to the Lord, or to check it off my list so that I can feel like I've done my 'christian time' of the day. My time of prayer then often feels like a ritual as I go through my typical prayer routine of asking God for forgiveness for my recent trespasses, thanking Him for the blessings in my life, and then bringing my requests to Him. Something in me keeps nagging at me that this is not enough, and is not how God intended for me to be communicating with Him. This was brought to light tonight when I was reading the book of Habakkuk. It is an obscure book of the Old Testament that does not seem to get much attention. Why was I reading it? Well I stumbled across the new blog of Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace - http://pastormark.tv/ - and found a section written by his daughter Ashley. She said that her favorite book of the bible is Habakkuk because of how the author depicts prayer. Having never read the book before and feeling a pull from the Holy Spirit to read it, I decided it was worth reading. To sum up the book from my perspective (aided by the ESV study bible commentary) Habakkuk is talking to God and is airing his complaints about what he is seeing in Israel and their complete lack of faith in Him, the Lord answering him, followed by praise to the Lord for His steadfastness and faithfulness to His people.

The main thing that struck me in here was how Habakkuk interacts and talks to the Lord. He is talking to God as if he were talking to a friend. He is not following a prayer routine like I often feel like I am, but rather talking to God, actually complaining at times, about what is on his heart. This is what prayer should be like. Our relationship with God should not be a long distance one where we only communicate when things are really good or really bad. Habakkuk is not talking to God because he feels like it is something he needs to do. He is doing it because he cares about the things that God cares about, and has a deep passion to be involved with the things that are of God's heart. Just as you or I would do with someone that we love and care deeply for. I don't communicate with Sarah because I feel like I need to or just when I want something. I do it because I have a passion to know her more, to be in tuned with her hear and know the things that are important to her. This is how I need to be communicating with my heavenly father. He longs deeply for me and to have relationship with me, and I think this is the longing that I have been feeling in my heart. Though it seems foreign to me, the kind of relationship that Habbakuk had with the Lord is the kind that I want, that I am longing for.

I would also like to begin praying more for my brothers and sisters in Christ. A big part of Habakkuk's reason for crying out to God was that he was deeply concerned for his fellow Israelites. I want to pray for you, to care deeply for what is on your hearts and what is happening in your lives. So if you read this, please comment or send me a facebook message or email with what is going on in your life or prayer requests that I can bring before the Lord and  begin to understand His heart for us.

Why the weird title?

Hello, and welcome to the official blog of Matthew and Sarah Martin! We decided to start this blog so that our friends and family can follow us as we move into a new chapter of our lives and move away from most everyone that we know. I have always thought blogs were a bit odd (and quite frankly the name blog makes no sense to me) but I decided this was a really good way to keep our loved ones updated on our goings on.  I also hope that this blog can serve as a spot where I can air out some of my ponderings and ideas as well as share how the Lord is working in my and Sarah's life. I dont claim to be a scholar or a theologist, but I hope that the things that are written here can have an impact on somebody's life for the Kingdom of the Lord.

As you probably know, Sarah and I recently graduated from Penn State where I also received my commission in the U.S. Army. We have spent the summer living and working in the State College Area, but that chapter has come to an end. In about a week, Sarah and I will be leaving our little basement apartment in Bellefonte and making our way down to Ft. Lee Virginia (next to Petersburg) where I will be beginning a 4 month officer's training course on how to be an Ordnance Officer. Sarah will be continuing to work with Penn State Clearinghouse, but with a promotion that allows her to work from home. It was truly a blessing from the Lord that Sarah got offered the position that allowed her to work from home, as the job can come along with us on the move and saves her from having to find an interim job for the next 4 months. Praise the Lord!

Some of you may be wondering what the heck the name of our blog means and why we chose it. Well, I will tell you. I wanted a title that explained what the blog was about and some how had our name in it, since this blog is about us. When I was pondering what I would be writing about, I thought about how life typically goes for Sarah and I. And the two words that popped into my head  were: melodies and mishaps. Those two words can basically sum up life for us. Some days are melodies: good days or times when we are being led by the Holy Spirit, and our day is a melody to the Lord. Other days seem to be full of mishaps: things seem to just not be going right or we just aren't pursuing the Lord like we know we should be. So, with this in mind, I thought that a cool twist to our blog would be that every post would be tagged with either Melody or Mishap as we share how the day was.

So, thank you to those of you who read this and I hope I haven't bored you to sleep. The next post will hopefully be less informational and more conversational. Thanks for stopping by!