Poor Neglected Blog :(

So I realized today how badly I have neglected our little blog here. I suppose I could make some excuses about how crazy things got, what with the holidays and all that but I guess there really isnt much of an explaination, so heres the latest from the Barz clan in Arizona.

Christmas was a blast at home, even though it felt like we did nothing but run everywhere. We got to spend time with both families (Doby's and Barz's) see friends in a couple different parts of the state. We even got to see snow, which was a great improvement over last years 55 deg. and raining Christmas debacle. We did a day trip to go skiing with my family and Liz and I tried snowboarding for the first time (BIG mistake, especially since we had to spend the whole next day on a plane).

After returning, we spent the New Year relaxing/recouperating from our vacation and mentally preparing ourselves for school kids who had been away from the discipline of school for two weeks.

We celebrated Liz's birthday 1/19 she turned the big 25!! We had a fun little get together with some friends after church for pizza and cake.

Exciting things have been happening at our church, we moved our Saturday night service that we attend from the main sanctuary to the youth building (the Bridge). The space has a real atmosphere that connects much better to the goals for the community than did the sanctuary but there is still a long way to go in terms of reshaping the culture of the service and the hearts of the people that attend.
With the move to a new building allowed for some great opportunities for me (eric) to lead part of our community. Along with one other worship leader, I am responsible for handling all of the worship for our community gatherings, that means that I am leading nearly every other week at the Bridge. This has been an awesome chance for me to grow and mature in my ability to lead others in worship and to take responsibility for the direction of the community for this season of change. Also, since the Bridge is a very new facility it has some very new (and very nice) sound equipment. This is great considering that our sound in the sanctuary has been a constant point of frustration for the worship team. The downside is that nobody really knows how to use any of the equipment, which is where I get tapped to lead the tech team for Saturday nights as well. Looking forward I see this being a great chance to teach and expand the knowledge of others in the community but for the time being it means that if I am not on stage leading, I am in the booth running sound and teaching.
God bless my lovely wife for her patience for this season of training volunteers for sound, as I have yet to actually sit and worship with her at a Saturday night service since the change in venue. (love you honey)

January also brought Liz's dad, Paul, to visit us so that he could run the PF Chang's Rock & Roll Marathon. Paul got to spend a few days hanging out with Liz and I and then ran the 1/2 marathon over the weekend. I think that he got the Arizona bug, being able to enjoy running outside in January, and the rumor is that he hasnt stopped talking about coming back since he landed back in Michigan.

One of the other major changes since our last update, is that we moved!! We decided to make a change in apartments so that we could be closer to our church community. As it was before, we were driving at least 90 miles a week to and from Joy which put a serious damper on our spirtits having to fight traffic to go to church. So at the beginning of February we packed up and moved to a new place that is MUCH closer to church and only 2-3 minutes more to work each day. So if you need our new address contact us and we will get it to you.

One last thing to update is some fun photography things. My first paying client (a co-worker) finished choosing her images and received her prints to rave reviews. She is expecting that some family will be looking for additional prints. Also, she returned from her destination wedding in Mexico with digital files from the resort photographer and has asked me to do some retouching and editing work on them to improve the quality. Also, Gareth Robinson, our worship pastor and friend of ours, just finished recording the bulk of his third album last month. On Monday, we went out got some great images for his CD packaging. Hopefully the record label likes them as much as I do. Part of the shoot was done in Sedona which is amazing nearly year round but we made a bit of a family day out of it and Liz came along as well as Gareth's wife Lizzy and their three awesome kids. It was quite a fun adventure and I will post some images here soon.