Life With The Wilson Family: Christmas and Challenge House

I hope you all have had a blessed Christmas and New Year. The Wilson Family was definitely blessed again this year. We even got our wish of a white Christmas, even though we had to drive to Iowa to get it! We also got one of the best presents ever. We recieved an email on Christmas day telling us our homestudy was done and we could proofread it. So we should be recieving the final copy soon!!! What a great Christmas present. I have put some pictures of our holiday season at the bottom of this post.

However, the main focus of this post is about Challenge House. About a year and a half ago Heath and I took a group of high school students on an inner-city mission trip right here in Hopkinsville. We spent three days and two nights in Challenge House I, where we painted, picked up trash, torn down an old building, loved on kids, and even had a block party for kids and adults in the neighborhood. That weekend trip sparked a passion in our hearts for the poor and the broken hearted. Heath and I met on the mission field and we always knew God was going to use us on a mission field as a married couple. So we began to pray about our involvement in the Challenge House organization. We prayed and asked the Lord what we were supposed to do for about a year before we heard clearly that we were supposed to move into another Challenge House. There were two Challenge Houses at the time and they were both being occupied, so after meeting with several people, we began looking for Challenge House III. After many months the organization finally bought this house, which was one of the very first houses we spotted the first time we looked through the neighborhood.

I know some of you might be wondering why we would want to move into a house like this, so allow me to explain what the Challenge House organization does. The purpose of Challenge House is to take old, abandoned houses, fix them up, and let Christians move in. These houses are designed to have a community part of the house and a private living space for the people living in the houses. Then the house becomes open to the community for GED classes, Jobs for Life classes, bible studies, after school tutoring, cooking class, mission trips, and anything else to help the people living in the community. The ultimate goal is to bring restoration into the lives of people in the community by introducing them to Jesus Christ. The programs are all about building personal relationships and bring them true hope. Fixing up the house is a physical representation of the internal restoration God wants to do in their lives and ours. So this is the before picture of the house.

We were excited this past week to actually begin working on the house. We gathered some local youth groups from Restoration House and Second Baptist and some family & friends to begin the demolition. Here are some pictures of all their hard work.

They knocked down walls.

Tore down two chimneys.

Shoveled and bagged insulation.

They were a hard working crew. Thank you to everyone who helped get the project started, we appreciate you all so much!!! There will be many more pictures and stories to come of this awesome ministry! If you want to know how to donate to this ministry or help with the remodeling of Challenge House III please email me at paigenicole32@yahoo.com

Here are some of our Christmas pictures.

We usually go to Iowa a week before Christmas so we always open our stockings at home the night before we travel. So this is our little family Christmas picture.

I was so exciting to finish making Gracie's stocking this year. Now our family stockings are complete until we welcome our next little one to the family :)

This is my family in Iowa on Christmas Day.

This is the girls on Christmas Eve. Aunt Stacey, Grandma Hoksbergen, Gracie, and me.

This is Gracie's Christmas dress my mom bought her. She was too cute!

We even had time to do a little Stampin' Up! We were making birthday and thank you cards. Gracie decided she wanted to help me too.

Then we travel back to Kentucky for Christmas with Heath's family. This is the whole crew, not all the kids are looking but at least none of them are screaming!