December
In the past 4 weeks a ton has happened here and I got some great pictures so I wanted to share. It all started on Thanksgiving as we had our small group over for a huge feast. I actually a few days before managed for the first time ever to put all our outside lights up and started spinning the Christmas music. I have never done that before so Im not sure what's wrong with me.














If that wasnt strange enough late on Thanksgiving day over 80 elk showed up in our back yard and hung out to have Thanksgiving dinner on the green. Here's a picture as we spotted them around the corner a few days later.




















In Phoenix a couple weeks ago Kathy and I drove by a group of hot air balloons landing in the sunset and got alot of pics. It was a beautiful day and
of course great weather for December


Speaking of crazy for the past four months we have been working on ou Christmas musical which we finally did last weekend. It went great as over 1300 people came and were touched by the story and the message. (pictured below is Kathys scene with the Grinch.)




Also last weekend we got pounded with almost 20 inches of snow so the kids got two snow days and we spent 3 afternoons building a snowman, sledding and making forts. Check out these awesome pictures taken in the snow.

The Ginny Owens/ Jamie Slocum concert
Here are some pictures of the concert and me playing the with the band on a song.

California Adventure 07
We finally got to make our annual California trip this past weekend so we headed out on Friday and drove over to Irvine, CA just south of LA for our 4 day vacation.

On the first day, Saturday we spent the whole day at our families favorite southern California hangout, Laguna Beach. Its an amazingly beautiful beach with a great view of the town and the ocean. Let alone the fun spent jumping waves is the tide pools you can find at the southern end of the beach. The kids love these spots as you can spend hours exploring muscle shells, small fish, am and even a star fish.
As always we cram alot of things into a very short time so while we were there we also did another drive down Hollywood Blvd., a tour through NBC studios (where somewhere Tom Cruise and Jay Leno were getting ready for the show.) a day at Knotts Berry Farm, a visit to Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in Beverly Hills and a service at the Mosaic Church to hear Erwin Mcmanus speak. Great time and the kids had a blast. I have a ton of pics I'm putting online so you can check out the trip and everything we did. Click HERE to see the pics!

Family, Fall, Flagstaff

So it's fall around through the Aspens and pines near the peaks to see the fall colors with our friends Joel, Monite and their kids (Justin seen in the bottom right of the climbing picture) Flagstaff is a very unique place as outside of all its ponderosa pines you can find many fall colors. On our hike near the peaks there were not only great colors but all kinds of other strange things around the forest (like piles of lava rocks, pine cones the size of softballs, engravings on most of the trees and strange whistle as the wind passed through the leaves at the top of the trees. What a very awesome place to see God's handiwork and spend a fun fall afternoon.

Summers Almost Over!

Believe it or not the summers almost over and here I am chillin in our hotel room, We wrapped up our first summer here in Flagstaff by actually heading out of town and spending the weekend at the Hyatt Regency downtown Phoenix (for $49 a night thanks to Hotwire.com!!) , riding the slides at Sunsplash water park, hitting the outlet stores in Happy Valley and having Ethan's birthday in the revolving restaurant 24 floors up. Of course it was a blazing 108 all weekend but we had a cool time getting away. School starts here on Thursday and the summer is over. I hope to get all the pictures of ou summer here in Flag on the site soon.

African Children's Choir (performers from

"American Idol Gives Back" )

comes to Flagstaff

Last night CCoF and Trinity Heights brought in the African Children's choir to perform a concert here in Flagstaff and I had the awesome opportunity to host the event. I had first seen the group, as did millions of others, on "American Idol Gives back" just a few weeks ago as they sang with several other well known performers to raise money for www.savethechildren.org The group performed an amazing show lasting over an hour including worship songs, some of their favorites and alot of energetic choreography. It was a privelege to watch them perform let alone share the stage with them. You can check out their site at www.africanchildrenschoir.com This is an very powerful and effective ministry changing children and the culture all over Africa.

Blogging in Baltimore

Last weekend I got home from an amazing trip to the Baltimore, Maryland where I spent almost four days with my college friend Dale and his family. After a few years of dating he decided to finally tie the knot with his fiance Kim. What an amazing place! It was great to meet Kim's family and visit the area let alone be at the wedding. I spent almost 9 hours total in the plane going back and forth, over 4 hours in the car and the first night at the airport making sure I was on time for my plane which left at 6 in the morning. The fun never stops. While traveling to and fro I started to do some blogging and realized that I am way behind and have alot to catch up on so Im writing the worlds longest blog to try and get up to speed with everything going on since our move to Flagstaff four months ago. (pictured: Dale and I on location of the wedding in the Severna Park, MD area)

My New Toys

So in the past few months I've managed to get two new toys that I spend alot of time playing with. One is my new Palm Treo. I can describe it in one word. No make that two. Insanely cool! Who would have thought you could take a a video camera, a phone, email, word, excel, publisher, a photo camera, text messaging, outlook calendar, internet service and all kinds of other bells and whistles and shove it all in a small device you could hold in palm of your hand and take anywhere you go?! If you havent seen one already just go and check them out. I'll warn you ahead of time though that they are addicting.

The other awesome toy is my new Martin acoustic guitar. As it is quoted in the Bible, " can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Well the answer is ... (other than Jesus) Yes something can. Straight from the Martin Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. This guitar has a great tone, and tuning and all natural wood finish for a great sound. Im actually using it in the studio right now on some new songs which is my next big news to share......

Back in the studio

After literally over 3 years I'm finally back in the studio working on CD #3. As of right now Im slowly approaching being 1/3 of the way done with the project. This CD has a whole new sound with alot of new creative approaches to the vocals and instrumentation. I'm excited about how far I have gotten and continue to work on the writing as I am combining some lyrics I've written over the past couple years and half that is being written along the way. Im working in a studio here in Flagstaff owned by one of the keyboardists on my worship team here at CCOF. Please pray for God to do amazing things as we continue on this project. We hope to be completed by late August, first of September.

No its not a rumor. It's true and something that my family and I are very very excited about. Effective February 5th I will be filling a new role as the Worship Pastor at Christ Church of Flagstaff. (For those who have no idea where that's at its 90 minutes north of where we are now in beautiful Northern Arizona!)
I wanted to say thank you to all the worship team, staff and congregation there who have already been flooding us with emails and messages encouraging us and helping us in this transition. We can tell already that we will have alot of great relationships and are excited about our new "family" there at C.C.O.F. ! We have been praying for an opportunity like this for a long time and are looking forward to serving there.
I also wanted to say thank you to those who have been supportive of us in our role at PCC through the difficult times and challenges. Its awesome to see how God works and answers prayers and its obvious that if you remain faithful to Him in all circumstances that He will be faithful and provide. (Two of my favorite verses that remind me daily of these two things are Psalm 77 and Psalm 40:1-3. Check them out!!) For all our other friends and family checking out this blog who arent familiar with CCOF check out their website in the works at www.ccof.net
We will keep you posted as things progress!!

Back in AZ
Well we are back home after a 14 day journey across the state of Michigan. It was awesome to visit my family in Buchanan, Kathys in Grand Rapids, my brother in Jackson and even our incredible visit with so many of our friends in south Detroit. Thank you Meadows family for having us over to your wonderful home and for the opportunity to have so many great friends over that we havent seen in two years!!! On top of that it was great to visit the old college group and friends there in Woodhaven. Great to see you guys!!! We were in Michigan for the whole two weeks and there was absolutely no snow... until... of course... the morning we left. It finally started. We boarded the plane in Detroit and it snowed like crazy. Just in time for us to leave. During our flights to and from on our vacation as we flew into Chicago, IL, South Bend, IN, Detroit, MI, St. Louis, MO, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, OK, and of course Phoenix there was nowhere with more scenic snow than the view over New Mexico as the mountains and terrain out the plane window. Ethan woke me up, "Dad look there's snow!" I looked out and there it was, snow all over and as far as you could see up into the Colorado area and even on the San Francisco peaks in Flagstaff out in the distance. We didnt get to ski or sled but it was pretty cool to see coming back. We had to come back to the southwest to get the snow. Who would have thought.

The Earnst Family Visits the

Gerald Ford Museum

Grand Rapids, MI

Top Row: Ethan and Corey Signing the Guestbook inside the Gerald Ford Museum

Second Row: Kathy Signing and the memorial wall

Third Row: Grandma Parker signing and Ethan putting out flowers

Fourth Row: Kathy being interviewed by Channel 13/ABC

Fifth Row: Kevin at Memorial, Kathys interview

Bottom: Corey and Kevin filmed while observing Memorial wall

While visiting family in the Grand Rapids area we had the opportunity to stop back by at one of our favorite museums and be a part of the Gerald Ford Memorial where he was burried today. After signing the guestbook in the lobby we went out to the curb and got picked to interviewed about our visit to the service and spent time observing the items left along the wall. ( a home recording of the interview will be on youtube soon).

Corey's Baptism in Buchanan, MI!!

Corey made the decision to become a Christian a couple months ago so on New Years Eve in front of my family, Kathy's family, friends from our old church in Detroit and my home church he gave his confession and was baptized. It was a little over twenty five years ago that my dad baptized me there so it was a great moment for all of us!!!