New picture of Israel

Check out this bathin' beauty!

Israel's recent picture!

Isn't she beautiful! She is such a delight. We have had a fun summer so far...we went to Josh's brother's wedding in Indiana last week and had a great time. And Israel did awesome on the plane! Seth and Laura's wedding really encouraged us in our relationship. Please pray for Josh and me to learn more about being married as parents.
Thank you so much for praying for our support. We have raised a bit more this summer but still have a long way to go. Please pray that God would show us the people He has chosen to join us in our ministry. If you have a Sunday school class or a small gruop of people you would like us to share our ministry with, please let us know! We went to a Sunday School class last week and it was a blessing!

Family Pictures

Hello everyone,
I am feeling better after a 2nd round of mastitis. Thank you so much for your prayers. I even felt good enough to go take some family pictures! Here are some shots of us with our family Brian, Candace, Ethan, Andrew and Kayla Lane (Josh's sister's family)...enjoy! (thanks Griffin Gibson for taking AWESOME pics.)

Meet Israel

Here are a few pictures to let you get to know our beautiful Israel Hope Irby.

The morning of her birth, less than 12 hours old. You have to love the little cap.



Our baby sucks, or loves to suck rather. She is always putting her hands in her mouth. This picture is from the first time we got Israel to lay in her bassinet at the hospital. I took it through the clear side of the her crib.



The happy mother looking beautiful in spite of lack of sleep and 15 hours of labor.



The new family getting ready to leave the hospital.



Israel's little feet and her ID tags. The hospital tagged her pretty soon after her birth just to make sure that we leave with the right child.



Israel's excited grandmom, to be called Nana, with her daughter and granddaughter.



Dropped off at our doorstep.



Finally in her crib at home, our beautiful little girl.



josh. taylor. israel.

The Peace of Israel

Israel Hope Irby
Born at 12:35am on May 10, 2006
7 lbs 15 oz, 20.5 inches



Taylor began with light labor at 10:15am on Tuesday, May 9th. On our way to Babies R' Us at 3pm to pick up our last piece of furniture for Israel's room we realized that we definitely were in labor and that we needed to get back home and be ready. Around 5pm the contractions started to become more painful and by 7:30pm we were heading to the hospital. When we arrived at Kennestone Hospital and had our first check, we were excited because Taylor was already at 6cm dialation and complete effacement. But, after very boldly enduring back labor for 3 more hours, we not any furthur along in the progression. One major problem presented itself: Israel's head was crooked and unless she turned we would be in for a C-Section. After much prayer and some strategic labor positioning Israel turned and was ready to be born.

After two days in the hospital recovering from labor and having Israel examined we are back home and getting settled in our new three person life. We love Israel and are so thankful that God has given her to us.


Josh, Taylor & Israel

The Story of Tech's Katrina Trip

written by Dustin Reed, Georgia Tech graduate student and vounteer with Crusade Atlanta.

I’d have to say that the Spring Break trip to Pass Christian this year was by far the most memorable Spring Break trip of my life. It was the most blessed college event that I have ever participated in.

God has been heavily teaching the Cru at Georgia Tech the importance of corporate prayer. We started, at the beginning of this semester, to have regular corporate prayer every Friday night. It is amazing! Without a doubt, it is the best night of the week for me, and pretty much everyone else who comes regularly (about 10-15 people) speaks similarly about the meeting. It is awesome to not be rushed in prayer; to sit, to kneel and to bow before the Almighty pleading for our campus, our city and our lost friends and lost family members. The Holy Spirit is truly there each week as we hope and pray that one day, as a Taiwanese student named Tony once prayed, people may say, “Truly, Georgia Tech is a place where God dwells!”

We began to pray for our Spring Break trip in early February (we went down from March 18th to the 24th). As we progressed in prayer, God really laid it upon our heart to use this event to reach lost students on our campus; so, we began to corporately pray that God would gather non-believers for our trip. We prayed that God would bring at least one person to faith as a result of the trip. Also, with our campus being an engineering school, we have difficultly getting substantial amounts of females to come to Cru conferences. In 2005 alone, we brought a total of 1 female to both Big Break and Christmas Conference combined. So we began to pray that God would gather females to join us on this trip. We prayed for unity among those who would go. We prayed for God to grant us favor in the eyes of our Student Government that we would be able to get funding for the trip. We prayed for the promotion of the trip – that the whole campus could hear about it, namely through a campus-wide e-mail. We prayed that God would give us large numbers to go with us. We prayed that God would bring many Christians in other ministries as well. Personally, I prayed that God would move the Christians on the trip to talk to the non-believers about faith and share the Gospel with them, for I feared a non-believer would go with us and never hear the Gospel from a believing member of our group.

And now here's what happened:

The numbers are unclear, but we had probably 8-10 non-believers attend the trip. We took a total of 78 people – the largest GT Crusade group to any event in GT Crusade history. Out of those 78, 24 were female. That’s 24 times the number of females we brought to Crusade conferences in all of 2005! We had complete unity on the trip. Everyone was so joyful, and there was no discord or dissention whatsoever. We got over $5,000 from our Student Government to cover registration fees and gas. We also received an additional $1,000 from our Housing Association to cover gas for the drivers. We also were able to raise $1,196 ourselves from selling the Katrina wristbands on campus. All of this money was given (in the form of Home Depot gift cards) to the residents of Pass Christian that we served. A campus wide e-mail went out to the entire campus, exactly as we had prayed for. About 50% of the people that came with us are not involved with Crusade in any fashion. All these things we prayed for and God, in His abundant mercy, gave us what we asked!

The greatest answered prayer was the fact that, to my knowledge, every non-believer who went with us was talked to multiple times, by multiple people, about faith and Jesus Christ. One girl has potentially accepted Christ, and as we got back to Atlanta at 6:15 on Friday evening – we still had our weekly prayer and she came! We prayed until past 10 pm thanking God for all the answered prayers and pleading again for the lost.

Hebrews says: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider hope we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as we see the Day approaching.” As we closed our prayer meeting out with these verses, God urged us to take His faithfulness shown to us on this trip and use it to propel us to finish out this year strong in corporate prayer as we continually meet together and mutually encourage one another by each other’s faith.

New Pregnant Picture

Enjoy the newest picture of our pregnancy. Taylor is 34 weeks pregnant in this picture, now she is almost 36 weeks...she underwent a "growth spurt" last week and is a little bigger. Don't know how much bigger she is going to get!!! :)