Thank You Pastor Shaun and Jodi Matako!

Well...it has been a great five years that Pastor Shaun and Jodi Matako have spent with us in Worland, Wyoming at First Baptist. We will truly miss Shaun and Jodi as they depart from Worland, and return to Ohio.

I am very fortunate and thankful that I have had the privilege to work side-by-side with Shaun and Jodi in ministry, and that my wife, Sandra, has had the opportunity to work with Jodi in children's ministry. We were and still are truly blessed by them. We love you, and thank you for all that you did in our church, our community, and our lives, all in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I know that we are deeply saddened by the fact that Shaun and Jodi had to leave Worland, but I know that the Lord has new things in store for them. They are leaving Worland in tremendous standing. I venture to imagine that the Lord is already saying, "Well done faithful servants," about Shaun and Jodi's work in Worland.

Shaun, we love you like a brother, and Jodi like a sister. Please keep in touch. We would love to see you again in the future. I do know this...we will see you Heaven!

Okay Shaun.....and Jodi you are a part of this too! Thanks for the following and then some:

1) Your faithfulness to Christ.

2) Teaching and mentoring me about Christ.

3) Your support of Worship Ministries.

4) All that you did to help us to grow in God's Word.

5) Your support of all ministries.

6) Your support of the Worland community and it's families.

7) Your involvement with youth sports of all ages.

8) Football! Football! Football!

9) A better appreciation of Ohio State Buckeyes.

10) Baseball!

11) The Warriors!

12) Announcing!

13) The chain gang!

14) Football games in person or at your house!

15) Great Football FOOD while following the game!

16) Fantasy Football!....well, "I" have good memories anyway;-)

17) Laughing so hard (especially about inside jokes-i.e. "shrapnel") that I thought my head and gut were going to explode.

18) Seeing you laugh so hard you turn purple!

19) Making fun of my VW Bug, Rusty.

20) Offering me a can opener.

21) The birthday EXPLOSION!

22)............The list could go on and on!

Thank you, my brother and friend. Thank you, my sister Jodi. We love you guys. You will always have a special place in our hearts. Until we meet again. So long. My God richly bless you. You will be in our prayers.

From my family to yours,

Jeff, Sandra, Caleb, Jacob, and Joshua Garza

Thankfulness in a Septic Situation!

Praise God that it turned out not as bad as we had originally thought. The first prognosis was that our septic tank went bad with it's baffles and that our whole leach field would have to be replaced. My wife and I immediately started praying. This can be a huge financial burden on anyone.

I am so thankful for my neighbors Ed and Janine Barnes. Ed suggested that he take his back-hoe and help me dig down to the leach pipe at the septic tank and see if we could find the problem. After digging down, we discovered that right at the septic tank, an iron pipe had broken and caused a blockage before reaching the leach field, at what looks to have saved thousands of dollars $$$ by finding the problem! Thank you Ed and also to your boy, Ben.

After getting our tank pumped, I am also thankful for Jeremy Carver, for being available to come out and help recover and fix our problem, including fixing a new baffle for the tank. He is a very hard worker and is very good at what he does as a plumber! He is very highly recommended in my book!

Thank you God for taking care of us. This situation could have been a whole lot worse. Jeremy told me that this was a blessing in disguise by catching it the way that we did. It wasn't luck, chance, or coincidence. I believe that God had His hand in this dilemma. Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness. I trust in You!

Blessed Easter!

I pray that all of you had a wonderful and blessed Easter to celebrate our Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. At First Baptist Church of Worland, we were able to have a wonderful Good Friday service with a time of intimate worship, communion, and message. Of course on Easter Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ! He is risen! He has risen indeed!

I am so thankful that my family and I were able to spend time in celebration of Easter with both my wife Sandra's family here in Wyoming, and my visiting family from Idaho. We not only got to worship together, but we were able to have some fun activities together. Here are some of the things that I am thankful that we could do:

1) Brunch at the Bennett Ranch- (Sandra's folk's)

2) Easter Egg Hunt for all the little kids- ( I love hiding all of eggs...This year some of us were eating the eggs as we were hiding them...and we were losing count of them!)

3) Of course we had to keep our tradition going at the Garza house by putting together a scavenger hunt to find the Easter baskets. My little Josh never let's us get through an Easter without the tradition.

4) I was able to spend some time with my mother and her husband Larry. A highlight was introducing them to Butch's Place. It was great food!

5) I was thankful that I was able to take Monday and Tuesday off from my day job, teaching at the Wyoming Boys' School. With that time I was able to spend some more time with Mom and Larry. We worked on projects around the house. Larry likes to keep himself busy...and he kept me busy catching up on household odds and ins.

All-in-all it was a great Easter. Even with the family fun, I'm glad that we were able to keep Christ as the center and focus of the Easter weekend. I pray that you were able to do the same.