It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving dinner with a family from church.  There were 31 people there, with their extended family and another family from the church.  It was fun.  It was the first time I had actually seen a whole turkey cooked with stuffing.  With my family, the turkey always arrived at our house already carved.  I also have never had a semi-formal sit down Thanksgiving dinner.  We always had it for lunch and it was an informal, paper plate using, football watching event.  :-)  I'm not saying I prefer one over the other, it was just different.  :-) 


It also snowed ALL day yesterday, which was beautiful and inspired a couple of Christmas songs from me during our drive to our friends' house. :-) Not that it's great fun to drive in the snow, but it is easier than driving on ice, which our street has been covered in for a while now.  Tonight we're going out to dinner with some friends to a Japanese steak house, which should be fun.  

Bring on the Christmas season!  This is one of my favorite times of year, and I'm excited to be in our new home in a few weeks with two tubs of Christmas decorations we received as a wedding gift to deck out our place with!


God bless!

I Should Not Be Awake Right Now

Well, after a little less than 3 hours of sleep, Tim and I got up at 2 this morning to catch our 6 AM flight in Philadelphia to head back to Anchorage.  And with nothing else to do in the airport, and free internet access, why not blog!

We had an amazing time meeting the people from Hillside and really enjoyed spending time with them and getting to know them.  It was a little nerve racking though, until they finally voted us in yesterday because from talking to the preacher before we came, we were under the impression that it was pretty much a done deal, and when we got down there everyone was saying things like, "If you come...", "If you get the job..." and we were thinking, "If we don't, we'll be homeless and jobless!!"  But I guess they like us because the vote was 100% in our favor.  This is a great group of people with lots of potential for growth and just seems like a really good place to be.

We found a townhouse that we are really excited about.  It has an unfinished basement with a washer and dryer, the main level has a living room and eat-in kitchen, with a garbage disposal, which I am super excited about!  I haven't had one of those in over a year, and I will never take that for granted again!  I hate dumping the food out of the sink, and Tim hates the many times that I leave it in the sink for him to deal with. :-)  Then upstairs there's a bathroom and two bedrooms.  Another great thing about this place is that we get one of the few units with all white walls (the other places have pretty ugly wall paper) and we get to paint and decorate however we want without having to redo it whenever we move out.  They charge extra up front to cover the repainting fee.  My two biggest issues with renting is not always having a washer/dryer and not being able to paint the walls, and we get both!

Maybe Max will like the basement and choose to live down there...I'll probably have no such luck, but one can always hope.  ;-)

So, now we get to pack up all our things and make the lovely trek down the Alaska Highway and across the U.S.

We're about to board our plane, thanks for stopping by!

God bless. :-)

Let the Blogging Begin!

Ok, so I started this blog a couple of months ago, and nothing too exciting has really happened until now.  Tim got a new job as the Associate Minister at Hillside Christian Church in Reinholds, Pennsylvania.  This is a step of faith for us and the church because they only have about 120-ish members, and financially it will be a stretch for them.  Therefore, we are going in faith that God will bless this ministry, grow the church and allow them to comfortably support us.  I will need to find a full-time job with benefits because the church cannot provide health insurance for us at this time.


The physical address of the church building is Reinholds, which is a very small town, which is next to a slightly bigger small town called Sinking Spring, which is where we are going to be looking for a place to live.  Sinking Spring is about 20 minutes from Reading, which is a decent size place that has all the necessities: Walmart, Chili's, Kohl's, Chick-Fil-A, etc.  :-)


Tim and I have quite a hectic schedule from now until we leave:
We fly out late tonight (actually early tomorrow morning) to go visit the congregation, look for places to live, and Tim is going to preach on Sunday and they will vote us in.  Saturday night they are having a time for the youth group to put Tim on the spot and ask him questions, and we're going to just hang out and play games and get to know them.  We come back to Anchorage on Monday afternoon, the moving truck comes Tuesday and we are loading up all our belongings, and the company is driving off with our stuff on Wednesday morning.  Our last day here is November 28th, with Tim preaching that day, then we leave early on the morning of the 29th.  So yes, that means we will be without our bed, dishes, appliances (besides the fridge) for 4 days.  (And then at least a week once we get to Pennsylvania because the moving company takes a while to get there).


So on the 29th, Tim, Evil Cat Max, and I will load up and make our way down the Alaska highway.  (Maybe another road trip video opportunity??? ;-P)  Nicole and Jerry were kind enough to offer to drive Tim's car for us, so they are flying up this weekend to get his car and drive it back down.  We've already made hotel reservations along the way because we used our reward points from our credit card to get them all for free.  Hopefully we can stay on schedule and won't run into any bad weather...the roads are supposed to be clear and plowed but who knows if we'll have snow storms or anything that could hinder our travel.  We're going to be driving really long days in order to get where we want to be on time.  We're taking a couple of side trips on our way to Pennsylvania.  First we're going to Texas to visit my family for a few days.  Jason and Melody are coming up to Carrollton the weekend we're there, so that will be a lot of fun.  It will be the first time the four of us will be together as married couples! :-)
After a few days in Texas, we're heading up to Tennessee to visit John and Melissa and baby Rachel, who we haven't had the chance to meet yet, so that will be fun too!


We are sad to leave the people here in Anchorage because we've made some good friends, and will miss everyone, but we are excited that God has called us to this church, and think it will be a good place to settle in for a while.


I don't know how much internet access and time I'll have on our trip, but I will try to update this blog as much as I can while we're driving.


On a totally unrelated note, for our young adult small group that we've been hosting, we are about to finish a book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  I HIGHLY recommend it!  It is very convicting, challenging, and inspiring!  You should read it!