An artistic rendition of Andy.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Honeymooning in Lake Tahoe - Cali
An artistic rendition of Andy.
Friday, September 21, 2007
More Wedding Pictures!!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
As promised!

This me getting ready in the bridal room.

Me and my Daddy. One of the best moments together.

Four of the best friends a girl could have!

Everyone had fun that day :)

Andy always makes me smile, even when he's saying his vows!

Here we are taking communion for the first time as husband and wife.

Praying.
We have some catching up to do!
School has started up again. Andy has his last full time quarter this fall and in the winter he will finish up his undergrad with a part time quarter. Praise the Lord for Andy's job! This winter quarter Andy will be going for 8 credit hours. And, if he works full time for the physical plant, they will give tuition reimbursment for up to 8 credit hours. Perfect! The less we owe the bank the better.
Being married is wonderful. I don't think either of us have ever laughed so much. We enjoy taking care of each other, cooking, and spending nights watching the Back to the Future Triology. We're making a point to make time for "us". It's paying off :)
Chi Alpha started off with a bang! Lot's of new people, lots of fun, and a little bit of running around. It's fall quater, what did you expect? We've had a tailgate party, awesome dGroup hang outs, meaningful prayer times, and so far two sweet Ignites! We're having fun getting back into everything, connecting with the students, and loving the Lord.
Jesus is taking care of us. From everything from finances to time. He's keeping us close to Him and helping us learn to balance this new life of ours.
On more of a bummer note, I was slightly ill this week. Put me a bit behind in my Chi Alpha work, but I'm back in the office today taking another swing at things.
There are BEAUTIFUL pictures...but I don't have the cd with me right now. Hopefully we'll have XA pics, wedding pics, and Tahoe pics real soon.
Thank you to everyone who blessed us at our wedding. We sat in our cabin in California and cried as we opened our cards. We appreciate your kindness and your generocity. We also laughed and smiled as we opened all of our wonderful presents. We could never have expeced so much love. Thank you.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
We couldn't have made it without you. I hope you all can feel a part of what we are doing because you really are.
Thank you.
So to start off, I guess ill start out with something funny. So being a son-of-a-pilot, I never really got sick on airplane, except maybe on little Cessna's or piper cubs. But it seemed though as soon as we crossed the boarder flying into Mexico, it hit me, like a sack of Mexican jumping beans. I was light headed and couldn't hold it back.
It wasn't the best start to the trip, but it wasn't the work either.
The main goal while we were down there was to help facilitate a brand new Chi Alpha at the University of Guadalajara. There are a total of 11 separate campuses to the U of G, most of which are hours apart. Our main focus was as the Marketing and Finance campus called C.U.C.E.A. We spend the majority of our campus time at CUCEA.

Each Campus had its own crest, all significant in themselves. To the right is CUCEA's. The majority of the city is Catholic so there were many crosses around town and on businesses and signs but for the most part it was a formality rather than something meaningful.
The image at the bottom with the two lions and the tree is the symbol of the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. It was actually a full statue in the downtown.
The main ministry that we partnered with down in Guad, Mexico was one called "Engage Ministries". It is a ministry through the AG church that allows students that are still in college to experience full time mission work, while still gaining college credit. It was really a great thing because most people that go into missions need to be ordained and so forth so by that time they have a wife and 2 kids, and the passion for mission work might be gone or at least diminished.
From the students that we talked to, they loved being apart of ENGAGE because they learned that mission work (full-time) was nothing like they expected. Some students actually decide to not continue in the world mission field because of what they found while in the "trial-period". It was not a bad thing but rather a great way to experience and be shown what they are really working for, not necessarily the easiest life.
Well after moaping around for the first day, and having Heather ask me if there was anything she could do to help, I finally felt began to feel better and regained my strength.
We spend the majority of the first week in a daily routine. We would arrive at the Engage house by their bus, eat breakfast and then head out to campus.
It was a stretch for me because I don't speak any Spanish but Heather speaks it very well. For the first few days it was difficult to connect with any students that didn't speak English well. I played soccer with them and talked music but it wouldn't really get 'real'. Before I knew it we were done with our part of the campus ministry and we were off to other stages.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Mexico: Round Two
Shown to the right is the typical traffic in Guadalajara.
This was two girls on in the market begging for change. It was very sad to see this next to so many wealthy vendors.
Church on Sunday was definitely and experience. Well in the morning it was 3 hours of straight Spanish, no projector with words, no translator, just passionate Mexicans praising Jesus. It was great to see, but a little hard to participate.
Sunday night was similar, a little more upbeat and American (meaning American songs translated to Spanish) so it was better, but most of all it was great to see them loving it all.
On Monday we painted the ENGAGE office which took longer than expected because apparently we had the wrong paint (oops).The next day we went to the village (the outskirts of Guadalajara) and did ministry with the kids. This was my favorite day up until that point.
We got to play a ton with the kids, teach them some songs, have a Bible memory verse (all in Spanish, again I don't really understand it).
Afterward we gave them coloring books and candy and toys, they were so thankful!
One little six-year-old girl said that it was the first coloring book she had ever had. It was very hard to leave them.
The last ministry day (Wednesday) we prayer walked around 4 different campuses, none of which had we previously visited save CUCEA. This day started our harder than expected. I was feeling pretty sick at the point again so it was hard to gain the energy to walk and pray on the little food that I could hold.
We saw a lot of interesting things on the campuses including a mountain view in the Art and Arch.'s backyard, and some weird paintings on another campus. We finally came to the Law campus. At the end of the walk we came to this tree we saw something really cool about it.
As you can see the tree is busting through the cement barriers as it grow, the blocks continue to fall apart. The understanding that we felt was that our prayers and time there, along with the other teams, ministries, kids outreaches, church services and the like, were all feeding into the grow that God is doing in that part of Mexico (dubbed the 'black hole of Mexico' as far a Christianity). Even though at times it felt like only 10 days, or small prayers on campuses we knew nothing about or didn't speak the language, God was moving.
Jesus' love is growing in Mexico.
He kind of brought it all together in one short moment. It was just like Him.



