YEAH! We made it to our First Anniversary! Thank you to all who remembered and special thanks to all who remembered AND sent us a card or called!! We felt loved by all the phone calls and cards we received. So what did we do? Well, we loved our honeymoon spot so much, we returned to our beloved Bed and Breakfast in the Catskill mountains of New York for the weekend. We oooed and aawwed over the amazing fall colors and got much rest in our quiet Lavender Thyme room.  It was a wonderful, restful weekend away.

We are settled now into our Evanston apartment and our amazing Living Water Community Church. We see people from church at least every other day, if not every day. Kirk rides his bike the mile to work everyday and I often walk or ride my bike to my various volunteer spots. I love volunteering a Ten Thousand Villages, which I only do every other week for 4 hrs. I also love teaching my Spanish class at church. Kirk and I both help with the after school program at church on Wednesdays as well. My class in Indiana is going well, the drive is a bit tiring, but worth the chance to see some friends this semester. As you can tell, my free time has filled up!

I find myself more than a little appauled this morning to find myself lumped in with those who try to appease the Nazi's as someone who opposes Bush's infantile war on foreign soil. According to Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who chooses to also use the opportunity to take a blow at Winston Churchill, this war on "Islamic Fascism" will not be finished until we name the enemy. I'm confused, who is the enemy again?  Who are the Nazis today? What's an Islamic fascist? What does Islam have to do with terrorism? Why use buzzwords from the United States' days of segregation and oppression such as "fascism" and "nazi" to describe a war that has nothing to do with terrorists [anymore]. People equate 9-11 with the current 'war on terrorism'?  How many of the terrorists came from Iraq?  How many of them were tools of the Iraqi regime or people? This sort of revisionist history taking place before my very eyes is getting me more and more upset.

Thank you to all of you have been praying for Kirk and me. God has be so good to us. Many of you know about Kirk's struggle here in the US and the lack of community he has felt. God has answered our prayers! God has led us to a church community that has in just a month completely embraced us. Over the last month, God has led us on a path to dive into this church and community, which is Living Water Community Church in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the northside of Chicago. God has also called us to move much closer to this community! Kirk's work happens to be 3 miles from the church, and we have found an apartment in Evanston between his work and church. We are moving in THIS Saturday! (Aug. 26). 

For many of you this might come as a surprise. What about Fuller and California? God has called us to Fuller as well, we just don't know when. Our thought right now is that I would begin next fall. I have been accepted! YAY! We plan to take a month to go to Trinidad next summer and another month to do full time missions before we move. God's refreshing living water is raining down on us, after a dry year...amen! 

Kirk, Sarah and friends...having fun swing dancing at Chicago's Summer Dance on Sarah's birthday!

Wow! A big thank you to all who made my birthday this past weekend an amazing celebration...mostly a "words are not enough" THANK YOU to my wonderful, loving husband whose celebration of me brought me to tears again and again. On Friday, I enjoyed eating with friends all day long ending with swing dancing at Chicago's free Summer Dance Fest! Saturday we watched the cool Venetian nights boats parade with fun lights and dancers on nearly every boat (getting a theme here) and Kirk had a surprise ending to this weekend long celebration with once again a romantic cruise on the unforgettable Odyssey! We enjoyed memories from our first date as we dinned and danced the night away...just the two of us!

This has also been a celebration of the end of my five years of service at Chicago Mennonite Learning Center. Please keep CMLC in your prayers as they go through times of transition and need of teachers and funds. See www.chicagomennonite.org if you want to learn more about the ministry I served as an administrator for five years.

Whew, the end of my last CMLC school year was a huge whirlwind! Graduation was not as emotional as I had thought. I wasn't as attached to this graduating class as much as others in the past, but the good-bye chapel with a wonderful display of gratitude from the parents and my last chapel on our last half day proved to be the most emotional points of my departure.

Isn't it funny how God takes our greatest weaknesses - my dealing with parents when I first came to CMLC, and turns them around into our greatest strengths - I had two parents in particular who expresses such gratitude for me giving them opportunities to use their gifts and become leaders. As I venture into Fuller, God has tugged my heart to learn how to grow native leaders and do their Leadership concentration and here I am at CMLC already being used to do just that. God revealed to me the power of being a good administrator and how you can really have a positive effect on people's lives.

I was also really uplifted by my secretary. Before she went on vacation, she told  me how wonderful it was to have worked with me - and Gina is a woman of few words. Another co-worker took me out for lunch on my last consecutive day of work, which also made me feel appreciated. I have a few days left at CMLC where I will go in a finish up organizing files. Splitting my job up into 5 people's jobs is much harder than handing it over to one person. Nonetheless, all will get done and my last official day is July 31st, but of course I will be on vacation then.

Hey peoples! I've been very deliquent in making updates to this site recently. Although such could be excepted when I started working. So I'll lead with that in a few short blog entries before I head out to lunch, to make up for the lack of information...

I've been working for abot 4 months now for Parity in Evanston.  It's a great place to work.  I passed my three month evaluation, and I'm now a full time employee.  It took me a little while to figure out the best way to get to work, taking the 'El' initially until the construction and slow zones along the Purple line got the better of me, and I started using the Northbound Metra trains.  So now my commute to work is a little under an hour.  I can handle that.  Work is great.  I love this job.  I get to program in any language that gets the job done, which so far has been lots of Java, XUL, PHP and Python.  The business is really laid back.  For anyone who was wondering how I do in a 9-5 job, I've been managing pretty well - Getting all my work done during working hours.  The people here are also great.  I haven't seen the guy who I share an office with much, as he works from home and I've only seen him on days when there are no games since the World Cup started.  Don't get me wrong, he's a great programmer, he reminds me of myself in my RTSG days.  He's the guy who keeps the ship moving, and I guess he gives his best hours to the job.  I've found my way to give the best at work, while still keeping a healthy balance for my personal and family life.

Well for those expecting the update to include 'little' Sarahs and 'little' Kirks, I'll set the record straight right now, we're waiting at least another year to start trying... that's at least. This last weekend, I got the Monday off to make it a great 4-day fourth of July weekend.  Sarah and I took off to a B&B in Michigan, where we spent the weekend unwinding, cheering for Portugal as they put an end to England's World Cup campaign and sitting in shock as Henri showed Brazil the door.  We travelled over South Haven, Douglas and Saugatauk.  We rode along the Kal-Haven trail. In case you're wondering... we have started cycling as oft as we can.  Bike trails are the best though because we've gotten tired quite quickly of cycling in the city, where drivers have no patience for us of the two wheeled ilk.  We enjoyed many a romantic dinner, and satisfying lunch, and all in all we were happy for this weekend away by ourselves in Michigan.  Sarah's off now... and I'll let her tell you about that herself.

I guess my whole problem again is expectations. I excepted to find community at a church that professes to be a 'welcoming church' and stresses 'community' in their regular services.  Although we've made some friends at LMC while we were attendees, it was a struggle and I found myself somehow only able to connect with those other International people at the church.  I remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the issues I raised with the church.  I should say my problem again is expectations.  I believe strongly in conflict resolution, and I thought this was a strong point of the faith of the church community.  Basically all the advice I was given, however politely, was to seek community outside of the church and see how bad it is outside there, and that the community within the church wasn't all that bad.  You see I get that already about the United States... I expect it.  I just don't get it about the church, who should hold themselves to a higher standard.