Greetings Friends and Family,

It has been nearly two months since our last update. Kirk and I have been busy, but that is no excuse to be silent about the stories of our lives. The stories that are our lives. Since March we have visited Florida, seeing the Atlantic Ocean on the other end of Highway 10 (after just two months earlier seeing the Pacific in CA). In Florida we stayed with Kirk's aunt and her husband, along with my mom and Bob, who drove down with us and Kirk's mom who flew up to the States to see us as her retirement trip. As you can imagine, putting two different families from three different cultures (Trini, Mid-western and Floridian) together under one roof for 5 days merited some stories!  We more than survived the trip - enjoyed most of it and learned lessons along the way.

Then we flew Kirk's mom up here to Chicago for a weekend view of our lives. Kirk took her up to his work place, while I sat in my second to last CMLC board meeting, and we met up later in the day to show her the city from the top of the John Hancock Observatory. Then we traveled to DeKalb after church on Sunday to hear the incredible sounds of the NIU Steel Band. Kinda funny how a Trini has to come to corn country IL to here her own native music. Nonetheless is was a great concert and time with Kirk's mom. She is so proud that we are doing so well here.

Kirk and I are still recovering from shock this week. No, we didn't get into any terrible accident or have any disaster happen to us...Kirk got is his Green Card - TODAY.

For those of you who have been following our story and praying for us, thank you. I was just praying on March 9th, the day we got email notice of his approval that Kirk would get his Green Card in time for him to go home to Trinidad for Christmas. Well, me of little faith...when we got the notice, I swore it had to be some kind of computer glitch. I wouldn't believe it until I saw...just like doubting Thomas, and here it is, just two days later in our mail box.

We are still in a state of shock, a government process that should have taken 6 months to a year, has arrived in less than 4 months! In fact we just got an update in mid February stating that our case expected to be approved in 300 days (which went up from 180, our original projections) and now in less that 30 days we have it in hand!

Greetings Friends and Family from me, who hasn't written for a long while. I am still getting used to this whole blog thing. Many of you I have called or emailed or even written a letter to (yes, I still do that) to keep in touch.

Kirk has done an excellent job keeping you all up to date. I am finally feeling back to myself again, after my terrible sinus infection which wiped me out for half of February. Work has been just as insane; we lost another teacher in the middle of the year. (CMLC doesn't have the best track record in that area, but all teachers who have left in the middle of the year have been due to personal emergencies of various kinds.) But since I have been through this so many times, I just had faith and knew God would take care of CMLC, and he has. I am taking it one day at a time to make it each day at work, but it does feel so good that we only have three months of school left...I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, what's next? Well you heard about our trip to Fuller. Even through the fog of my sinus infection, I enjoyed the place, the people and we already knew they had the programs I want - a Masters in Cross-cultural studies and a Masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). The only issues are I feel tied to AMBS (which we visited last weekend) and that having given so much to CMLC, I feel burnt out and have lost track of where my true passions really are. So I am in desperate need of a respite. Which God will be providing. Because of Kirk's new job (YAY! which he is still liking after the first week) and God's calling, we will be staying in Chicago until at least the end of this year. We really do enjoy our neighborhood and the city of Chicago.  

Hey, I have a real job now.  As much as I enjoyed staying at home with the cats, doing freelance web development work and making money through sales on eBay, it'll be good to get out of the apartment to go to work.  God knows me, I probably would've gone batty at an 8-4/9-5 job, so he provided me with a workplace with flexible hours like RTSG's up here in Illinois.  My new job is as a Java web-based programmer, working for a small development firm in Evanston, IL.  I hadn't used Java in a while, but that doesn't mean I'm a stranger to it, I completed my undergraduate final year project back in 2000 using Java Servlets which this job requires and I got an integral understanding of Java on the backend.  I enjoyed teaching the fundamentals of server-side web based OOP ever since.  This was the first job that I interviewed for, and was offered the position the following day.  I'm kinda passionate about it because the company is passionate about things which I am passionate about.  So I'm looking forward to working with them.  They use open source tools and methodologies, they're passionate about keeping their employees happy working 40 hour work weeks.  They use the Eclipse IDE, that should be enough for any open source programmer to get happy about.  I start tomorrow, and have to get up to speed on some new technology quickly, which has never been a problem for me. Now, we'll see if I'm this excited after a month.

So our cats know us very well, everytime they see the suitcase come out of the closet they know that one of us is leaving, or worse yet.. we're both leaving them.  Zoe bid her last desperate attempt to sneak into our suitcase tonight to come with us.  Nice try.  Tomorrow Sarah and I will be off to Los Angeles, with many things planned for our visit.  Firstly, Sarah is attending an education conference over the weekend, but we also get to spend time with a friend who recently moved there.  I get to see an ocean again, a real one, with salt water.  We're also hoping to meet up with a friend and colleague from Trinidad and his wife if they can make it down from San Diego.  Finally the other purpose of our trip is to discern is Fuller Seminary in Pasadena is a place that we could possibly move near for Sarah to enroll in seminary.  There are many activities planned, some fun, some we just have to do, but we'll see, probably Zoe and Carly get to come out to California with us in the future if we decide to move there.  The warm weather scores easy points for us to move there, but we're trying to be more objective than that.  Pray for our discernment process.

If you asked us two weeks ago what the plan was for 2006, we thought we had a pretty finite answer for what this new year would look like.  Of course, what else would you expect from Christians like ourselves who continually make plans in light our own limited vision.  Thankfully I would like to believe that we're getting better and more flexible to God's plan for our lives.  If only God would put nice crosswalk signs and stop signs all over the place as conviently as the city of Chicago, I'd have an idea where we're going. But even with all these signs I guess I still see people barrelling down one way streets, crossing where they shouldn't cross and going through stop signs.

Well even six months ago, no one would have even guessed that Sarah would be starting the new role at her workplace that she has begun this morning.  Yup, Sarah's now the co-principal at Chicago Mennonite Learning Center.  It's a little scary for us, but thought it through and it only makes sense that she do the job that she knows, and besides it's only for six months before we leave for AMBS in Indiana this summer.

Greetings from wintry Oak Park!

As we reflect on the year past, we marvel at God's amazing plan for our lives. The dawn of 2005 found us together in Illinois celebrating with the friends who introduced us. This was followed by our longest separation so far. For the first three months of the year, we maintained our relationship through phone calls, letters, email and all that wonderful stuff technology enables us to do in this age. Sarah visited Kirk in Trinidad over her Easter break, during which time Kirk had grand plans to ask Sarah to be his wife. All of these grand plans fell through, except the asking part, of course. Sarah said, “Yes!!!” as Kirk asked her at the end of a day when all plans to romantically pop the question collapsed.

We then started planning our wedding and figuring our exactly how we were going to get together, which is not all that obvious when you're living in two different countries. We decided to begin our new life together in the US, but were unable to set a definite wedding date, as the US government does not tell you how long your Fiancé visa process will take until you are half way through. On faith we planned a tentative date. Kirk came begged his boss to let him work off-site for five weeks to visit Sarah during May and June. It sounded like a long time, but we packed in three marriage counseling sessions, lots of wedding planning, an overnight trip to Indiana with Sarah's school, three weddings, including a trip to Canada in those five weeks and we were still both working! Those five weeks had been the longest we had been together, and we didn't seem to drive each other up a wall, thankfully normal life is not that busy! Sarah was still amazed to be married in the same year as her brother, Randy, and two of her closest friends.

Just this last weekend we had a sixty degree day.  Today I look out of the window and the white stuff from New York has followed us to Chicago.  It's a cool, day with wind and light snow here in Chicago... and snow it begins.

Here in Windham, NY on the Catskill mountains, the honeymooners experienced the first snowfall of the season, 5-9 inches of snow at the peak of the fall season.

Yes, we got married. Can you believe it? We're Mr. and Mrs. Lashley!  Really... we're married. For all those wondering why we hadn't updated our site in so long, we had an incredible wedding and honeymoon.  For anybody who ever got married before... time was not a luxury that you have before the wedding.  This first step for us was just amazing and I guess it will be something we have to write a chapter in our story of us, and not just a blog entry.  You can view the pictures of our wedding on Flickr.  Our photographer was amazing, he was what we'd call the amazing, unintrusive photographer. We didn't even see much of him during the wedding, but he managed to capture most of the action.