Macedonia Team Meeting & Moving

Ryan, Matt, Summer, Wes, and I all crammed into my little Honda Accord a couple of weekends ago and road-tripped our way to Durham for our second and last Macedonia team meeting.  Our entire team was there this time and we were able to Skype with Brian, the missionary from The Summit who lives in Macedonia that we will be working with.

Our meeting really got us excited about going!!  As it turns out, the football camp that had started out as an afterthought since we just happened to have three former football players on the team has turned into one of the main parts of the trip.  It's awesome to see how God has gifted Ryan, Matt and Wes with their football abilities not only to provide them with a college scholarship, their education, and a platform to be a Christian example among their teammates, but also how they are able to now use that God-given ability to minister to people in a huge way across the world! Just when they thought that football chapter of their lives had come to an end... :)

Initially we were supposed to work on a project with the Red Cross in the mornings and then do the football camp and English classes in the afternoons.  But once Brian started talking with the Red Cross Director, who has lifeguards stationed at all of the beaches in Ohrid, about us coming, the director actually recommended having the Red Cross lifeguards block off their main beach so that we could conduct the football camp all day!  Brian mentioned that one of the biggest ways mission teams can help their ministry is to do things that bring in lots of people, so we hope this will do that.  So exciting!!

It sounds like there may be a bigger turn-out for the football camp than we initially thought, so since we may be doing it all day, some of us girls may even help some and then we will probably utilize the opportunity of having so many people in one place to conduct informal mini-English sessions every couple of hours on the side, encouraging the people we meet to meet up with us later in the evening at the coffee shop for more formal English classes.

The Red Cross does have a project that we can still work on, so we may have a couple people go and work on that for a couple hours at a time.  It sounds like there will be a lot for us to do!  In addition to the football camp, English classes, and Red Cross project, we hope to be able to minister to and encourage Brian and Mandy and their family as well. They have two little kids, so maybe Summer and I can babysit one night so they can have a date night or something. :)

While our whole team was together, we were able to get a group picture!  Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to leave for Macedonia in 23 days!

On another note, we are finally moving!  We found an awesome condo in Dunwoody, right between Ryan's office in Buckhead and mine in Alpharetta (we'll both have about 15 minute commutes) and moving day is set for Saturday! woohooo!!!!  We found it a couple months ago, but it was not available until July, so we have just been waiting until we were able to move in.  We will definitely miss Buford and being close to family and close friends, but it will be nice to gain two more hours back in our day and have more time together, be able to actually cook dinner every night again... ahh, can't wait! God is good - it amazes me how He constantly provides all of our needs! :)

Going to Охрид, Македонија

   ...or in English, that's Ohrid, Macedonia.

Ryan and I will be heading there on July 22nd on a mission trip with a team of ten people from our church, The Summit Church, in Durham.  We are SO excited to be a part of this team!

While Ryan and I from early in our marriage have tried to make it a priority to constantly recognize and serve in the mission field that God has placed us in (our friends and family, our work places, our community, etc...), we have also prepared ourselves for a time when God might open the door to an opportunity for us to serve Him and share God's love and His word with others someplace away from home.  As Americans, we have been so blessed with so many freedoms and luxuries in life that we take for granted every day.  It is easy to forget that there are people groups around the world that do not have "churches on every street corner" or people who have a relationship with Christ and can share God's love and His hope and truth with them or small groups to meet with to study God's word and gain encouragement from.

So, when this opportunity came up for us to travel to the town of Ohrid, Macedonia to work with a family that lives and serves there as permanent missionaries, we spent a couple weeks praying and seeking God's direction on this opportunity and ultimately felt that He was opening the door for us to go.

We hesitated at first to go on a mission trip through the Summit, only because having just moved back to the Atlanta area, we thought maybe we should wait until we found a church here before going on a mission trip.  But we LOVED our church in Durham - it's heart for missions and taking the gospel around the country and around the world is contagious.  It seemed that every few weeks we as a congregation were praying over families who were leaving jobs and families to uproot and move their young families overseas into full-time mission work to plant churches.  The Summit has a goal to plant 1,000 churches in 40 years around the world in areas where the church is needed most.  Our church has sent many missionaries to closed countries, to U.S. cities...all over.  And while they are very focused on "sending", they are just as focused, if not more, on serving the Raleigh/Durham community.  We just felt so blessed to be a part of that church and our small group for the past two and a half years, so although we no longer live there, we are extremely excited to be going with The Summit. 

Secondly, we were hesitant because we didn't want to serve on a mission team with people we would never see or keep in touch with afterward since we just moved away from RDU.  However, my brother Matt, his roommate Wes (both attended the Summit with us), and a friend Summer (from Buford) are all a part of our team going to Macedonia, so we're also super excited about serving alongside each of them. On a side note...during our time in Durham, I had spent months praying for Matt to recognize his need for God's guidance in his life as it was his nature to always be in control and have total dependence on himself rather than be able to depend and trust God with his life. And after months and months of praying and feeling discouraged that God was not doing anything, Matt shared with Ryan and I that God had been working in his life over the past few months (those same months I had been praying!), had been humbling him and showing him his need for total dependence on the Lord to take and direct his life (exactly what I had been praying for!).  Over the past year, it has been amazing to see the way that Matt's life and heart have changed as he completely seeks after the Lord's will for his life.  Together, Matt and Wes, along with their friend and teammate Adam, pursued their walks with the Lord and spent time in Bible study with Ryan on a weekly basis until we moved.  After we moved back to Georgia, Matt is actually the one who found out about this mission opportunity to Macedonia, pursued more information on it, signed up for it, and then asked us if we would be interested in going.

Another kinda cool story...one day right before the application deadline when Ryan and I were praying and seeking whether or not God had us going as part of this team to Macedonia or not, we were reading through Acts together and came across this passage:

"...During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.'  After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them".  Acts 16:9-10 

Crazy, huh?  We didn't take this as a "sign" or base our decision off of just this passage, but it was pretty cool reading this as we were trying to make a decision.  

So now that I've given you the "how" and "why" of us going, let me give you a little background on where we're going, who we'll be working with, and what we'll be doing there...

Macedonia is a small country north of Greece, surrounded by Albania, Kosovo, and Bulgaria on it's other sides.  It's part of the former Yugoslavia and has only been independent from a 500-year Turkish rule since 1991.  Ohrid, the town we're going to is in the southwest corner of Macedonia, near Albania and is made up mostly of Macedonians, but also many Albanians.  At one point centuries ago, Ohrid was actually known for its many churches (Paul traveled through this area on two of his missionary journeys when the early church was established...how cool is that??).  A family from The Summit has been living in Ohrid as full time missionaries through the IMB (International Mission Board) for the last several years trying to build relationships with the people there and have been preparing to plant a church there.  They have established a coffee shop where they talk with people and provide Christian reading materials in the Macedonian language.  Several have become believers in Christ and have been meeting with Brian and Mandy and their team for Bible Study and from what we understand, they are in a position to launch the church very soon.

As the Macedonian people are very interested in and curious about American culture, our team will be spending the mornings working on a project (project specifics TBD) with the Red Cross and will spend our afternoons teaching English workshops while Ryan, Matt, and Wes head up an American football camp with our team leader Doug and Brian, the missionary who is making all the arrangements and plans for our team.

I can't say enough how excited we are to be going to Macedonia!!!  As we plan, pack, and prepare for this trip, we would so appreciate your prayers!  Please be praying for Brian and Mandy and the group of believers that they have been meeting with and for the church that is soon to be planted in Ohrid.  Please pray for our team - we will be traveling to Durham and Wes will be flying in from Texas this weekend to meet with the rest of our team and talk with Brian over Skype.  Please also pray that God would prepare our hearts to be His servants during the week of July 22-31 and that God would do awesome things in Macedonia through our team.

Introducing "Duke"

We want a dog.  Like real bad.  But the timing just isn't right...we're living in a basement, we're gone all day, we're going to be in a rental living situation for the next year with no yard... 

So instead of getting a puppy, we satisfied our puppy fix by going in with TJ and Jamie to get a puppy for Matt for graduation. 

Meet "Duke".

We have all grown quite attached and Matt has become quite the proud parent.

Ryan and I found out about the puppy from a friend whose aunt and uncle had a litter...in Florida. Since we couldn't have a dog, I mentioned it to TJ since the farm was not far from Gainesville (FL).  Now isn't the best time for him to have a dog either (with a full time summer job and then another semester left of school), so we talked about maybe getting it for Matt for graduation. TJ went to see the dog, of course couldn't turn down his little puppy eyes, so with a week left of school, he took him home with him.  In that week TJ got pretty attached and wanted to keep him, but in reality, he knew Matt would have more time to spend with him, so he decided to give up the pup so we could all give him to Matt as a graduation gift.  

He brought him home that weekend, handed him off to me and Ryan, and we drove him up to Durham to Matt.

TJ saying bye to Duke. 

 That baby just laid on my lap or at my feet the entire 5 hour drive.  He is sooo sweet and has such a good personality!  We drove straight to Matt's track meet and the little guy sat through the rain and watched Matt run before getting to meet his new "dad".  

check out the cow-lick on his tail!

He cheered Matt on in his race

Matt got to meet "Duke" after he ran his prelims

On Saturday, Duke sat through another day at the track meet.  Instead of rain, we got heat...he tried staying cool by sleeping under the shade of the bleacher. 

Isn't he cute??  I want a puppy!

Matt started working with him right away on sitting, staying, fetching, going outside to pee...

I think he likes his graduation gift.  He was just lucky that we were needing a puppy fix ourselves, but couldn't have one of our own. ;)

A blog post...what?

Well heeeey there! It's been a while...

We're clearly not "all about our North Carolina life" anymore.  It's clearly no longer football season.  And I've clearly abandoned our blog...which is clearly in dire need of a makeover!

But I just thought I'd pop in and give a lil' Georgia update and maybe catch up a tad.

In short...life is good.  We've gotten settled into our "terrace level suite" as we like to refer to our basement lodgings at the in-laws house.  We are soo so thankful that they have let us stay with them so long while we sold our house and have tried to find a place to live in Atlanta.  Thankfully the selling the house part was easier than deciding on a place to live here...imagine that (and Praise God)!  We have at least narrowed our choices down to a couple of options and should hopefully be getting moved into something soon.

Ryan is liking his job at JLL, but he stays really busy and gone a lot, partly due to his outrageous commute everyday.  I started working recently for a company called Roam Atlanta (you can check that out at www.roamatlanta.com ) in Alpharetta and also have about a 50 minute commute each way.  So we are definitely anxious to move closer.  I am really liking my new job a lot though!  It has given me a great opportunity to meet all kinds of interesting people...mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners.  Every day is interesting and I love all of the people I work with and get to talk to every day. 

Other than the major updates (living and job situations), we have stayed busy lately with weddings of a couple of our good friends... Ryan's roommate from college got married in Pittsburgh, so we had a miniature Duke reunion with a lot of friends up there, and then one of my best friends from high school and college, Breanne, got married a couple of weekends later.  Between bachelor/bachelorette parties, showers, rehearsals, rehearsal dinners, and actual weddings, we got to spend a lot of time with friends and had a lot of fun reconnecting and catching up with people we've missed over the last couple of years.

As for other things going on...TJ is home for the summer, getting to experience an actual summer break for the first time in years.  The same goes for Matt now that football is over too.  He is still at Duke finishing up his one and only track season, then he'll be joining TJ on his first ever true summer break as well.  Jamie is finishing up her freshman year at UGA and will also be heading home after finals.  It's crazy that all four of us will be home this summer! 

Ryan and I made it to Duke last weekend to watch Matt run in the ACC Track Championships that were hosted by Duke.  It was so fun to see Matt run!  The last track meet he ran in was his senior year of high school.  He won state in the 200m and was 1st runner up in the 100m his senior year and I was on a plane headed to New Zealand for my study abroad and missed it!  Now that his football career is over, this was his first spring free of football workouts and spring practices, so for fun, he decided to squeeze in a track season after four years of not running just to see how he would do.  He was hindered for most of the season by a pulled hamstring, but he still did well in the ACC Championships and Duke was really excited to have him on their sprint team this spring.

Day 1 of prelims was nasty and rainy out, but he won his heat in the 400m and got 2nd place overall.

Matt ran in the finals on Saturday and placed 7th in the ACC in the 400m. 

We stayed with our good friends, the Densmores, for the weekend and got to celebrate Easter weekend with them.  I helped Marnie put together the Easter baskets after Caden (4) and Asher (13 mos.) went to bed and didn't realize until the next morning that one of them had been for us.  Ha, Marnie and her slyness! We did enjoy that basket of candy on the ride home though!

It was so fun getting to spend some time with their sweet kids too.  Caden and Asher are seriously two of the cutest and funniest kids I've ever been around. 

Just look at Asher.  Those eyes!  And couldn't you just eat his cheeks??

And that Caden...he holds a special place in our hearts.  He can be really shy around people and take a while to warm up.  But he became comfortable around us early on in our friendship with the Densmores and rarely gets shy around us.  Even after months of living in Georgia, he was still excited to see us and acted just like we had never left.  Marnie said that when we were driving up, he was asking when we were going to get there.  :)  I just love him!  He's so funny too...the second I pull my camera out, he gets camera-shy and tries to hide from the camera.  So I try to catch him when he doesn't realize I'm trying to take a picture of him. 

And on a side note...this kid is a trooper.  He sat through two days of the track meet, including Friday in the rain... and apparently runs around his house with a baton and hurdles these days.  ;)

But once this weekend, just out of the blue, he turned around and said, "hey, take a picture of me running" and then just took off running down the sidewalk.  haha! 

After Marnie explained that if he would let me take his picture, he could see them on the computer later, he finally warmed up to the camera.  For the first time ever!  His big ole' personality completely came out of his camera-shy shell and gave me some goofball Caden poses. :)

Ha, Charlie told him to do a "hang ten", but he got stuck on the "hook 'em horns"...

but then he got it! :)

and a "real ten"

 Cute, cute, cute!  We miss you guys...and all of our other Durham friends!!!

Welcome to the Peach State!

Well, we're here!

And as usual, it takes me a while to get around to updating the blog, but we've been back in Buford, GA for a full week now.  And I will finally say it.  "It feels good to be 'home'".  Maybe it's because it's Christmas time.   Maybe it's because we haven't been away from Durham for too long yet.  Maybe it's because it's only been a week since we've seen all of our Durham friends, co-workers, and been to the Summit church, but so far, it does feel good to be here.

I know I alluded to it being hard to leave even though we were moving "home", but it was actually really hard for me.  Close to awful, actually.  That last week in Durham was just sad.  It was sad because it was such a great week filled with all of our favorite things that it made it just that much harder to leave.  The last day we were there was Sunday and I literally was on the verge of tears the entire day.  It started with the first song at the beginning of the church service and I finally did burst out in tears when we bumped into some of our friends from our small group on the way out.  We stopped by our friends' Adam and Melissa's house for a little bit that afternoon, then had Matt, Wes and Adam over for a steak dinner Sunday night - "the last supper" we called it.  boo. hoo.

Anyways, even though we were headed home, I just dreaded it.  Surprising, isn't it?  I always thought I wanted to live back in Georgia eventually, so why was it so hard to move back?  I think because God blessed us tremendously during our two and a half years in Durham with amazing friends who became our family while we were there, with an incredible church that is serving that community in awesome ways, and just surrounded us by great people that were SO hard to leave.  Not only did He provide for us in so many ways, but He also taught us so much while we were there.  If we stay in Georgia for the rest of our lives, I'll always be thankful for the two and a half years we had in Durham.  I think being away from home was the best thing for us and for the start of our marriage.  We really learned so much these last couple of years and have learned to depend on each other and fully rely on God for everything.  And those lessons have been priceless.

We got a late start headed south last Monday, and didn't get here until that night.  But ever since our arrival, it has just been nice to be home.  We unpacked and visited with Ryan's parents on Tuesday and ran some errands at the mall for things Ryan needed to start his job.  He started working on Wednesday, so I've been on my own.  I thought having the days to myself, being alone and without a job to keep me busy right away, would be the worst thing since I was away from everything I had just left behind, but I have actually stayed really busy and friends have just so warmly welcomed us back.  Some things that have kept me busy and also helped the transition tremendously over the past week have been:

• Going to lunch on Wednesday (Ryan's first day of work) with two of my best friends from childhood, Erin and Julie.
• Taking an afternoon on Thursday to visit the old college campus and have lunch with Jamie in Athens...and check out her dorm, buy a new "UGA Alumni" car decal for my car, and get frozen yogurt with her and Jennica.    
• Christmas errands and Cheesecake Factory with my mom and her best friend, Lisa.
• Making it to a Friday night Buford football game.  They're still good - playing in the state championship on Friday!
• Going to my good friend Susan's baby shower for the twins that we have prayed for and waited for with Susan and Chris for years. 
• Watching the SEC Championship game with good friends (and Auburn grads), Julie and Rob.  {Ryan has had his heart set on a German Shepherd for two years now from being around their dog, Bo.  Being with them Saturday only made it worse!}
• Decorating the Wood's Christmas tree by the fire...ahh, love it!
• Going to church at Blackshear Place and seeing so many family friends
• Decorating my parents' Christmas tree and hanging the stockings on the fireplace
• and of course, some Christmas shopping at the good ole' Mall of Georgia!

And this weekend, we have - well, just on Friday alone, we have the Buford State Championship game at the Georgia Dome, then Ryan's company Christmas party (any advice on what I should wear for the "South Beach Chick" attire??), followed by a tacky Christmas sweater party with some friends in Atlanta we haven't seen in a long time.  Then on Saturday, we have an engagement party for one of my best friends, Breanne and her fiance Knox.  ...so a lot going on!

Lots of fun stuff to welcome us back and make it feel like we never left.  Lots of friendships that have picked right back up where we left off two and a half years ago.

Still to be determined though... a job for me, where to live in Atlanta, and what church to get plugged into.  Anyone hiring? :)