Quick catch-up

‘Ello friends!  It’s been awhile, but yes, we’re alive!  We’ve been busy over the past few weeks trying to take in all that Dallas has to offer.  We’ve had quite a few date nights (which is kind of a shock to my system…thanks residency) because Josh’s schedule is so flexible.  It’s been nice to be able to hang out so much and do the fun things that we haven’t been able to do until now.

“Night at the Nasher”  Every first Friday of the month, they have a live band in the art museum’s courtyard until it gets dark.  Then, they project an outdoor movie on the back of the museum!  So fun!

 

Enjoying the concert from our blanket.

 

A good old fashioned Texas rodeo where they say “God bless Texas-America!”

 

 

We went down to Austin for a few days to visit some friends.  We happened to enter ourselves into a corn hole tournament and the guys came in 2nd place of 16 teams!  They have skills.

Also, we found an awesome church to attend while we are here!  We visited the Village (Matt Chandler’s church) at first.  We absolutely loved it, but it was so big that it was hard for us to get plugged in.  I googled “churches in Mesquite” one day, which led me to several websites.  After looking at a few, we decided to go to this one called New Community Church.  I’ll post another blog about this and what I have been learning through this church, but for now, I just wanted to take a moment and point out an important aspect of this journey.  I prayed for 2 very specific things for us this year: that God would provide really great friends in each city and that God would provide a really great church in each city.  I know some of you have prayed this prayer along with me and I thank you for that.  It’s very nerve-wrecking for me to move to a new place, not knowing anyone, and realizing that in a few months time I’ll be starting over again.  So, this is my way of saying that the Lord is faithful and He has answered those 2 prayers within the first month of us being here.

We have some sweet friends who live in Dallas but are actually about to move to Columbia (we’re switching).  It’s been great to hang out with the wife and see the Lord’s work in her life.  She has an amazing story!  We were talking about moving and all the mayhem it involves.  Then we started talking about missions and “what if the Lord called us to go to _____ or _____?!”  She said something so amazingly perfect that I just have to share it.  She said, “The Lord has been so faithful in my life, how could I resist His will?”  That has stuck with me so strongly over the past few weeks.  She is so right!  God could ask me to go to Siberia (although, Lord, it’d be nice if you didn’t) and I should go, because His will for my life is always better than my own.  So, bringing it back to answered prayers….my King has answered mine and will continue to do so, because He is gentle, compassionate, faithful, and intimate.  Wow!  I’m so glad my God is that good.

Last little update….or big update.  Like I’ve said before, our plans are not definite.  We thought we would be in Texas until October.  Looks like we will now be here until the end of November.  From here, it looks like we might be going to (drum roll please) Tacoma, Washington!  Talk about extremes!  We were looking into Colorado or Utah, but there don’t seem to be any jobs opening up soon.  The next best place that would kind of be similar to that mountain feel we were looking for that’s available is WA.  For those of you who aren’t familiar (I wasn’t), Tacoma is about 30 minutes south of Seattle and about 2 hours south of Canada.  Really, I’m laughing to myself, because I don’t handle cold weather well (come on, I think SC winters are bad!), yet here we are, going way up north during winter months in our little RV.  Alls I gots to say is that they better have excellent hot chocolate up there!

So, there you have it!  Our lives thus far in a nutshell.  I’ll keep the updates and ramblings coming on a more regular basis, hopefully!