New Year

It has been a hectic yet fun last couple weeks.

Stephen, Jess, and Mengning were here for a great week/end, and my parents as well, right before Christmas.

We had to have all our stuff in the church house we lived in in the basement by the morning of the 23rd. By God's kind providence (lucky for us, lots of work for Stephen) Stephen was here AGAIN to help us move. : ) We got the house packed and cleaned and left for vacation to South Carolina to visit Bobby's grandparents and dad's side of the family the next day. Due to a broken train on the way to the airport, we missed our flight...but ended up taking the Carolinian Amtrak instead (DC to Charlotte in eleven hours).

We had a great time celebrating Christmas and Bobby's g-parents 50th anniversary. Praise God for such kindness in preserving them and their marriage this far! It was good and exciting for me to hang out with the entire family and get grafted in a bit more. I also got to spend some time with the dear Emily Heath. She stopped on her way from Murrells Inlet to Asheville and we got to spend the morning together.

For the last ten days we have been houseguests at the Devers - very kind and gracious hosts! We've been eating dinner with them a lot and watching good classic movies (like The Saboteur and Christmas in Conneticut).

Yesterday and today we moved all our stuff from the basement at our old house to our new apartment. It is basically a very large studio with a separate little kitchen area. Bobby and I were talking about how amazing Christian community is - one woman at our church is allowing us to use her Suburu Forester yesterday, today and tomorrow to move and run errands. Our friend Brian made two big trips with his truck in the rain. Three other folks came with their cars. Our friends the Dunlaps brought dinner to us (and it was delicious at 8:00 PM after moving in the rain). Such generous, kind folks here at CHBC.

For a slightly more detailed housing situation update: We moved here and stayed in church housing while Bobby was completing the internship. There is a new intern class and another family just moved into our old house. Bobby has been hired to work in the church starting July, so we will be living in our new place through July/August, at which point we will move back to church housing. This situation is made easier by the fact that we live in the basement of a church member's house. They are gracious landlords.

Bobby started his new job yesterday and is loving it so far. At this point he is using a huge master spreadsheet to work through every article and piece of information on the 9Marks website, making comments and brainstorming about which heading it should go under and what other articles it should link to. Once he and the 9Marks crew know what there is, they will know what else needs to be written to round out the information.

I am still dog-walking but adding on to that a job as a teaching assistant at Capitol Hill Learning Group (imagine an informal pre-school and a more structured play-group and you have it!). They run the CHLG out of the top floor of a church on the Hill and work with kids 2-5. They learn Spanish, do arts and crafts, stories, play-time, etc. I'll for now only be working Friday mornings, but it is a great provision for us financially and it will be super fun. I start this Friday and can't wait to meet the little ones in my group.

Some of our prayer requests:

1) Discipline and the fight against laziness. We're trying to get to bed earlier/wake up earlier so we can each have quiet time (Bible reading and prayer) with the Lord before we start our days. We're also trying to become more consistent in our evening family devotions. Pray that our hearts would desire to seek the Lord in these very important ways.
2) Contentment. We've loved living half-way down the block from the church and now we're a mile and a half away. We now live very close to a Metro stop which takes us near the church, so the commute isn't long but...it is a commute. May we be grateful for the kind way God has taken care of us in giving us such a good living situation, albeit further from the church.
3) In light of the new year, all of Psalm 90! It is good for developing an eternal perspective and meditating on God's love. "So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom (vs. 12)."

Take care and much love, friends.