I cannot believe the opportunities we've had to grow in these last months.
We immediately got involved with South Bay Church. I have been given several projects to work on and have interned here since September. After this internship is over, I plan to start volunteering with another non-profit to continue to gain more experience in my field. John Mark and I also joined the student ministry leadership team. Before we came, there were weekly Bible studies and a few student ministry events, but our awesome team has played a major role in making Ignite Student Ministry into a program! It has truly been a growing experience and we are thrilled to be a part of this from it's beginning stages.
After months of applying to what seemed like everywhere and job hunting, I was finally able to start my job with REI in October. I am so grateful to finally be working after over a year of unemployment. I am really enjoying it. Even though it's retail and my hours are always different, I feel so blessed to be working and feel like there is a lot of opportunity to grow in the company! I hope to stay with REI for a while!
JM's job has thrown us a few unanticipated curveballs, but for the most part it is a good job and has given him some time to still be active at South Bay. Unfortunately he has worked most weekends and has been given some weird hours, but we are happy that he so far has not been deployed away from home.
It definitely was a culture shock when we moved here and life is not quite what we were expecting, but we are in a good place in our lives right now and we are just trying to take everything in while learning as much as possible. The Bay area pace of life and traffic is a lot to get used to, but we've been able to take some incredible hikes and day trips and there is still so much more to explore!
We miss our families like crazy!! I believe this is the longest I have ever gone without seeing my family, but we know this is just another piece of our life journey! I really struggle with looking forward to the next step in life rather than living in the now, so I am really trying to acknowledge this incredible opportunity we have in this season of life. But to be honest, it's really hard to not look forward to moving closer to family. Thankfully, the Redwines will be here for Christmas and we are so excited!
Thanksgiving was my first holiday away from family - JM had to be away a few times when he was underway. We planned on just staying home, the two of us and having our first holiday alone. But some of the staff at South Bay invited us to join them for Thanksgiving. We decided to go and it was an awesome day with our church family! All together there were 5 families - 10 adults and 9 kids! We are all transplants to California and thousands of miles away from our families. It's incredible to do life with these people!
God is doing big things in our hearts and lives and this new season is seriously just insane!
