The Move!

So we made it! On the 14th of this month we packed off and/or packed up all our worldly belongs, hopped into a somewhat questionable Budget truck, and made the long drive East. It wasn't exactly a breeze, but the car didn't fall off the trailer, we avoided all collisions despite the malfunctioning tail lights and dash lights, the cat peed ONLY in the litter box during the drive, and we managed not to hydroplane off the Blue Ridge Mountains as we weathered a monsoon in the dark night of WV! Seriously, the trip was pretty rough, and we will certainly be thinking twice before we use Budget or accept "sure, we just checked 'em and all the lights are working fine" from any rental agent. But with a little help from a number of good friends, we were able to unpack the van, stash all our stuff in various basements, and begin the process of transitioning to a new address, a new context, and a new season of life.

(We even managed to make it through the exuberance of my dad upon our arrival back in MD. Yeah...he's weird, but we love him anyway)

And so we are here. Linds is getting into the groove at the church she is working at, I am getting the swing of things at my new Trader Joe's location, and life is slowly falling into place. It's fun to explore all the old haunts of Annapolis and see many old friends (they were all young friends when I left), and get to relearn the nautical culture that is so deeply seated into the veins of the city. We like it here, and we are beginning to get rather excited about the opportunity to make this our home base to being our efforts at building a team of supporters to help initiate our work with the Global Youth and Family Ministry.

We have spent the first week crashed at my parents' house up near the headwaters of the Severn River, and I don't think we'll ever get tired of the view. Each picture we took was only the best until another two minutes of sunset added more color - truly glorious!

And so it begins! We've got a lot to accomplish while we are here and we are now beginning to start strategizing ways that we can engage the challenge of support raising well, but as we are committed to keeping our readers in the loop, we need your prayers to make it all possible. The biggest "next step" for us at the moment is a trip we have scheduled this October to help host the adolescent side of things for MTW's Asia/Pacific Area Retreat in Malaysia. It's a pretty large project and we need a lot of help to get it going, but we have been fully satisfied in God's provision for us every step of the way so far and excited to follow through to see the next steps he has for this trip as well. We'll be filling in more details about this trip in the near future, and we are excited to explore ways that you all can partner with us to bring it all together!

Thanks for keeping up with us in all this, we are thrilled to have you be a part of our lives as we walk together the paths that God has laid out before us!

Much love from Annapolis!

- Drew