Life Updates...

The past 8 months of my life have seemed to move faster than I can keep up.  I don't know if there are shorter hours in the day when you live in New England, but it has certainly felt that way since we moved here.  Moving is hard work (see my blog post on Transitions).  You're constantly working on forming new relationships, establishing yourself wherever you go, jumping into everything, and if you are like me, you tend to live life fuller than full so you don't miss a beat.  You experience a million emotions and just when you think you have them under control, something reminds you that you don't!  Moving kind of flips your world upside down for a bit.

That being said, I have epically failed at blogging these past several months.  Seriously...if I were in a blogging class I would have an "F" right now.  So here is my feeble attempt to fill in the gap and catch you up on life, ministry, and the endless Sawtelle adventures.

The Move:  We are finally settling into a routine here in "The Q" as they like to call our bustling city of Quincy.  We love our house (seriously a dream house), hate the traffic, love the church (dream job central), love our youth group (our teens are awesome), hate the traffic, love practically living on the campus of Eastern Nazarene College, and....well, we just really hate the traffic!  While we miss our friends and family in Maryland a lot, God has also been gracious to bring some new friends into our life and has allowed us to live close to other parts of our family.

Youth Ministry:  We constantly have opportunities to minister here.  Our youth group is awesome and we are really working hard to create a culture of welcome.  We are encouraging kids to bring their friends from school, and that is a somewhat new concept.  New England is a different context to do ministry.  Christianity is definitely not as talked about in the school setting and there aren't nearly as many youth ministries around here.  I actually think this means there is a TON of potential. It's kind of like it's own mission field which is awesome, so we are plugging away to build relationships here.

ENC:  I have spent the past semester teaching my very first college class (Philosophy and Methods of Youth Ministry...which by the way sounds way more intellectual that I am).  It's been an awesome experience.  I have loved it and have found it very life giving.  It's also been a boat load of prep work and extra time.  Nate and I also have about 10-12 college students over for spaghetti every Wednesday.  That's been pretty awesome too.  We try to attend as many sporting events as possible and even Biruk loves that.  I get to go to chapel a couple times a week and feel like that's a gift.

Adoption:  Nate is amazing and has pretty much dedicated the last 8 months of his life to working on our current adoption process.  Because our agency didn't have a Massachusetts office, we had to do our home study through another agency.  It has been a HUGE undertaking.  Just this past week, the home study was finalized, which was a really big step.  But, when Nate went to take all of the rest of our paperwork to get it state sealed notarized, he was told that we did all of the notary stuff wrong.  He will have to go back and do 18 pages over again.  Not a good day.  We hope to re-do that fast.  The time frame we have been given for bringing home a child is about a year.  We have A LOT of fundraising to do before then!!!

Biruk:  Our little guy turned 4 on Thanksgiving.  We can't even believe he's been home for that long or how big he is getting.  He goes to preschool 3 full days a week and loves it.  He runs around non-stop, sings all the time, and talks regularly about the sister that we are adopting (let's hope its a girl, because he definitely has his heart set on that!).  He talks about missing his old house and also talks about his new friends here.  I think it's setting in that this is home.  He regularly gets to see his cousins, who are only 20 minutes away and that's pretty great.

God is definitely up to A LOT of somethings here.  We feel it on a daily basis.  While this adventure he keeps inviting us on wears us out at times, it's still pretty sweet.  We make every effort to listen to Him and continue to say yes to what he asks of us.  We believe he's all over this new chapter and we can't wait to see all that unfolds.

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