The last month has been a crazy whirlwind of events. We got married on July 9th and the wedding turned out to be fabulous. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. It was personal and beautiful and a blast!!! The following day we left on our honeymoon to the beautiful Punta Cana for a whole week. It was so relaxing and just what we needed after all the chaos of the wedding and preparing for our big move. Just as soon as we flew back into Cincinnati, the chaos was back full force. We drove straight down to Hendersonville, TN to present to the missions committee at the church on Sunday morning.
Sunday, we drove back to Columbus to open our wedding presents and get the apartment in order and ready to move. We had one week to pack up everything, use the gift cards we received, tie up any loose ends and visit my family one more time in PA. It was kind of a bittersweet week, having to say goodbye to everyone, but still we're excited for the future.
Tuesday, July 27 was when we started our journey across the country in a great big Uhaul. I thought it was a pretty fun adventure as I have never driven across the country. We stopped in St Louis to see the arch, which was really fun. Then we went through Oklahoma City and Albuquerque. We had a couple hiccups including losing air conditioning for about 4 hrs, but we made it safely on Friday, July 30.
Since then we have been doing a lot of unpacking and trying to get the new place organized. We are getting ourselves familiar with the town and with the church here in Kayenta. We have already connected to a young girl in High School that wants to learn more about the Bible and we’ve set up regular studies with her. Also, we had the opportunity to attend AIMS- American Indian Mission Seminar held in Colorado Springs this past weekend. Some of the preachers from the Navajo reservation were there and spoke about their challenges, successes and ideas to improve. One speaker couldn’t attend due to a death in the family so Nick got a chance to fill in. He did a great job speaking about why we chose the Navajo reservation to be in the work of the Lord.
Now that we are here, we see an even bigger need to work with the teenagers. This is mainly due to the large number of teens but also because there hasn’t been a lot of structure for them in the past. We will be looking to build a solid youth and family program here to get the teens involved as well as their parents. The first Sunday we were here, there were 56 people in attendance and 26 of them were under 18. Speaking of which, Josh wasn’t feeling well that day so Nick got his first opportunity to preach here.
We got puppies too!!!! We got two sister puppies from a litter of seven. They are basically pure mutts (they call them rez dogs), but adorable. Nick is trying to train them up to be guard dogs but they are too cute for that right now. Their names are Uncle Paulie and Mr. Rocky Balboa- yes you heard that right, they are girls but they have boy names.
Well, so far so good. We really love it here and are so excited about the opportunities we have already found. We thank you for your continued prayers and support.
