Newlyweds

As most of you know, I married the woman of my dreams on New Year’s Eve, 2014.  Here I’m going to try and encapsulate all that the first 5 months of marriage has entailed.  

We started off 2015 with a bang, heading to the Bahamas on a short cruise that certainly had its moments.  We got to the room only to realize it had two twin beds, not one like I thought/assumed it would have.  Lesson learned.  I also learned we have different ideal times at the beach; her’s is the typical middle of the day when the sun is the most intense.  Mine is at night when I can’t get sunburned like I am prone to do every time I’m out in the sun even with sunscreen.

We got back to Ft. Myers and started setting up shop.  We live on campus here with our missions agency and have a great little place that I love.  Steffani wants a bigger place but I think it’s a perfect size for us right now.  Even if we get upset with each other we don’t really have anywhere to go.

Thankfully, we don’t get mad with one another very often at all.  As my doctor told us, it seems like most married couples have one of two very different experiences their first year of marriage.  Either it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done and just awful, or it’s the honeymoon phase that couples who are having difficult times presently long for.  We’re in the honeymoon phase, gratefully.

Later in January, we went up to Tennessee to do some fundraising and spend some time with her family and friends.  We spent about a week to 10 days between traveling and fundraising up there and presenting.  It was great to get to know her parents better and spend time with our niece and nephew on the way up there; they live in Montgomery, Alabama.

After our Tennessee trip, we were able to spend some time just the two of us getting settled into our roles at our missions agency, New Mission Systems International.  Steffani worked in the HR department and I worked on fundraising.  Calling, emailing and lining up appointments consumed most of my days.  I thoroughly enjoy the appointments, sharing our vision of what we feel God has placed on our hearts.  Steffani enjoys the appointments as well, but it usually drains her introverted personality whereas I get a lot of energy from them.

In late April, we took a trip up to Illinois and Indiana to do more fundraising, are you seeing a theme here for this year yet?  :)  We did 19 appointments in 11 days and had success in a lot of those, some we are still waiting on but are confident God will come through as He always has and continues to do.  Steffani got really sick up there too and I had the first taste of how truly useless a spouse can feel when their better half is sick and we’re not a doctor or nurse.

Right now, the summer interns are here at our mission agency’s headquarters (the CGO - Center for Global Outreach) and we have had a great time interacting with them so far this week.  I taught them how to use the SOAP (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer) method that they’ll be using for studying Scripture this summer.  Today we were on a Q & A panel of missionaries fielding questions about long-term missions from them.  On Saturday we will be leading a class on how to teach English overseas.  I’m really looking forward to that class, I love teaching about almost anything.

Well, I was planning on writing more but I’ve already passed the one-page marker in Google Docs that I try and keep my blogs limited to.  I’ll try and write more in another blog perhaps.