The Perks of Unemployment

Man oh man has time flown by... we leave in less than 2 weeks! We have been crazy busy seeing old friends, saying our goodbye's and spending time with family. Its crazy to think how fast this has all gone by.

Here's what we've been up to:

After we stopped working we spent a week up in Yosemite with some church family & both mine and Stevens dads, and my little sister Victoria. It was so great to spend time with them! Here are some pictures from that trip:

 Getting ready to enter the fridged waters of the Merced river to clean it out:

 Baptizing Vicky in the Merced River:

After Yosemite we headed north to meet Nic, Stephanie & Noah to camp with them at Folsom Lake:

 

After Camping for what seemed like forever (going with out a decent shower for a week really gets the best of you) we made our way home with just enough time to do some laundry, take a good hot shower, have dinner with the Buzzoni's, be encouraged by the Constables (who are in town from Syria) and hang out with the Vroom's (Dusty, Juniper & Caleb).
(We intended on taking pictures with everyone we had dinner with, but some how only the Buzzoni's managed to make it in one)


Once we had clean clothes and clean bodies, we went down to San Diego to see Stevens Grandma & Family:

From there we headed up to Redlands to spend some time with George & Teresa (one of Stevens best friends and his wife) We quickly learned, in Redlands you eat, drink & shoot:

Once we got back from our weekend with the Gendy's, we sold Stevens truck (carmax baby!) and took care of a few other things. All we have left to do is sell my car, tie up a few loose ends here and we are off! (after our awesome going away party, of course, which you better be at!)

And so starts the adventure....

2 months ago we were living in San Pedro, enjoying our 2 bedroom apartment, and Mega-Couch, working full time jobs and leading the High School & Jr. High students at Bethany Christian  Fellowship. Today, we are unemployed, homeless (well, living at my sisters house in long beach) and missing Mega-Couch. As most of you know, we have decided to move to the Middle East to live, work & minister there. We are now just waiting for September 11th (I know, I know) to roll around so we can fly off and start a new chapter in our lives. 

Getting to this point hasn't been easy, it started with a lot of prayer and counsel from some people we trust and love. Once the decision was made, came the hard part of telling everyone we loved of our decision to move to Dubai (thank God for Facebook) and to try to arrange a move to the other side of the world. 

 

We had a plan set to sell some of our stuff, ship some stuff (Mega-Couch) to Dubai, and store some stuff at my moms house in Torrance. We were so blessed and thankful for our good friends Julie & Ami who cleaned out their garage and donated it all to our garage sale. My mom, and brother-in-law Nic also helped us out a ton with getting set up for our garage sale. Once everything was sold, we had to pack up the few things that we were storing at my moms. Then came the movers:  we sat back and watched as our lives were packed, wrapped and loaded onto a 20 ft container in less then 4 hours. 

After that, there was really no point to continue to rent our apartment so we packed the few clothes we had left and headed over to the Banda's house. 

Next stop: Vietnam, where Steven has promised me many manicures & pedicures!