Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Hope your holiday has been as great as ours. We have been having such a great time with family and reflecting on Jesus' birth! We have been to Lewisburg, Ohio to spend time with Joe's parents and to Illinois to spend time with Andrea's family. We will be traveling later today to another part of Illinois for Christmas fun with Joe's extended family. Here are some pictures of all the fun!!!



In Lewisburg, we went to a fun light display throughout a park with Joe's parents. It was quite fun and they even had free hot chocolate!

Joe with his mom (Debi) at the light display.


Having fun on the bridge with the fog and Christmas lights.


Our adorable nieces pumped for Christmas!

Our nieces were an absolute hoot on Christmas. They are just the perfect ages for tearing open the presents! They kept saying "Oh my gosh, look what I got"! Hope you all have been having a great Christmas!

1.5 year anniversary

Yesterday, was our 1.5 year anniversary. It seems crazy that we have been married that long! I guess time flies when you're having fun!

Thanksgiving fun and more!

Joe and his momma (Debi) and Andrea with her momma-in-law

So, we had a great Thanksgiving! We traveled to Joe's hometown to spend time with his family. It was wonderful, since we have not spent time with them in awhile. We went to Joe's aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner, which was delicious. We had a great time hanging out with his cousins, parents, and aunt and uncle! This year consisted of eating too much, playing games (ping pong, darts, pool), and giving tutorials on our Garmin GPS (Joe's parents and aunt and uncle really wanted to get a GPS on Black Friday and we had won one awhile back).

We also really enjoyed spending extended time with Joe's parents and helping them put up their Christmas decorations. Joe's parents had never had a artificial tree before so wanted our help putting it up. Andrea has become a pro at this endeavour (and filling in the holes) because her family has always had an artificial Christmas tree. Here is the final product!

Joe's parent's Christmas tree that we decorated!

Another pivotal time of our stay in Lewisburg, Ohio was playing Joe's mom's favorite game - Aggravation. We played probably ten times before Joe won. Here is a picture of when he won! He was so excited and kept jumping up and down. His mom was laughing so hard she was crying!

Joe is pumped about winning! Not only did he win, but he schooled us!

Fall Retreat

We were so excited to go to Springfield, Illinois for Illinois Catalytic's Campus Crusade for Christ's Fall Getaway. Not only did we get to hang out with the staff (whom we already love and are excited to work with), but the amazing students of central Illinois! The theme of the weekend was "authentic" - challenging students to be authentic in their relationship with God and others. It was so refreshing spending time with the students and hearing their hearts for the Lord and their campuses! We appreciated the opportunity to rub shoulders with students through bunk bed living and community showers! The only thing that was a drawback to the weekend was Andrea got sick right when we got there, but luckily with God's strength she was able to plug and chug through the weekend and had a great time! We thought we would share some snapshots from our wonderful weekend! Joe helping students as they arrive at the retreat. He was in charge of passing out schedules and name tags!

Andrea hanging out with girls from Illinois State University at the lodge. Students would gather every night to hang out, play games, and talk. Andrea learned about the ISU women's tradition of playing a Barbie game at every getaway and retreat!

Students sharing with other students about summer mission's trips. Campus Crusade for Christ offers "summer projects" to various locations throughout the US and overseas. Many students had amazing summers on summer projects and were sharing their experiences and challenging their peers to trust God to "GO".

Another highlight from the weekend was attending "campus time". Seven campuses were represented at the retreat. Campus time was a great way for students to connect with others from their campus. We enjoyed visiting each college's campus time!

Oh.. now how we long to work these wonderful students and report to campus!

Running...in pain

I (Joe) started running last week to get back into shape. I ran a couple miles each day for several days and then I ran 5 miles with Andrea's sister Jill on Friday. After that day, the arch on my left foot was in a lot of pain. We are blaming my new running shoes.

I bought the shoes this summer for a great deal. After a couple good deals, the Asics shoes were only $15. I hadn't planned on running a lot in them, but I just needed some new shoes. After last week, we inspected the shoes and realized there wasn't much arch support in them. So we decided to buy some insoles for them. Normally you take the original insole out and replace it with the new insoles. Unfortunately the originals were glued really well into the shoes. I tried keeping the original insoles in the shoes with the new insoles in place, but the shoes became uncomfortable. So...tonight I decided to rip out the original insoles.

It was a brutal scene, but after much pulling, ripping, and cutting...most of the original insoles were removed. The shoes fit much better now, but that was an awful task. There still remains parts of the original insole, but I didn't want to spend my entire night removing all of the remnants.

Here are some pictures showing what remains of the original insoles:


Needless to say, despite the new insoles my arch is still very painful. I think I injured it pretty good, but I hate to stop running. I have been running again this week as well. I ran 1 mile on Tuesday, 5 miles on Wednesday, and 5 miles today despite the pain.

Andrea has also been out and about in the neighborhood. I have refused to let her run with me due to the problems she has with her knees. But she has been walking/running(even though she shouldn't be running) in the mornings around the neighborhood as well.

Illinios State University and helping around the house!

We were able to make a short visit to Bloomington, Illinois to Illinois State University. This is one of the schools we will be working on when we report to our ministry assignment. We were so thankful to be able to hang out with our future co-workers and to have them show us around campus! Here are a few pictures from our afternoon at ISU!

Looking at a big map of Illinois and pointing to Bloomington (our future place of residence).

On top of the tallest dorm on campus - it was a beautiful view of campus and all of Bloomington and Normal!

So, besides visiting ISU, we have been busy with home renovation projects. As many of you know, we are currently living with Andrea's parents in Lima, Ohio. Her parents are in the process of updating the decor throughout their whole house. We figured we would help and gain knowledge of painting walls (since we may have to do it when we purchase a house someday). I think Joe really likes painting! Here are some action shots!

Joe painting the ceiling in the family room! Very focused!

Joe with a paint bucket in hand and Andrea's Dad trimming up!

25 Percent!

We just crested over 25 percent of our monthly financial goal with our support! We are a fourth of the way to going to Illinois now. Thanks to everyone for your prayers and monthly financial giving!

Mountain Biking

This was the day that we went mountain biking. We rented the bikes for the day and rode on some trails in the Rocky Mountains. We were out for about 5 hours of biking on about 15 miles of trails.

This was Joe perfecting his skills at a mountain bike park.

Colorado!

We had a great time in Colorado for the National U.S. Staff Conference with Campus Crusade for Christ. We head out to Colorado for this conference every two years. There was about 4,500 staff members with us at Colorado State University! It was a great time of encouragement, rest, and fellowship with our fellow staff members. We heard great messages from national leaders, pastors, speakers and authors during our twelve days at CSU.

We had some free time while we were there as well. We did a couple day hikes in the Rockies with our friends and also were able to go mountain biking in the mountains!

This was during our first hike. We hiked with our friends Royce and Liz to the top of Horsetooth Rock. We climbed about 1,500 feet topping out around 7,000 feet above sea level after about 2.5 miles of hiking. Once on top, we were able to see the great plains to the east and the great Rocky Mountains to the west.

On top of Horsetooth Rock

This was our second hike with Royce and Liz. We drove into Rocky Mountain National Park for a 10 mile round trip hike. We started at 7am at around 9,475 feet in elevation. We climbed about 2.5 miles to the tree line. We continued for another 2 miles to Flattop Mountain and then onto Hallett Peak cresting at 12,713 feet in elevation. We arrived back to the car at 3:30pm exhausted, tired, sore, and Joe having drank 7 liters of water.

Our hiking group: Royce, Liz, Andrea, Joe

On top of Hallett Peak!

These our some of our new friends who are actually on our team in Illinois! They are Jeff and Kate Mehne and they happened to be hiking the same trail as us that day.

This was a picture of the parking lot where we started!

July 4th Fun!

So, July 4th was a little while ago, but we had such a great time with family that we wanted to post some pictures! Hope you all had a great 4th of July, we know we sure did!

We played ladder ball with Andrea's family. It was a lot of fun. It was like cornhole, but with a ladder instead.

Andrea's dad (Dave) and sister (Jill).

Andrea and her sister!

Andrea with her bro-in-law (Glenn). We ended up playing disc golf with the whole family. That was quite interesting!

Joe lovin' on our nieces. Aren't they precious and adorable? We sure think so - Ava is in the red shirt and Ellie is in the white shirt. They were having fun while waiting for the fireworks!

Moving!

So, officially we are moved out of our very first apartment. We happened to move out on one of the hottest days of the year, but on the bright side, it didn't rain. Some of our friends came to help us, which was wonderful! We got everything into the Uhaul quickly and everything fit! Here are some pictures from moving day!

Marc and Royce - 2 of our friends who helped us - see why we picked them - they look strong!

Joe's Hometown

We went to Joe's hometown (Lewisburg, Ohio) last weekend to visit with his family. His sister, brother-in-law, and our nephew were in town from NC. We had a great time visiting with them and with his parents. We also had a fun time out in the country! Here are some pictures from our fun weekend!

Joe's dad, Joe, Andrea, Curtis (Joe's brother-in-law), Michelle (Joe's sister), Toby (our nephew), and a bunch of ice cream cartons.

Picture of Joe's parent's barn and silo.

One thing you might not know about us is that we enjoy shooting guns every once in a blue moon. We only ever shoot at Joe's parent's house due to it being way out in the country.

Joe shooting a shotgun. It is a pretty neat picture as you see the shotgun shell ejecting and the clay pigeon exploding in the air. The pretty impressive thing is Andrea took the picture after hand throwing the clay pigeon.

Andrea shooting the shotgun. It was her second time ever. Also another neat picture of the shotgun shell ejecting and Andrea hitting the clay pigeon!