Jobs

Once again we are so amazed at how God provides for us and is taking care of us. Its mind boggling to think about the fact that we don't deserve and he gives so much.
Well this is how I feel because God once again has worked out all the details for us. And time after time I still get impatient and worried.
We have been here exactly a month and everything is changed over and fully become residents in PA. We both have full time jobs, his seminary schedule is set up. We have all of our Christmas presents and are able to celebrate wonderfully at our new apartment with decorations, a tree, and the holiday baking. And we still have money left in the bank. The only thing that we can do and should do is give God the praise for being so gracious with us.

The details about my job I think are amazing mostly becuase of how impatient and worried I get about things. Of course I had been looking everywhere for jobs. I was trying to get a job that I would use my Spanish. So Richard found this legal office that was looking for a bilingual intake secretary. So of course I jumped at it and contacted them and sent them my resume. Meanwhile I kept calling people to check up on status of applications and trying different things. Then on thursday they called and asked if I could go in the next day for an interview. I was very happy. So Friday I went to the interview. I thought it went well, but the only thing I thought was bad was that they didn't believe that I knew how to read and write spanish. But I tried to convince them that I did. So it was over and they said they would get back with me later. So now back to just waiting. I didn't do too much other looking because I really wanted this job. Meanwhile Richard got a job and started working right away. So I just wait at home all day. Come Weds of the next week and I was really getting anxious. I was waiting for a rejection letter to come in the mail, and I even sent out my resume to 3 other people that afternoon. Then later that day the lady called me back and offered me the position. But it gets better. I was worried about my schedule being worked out with the holidays and the wedding we have to travel to. But turns out I will just train a few days this next week and then start right away full time when I get back from my trip. Its so perfect. Now I can enjoy all the holiday bustle without being busy with work, but I have the assurance and security of a job.
The job is pretty good paying, full benefits, and paid vacations and holidays. Its so amazing.

I just love to look back at how God has taken care of us so much.
I hope that you guys can testify to that too. It makes you realize how much you don't need to worry. Matthew 6.

Here We Are!!

Well we have officially become residents of PA and no longer CO. This is kinda sad since we loved being from the great CO and we loved living there. So the story of our move.

We left Grand Junction on a Tues afternoon and Richard drove the big moving truck pulling my car behind, and then I was driving his ford Ranger behind him. We just went to Denver that day, but that is the hardest part of the trip at least on the cars and gas tank. We made it over the mountains fine. Which was a huge answer to prayer. The next 3 days were filled with the days taking a lot longer that we had originally thought. We were very tired every night. It wasn't too much fun driving separately either. But every night we stayed at friend's or families' houses which was very nice. We finally arrived to our new apartment on Saturday night. Richard's sister Melissa met us here and opened the apartment for us. I was right. I did have my hopes up too much. The place seemed a little less than desired. It smelled a lot like smoke and we have found that the people below us smoke a lot. This smell will never go away that means. I was so sad about that. It was one of the things that I was looking forward to so much. But I guess I'm doomed to smell like smoke my whole life. I do burn candles and have lots of air freshner things, and they help. But every time we walk in the house we get a big wiff if smoke smell. Oh well, its not the end of the world.

Our heaters are old radiator heaters. Initially you say what's the big deal, right? Well I knew that radiators make noise but these make more noise than anything else in the house. They whistle and squeal really bad. Like we have to turn up the tv when they come on to hear over it. :-) But after a few nights of waking up every time they went on we got used to it and they don't seem to bother us any more. Once I had put all my stuff away and up in the house it started growing on me. The kitchen is very big which I love. Every place has things about it that you just have to get used to. And now that we are used to things its ok. :-)

The last few weeks have been filled with running around sitting in offices getting our things switched to PA residency. (this process turns out to be very involved and very costly). But its all done and finished. We were nervous about Richard's truck passing inspection but Praise God yesterday we took it to get inspected and it passed. We were so glad that God answered that prayer. Now we are just looking for jobs. This is a very long and involved process too. Its just hard to know how long to wait on something. Maybe the perfect one will come up. Or maybe we should not be picky and go ahead and just work in retail or Panera. So we are praying for wisdom with that. This is our latest update. It will be nice to get settled and on a schedule and stuff like that. So keep us in prayer if you think of it.

Final Decision

We finally decided!!! God has worked everything out so well. We decided on the Clearview apartment. The guy called us back a couple days after Richard's sister looked at it for us and said that he wanted to know how interested we were in it because he wanted to take it off the listings. He knew some people who attended that seminary and really thought that a Christian couple in the place would be good and he worked with us on the downpayment and everything. He has been very good to work with from long distance too. So we are so thankful that things have worked out and that we have a place to move right into. God has anwered so many of our prayers.

I have ended work this past monday and that has been so nice. Although the idea of packing is so overwhelming. I have started and can see progress so that helps.
We are officially moving this coming Tues the 13th. We are very excited about it. We will take about 4 days to get there and I will be able to see my two sisters on the way. Which I am so happy about.
Mostly I am so happy because we have started to see cockroaches again. Richard has tried to fix some things and we thought the problem had gone away but they are back again. Not quite as bad but still it makes moving even better.

I am so happy to be able to decorate for Christmas in my own house and get our very own Christmas tree. It will be our first time and I can't wait.
I will keep everyone posted on things once we get there. WE still need to find jobs and stuff like that and there is alot we don't know about the area and everything that we need to do so still lots of stuff to pray about but God is always faithful to answer. Next time I write I will probably be in PA. Yeah!!!

Apartment Searching

So, What is your opinion? We are trying to decide on Apartments in Clarks Summit. It is very hard to decide on a place when we can't really see any of them. Richard has sister that has been such a big help to us with looking at places and sending us pictures of them and telling us about them. So we are down to two choices now. One on clearview street - Has 2 bedrooms and decent bathroom and a nice kitchen with lots of cupboard space and counter space. The living room and bedrooms are hardwood floors. There is some sort of back yard that we might share with the downstairs neighbors. There is pretty good closet space and supposedly some more storage somewhere else.
Then there is the Peckville one - again 2 bedrooms but the bathroom is really small and not too appealing. The neighborhood is very nice with a nice porch that we could use and a 2 car garage. There isn't too much closet space but there is a big attic that is perfect for storage. The kitchen is not as nice and there are no appliances (the Gardners said they have a stove and fridge we could take with us and we have the room, so its not too much of a problem) but the counter and cupboard space is limited.

Both are the same price $500 + utilities (gas heat) and both are the upstairs apartment of a house or something so there are people underneath us.

So now we have to decide which one we want more. We will probably be happy with either once we just make the decision. But let me know what your opinion is. What would you prefer in an apartment?

Terrible Struggles

I'm trying so hard to figure out how to add a list of my friends on the side of my blog posts and I just can't figure it out. In my template section it shows that I have added friends but then when I want to view my blog nothing is added. Please help me if you know how. Is it something I'm not following right? UGH!!

Once again I'm writing on my blog. I would like to discuss our new move. We have decided to move to Clark Summit PA and Richard will attend the Baptist Bible Seminary. We are planning to move the middle of November. That is about all that we know for sure. Housing and jobs, and how to get there are all just good ideas right now.

What should we do? Should we pull a trailer with Richard's 1991 Ford Ranger and me drive our car following him with the possibility that not all of our stuff will fit in the trailer and the weight of the trailer not being very good on his old truck? (We are kinda nervous about pulling something too heavy over the mountains and so far with his truck) Or should we rent a Penske truck (the seem to be the cheapest truck rental) and a car dolly? For sure all of our stuff would fit in to a truck because we would have to rent a 16' truck to pull our car. Then I would drive our truck behind Richard.

Once we have the car thing figured out then how should we make the trip? Richard thinks it will take about 30 hours. We would like to drive over the mountains and stop in Denver and say goodbye to his brother and family and his sister. Then we would like to stop in Cincinatti and visit my sister. But we have the drive from Denver to Ohio that would be really long. Where should we stop in between? We think that we want to make it in 4 days. From Ohio we are thinking it will only be about 7-9 hours.

These are all things that we are considering right now. We do just need to sit down and put together a plan looking at mapquest and stuff. We have researched rental trucks and stuff. I'm not looking forward to driving all that way in separate cars but that is what we have to do.

We are very excited about this move. It is very exciting to start all over again together after living here for a while married. It will be so good for us to look for our own church and decide on one together for all the right reasons. I'm looking forward to and anxious about where we will work, live, and who we will be friends with. It is so exciting to do something like this.

But at the same time we are looking into a year internship. Richard says, "We are moving to seminary and filling out an application for a year internship in Ecuador at the same time, Who does that?" Well if you think about it you can pray that we will follow God's leading. I have complete confidence in God and that he is guiding us for all of our decisions in the future. We are just excited!! I just wanted to write another post here letting people know what we are doing these days. Conversations of what is the best thing to do and such have filled our lives these days. :-)

Ouray

Then after our backpacking trip we went to Ouray and stayed in a Bed and Breakfast called the Christmas house. It was a very quaint little place and very enjoyable. After the long hike the pampered bed and breakfast was so nice. The town of Ouray is a beautiful one. We showed up to town at about 1 and we couldn't check in until 3 so we sat around waiting. All I wanted was a nice warm shower, nice clothes, and a nap but we had to walk around the town and wait. The nice lady did let us in a half hour early though. We went to a nice Mexican Restaurant for my birthday that night and then just went straight to bed. The next day we saw places like the famous Silverton, the Box Canyon Falls, and Cascade Falls. I think Silverton was my favorite. It has the old looking buildings and is very cute. The mountains all around are gorgeous and the to Silverton was amazing. It was very relaxing. On our way home on Monday we stopped at Black Canyon about an hour south of Grand Junction. That place was cool too. We drove down to the bottom and low and behold we saw a bear crossing the road. It was very close to us and we got some good pictures too. That was ver exciting to see one. But I sure am glad that we didn't see one a few days earlier while we were camping. It was just a wonderful weekend that my husband planned for me. Colorado is a beautiful state and I have enjoyed living here very much.

Backpacking

Well, Its been a while since I have written on this thing. I guess they are kind of hard to keep up.

Well I had my 23rd birthday. I have a wonderful husband who always treats me so well. He was going to surprise me with a trip to a beautiful mountain town called Ouray here in Colorado. But just like my mother, I found out about it. He was devastated that he couldn't surprise me, but I love the planning of it so it was still fun for me.

So we took friday before Labor Day off of work. Thursday after work we packed everything up and traveled to the mountains about 2 and half hours. We got to a camp ground at dusk and so we just payed the woppin' $20 (YIKES!!!) and spent the night at a fancy campground. We woke up the next morning and packed up our backpacks and headed for the Lizardhead trail. We got there and started on our journey. We get to a fork in the road either go right to the Meadow (where we eventually wanted to spend the night) or go left to lizard head peak. Of course we decided to go up the trail, not knowing how hard it would actually be. We climbed on switch backs for a long time and finally got to the top. The view was gorgeous. But I did not want to stay up there because there was no water and storms were coming in. So we saw the meadow down below and knew we had to get down but it was very steep hike straight down the mountain off trail in dense forest. That part was pretty nerve wracking and I was very exhausted. There was a time when I thought that we would never get out and thoughts of getting lost for days and people having to come look for us were going through my mind. But the sight of coming out of the forest and seeing the meadow was the most wonderful sight of the day. It was so beautiful with all the peaks around us, and a sense of accomplishment came over me like I did it. So we set up our tent and got water and things like that. But the storms came through and we were stuck in the tent for about 2 hours. That was boring and that is when exhaustion and fear set in cause all I had to do was think about things. But once the rain let up we were able to go oustide and make a fire and things got better. That night I was sore and very tired, but didn't sleep too much. It was very cold but thanks to my mom and dad I had a wonderful sleeping bag that kept me quite warm. I could hear the coyotes howling all night too, but they sounded far away so that was ok.

The next moring was so pretty. The peaks and the dew rising from the meadow were all so neat to watch. We ate breakfast and then packed up our stuff and headed out. Thankfully, we went out the other way where we should've gone the day before and the trail was much shorter. I was sore but very anxious to get out so we booked it out of there. The sight of the car was so wonderful. I knew I had made it backpacking and I was alive and the trip was over. :-)

Cockroaches

Well we have a wonderful little apartment. It is very cheap rent and we get what we pay for. So it's very small but I like it and it works for us. With the wonderful nicer weather we started to have a problem with cockroaches. At first we started seeing them outside all the time when we would walk in the parking lot. Then little by little we started seeing one or two inside a few times a week. Now its getting worse. One morning I woke up early for work walked over to make my coffee that is very much needed. The next thing I know there is something scurrying around in the sink right next to the coffee maker. YIKES!! That'll wake you up. Another day Richard was enjoying one of his favorite chips for lunch thinking that this time they tasted especially good only to find that there was a dead cockroach in the bag. :-) Oh well I guess we will have to start doing something about that.