mark + ange guinn

we had a cookout with friends last night (whom we consider our indy family) and i thought i’d show them off to you.

mr. rogers sure knew what he was talking about. today has been so lovely. i awoke to the sun filling my room with its beautiful morning light. i’ve spent the day making things, and i’m so inspired today that it feels like there’s just not enough time to get it all done. or started…

mark and i met for a quick picnic lunch today at a little park about half-way between home and mark’s office. when we got out of our cars, we stepped into honkfest 2008. the geese were going nuts! we looked at each other and laughed, then proceeded to our quaint bench by the river. all the wildlife seemed excited, but we couldn’t figure out why…until we saw one goose on top of another…then another mount. mating season? i hope so. regardless, it was a delight to watch the white swan, grey goose, mallards, and dozen or so canadian geese having a time.

i always feel kind of sad posting without including any pictures. so i went outside today and took a few photos of our new neighborhood. hope you enjoy!

down the street

the fountains

the neighbor’s tree

Yesterday was one of those days that I just woke up in a fog of heaviness and weariness. I imagine most of us have days like that. All morning I was feeling heavy and anxious about things at work. I decided to take some time over my lunch break and pray, asking God for peace and for awareness of His love for me. And He did it. The afternoon was totally different. Not perfect, but lighter.

There’s no great point to this story and it’s not even uncommon. I’m just thankful and I wanted let it be known: Our God cares about my silly moods. He’s good to us.

Peace,
Mark

If you’re anything like me (and I know a lot of you are…), there are many people that you intend to keep in touch with. For a while you do pretty well, but then it begins to falter and after a while, there’s so much to communicate, that it becomes overwhelming and so that relationship is neglected, not because there is nothing to say, but precisely because there is too much. Well, that’s how our blog has been of late – plenty of thoughts and events, and not enough unction to function. So here are a few of the major things that have happened, which will hopefully break open a new era of blogging frequency.

First, we have moved (No, sadly, not to Northern Ireland, yet). On April 1st, a room came open in a house owned by one of our friends from church. We decided to go ahead and sell/pitch/store most of our stuff and move there so that when our visa comes through, we will have a much easier time leaving the country. A lot of the hard work of moving will be done already, and we don’t have a lease here. This new situation also allows us to cut our living expenses in half, which is great. We’ll post pictures and more info soon.

Second, we’re really excited to report that there are two other couples that are very seriously considering coming to Ireland with us. I’m not going to say any more, because we want to respect their process of discernment, but it makes us really excited to think of having companions in this journey. We’ve never been too happy about “parachute-dropping,” and have been praying for a team from day one. Please pray with us about this and pray that God would speak clearly and make a way for those He wants to join us.

So, we haven’t left yet, if you haven’t figured that out. We are still committed and, Lord willing, it will be soon.