Residency Update

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on my (Kim's) residency. My residency hours are 300 hours after I am done with my school work where I will work with a nurse practitioner or doctor in the area related to what I will be doing after graduation. Ideally, we would have liked to do that in Ecuador since that is where we are going to hopefully be working long term. When Joel was in Ecuador, I talked with my school about this and the answer eventually was "no" to doing it in Ecuador. Bummer! We were excited about this prospect because it means we could have gotten to Ecuador quicker. That's OK. Our plan will be for me to finish school this time next year and to do my residency hours here and then take my certification boards here. After that we will plan on leaving.
Just a quick update. Thanks for your love, support and prayers!

Our DEEPEST Apologies

I have to send this apology out to those of you who read this and say I am SOOOOO sorry about the music on this blog. I had downloaded a lot of Christian songs from playlist to play when this blog is accessed. I was just listening as I was doing homework and realized there is a song on there under a Christian artists name, but it is NOT. It has vulgar words and themes. I just now realized this. Again, my sincere apologies. I hope you all do not think less of us or are not reading the blog because of this. Truly, know that I would NOT have had this on here had I realized that this song was playing. I have since removed playlist from this blog. Please accept are apologies. We did not realize until today.

New Job and New House.... Good!

Well, we can officially announce that we are moving... whohoo!!!! and I (this is still Joel!) am starting two new jobs.

One is with Verizon Wireless where I will be a Store Manager In-Training. I'm very excited about this opportunity and it will be nice and close to our new home.

My second job is related to our move. I am taking over as the grounds person at our church. Basically, I'll be responsible for mowing the lawn and snowblowing during the winter and making sure everything is locked up at night. In the end, it's just making sure the place is in good working order. The awesome thing is that I don't get paid!!!! Rather, Kim and I get a free house to live in!!! Hot dog!!! Pretty cool, eh? Yeah... we are going from almost paying $1,000 per month in rent living in Chicago to moving into a 4 bedroom house in the burbs for what equates to about 2 or 3 hours worth of work on average per week. It's safe to say we are pumped!

We are moving on July 30th. We have only lived in Chicago since we have been married and we will definitely miss it. At the same time, we are also very excited about being right next door to our church family.

We'll be emailing out our new address soon, we just wanted to let you know.

Ecuador, Ecuador, Ecuador!

Hey y'all!

This is Joel and I'm doing my first ever post on our blog!!! Whoo-hoo!!! Sorry for not being the communication giant that Kim is....

I had to blog becuase I just got back from... well... I guess you can probably tell by the title.

I had a fantastic trip! It was a part of our church's (Northwest Covenant) every 3 year youth mission trip to Ecuador. Kim and I went 3 years ago and that is where we started feeling like Ecuador may be where we will end up. We've visited one more time since then, but since I am between jobs, it worked out perfectly for me to head down to South America for 9 days.

We were again helping our missionary friends Karen and Carlos Feijoo with the ministries they are a part of. Our primary work was in the small town of Carabuela, which is a town just outlying Otavalo, where one of the world's best markets is located. There we were helping Fundacion Amor A La Vida, a foundation dedicated to youth of Carabuela. Here some pictures of the foundation and kids.

We were able to fix up those desks that you see above. We also did a lot of other work at the Foundation and ran a VBS and just loved on a bunch kids. It was a ton of fun!

The kids on the trip have created a blog so you can track their progress... http://www.nwccyouth2008.blogspot.com/

I guess I could get into a lot more details, but I'll just share pictures for now...