Our New Normal

Well, I know it has been a crazy long time since we have posted, updated, worked on our website, or reached out to many of you. Well here's why... Oliver. Our little boy was born on a Thursday morning, December 13th at 8:50am. Both mama and baby did great and were and still are perfectly happy and healthy! 

Happy Ollie at about 10 weeks old

Oliver has been such a joy and an honor to get to know over the past almost 3 months! He is such a special little boy and we are so proud to be able to call ourselves his parents. Some of Oliver's favorite things right now are his Mommy (mostly because mommy means food hehe), his Sophie the giraffe, sucking on his hands, watching Baby Einstein and looking at the smoke alarm on our ceiling. ​It's pretty rough being a baby :-)

​Right now we are still living in the heart of the Napa Valley in Yountville. The Yountville Community Church has been so very generous and loving toward Ryan and I over the last 8 months. We are still living in the church's "Loft" apartment while Ryan works part time as the church's worship leader. Ryan is also working part time at a local hotel (The Vintage Inn) as well as trying to find time for his app writing. Thankfully, because of YCC's generosity and Ryan's hard work, I'm able to stay home with Mr. Oliver to be a full time stay at home mama. God sure has been blessing us!

Yountville, CA

We are just now getting ready to start with support raising again after our little baby break. So far we have 3 churches (yay!!) and a few individuals who have committed to monthly partnership! Because of these supporters we are close to being 40% monthly funded! ​We have a few events planned for this spring where more of you can come meet with us and learn about our commitment to doing church planting in Germany. We hope that you and your family consider partnering with us! on our "Germany" page, you can see our informational packet if you would like to learn some more about our heart for Germany.

​Our estimated date of departure for moving to Germany is still October of this year, but in the meantime we have another trip to Germany coming up in our very immediate future! Every year, our mission organization Kontaktmission, has a sort of conference/ retreat in Germany for all of their missionary workers. You have probably heard of this from us before since we have attended the lat two years in a row! (It was actually at this conference last year where I started suspecting that I may be pregnant. And upon the day of our return to the US, my suspicions were indeed confirmed!) This year we will be attending again and bringing Ollie of course as well! If you're thinking, "Man, that's a lot of traveling for new parents and their 3 month old!"... you have no idea. The conference is the week right before Easter; TWO weeks before that we are flying from California to Minnesota to spend a couple days with Ryan's grandma, then driving from Minnesota to Illinois (a 9 hour drive by the way.... and Mr. Oliver hates car rides and needs to eat like ever 2 hours, so that should be fun...), staying in IL for about 10 days where I am a bridesmaid in a wedding, and then we leave the day after the wedding for another 10 days in Germany. Whoa! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pray for us!!!! It's a daunting trip, but thankfully Ryan and I are good travelers and hardly ever get stressed out from traveling, so hopefully things are not too completely overwhelming even after throwing a 3 month old into the mix. We'll see :-)

​We are very excited to go back in Illinois for a while to see our much missed friends and family! Please make sure we see you! We are also very excited to be able to spend a few days in Dresden after the Kontaktmission retreat to meet the church that we will be working with our first 1-2 years in Dresden! So be sure to check back in here on the blog after we get back  to get an update and see some pictures!

Wow, this post sure has covered quite a few things! Hopefully we get better at posting more often so that we can avoid these long generic posts! Well, Oliver should be waking up from his nap any minute now, so I'll leave you with some more pictures to look at of our cute boy :-)