We made it!

We have arrived at Matthew's parent home in Roseville, CA and are settling in nicely.


Yesterday was a long day. We did the final check out from our apartment a little after 8am, put the car on the car carrier and got on the road by about 8:45am. It was a long drive. We had to go about 15 MPH slower than normal with the truck and trailer and tried to stop about every two hours to stretch our muscles, etc. On top of that we had to slow way down going up steep hills (especially the Siskiyou pass at the boarder) because the truck engine was getting too hot so it took us a little over 14 hours with us arriving around 11:15pm last night. It was a long day with a stressful ending (a mishap with unhooking the trailer from the truck) but we got good rest last night and today has been much more relaxing.


We got a pretty good start and thanks to some help from our dads and Emily's mom were able to unload the truck into our storage unit in about 90 minutes. Since then we've done a little unpacking and a lot of relaxing. We're excited to be home near family and old friends. Thanks to all of you who prayed for safe travels and a smooth transition, thanks also for all the well wishes and goodbyes from our Portland friends and the good wishes and

The Truck is Loaded!

This will likely be our last blog post for a bit but I wanted to give everyone an update. We finished loading the truck at about 4:30pm thanks to help from our friends Jason, Gary, and Ford. We had quite a bit of extra space but don't think things will tumble around too much. We still have some cleaning to do but will have the help of our friend Virginia with that. We should be done by 7 or 8pm. We'll be staying the night at our pastor's home and then coming back for the final check out from our apartment at 8am tomorrow. That should put us on the road by about 8:30. We figure we will take it nice and slow (since we're towing the car too) with plenty of stops so it should take between 12 and 14 hours but we should be able to get into Roseville in time for a good night's sleep there. Then on Thursday morning we'll unload most of our stuff into storage and start to settle in as guests with my parents. A busy couple of days but we're excited to be coming home!

Peninsula Baptist Update

We had a good time visiting Peninsula Baptist Church (PBC) this weekend. God gave us some beautiful weather and we were able to explore Long Beach and a fair bit of the greater peninsula on Saturday before enjoying an evening of good fellowship with the church's pastor and his wife, daughter and son-in-law. We stayed the night with them and attended church the next morning "under the radar" then went back to the pastor's home for a Father's Day BBQ and US Open viewing get together with several other couples from the church.

While we enjoyed our time and see a lot of potential and positives in this situation some of the traits of the community itself (demographics, culture, climate, isolation, distance from family, etc.) are dampening our enthusiasm about the prospects of raising a family in that area. We have advised PBC that at least for now we are not able to commit to coming there if they offer us a position. While we don't want to shut the door we have informed them that with our move and the baby coming we will not be able to continue to pursue the process at this time. We expect them to continue their search. If after a few months in California they are still interested in us we may try to make another visit and take a closer look but for now we will be continuing our search and we will be perfectly content (and happy for the wonderful people we met) if God raises up someone else to fill this position.

Penninsula Baptist Church

Thursday Matthew made the 2 and half hour drive from our home in Portland out to Ocean Park, Washington for an interview with the search committee of Penninsula Baptist Church. PBC is an independant Baptist church. They run about 150 on a Sunday and currently only have 1 pastor. They are looking for an Associate to assist with general pastoral ministry (preaching, visitation, etc.) and to help develop lay leaders for and oversee ministry to families and youth.

Matthew has had several opportunities to dialogoue with the pastor, Kerry Stroupe, and they seem to have a good rapport. The church is located on the Long Beach Penninsula in Southwest Washington about 40 minutes north of Astoria, OR near HWY 101. The Penninsula is a beautiful area. It is a popular tuourist destination during the summer and has one of the world's largest beaches but it is fairly isolated area and gets about twice as much rain as Portland so there are definitely some cons to go with the pros.

So far the interaction has been positive. We are planning to go out together next weekend (June 14 & 15) to check out the area a little more and visit the church "incognito" to see what we think. This will also serve as a mini-vacation to celebrate the end of Emily's teaching year (June 13 is her last day with students). We would appreciate your continued prayers for God's clear guidance as we consider this possability.

Interview

Matthew has an interview with the search committee at Penninsula Baptist Church in Ocean Park, WA. They are smallish church on the coast of Southwest Washington (near Long Beach, WA north of Astoria, OR) looking for an Associate Pastor to assist their senior pastor in various asspects of ministry.

So far Matthew has had a brief phone interview and a lunch meeting with the pastor. Those have gone well enough that Matthew plans to spend most of tomorrow (Tuesday) with him at a conference in Salem, OR before driving out to Ocean Park for the interview on Thursday. While the pastor seems like a great guy we really don't know that much about the job description, church or community yet. We would appreciate your prayers for God's guidance as we consider this opportunity. Thanks!

Moving Preparation

A week ago we helped our good friend Luke Thomas load up for the move down to California. Yesterday Matthew helped our neighbors Travis and Cheryl Wavrin with their move. Our little housing complex is starting to get pretty quiet with all the summer moves that have been taking place and all of this serves to remind us that we too will be leaving our wonderful home here in Portland very soon.

Our last day at Central Bible Church is June 22nd and our plan is to take Monday the 23rd to finish packing up our stuff, pick-up the moving truck on Tuesday the 24th and load the truck and do our final apartment cleaning on that day. Then on June 25th we will drive south to California where we will unload most of our belongings into storage and move in temporarily with Matthew's parents while we wait for Naomi to be born and continue to look for a long term ministry job.

Over the next few weeks we have a lot to do to get prepared. We have already begun to collect empty boxes (see above left). Fortunately as the yearbooks at Beaverton High are distributed Emily is able to collect as many of the empty boxes as she can fit in our car each day. We're also beginning to pack up some of our things that we won't be needing before the move (see below) and of course we hope to get rid of a lot of our stuff before we move.

How valuable something is can be significantly altered by the knowledge that we'll be loading it into a truck, unloading it into storage, storing it for months, loading it back into a truck, driving it to wherever we end up and unloading it again before we get any more use out of it (not to mention that we'll be paying for the privilege of moving and storing).

Matthew signed up for a Craigs List account today and we're hoping to sell some of our furniture in the next couple of weeks. We also are planning to give a bunch of stuff away before we leave. If you are in the Portland area keep an eye out for a "Free Stuff" post coming soon. Also if any of you local Portlanders are available on June 24th we'll be looking for help that day. Don't worry though we'll almost certainly contact you directly to beg ;-).

Baby Shower

This past Saturday the ladies of Central Bible Church put on a baby shower for Emily. It was a special time and we really felt incredibly loved by our church family. We also ended up with a ton of great stuff to get us started on our way as parents.

Emily admiring the two "cakes" made for her shower.

Jennie Wymore, a friend from church and Life Group who is from Honduras had a beautiful cake made for Emily in the authentic Latin American style. With dual blessings written on it in English and Spanish for our coming baby girl. Connie Clayton made us a "diaper cake", a decorative sculpture of diapers, toys and baby products assembled to look like multi-layered wedding cake.

A close up of the eatable cake.

Emily was showered with a wonderful variety of gifts including clothing, blankets, books and toys for Naomi to enjoy throughout her first year or so of life. Our generous friends also kindly took into account our coming move and avoided giving us bulky items, instead chipping in on some gift cards for a group gift.

Emily preparing to open her many wonderful gifts as the Clayton daughters offer to help.



Emily showing off the lovely "Sunbonnet Sue" quilt that Donna Gurney made for us.

Emily enjoying the love showered on her with gifts, words, and fellowship.

In addition to the gifts the ladies showed their love by throwing a great party with food, games and good fellowship and with kind words spoken and written on many cards. A special treat was a book they assembled for Emily with each woman writing their own page sharing their words of personal love, encouragement and wisdom for the mother-to-be.

Kay Ramsey, Shelley Price and Rachel and Tia Clayton at the shower.

Sarah Clark, Lori Wolpert, Mary Lister, and Karen Dunbar with Emily at the shower.

Unfortunately, the timing of the shower was bad for some of Emily's closest friends from Multnomah who were not able to attend. However, these girls didn't want to miss out on the fun so they threw Emily a "private baby shower" on Sunday after church. Erin Searight, Virginia Thomas and Mellisa Pace took Emily out for lunch (and of course dessert, too) at the Cheesecake Factory. The four of them enjoyed some good "girl time" and Emily received even more adorable gifts for baby Naomi.

Emily, Erin Searight, Mellisa Pace & Virginia Thomas at the "private shower" at the Cheesecake Factory.