Reasons for my blog and such..

Hi! So here I am...finally getting my blog started. Believe it or not, I am a procrastinator, not just a trend follower. :) Either way, I do have a main purpose for starting a blog. 

Wow.

Where do I start. Some (hopefully many) of you may know this story already. 

Dustin and I have always known we've wanted to get involved in missions.  He was up at NYP for a year of voluntary service, and I was up there for their six week summer camps (that's actually how we met), in addition to both of us doing other short term missions.  We both loved mission work! It's so fulfilling to us, and not at all that that should be your sole purpose in doing missions, but it just felt..complete or something.  I don't even know if I can fully explain it.  

Anyways so we've always know that even before we were married.  We figured we'd settle in somewhere for a year or two, then pursue some mission opportunities.  

We actually didn't really know where to start "looking"!  We both loved NYP, but at the time, there weren't very many positions open.  Dustin has had a fascination for the west since he was a kid, so that seemed like a starting place at least!  

This past summer we took a 2 or 3 week out west trip.  It was like..the funnest thing ever. :) We drove all. the. time. That part wasn't the funnest.  But we saw tons of beautiful mountainous scenes (In real life! Not just in pictures!), met old and new friends, toured a lot of different places, and checked out 2 or 3 missions (Secretly, that was our main purpose for the trip.).  

We came home and prayed about the opportunities we saw while out there, but one kept coming back.  I think secretly we knew which one we'd end up at.  We had felt so much peace there--Dustin personally and me personally.  That in itself was a breath of fresh air...a big go-ahead from God, it seemed.  So we started making plans.  

We are going to move to Los Angeles, California!  It honestly looks so big and scary right now.  I do know though that I am excited to see what God's going to do and what I'll learn there. 

When we decided on LA, it was amazing to see the doors opening up.  Dustin got a job lined up soon after that (he'll be working as an excavator or something similar to that).  The pastor there opened his home up to us while we look for an apartment or house to rent.  We got people lined up to help us make the drive out there.  God is so good. :) 

So yea, it'll be more like a "lifestyle" ministry if that makes sense.  We'll be helping out with church planting there, just trying to build relationships with anyone we meet.  I don't know for sure if I'll get a job or not..I think I'll play that one by ear.   

We'll be moving a few days after Christmas of this year.  We'll have Christmas here, drive both our vehicles down south for the MS Christmas, then from MS drive to California. 

I personally have so many mixed feelings about it.  It's hard to imagine actually living somewhere else.  It all seems so surreal.

Basically this blog post has two reasons.  I didn't feel like all my friends knew about it, and I wanted to take time to explain it to them.  Also, I want to keep up with it up until and after we're out there!

Please pray for us if you think about us! 

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. :) 

Gina