Jake and Emily's Wedding

This last week my wife and I took a week to spend down in Florida to stand up in Jake and Emily's wedding. They are a wonderful couple that we have served in Taiwan with in the past and will again in the future. They both first met in Taiwan with a similar story to ours with some differences.

We left Wednesday driving all the way down in one day. My wife makes fun of me for this but I have a rule that we can only stop once about every 5 hours. So basically we only stop when we need gas and food at the same time, any bathroom needs must wait until those stops come up.

When we finally got down to Florida, just past Jacksonville, I heard a loud noise. Now my car makes all sorts of weird noises so I normally ignore them. However moments after I made a comment about it to my wife our tire blew. We originally were going to arrive at our stop at 11:30 but got delay until about 1am.

The next week Kyle Paradis, another groomsmen and I charged lots of tires including the Bride and Grooms honeymoon car the day of their wedding. Luckily the bride never found out...

Kyle Changing Tires

The actually wedding was at a resort at St. Pete Beach. It was a beautiful location and aloud us to have a decent amount of time at the beach.  There was lots of old friends from WOLBI (Bible College) that I got to see again and made lots of new friends.

Picture: I snapped a few pics of Jake getting a haircut for his wedding.

Both Anne Marie and I had the privilege of being in the wedding. About 30min before the wedding it was down pouring. When the wedding finally started there was still a very very light rain but it made for a beautiful ceremony with people holding umbrellas in the audience.

They wrote their own vows. Jake has an amazing way with words. Most of the time its for making jokes, but he can be really powerful and make people feel and understand his emotions. Many people were crying after he finished his vows to Emily.

The next few days we were able to meet up with friends and spend a few days with Anne Marie's relatives. We even stopped by were we got married almost 2 years ago. While we were there we took some photos of ourselves trying to re-enact the photos from our wedding day. (but I don't have those to upload at the moment)

Support Raising Bootcamp

We are in the back row second from the left

Anne Marie and I were invited to go up to Word of Life (WOL) in Schroon Lake, NY this 2 weeks ago, to partake in a support raising bootcamp. It was extremely last minute, we literally found out about it a week before going. There was a lot of homework, including a Bible study, a book to read and more. We really enjoyed the prep-work, that we were able to get done. The bootcamp gave us fresh eyes on how to support raise and Biblically what it should look like. I'm really glad we took the time to sit down and read through God's Word and his plan for us through support raising.

This is helping us better view ourselves as missionaries and the donor. Lots of times we almost view missionaries as having to be poor and begging for money from potential donors. Instead I need to be viewing myself as an investment for others to partake in what God is doing in Taiwan while I need to view the donor as someone I can minister too and pray for. As missionaries we often just see donors as dollar signs. I'm really glad Anne Marie and I took the time to go through this training, we look forward to support raising the way God intended it!

While we were at WOL we were able to connect with a best friend couple of ours who will also be returning to Taiwan to do ministry. We look forward to serving God as a team with them and being able to encourage each other as we go through struggles and with joy from ministering to others. We also met a lot of other missionaries and we able to be encouraged through them. We look forward to following their ministries and receiving prayers from them.

Through the bootcamp and meeting with WOL Directors we have decided to join the WOL team! We will have more details to come after the partnership becomes official!