t-minus 1 week and counting

this past month of july has flown by and Minda and I are both getting extremely nervous and excited about our new journey that is just about to begin! our last week in ohio is absolutely jam packed, meeting with friends and family.

this past saturday Minda worked her last day at the doughbox bakery, she is really sad to leave all her friends but so excited to start this new chapter in her life! friday morning her co-workers threw a going away party. they wrote encouraging notes, and made awesome homemade salsa (thanks Jules)! and Minda is very proud to say that she contributed to the party by making an egg bake dish!

today is Garrett's (my younger brother) graduation party, so we are excited to celebrate with him and send him off to continue his education at Ithaca College in upstate new york.

in other news, we are beginning the long hard process of deciding what to pack to bring with us, this is obviously an important task, seeing that the decisions we make now will have a profound effect on our next six months, let's hope we choose wisely! 

t-minus 4 Weeks and Counting

today marks four weeks until we leave for California. furthermore we only have three weeks of Church left at Christ Community Church which we are both really saddened about. we are both getting more and more excited, but we are also getting more and more disappointed about leaving our family and friends. BUT, we are not planning on becoming disconnected while we are gone. we are going to try our hardest to stay connected in a plethora of ways, really attempting to give you a variety of avenues to keep up with us in the way(s) you find easiest or most interesting. these are the ways we are staying connected:

• our blog, duh right? if you would like to spread the word please post this link on your facebook!: http://nikandminda.blogspot.com/ we really would like as many people to know about and see this blog as possible. so please spread the word! also we LOVE comments, so please comment away either at the end of each post or on our facebook profiles!
• Facebook updates of course! we would also appreciate your comments and encouragements on these, we LOVE your personal encouragements and love.
• Twitter updates. if you are unfamiliar with twitter you can check it out at http://www.twitter.com/. it is basically a site completely dedicated to facebook style status updates. if you want to follow us or get our updates texted to your cell phone via text messaging our twitter name is nikandminda
• UStream video blog. we will be broadcasting a video blog that you can watch live while we are recording or later at your convenience when you are free. during the live blog as many viewers as want are able to watch and chat with each other and us without signing up for any service. the link to follow to find the blog is: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nikandminda we will have listed blog times on the website and later on facebook and twitter.                                                                                            

we also just added a "like" button for facebook as you can see below, so please "like" each post you read and get the word out! there is also a small box with the facebook icon below that will share the link to facebook, so please share away!

in the beginning...

Arminda and I have been married for twenty-six days now. twenty-six wonderful, crazy, exciting, and adventurous days. everyday that we are married brings us one day closer to beginning our new job together. we are going to be working for the company Camfel Productions, and in a nutshell our responsibilities are: to set up the equipment for and run school assemblies in public high schools all across America. the school assemblies are focused on encouraging students to be the best person that they can be, and reminding them that they are all special and unique. we begin our new job in august, august 8^th to be exact. we will be leaving august 8^th heading to ontario, california to begin 2 weeks of training, after the training we will begin our journey through the united states. we are unsure of exactly where we will be headed, but we will update you all as soon as we know. Arminda and I are so so pumped to keep all of you, our family and friends, in our lives and in the know of our current struggles and sucesses. we would both love for you to comment on our post and let us know how you are doing and what you think of our latest endevors.

Soooo right now here are some prayer requests and praises:

·        we bought our plane tickets (we leave august 8^th!)

·        that the Lord will prepare us to work with the high school students we will soon encounter

·        that we would be wise with our finances

·        we are looking for a GPS and a Video Camera right now