Moving Day

We're pulling out of Stuttgart at 7am tomorrow morning!

We worked our booties off today packing, cleaning, tying up lose ends, and spending some time with friends. We're really sad to be leaving -- there's nothing fun about it!

So back to St. Louis we go.... Back to seminary, back to St. Mary's, back to some good restaurants and mountain biking! There are things to look forward to, but right now our focus is on the friends and experiences we leave behind in Arkansas.

Arkansas exceeded all of my expectations and I am really sad to go....

(Stay tuned for more posts to come once our internet service is set up in StL.)

YouthWorks!

In mid July, Aaron and I went on a servent event with the youth director from St. John's and 9 high school youth! The program was through a group called YouthWorks! and they have sites all over the U.S. for high school or junior high youth groups to do mission work.

We went to Hyde County, North Carolina and worked primarily in Swan Quarter and Engelhard. It is on the inner banks in northern NC where they have been hit by many hurricanes over the last few years. Work is mostly agriculture and fishing and there is a fair amount of poverty.

Our work consisted of a few different things. One area was a vacation bible school for community children that runs all summer long. It is free for the children and they play all kinds of games and learn about Jesus. They had so much fun and it was such a blessing to witness their awesome faith!

The rest of our time was spent doing light home repair and yard work for community members. We did a lot of scraping, painting, sanding, and yard clean-up. Our kids worked very hard (so did the adults,too!) and they represented Arkansas, Stuttgart, and St. John's very well!

The trip wasn't all hard work -- We managed to get half a day at Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington, NC. This beach was amazing! All of us had a blast jumping waves in the ocean and digging in the sand. I hope to come back to this area someday with my family because it was such a nice place!


Eric found a "bargain" on this sweet gas mask for only ten dollars! He bought it in Wilmington and we got many laughs out of it!


One of our evening activities with YouthWorks was going crabbing. We tied some raw chicken to a long string and dropped it in the water and waited for the crabs to nibble. Then you slowly pulled the line in and scooped out the crab with a net. Here you can see Rachael with the largest crab caught! Although I did catch two at one time which was pretty impressive.


Here is some evidence of our hard work. Julia is scraping paint of the concrete floor of a carport. They painted it after all the scraping was done!


It was a blessing for us to go on the trip with Katie and the kids. We worked hard, played hard, and learned a lot!

Lasts Days of Work

My last 2 days of work have officially come and gone. Tuesday was my last day in Stuttgart and Wednesday was my last day in Pine Bluff. Both days were bittersweet with the fun of telling them I was pregnant and the excitement of change mixed with the sadness of saying goodbye to some very special friends!

In Stuttgart Sylvene and Virginia got some cakes and cookies and had a little going away/congratulations party, complete with gifts. It was awesome and really meant a lot to me! SRMC is truly a special place, like a little community in itself.




This picture is my good friends Warren and Virginia. Warren is our 'computer dude' at SRMC and is a great guy. Love that hair! Virginia is another pharmacist and was SO MUCH FUN to work with! She's super funny and is the single most hard-working person I have ever met. Her dedication to her family and work are second to none -- she is a lesson in hard work, perseverence, patience, and faith. I'll miss working with her so much.... :(

Above are Sylvene, Jewel, and myself. Sylvene and Jewel are two of the sweetest AND funniest ladies that I have known in Arkansas! I'll surely miss them.

In Pine Bluff they also had a delicious cake for my last day. I worked upstairs doing kinetics but still made a little time to visit with my co-workers in the pharmacy and was able to leave early to make it to youth group (more on that later).

The above picture if of most of the ladies from the day crew. In front is Marie (super pharmacist extraordinaire -- she's AMAZING!) Left to right: Charlene, Cassie, BeeLinda, Carol, Tanya, and Debbie. This is an example of the outstanding employees that JRMC has. I can't say enough positive things about each of these ladies AND the other employees we have in the pharmacy. It is a great bunch of hard-working, dedicated, caring individuals -- not to mention fun!


Two of our great evening techs, James and Justin. We always had fun laughing and joking -- but these boys know how to get the work done when it's busy! Melva is our other regular evening tech and I wish I would've had a chance to say goodbye to her. I'll miss her sweet nature, her inspiring faith in God, and how well she kept James & Justin in line.

I'll really miss them.... Everyone sent me off with well wishes for a healthy pregnancy and baby, and wishes that I will come back to Arkansas to work with them again someday. Only God knows what the future holds but I would be more than happy to work with these folks again! As my great aunt Vivian used to say, maybe the goodbyes were "not goodbye, just see you later".

Prologue

Any reflection upon the events of this past week would give the ponderer a keen view of the many threads that are now weaving through our lives.

It began last Tuesday at the doctor’s office when we heard the heartbeat of the baby. As we are moving they didn’t do the full work up, but did let us hear the heart. My first reaction was akin to disbelief. I just laid there stunned. I looked at the nurses face and saw a big smile. It hit me, “Oh yeah, this is really cool.” Aaron was outside like a dummy. He claimed that he didn’t hear the nurse call my name, so I went and got him and had the nurse do it all over again.

This news comes in the midst of our moving. In a few days we will take off for St. Louis moving half of our stuff. We’ll come back, Aaron will do his final farewell sermon here at St. John’s, we’ll pack a new trailer load and then be gone for good.

Aaron has one academic year left in his quest to become a pastor. He has an undergraduate degree and seminary is 4 years on top of that. We’re currently finishing up year 3. This year is alike an internship year working at a church -- they call it vicarage. Vicarage is now soon finished and we will be returning to the seminary in St. Louis.

In the next 2 days both of my part time jobs will be ending. Both of these jobs are as a hospital pharmacist, one here in Stuttgart and the other is in Pine Bluff. I approach these last days with mixed feelings. It will be hard to leave behind the people I’ve been working with and yet at the same time I’m excited to go back to one job at a familiar hospital. I’m going back to St. Mary’s Health Center where I’ve worked for 2 years, one of the years doing a pharmacy residency and the other year as a clinical pharmacist.

The heat has finally broken in the dog days of summer. We took our dog Maci outside and played with her for a bit while talking with one of the members of our church. When done talking we returned to the door shortly behind Maci who timidly howled to let her in. It was the first time we had heard her howl, and the howl was indeed timid, as if she was testing it out on us to see our response. We laughed and in we all went.

Perhaps our howl is timid as well. We howl for sadness in the things we leave behind and howl with excitement for the things that will come. In this transition the one sure thing is that our howl, either way, isn’t a strong guttural vocalization. We now exist in a state of flux, not sure what we are leaving behind, and not quite sure what comes next.

As we go forth, we’ll keep you updated…