Hi all!

Heya everyone,

Things are continuing to chug along for us here. There isn't too much to report to be honest. We were blest to have the opportunity to house sit last week - which is always quite nice, it felt a little like a holiday for us, and a bit of a change of scenery so that was pretty fun. 

Josh has continued to have exams - last week he had Church History, and felt that it went pretty well. I think that he still has a few more over the next couple of weeks. It's in some respects nice that they are spread out a bit so he can really sink his teeth into studying for each exam. 

I know that I always seem to talk about the weather - haha - but it's continuing to cool down over here, and I am really enjoying it! All the trees are starting to change colour and they are so pretty. And it is super nice to step outside and there is a real chill in the air. This morning it was 7 degrees (celsius) when Josh left - and I checked the weather report and it is due to get down to 2 degrees later in the week! :D Exciting. Haha we'll see how long that excitement lasts for. 

I have been continuing to teach art classes to the homeschooling kids and it has been a lot of fun. We have been learning a bit about animation, so last week we made Thaumatropes. I even did a video to show you! :D So that was pretty fun. :)

I was reading my devotional today - currently I'm using two, haha they are both really good! One is called The Quiet Place, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and the other is called 'At the Feet of Jesus' by Joanna Weaver. They are both very good I'd recommend them. Today the one from Joanna Weaver's really struck me, so I thought that I'd share it with you here:

"One of the most powerful testimonies I've ever heard came from David Ring, and evangelist born with cerebral palsy. "Why Mama?" David used to ask his mother when school kids teased him. "Why did I have to be born this way?" Although exceptionally bright, he was caught in a body that wouldn't do his bidding and was constantly tripped up by a stuttering tongue. 
God gave that sweet mother incredible wisdom as she taught her son that perhaps why wasn't the best question after all. 
"Asking why is like going to a well with a bucket and coming up empty every time," she told him. Instead, she said, the question should be, "What can I become?"
What a powerful, life-changing concept for all of us, especially when we're trapped and tripped up by the whys of life. Because when it comes right down to it, life is full of questions that don't have adequate answers.
Such questions haunted my young friend Tom. Though he loved Jesus, he struggled with the whys of his difficult life. 
But one day he showed me his Bible and a verse he'd underlined. "Now I know why my life is the way it is," Tom said. Pointing to the story of the man who had been born blind, Tom read John 9:3 aloud: "This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
Oh that we all might have a vision to see beyond the misery of what is to the miracle of what we can become."   ~Joanna Weaver, 'At the Feet of Jesus'

This message really struck me. My Nana lived most of her life struggling with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Although the pain she experienced from this crippling disease must have caused her more pain than she ever let on, she allowed God to use her epic ways. Her testimony to others was that she handed over her life to Him, despite the pain, despite being seemingly so physically restricted, I saw that God used her so amazingly. Especially in being a blessing to other people and caring for them. What an awesome witness of what God is capable of doing with us in spite of our weaknesses. 

Although no where near as debilitating as what my Nana faced - Josh and I have had to come to terms over the past 8 years with not being able to have children. And too often I found myself asking why on earth God would withhold this blessing from us. However, what we instead have to learn, is that "this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in our lives". I hope that will be the case! Because in writing that, it's amazing to think of what an honour it is to be called to that. :) But we are works in progress, I can't begin to tell you how long it has taken me to get to the point where I acknowledge that. Hopefully God will continue to gently teach me more and more every day - like He already has been. I'm very thankful to Him for His patience with me! I'm sure we all have burdens like this that we are struggling to bear. I hope that you can learn to find a similar perspective to this - because it really is liberating. I assure you. :)

Well, that is all for now - hopefully will get to take some autumn photos for you over the next week and see if I can get them posted up. Take care everyone!

Finally, an update!

Allo everyone,

Sorry that it has been such a while since our last update - the reason being that we moved into our apartment just over a week ago, and haven't had internet! So Lord willing, we will be getting that hooked up this coming Wednesday. 

In the meantime, we have been SUPER blessed - with being able to move into our own place, get set up with a lot of generously donated (and very nice I might add) furniture and items for everyday living, and also continuing to enjoy church life and getting to know people better!

Josh has still been busy with intensive Greek. He had another big exam last week, and did well - so that is a huge blessing, his hard work is paying off. This is his last week of the course, and he has the final exam this coming Friday. 

Our fellow Kiwi's, Albert, Hanneke and their girls, are coming back tomorrow - so we are really looking forward to hanging out with them in 'real life'! Haha - up to this point we have been in communication with them via email, Skype and phone - so it will be cool to meet them. :)

I have been keeping occupied with going for walks around our new neighbourhood, bike rides, and spending time with church and seminary friends which has been really nice. Also been investing time in some cooking and baking - I made some strawberry jam last week which was lots of fun, and it even came out tasting yum. :) 

A local home-schooling group has asked me if I would be willing to take the children for some art classes, so I am also going to be busy coming up with some lesson plans for that over the next couple of weeks. Josh will have a couple of days off to recuperate from Greek, before starting a short course in Hebrew. Then I think he has a week off before the Fall semester begins. :) He is still enjoying study, although has been pretty tired just lately in particular. 

Another couple who have moved here to study at seminary too, called in on us over the weekend and very kindly brought us some house warming gifts! They gave Josh the mug pictured below - they already have him figured out. He does love his coffee. :D

Hopefully we will have our internet set up on Wednesday, and then I can be a bit more regular with our updates. In the meantime, hope you are all well. Your prayers would be appreciated for Josh as he preps for his final exam on Friday. Also he has been feeling a bit under the weather for the past couple of days, so prayer for his health would be amazing too. Thank you so much! 

A new week...

...and more blessings!

Saturday was an exciting day because we got a car! God has been so good to us, and particularly in this regard. The car is very nice, and we have been told that the particular type of car holds it's value really well, so hopefully taking care of it over the next three years means that we will be able to resell it at a minimal loss. So now we are just praying that the Lord will take care of us as we drive it!

And we both have been doing a good amount of driving - so far so good. We have both found that we have managed to adjust to driving on the other side of the road pretty quickly. I still find that I get a little nervous before getting out on the road, but once I'm driving things fall into place, and it helps to just follow everyone else!

The next thing that was important was to get a GPS, which I think will become our best friend in our time over here. 

Well we had another really great Sunday at Redeemer church. If anyone is interested in where we are attending church over here, you can check out the Redeemer website here. We heard two excellent sermons, and got to meet some more members of the congregation. A bonus was also that after the evening service we got to see the Holtslags from Dovedale church in Christchurch. :D It was nice to see another couple of Kiwis. 

On our way home from church on Sunday night the sunset was A-mazing. We attempted to take a picture of it, which gives a bit of an idea how cool it was (but doesn't quite do it justice).

Amazing sunset Sunday night

You can even see our good friend the GPS in the pic. Josh has set the little icon representing us as a monster truck - which is getting into the American spirit. :)

On Monday Josh started Intensive Greek! He was pretty excited about this - he has been waiting to start studying for a looooong time now, and he is loving sinking his teeth into it. He is going to write an update on how he is finding the class later this week, so stay tuned. :)

Over the past couple of days I have been working on menu plans for dinners/lunches so that I could put together a grocery list and go shopping. Finally I got it done today and worked up the courage to go on my own. It sounds silly, but I was nervous about using our new bank card - you know, there is nothing much worse than getting to the supermarket checkout, go to pay and your card doesn't work, or you haven't got your wallet or something like that. :P So I was praying like crazy as I walked around the aisles that the card would work ok. As a backup I had a check that I had brought along - which is really weird to me, we've never used checks before (it's what our parents did back in the day) but here they are still really prevalent. 

Grocery shopping is quite an experience here. In many respects it's very much the same as home; standard aisles, trolleys, etc. But there are subtle differences - for one thing there is quite a bit of range. Say you want some mustard - great! But good luck choosing which mustard you want. There is a whole shelf, floor to ceiling a good meter wide full of about 40 different mustards. Thankfully my job is made easy because we go pretty much by what is the cheapest (with most things anyway). 

There are also people who pack your grocery bags for you (and often double or triple pack them), and then they wheel them out to your car for you on these little special trolly things. It was nice, but I had to kind of get used to it, considering I felt quite capable of taking my own groceries to the car. Haha. :)

Some of the food is super big too. You should see the tubs of ice-cream. 8-O And I got some veggies today too that were impressive. Such as the capsicum...

...and the zucchinis...

...and I didn't get a picture of them, but you should see the onions! They are humungous! Seriously, one is about the size of a baby's head! (Sorry, I couldn't think of another size comparison :p)

Prices vary compared to back home. Some things are really cheap - like 18 eggs for $2.40 (cheap right!), and a gallon of milk for $2 (in all seriousness). And I got a pretty good deal today, at least I'm pretty sure it was a good deal (compared to home anyway) - three massive chicken breasts for $3.45! That will go towards 3 meals, so at only just over a $1 for meat per meal - I'm thinking that's a good deal. 

With huge vegetables and my thumb placed next to it for scale. 

There are other things that seem to be a lot more expensive though - like herbs and spices can be up to $4 each (although I haven't managed to shop around a lot, and I also scored some for 89c), and yoghurt is kinda pricey. 

Apologies to anyone reading this who really is not very interested in the ins and outs of grocery shopping over here - I realise that it is kind of a menial subject - but it has just been so interesting learning what little things are different about here vs. NZ. Plus hey, at least you got some silly pictures. 

We are coming up to the 4th of July (obviously) but that is kind of a big deal over here in the States which is fun. So there have already been some fireworks going off, and we are looking forward to walking down to a local park on Thursday to check out the festivities. Fireworks are banned from public purchase in Illinois, but what is funny is that they are legal in Indiana, the border of which is just about a 5-10 minute drive away from us here in Lansing. So all the residents of Illinois drive over the border to purchase fireworks. But apparently in the past cops will wait just over the border and stop cars to search them for fireworks and confiscate any that they find. I wonder what they do with all the fireworks that they confiscate? Burn them? *snigger* Maybe they have a big party of their own (with the Indiana police of course, because it's legal over there). Anyway, that is going to be fun to experience the celebrations.  

Oh and I mentioned the other day that I had been baking some chocolate chip cookies that were a bit of a fail because it was so hot that the choc chips melted into the batter. Well I baked them, and they came out delicious! Even though they were more like "Chocolate with a little bit of Chips Cookies", I was still very happy with them. 

So if you are interested in trying some yummy cookies check out the recipe at the Sally's Baking Addiction website. Apparently the trick is in refrigerating the dough for at least a couple of hours before baking. That's all from me for now - over and out. :)

Living the life of a student

Well another few days down and we have more to be thankful for (isn't that always the way?). :)

It seems that God has provided a car for us, and although we are still having trouble getting our funds over here people are being amazingly generous and helping us out in trust. So Lord willing we will have a car on Saturday! Which will be huge. :)

On Wednesday I was feeling quite unwell, so we didn't leave the house and I just took it easy. Josh did some more Greek study, he has got the alphabet down pat, and has been working on some translation and pronunciation. 

Thursday we needed to go and get some groceries, so in the morning we walked to the nearest supermarket which was just over 2km away - so not tooooo bad, but made a bit more tricky with the heat (it was 89F, so about 31 degrees celsius) and also having to carry bags. But we like a challenge, and we don't mind walking at all, so made it fine. :)

We had a lovely simple dinner in the evening and spent quite a bit of time gazing out the window at the fireflies. It was the first time that we had ever seen any in real life and it was really cool! What amazing creation right! This little bit of video was the best I managed to get of them, and I'm not sure if you can see much in this, but at the end you see one flash across the screen. :) Also there was another lightening storm that night, so you can spot a very quick flash in the sky at the start of the video. 

I have to confess, I like fashion a wee bit (possibly more than I should)(I did warn you it was a confession), so have decided to make it my personal mission to try and create a comfortable wardrobe on a teeny budget. We came over with only 3 bags, and mostly summer clothes. We didn't want to have to pack a lot of clothes because we needed space for other things. So we don't have anything for winter apart from a few hoodies and a couple of pairs of jeans each. So up the road is a Goodwill store (like a big op-shop) which I haven't been in yet, but I think that there will have to be some recycling of clothing going on and I am going to have to crack out the needle and thread and get some ideas off Pinterest! :D We'll see how we go. 

This afternoon we were able to meet up with another student who will be starting study this year and his wife. They were a lovely Dutch couple, so it was really nice to meet them and compare stories about our experiences so far in the US! 

I have been trying to do a bit of baking, so have made some cookies mostly as thank you offerings for all the people who have been so kind to us so far. When words aren't enough, say it with cookies (I think that's how the saying goes). :) However the batch of chocolate chip cookies that I made this morning were a little bit of a fail - it was so warm here that the chocolate all melted into the dough. So they are pretty much just chocolate cookies now. :P Oh well, once I bake them hopefully they will taste ok - that's the main thing!

My supposed 'chocolate-chip' cookie dough - hmm or not.

I also made some home-made lemonade (non-fizzy) with just a couple of lemons, a bit of sugar and water which has been very tasty and upped our vitamin-C intake a bit hopefully! It's great to be able to make a cool, cheap and tasty alternative to just having water. :)

So despite frustrations over not having easy access to our funds, and therefore having to be dependent on other people's kindness (testing our humility) we have a huge amount to be thankful for. A very kind lady from church on Sunday gave me a daily devotional book by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and the devotional from the 27th was talking about dealing with difficult situations (referencing Romans 8:37), and said the following:

"But true, Christ-centered, grace-motivated gratitude fits everywhere, even in life's most desperate moments and difficult situations. Even when there are no "answers", it gives hope. Gratitude is what transforms overwhelmed strugglers into triumphant conquerors, even if their circumstances remain, for the present, unchanged."

Although our situation really is not very difficult at all - there are some things that we are experiencing that we could too easily get frustrated and stressed about, and sin in doing so. So it was great to have a reminder to take stock of all we have to be thankful for! And just to prove that it is still us writing, we thought we'd throw in a selfie. :)

Allo!

We thought that starting up a blog just before our journey over to study at Mid-America Reformed Seminary (MARS) would be a great way to keep everyone up to date. So here we go! (Plus we were inspired by the Kiwi's who are already over there and have their own blog - you should check it out HERE, it's a goodie :)).

So here it is. A place where we will (hopefully) keep you up-to-date with our adventures in the USA, as we face new cultures, and different climates. A new living situation, and a reverse way of driving. A place where the way we say 'tomato' is altogether wrong. Intensive Greek, being back to full-time student life and Christmas in the snow! Dun dun DUN!!! (I hope that sounded as dramatic and exciting in your mind as it did in mine :D)

Maybe a little bit about us for those of you who may not know us so well. :) We are both born and bred Kiwis. Both raised attending church - Hannah at the Reformed Church of the North Shore. Josh moving around a bit because his Dad is a minister, so he was at Pukekohe Reformed Church, in Christchurch at Bishopdale and then Dovedale as it was instituted. 

We were married 8 1/2 years ago, and can gratefully say we are even happier now then we were when first married. :) Josh has been a high-school teacher for the past 6 years, Hannah has been pursuing book illustration. So far, the Lord has not blessed us with a family, but He has blessed us in a huge number of other ways. We spent some time living in the UK after living in Christchurch for the first 3 years of our marriage, then came back to settle in Auckland where we have loved being members of the North Shore church once again. Now we are heading off to the USA so that Josh can study for the next three years working towards a Masters in Divinity. After which, Lord willing we will return home to NZ! 

This is us, and we hope that you will see us grow spiritually as this blog grows literally over the next three years. :)