Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year (or my writing Hiatus has ended)

Happy New Year Everyone (I am ending my writing hiatus)

I apologize for the writing hiatus. The year of 2006 ended with a lot of commotion and craziness.

After returning home from China I began working as Associate Pastor at Southbrook Church in Franklin. While it has been odd adjusting to the role of “Pastor” (I still feel weird when people call me ‘Pastor’ instead of ‘Joe’ as if it's my name), I have quickly fallen in love with the church. It is a great staff to work with both volunteers and paid church workers.

Michelle returned home from Asia with the two of us rendezvousing in Boston for the wedding of our dear friend Aaron to his bride Ariel. The trip was fun and exciting, but tiring at the same time. Way to go Aaron and Ariel!

Having accumulated a ridiculous amount of airline and hotel points, we felt it necessary for the two of us to take a ‘free’ vacation. We set our sights on Florida, but found a frequent flyer ticket to Hawaii used much less points, so Aloha state we went.

Highlights from Hawaii:

1. The convertible upgrade the car rental agent scored us. There is really no better way to travel around Hawaii.















2. Scuba diving with 7 Manta Rays. These babies have 14 foot wide wingspans, and came right up next to us















3. Explore national volcano park. We hiked in volcano craters that were still steaming, and saw a live lava flow as it ran into the ocean



















4. Riding our wave runner with a pod of 40 wild dolphins. The played with us for at least ½ hour.
5. Amazing time of connecting as we explored the wild world that is Big Island and took in the beautiful weather.

Our holidays were full of chaos, but lots of joy as well.

2006 was quite a year; new jobs, new countries, new experiences, new friends. All of these things have really stretched me as a person and I would say have brought lots of growth in my character and in my marriage.

2007 is already shaping up to be quite a year. Some highlights I am looking forward to

1. Lots of exciting growth in the family ministries at Southbrook Church
2. Graduating from Trinity with a Masters in Divinity
3. Competing in first Triathlon July 14th in the Twin Cities
4. Basement renovation (I love my house projects)

Just a few of the events to look forward to.

This officially ends my writing hiatus, and many fun entries are sure to follow.

2 comments:

mjonthemove said...

Hey Joe,
How about some music highlights from 2006. You can view mine at mjonthemove.blogspot.com

- m.j.

timmer k. said...

Good to see you back in the saddle, Joe. Gotta say though, I'll believe the 'many fun entries' part when I see it.

Call me a cynic :)