Wow, wow, and wow again

God is an amazing God and I have never felt more blessed by Him than I do at this very moment. We were so nervous about leaving Virginia because we LOVED our church family, we LOVED our house, Christina LOVED her job, and we often asked ourselves, "Why are we leaving all this?" Well the last few days God has answered that question. As has been the case in our lives since we've been married, we've wished for it and God has made it happen. We had a very uneventful move to Houston last week and we're settled into our humble little hotel room where we'll call home for the next few weeks. We immediately started house hunting and found one after only two days. The downside was that it was WAY out of our price range. But the owners, eager to sell, agreed to come down to our level and proceed with the transaction. So we close on our new house on October 2nd. Let's just say we could fit three of our old house into our new one. It's HUGE. We've been calling it Gigantor. You can see the church building from the backyard so I can ride my bike to work on most days, and Christina got a job at a hospital about 5-10 minutes away. Amazing.

Today we were overwhelmed with love and support from our new congregation. In class this morning I got to share some of my own life with our new teens (who are AWESOME by the way), then after the sermon Matt Soper, our preacher, called me up to the stage and commissioned me and charged me with the task of leading the teens of this church, but also commissioned and charged the church with supporting me as a Christian man, as a husband, and as a father. Absolutely awesome.

Then after church we went to the gym and had our first potluck. After lunch we went up on the stage and each grade level had a family representing it that presented us with gifts. The gifts ranged from salsa to t-shirts from all the area high schools to tickets to a Texans game in December to toys for the boys. One really cool one was from my youth deacons. It's a Bible that was printed in London during the reign of Queen Victoria, then shipped to America where it was bought by someone named Mary Johnston in Easton, PA. The deacon's presented it to me to symbolize the legacy they hope will be established by our ministry here. Very exciting things.

Needless to say we've got a lot of good stuff happening right now. Levi and Titus seem to be adjusting well on top of everything else. What a blessing this move has been.