Moving Date

All arrangements have been made, and we pick up our moving truck on the 8th!  We already have most of our things packed up, so this last week here shouldn't be too stressful.  

Though we are bursting with excitement, we are also so very sad to be leaving everyone here.  Every moment we spend with our friends and their families during our last days here is being savored, and we will treasure these moments until we see each of them again.   

So, with the help of our friends and some of their family we'll get the truck packed up the afternoon on July 8th, and then head out early in the morning the next day.  We have reservations at a hotel in Boise, ID where we'll spend the night after a 13 hour drive, then finish the last 7 hours the next day.

We will arrive in Portland sometime in the afternoon on the 10th, and with the gracious help of some of the members of our new community at West Hills Friends we'll get the truck unloaded and begin to settle into our new apartment and into our new journey as Oregonians!

Can you believe that?  We've dreamed for 4 years now of calling Oregon home, ever since the day we stepped foot there in 2006 when we attended the Oregon Extension.  It still feels so surreal!

To our Pennsylvania family and friends, thank you for standing by us, loving us, and cheering us on from across the country!  We love and miss you all dearly and can't wait to finally visit!  To our Colorado friends and families, you all have truly been shining lights in our lives, encouraging and loving us, thank you for making us feel like family!  A big part of our hearts will always be in Pennsylvania and Colorado!  Without all of you, we wouldn't be who we are or where we are today!  Thank you for all your love and support no matter where our journey has taken us!

-Beth

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A recent picture of us taken and sent to West Hills Friends so everyone can see what we look like before we arrive! 

And of course I have to include a picture of our Oliver!  He's growing so much, and becoming quite the big boy!  This was taken on a recent hike near Breckenridge, CO.  Oliver is a true mountain dog.  He's surely going to love Oregon!

Big News

I (mark) have some big news. I have just accepted the position of Youth Pastor at West Hills Friends in Portland, OR. This is incredibly exciting. Since graduating from Eastern in 2008, Beth and I have been longing to do "meaningful" work. It seems like things are starting to really come together for us. We will be moving to Portland starting July 9th, and will rest our  eyes in our apartment for this first time on July 10th.

Please continue to hold us in your prayers and thoughts as we prepare for this move and transition, but most importantly let us celebrate! 

Another one of those massive updates...

Our visit to Portland was just the beginning of the good news to come our way! Our interviews went well, and we were able to get a good feel of the city and some of it's surroundings. The position Mark interviewed for, was open before we could make a move to Portland, so we decided it would be best to pass it up. There is a possibility that another position may open, but it seems like God may have something even better than we could have ever expected in store for us! Mark is headed to Portland, June 11-13th for another interview, this time with a Quaker church for a youth pastor position! He's one of the top 3 candidates, and we are really praying he gets the position! We both feel like the church would be a perfect fit for us, and we'd finally be able to get back into Youth Ministry, one of our greatest passions.

Beth will begin her new job as an assistant at a small home-based Montessori school in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood in August! She is beyond thrilled! There are a few details that need to come together with the school, but we are trusting that everything works out.

Our search for a place to live has also proved to be fruitful! Mark posted an ad on Craigslist, and shortly after we were contacted by a family who has a basement apartment in their home for rent! It was exactly what we were looking for! There is even a fenced in back yard where Oliver can play along with their black Lab! Mark is hoping to stop by and meet with the family while he's in Portland and give them part of our deposit. They were so gracious to wait for us, as the apartment has been empty for over a month already. We're looking to move in July, so keep you all posted once we pick a date!

Here are some great shots from our trip of the gorgeous land we are looking forward to calling home!

The Columbia River Gorge is about 20-30 minutes from Portland! We got to see lots of great waterfalls along the river, and you just wouldn't believe the gorgeous colors of green that blanket everything in the forest!

This was taken at Ecola State Park, near Cannon Beach, OR, just an hour and a half from Portland, OR!

I'm sure it's not hard to see just why our hearts have been in Oregon ever since the first time we stepped foot there! And If you've been around us enough, you know that we talk about our experiences in Oregon A LOT! It's been "home" to us ever since, and we are truly excited to be able to make it our physical home.

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We celebrated Oliver's 1st birthday on April 3rd! He's adorable and ornery as ever!

(And continues to grow like a weed!)

Isn't he handsome!

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Beth continues to knit, and has been knitting up lots of baby hats for our friends back on the East Coast that are expecting! She's been knitting from patterns, but hopes to come up with her own design soon to post on her Etsy shop! She has also started getting paid to clean a couple homes, as well as a local church. It's really helping us save up for the big move to Portland, and she actually kind of enjoys it!

Beth calls this "Stitch and Pitch," knitting at a Rockies game!

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Ladies and gentlemen, the hair is gone!

And Beth got a trim and some side bangs. :-)

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With the start of baseball season, Mark has really enjoyed keeping up with his Fantasy League team, and of course rooting on his Phils! We got to go see game 1 of their series against the Rockies with some of our favorite Denver people! The Phils won of course! :-) Unfortunately games 2 and 3 got cancelled due to weather... but we're looking forward to going to one of the makeup games!

Adam and Joe

Carrie, Mal, Brit, and Me

They're all one reason we'll be sad to leave, Denver. We love them all so much!

PDX

"If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet wiht a success unexpected in common hours." -Thoreau

We have been allowing ourselves to dream about what we want to do next, since things just haven't quite been working out for us. February Mark and I both started exploring other options that were beginning to interest us, and let ourselves dream about what that might look like for us. Finally a couple weeks ago, we received good news! We are headed to Portland on Saturday for a couple interviews! We'll be there Saturday through Tuesday. We'd feel a bit better if we each had at least one more interview, but if not that's okay too. We are just grateful that someone is actually interested in meeting with us!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

After the suggestion of a friend, Mark began exploring the possibility of working in residential treatment centers for youth. We’re excited because these type of positions seem to fit Mark a lot better than any youth ministry position we have looked at. He has not been able to find any openings here in Denver, so we decided to check out Portland. Mark emailed a connection we have there, and it turns out he had some pretty good leads for him. Mark was able to line up an interview almost immediately with Northwest Behavioral Healthcare Services, a residential treatment center for youth.

I've been exploring getting into Montessori Education, and I really think it will be a great fit for me. I have been considering going to one of the Montessori Institutes to become a teacher, but decided to look into job opportunities first. I found a posting for a position as a classroom assistant in a small Montessori school run out of a mother's home in SE Portland. It seems this would be a great opportunity to gain a significant amount of experience before seriously considering becoming a teacher. It also just so happens that she is into local/organic foods, gardening, community, yoga, etc. That made me even more excited! I emailed her and she said she’d be very interested in meeting me, so we went ahead and set up an interview when we found out about Mark’s interview.

We feel like we finally have hope that something will finally work out for us. We are trying to stay calm though, we're so afraid of setting ourselves up for disappointment. So please keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

"Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.

For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live."

-Thoreau

I often hesitate to update this, thinking that unless I have some update on our lives that it really isn't worth writing anything. I have to remember that this blog isn't strictly informational in the "I just did this, we just did that" sorta way. I guess there are plenty of things that I wish you knew about the two of us. Chances are, when you learn these things, we will have found another thing in common. We like that common word. Community.

I have been reading a lot of David James Duncan as of late. More specifically My Story As Told By Water. I guess you can call it a memoir. If you call it that, then I guess you could read it and hear our story too. I (Mark) feel like it is as much of My Story As Told by Water as Duncan's. His descriptions of the Pacific Northwest feel hauntingly like the very words I use to describe it, the images created by his words are the very photos and mini-movies I have preserved in my memory.

So I have been flipping through all of those as of late. Remembering and reliving those sacred moments in Lincoln, OR. Beth and I both go through these times often. Beth calls them the "Oregon Homesick Blues."

Take for example the photo below. A picture of our honeymoon road trip starting in San Francisco and traveling north through the redwood forest.

Thinking about that first full day of our marriage...man. We arrived in San Francisco, rented a Jeep Patriot from a shady rental place, and turned that thing north. We traveled for nearly seven hours, passing through the rolling, grass covered hills just north of San Francisco, then dodging in and out of dense redwood forest and the subsequent fog. We stopped in tiny towns for burritos and gas. We drove by roadside attractions like "The Legend of Bigfoot," and laughed.

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We met Paul Bunyan, who amongst the giant redwoods, seemed at home, but thankfully retired many years ago.

We were headed to a campground on the coast in Brookings, OR. Our second night as a married couple was to be spent in a tent, and we preferred to set up that tent with plenty of daylight. But as we entered into the ancient forests the headlights started to beat out the sun as far as illumination. After hours in the forest we rounded a corner and beheld the mighty Pacific and the setting sun. Still hours from our campground we decided to stop and embrace the disappearance of our easily set up tent. We took this photo:

Man, how I wish we could repeat this again soon.