who are you?

remember this guy? why was he so angry?

we are a married couple in our late 20's (he's from alabama; she's from tennessee) who as of september 2012 are returning to the states (memphis, tn) from 2 years of "mission" work in florence italy. i, laura/the wife/the girl, will be doing the blogging.

we went to florence with the intention of making some italian friends and telling them about jesus by offering the services of free english lessons using the bible. sounds pretty fun and uncomplicated, right?

[laughter]

what we got was a roundhouse kick to the face/comfort zone/soul/marriage/heart/priorities/vision. we needed god to survive a lot of days. that was his point, duh.   

i could tell stories for days about the things we have learned and experienced but i'm not going to, especially not here. 

hear me now: i don't think i'm better than anyone because i went. i know that i am "the worst of sinners" and that god had to yank us away from everything we knew to reverse the downward spiral toward visionless lives, a weak and selfish marriage and a materialistic obsession that we were comfortably drifting into.

i now know what it is to thirst for his word. i'm utterly in love with his son. i want to live by nothing more than his life-giving spirit. for the first time in my life. this is his doing. this came from suffering. i can't go back.

he could have done that in memphis or timbuktu but he chose to do it in italy. 

i have no doubt that our decision to move back to memphis will just be the next chapter of changing and growing as we learn what it looks like to be our new selves in a familiar setting. 

at the same time, just because the city is familiar we are looking at it through fresh eyes and with a vision. and that has the potential to make all the difference.

praying for guidance, wisdom, humility and boldness. 

i'll share the happenings here as we strive to live a better story.

ps. i don't pretend to be good or knowledgeable at grammar (this sentence itself is probably validation of that). all i can promise is that it comes from the heart. judge if you will. 

pss. before we moved to italy i blogged here for some time about nothing really outstanding or interesting. a lot of it is materialistic crap actually but there were a few moments of clarity when i managed to write about my wonderful family or husband or something worthwhile we did. if you do scroll back in time, read those and ignore the others. hopefully it will be more interesting and meaningful this time around. just sayin'.

wisdom.

my granddad's famous (in our family) words. 

i believe him. 

he lives this way. 

this is his nature.

his treasure isn't of this world. 

i need reminding of this every once in a while and just felt like putting life to his words in the form of this little doodle.

love links

our church family: 

http://www.highlandcc.org/

our diving boards into a life of ministry:
http://avantiitalia.org/whatisavantiitalia

http://www.healthtalents.org/index.php
http://ihcf.net/index.html

our favorite places serving the community of memphis, tennessee: 

http://www.whyhopeworks.org/

http://revolutionsmemphis.wordpress.com/

our favorite places serving the community of florence, italy:
http://www.aurora-onlus.it/

our favorite places serving people worldwide:
http://www.iamsecond.com/

friendly blogs

blogs of my friends:


laura: http://onefortyfivepm.tumblr.com/
       http://xlegit.wordpress.com/
martha: http://marthacarter.blogspot.it/
kate: http://goodtimestaylor.blogspot.it/

arrivederci!

i feel bad that i'm just now blogging about this, but this week has consisted of nothing but packing and moving from sun up to sun down (with the occasional social activity sprinkled in).

so....this past sunday, our wonderful friends martha and tdud hosted a going away party for us and invited all of our favorite people! it was just a come and go fun time that consisted of oh so much fun, friends, family, photos, bbq, my family's 4 generation chocolate chip cookies (made perfectly by the hostess herself), and homemade shortbread with peach ice cream and hot homemade raspberry sauce. i'm such a sucker for homemade anything. i actually chose not to eat desserts if there is not some sort of homemade element in them. anyway, that is beside the point.

it was so great to be around all our closest friends and family all together one last time before we take off.

here are some photos from the joyous event (somehow we did not get one with the host and hostess).

moving out

even though we aren't leaving until september 8th, we have to pack and get moved out now in preparation for our 2 week training session in searcy, arkansas.

after returning sunday from a week in orange beach with ryan's family, we began this fun game called packing our home. we started monday "morning" working room to room. this packing is even more challenging than just packing to move from home to home. we are packing to store things at my parents house and marth and tdud's in a variety of climates for TWO years. we are having to take a lot of things into consideration when packing like, "what if i decide i want these shoes 3 months in?", "is this going to break?", "is this going to get eaten by moths?", "can someone else use this instead of packing it?", "what will the combination of non-use/sub-arctic cold/dessert heat do to this?"... needless to say it has been a experiment in patience and the true obsessive compulsive tendencies of my husband and i.

we've actually had a lot of fun jamming/dancing to 94.1 kqk and listening to quality films like "sideways" and "the big lebowski"... 2 of our family favorites.

so, for anyone who cares (probably only my grandmother) here are some photos of our progress thus far.

empty walls/windows and stuff everywhere

untouched but messy kitchen because i'm

attempting to cook everything in our fridge/pantry/freezer.

this room will be the last to be packed

the hubs diligently going through old magazines

our schnucks box collection

the guest bedroom has become the

holding area for packed stuff

this closet has affectionately become known as

the marth and dud closet because everything

in here will soon be at their house...plus more

the books we are taking on our journey

beginnings of the real packing for italia

simple project

not a major project at all, but very necessary considering our upcoming life change.

i stopped at target today, as i occasionally do when i have time to kill in east memphis, to buy some thank you notes. instead i found this:

box of 200 earth tone note cards with matching/not matching envelopes, depending on how i choose to pair them up

i figured i could use these for a multitude of purposes since they are blank, and there are so many so i hopefully won't have to buy anymore while in italy.

then i remembered i had a ton of blank return address labels from our wedding, so i made these:

happy little "thank you" and "i miss you" labels to stick in the middle of an appropriate note, and return address labels with our soon to be address at the bible school in florence.

so easy a first grader could do it, but i had fun and i love them. that's all that matters right?