NEW HOME!

Hello dear friends and family...thank you all so much for your prayers. The weekend before we left San Francisco to fly to Justine's parent's house in Oklahoma, we applied at a lovely little apartment near Nob Hill, San Francisco and our application was accepted!!! When we return on the 1st week of January we will finish the lease signing and start moving into our NEW PLACE. It was an amazing relief for us and such special timing, like a wonderful Christmas present.

We'll get pictures of it up eventually. It's small but very sweet, with a clawfoot tub in the bathroom, a nice big walk in closet, and an eat in kitchen. We're excited to settle in.

Thank you again for the PRAYERS and we hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas week wherever you are.

New beginnings...

Hello friends!
We haven't posted since we got back to San Francisco, because it's been really busy! Right when we returned (literally two or three days in) the week of Thanksgiving, Justine's grandfather passed away out in Oklahoma. It was a very sad time, but thank God, she was able to go home to be with her family for a few days. Being back at work has been great. We're back helping out around our offices, catching up with some admin work, and other practical stuff. Jason has been helping rebuild a pool table that was donated to us recently in rough condition. Him, a few other guys on staff and one of our friends from the streets have been putting it back together.

We've been praying a lot about becoming more connected with the immigrant/refugee community in our neighborhood. There are so many needs and ways of connecting people with God in this community! One of our friends that we made (she actually fitted Justine's wedding dress) we went to visit last week. She's a wonderful lady and has quite a harrowing story of her past as a refugee from Vietnam. Soon we will be scheduling a special date with her to taste her homemade Pho (Vietnamese chicken soup)!

Justine has been helping out with some admin work with the Because Justice Matters ministry that we are working with. (By the way, Because Justice Matters has its own website: http://www.becausejusticematters.org/) She's been helping a lot with the website, newsletter updates, and designing brochures about the ministry. She'll be taking a computer Photoshop class starting in January so that she can help out YWAM more with their advertising.

Last week, both of us attended an orientation with an organization called Refugee Transitions. Starting in the new year, we will be volunteering with them. They offer home-based ESL classes for refugee families. We will be able to meet with these families regularly each week and help them with their English and other transitional adjustments to American life! It's going to be an amazing experience and introduction to connecting with immigrants/refugees.

We are also hosting a Christmas party for the Nepali community here. 50+ Nepali's will be joining us for food, a Christmas story play, and games! What a great way it will be connect with the Nepalis in our area.

So, as you can see, it's been busy since we got back. We are also still looking for our future home. We are in temporary housing at the YWAM dorms right now. There is a very special apartment that we found last weekend and applied at, and we are still waiting to find out if we are accepted or not. The location is great, the price is great, the size is great, it really seemed like God led us to it. Please pray that we are able to move into this place, or another place soon! It's hard to not be able to settle, after all those weeks of travelling. We are looking forward to settled married life together!

We will be leaving next week to spend our Christmas with Justine's family in Oklahoma. We will most likely write another post after Christmas, or as soon as we get an apartment! Thanks for reading. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Heading home...

We just have a few days left of our post-wedding trip! We're in Ventura, CA right now, packing, tying up loose ends, and spending time with Jason's family. We leave bright and early on Tuesday morning in a rented car packed to the brim with our stuff from the past two and a half months, as well as all of our wedding gifts!!!

As sad as we are to leave family and friends and the excitement of these last couple of months, we are both so ready to be getting back to San Francisco and our lives there. It's going to be quite different, returning married!

We start work on December 1st...it will be good to meet with our leaders and make a plan for 2009. We'll keep you updated on what that is as it unfolds.

Please pray for us, that we can fit all of our stuff in the rental car and that we have safe travels! We hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving holiday.

Looking for our home.

As our honeymoon/post-wedding trip is winding down, we are thinking more and more about starting our new home in SF. We've spent many hours looking at apartments online...it's a little overwhelming. Today we listened to a teaching on anxiety...and it definitely related. All we can do is trust and know that God will provide a place at the right time.

San Francisco is so beautiful. The homes are almost all made in the early 1900's. Rent is really high...it's strange because it's started to become a 'normal' for us, but then we look around in other parts of the country and realize how abnormal it really is. It's amazing to think that if God wants you somewhere...it doesn't really matter what has to happen to get you there...He'll do it. It's probably a lot less significant to Him then it seems to us.

Please pray for us...that God would lead us to our first home and open all of the doors for us to get there. And also to give us courage and faith along the way.

Our very first blog.

Welcome to our blog! This is our very first post. Most of you know us as Jason & Justine Martinez, newly-married couple, working as missionaries to the city of San Francisco.

Over the last two months, we've experienced the joys of wedding planning, the amazing experience of taking marriage vows before our friends, family, and God, travels to Mexico, Virginia, & New York City on a whirlwind honeymoon.

Now we are spending time with our families while also working on raising our financial support as missionaries for the coming years.

It's hard to believe that it's already been 3 1/2 weeks since our wedding! We are still waiting to see all our pictures and gifts, but it's been so wonderful to drag out the experience as long as possible! Each moment of the wedding day was so beautiful. It was incredible to see all of the hard work of planning come to an end, as well as to see all of our loved ones there to support us. But best of all was to be able to make this amazing commitment, and to know God's love and His will was with us.

Here are a few pictures...