The new apartment!

Finally, the long awaited photos of us in our new home! Tonight we are going to be attending a training session to prepare us for the ESL classes with refugees! Pray for us that it will become an amazing way to connect with refugees and their families and help them as they transition! In other news, Justine is taking a short weekend trip to Salem, Oregon, to attend a YWAM meetup...it will be made up of YWAM staff around the country who are involved in the issue of human trafficking. We're really looking forward to connecting with others who are working on the same things that we've been working on, and building a network together. Jason has been most weeks playing volleyball with a group of young Nepali guys! He has such a gift in friendship and it's been great to see him make connections in that setting.
Enjoy the pics and captions below! Thank you to EVERYONE for praying for us to find this place, we are loving having a space of our own!

We live in a cozy studio, so we've put up a lovely bookshelf/room divider and created our "living room"

Here Justine is creating HOMEMADE pizza! (homemade dough as well)

Our walk-in closet that we couldn't live without!

Jason fries home-made tortilla chips as we make our first meal together in the apartment...

Our favorite feature of the apartment, is the full size kitchen! For the last two 1/2 years we've been living with a mini-fridge, tiny spaced kitchen...as you see here, we actually have cabinets, counter top, full fridge, and a space for table and chairs!

Here we are, move-in day, building our bed!

Moving in will make you sleepy.

Nepali Christmas

Hello everyone...it's hard to believe we're already in January of 2009! We are officially in our NEW home! A beautiful cozy studio apartment in the lower Nob Hill neighborhood of SF. It's nice because we're just a 10 minute walk to and from work, near lots of shops and restaurants...our apartment is in a building built in 1915, and it is kept in wonderful shape! We have cute little built in cabinets and wainscotting (I believe that's the spelling?) on our kitchen walls. We're slowly unpacking, settling, and furnishing our new place. I'll get pictures up of it as soon as possible!

We were very business all throughout the month of December! We were busy looking for an apartment, getting ready to go to Oklahoma to visit Justine's family for Christmas, and busy at work! One of the highlights of December for us was the Christmas party that we helped throw for the Nepali community. Partnering with another couple that is in the city with a heart for the people of Nepal, our party consisted of delicious Nepali food, games, donated items for families to take home, and Christmas songs and the Christmas story shared in the Nepali language! It was wonderful to connect with this community, as there are about 5,000 Nepalis settled in the Bay Area. They are lovely people and we look forward to continuing to build relationships with them. Jason has also started playing volleyball on Tuesday mornings with a group of young Nepali men every week.

Here are some photos of the Nepali Christmas party! One lady in particular, her name is Gita, has been also volunteering with us on our weekly food pantry. Justine and a few other women at the YWAM base have been befriending her. She works as a nanny in the city and helps to support her two grown daughters. Please be praying for Gita, that our friendship with her would be an encouragement to her and that she would know God's love for her and her family.

Please be praying for us as we continue to settle into our new home! Pray that our finances will remain stable. We are both taking a few college classes this semester, which is exciting! Justine is taking a class on Photoshop, so that she can help out with the ministry and their advertising, fundraising, etc. The other class we are both taking and it's US History of Immigrants.

Thanks for listening! Pictures of the apartment will be up soon. Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years. We had a wonderful time with Justine's family!