Vacation and Blessings

Hello all! We are new to blogging and it has taken me a while to get it all figured out :) EK has done an excellent job creating the blog...I can’t take any credit.

Walking across the stage!

We have had an excited couple of weeks. I (Maddie) just graduated from the University of Missouri with my Masters of Social Work. It is so amazing to be finished with school it felt like the day would never come. However, it was a wonderful experience and I feel blessed to have learned all that I did and can't wait to use all my social work skills!



This is in Freeport Bahamas, we were on our way to go swim with
dolphins!

After graduating EK and I headed off to a week long cruise in the Bahamas which we had planned several months ago to celebrate my graduation. We had a wonderful time relaxing and spending time together. We liked to say that it was a vacation and we were preparing ourselves for our life in the Caribbean. We did experience driving on the "wrong" side of the road when we rented a scooter for a day. The scooter ride started off great as we drove by the beach and did some shopping. However it ended a little differently...We had a run in with a very LARGE pothole and actually ended up crashing the scooter! Luckily we only had a few scraps and bruises and nothing serious, we were very thankful that God protected us in this situation. There were lots of locals around when it happened and they were all very helpful and concerned, one kept telling us we needed to go to the hospital but we just went to the medical center on the cruise ship and we were able to get band aids, which was all we really needed. It was a little embarrassing after we crashed and we had to drive the scooter back to return it. There we several busses of tourists and all of them were looking and pointing at us out of their windows since EK's ankle and my knee was bleeding pretty badly. This experience taught us we may not ride on any scooters when we are in St. Vincent :). The rest of our trip was great and we had no other mishaps.

Before the accident...

After...

We also spent a few days in Orlando after our cruise and went to Universal Studios. For those of you who don't know I have read all the Harry Potter books (possibly more that once) and I told EK if we were really celebrating my graduation I wanted to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, so we went! I loved it was so much fun and it really felt like books were coming to life around me, EK enjoyed it as well.

Having a refreshment in Hogsmeade with Hogwarts behind us

We were really blessed when we were leaving Orlando our flight was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to take the next flight for compensation. EK and I decided to do this and we go $900 of credit through Southwest. We were excited because we know some of our family would like to come visit us while we are in St. Vincent but the trip is rather expensive, we hope to transfer this credit to our family so they will be able to make the trip! God is so good.

Now we are back home and to reality. We were so thrilled at the amount of support we had gotten while we were gone and are so thankful to all of our supporters. We found out last week that EK will be teaching three classes at WISE: Old Testament History I, and Personal Evangelism I and II. I will be teaching English and will be helping in the preschool which currently has three children signed up that are between the ages 3 and 5. And finally we got our plane tickets booked thanks to David Wurdeman and we are flying out on August 13. We will be flying out of Chicago and will actually arrive in St. Vincent on the same day...which I guess is kind of unheard of. We decided to fly out of Chicago because EK's parents live there so we will spend a few days with them before we leave.

Again we are sooo excited for all the God is doing in our lives and look forward to seeing how He will continue to work in us!