SAVE THE DATE!

It is finally official! Our wedding date is May 16th, 2009. Sorry for the long wait and many changes in date. It truly is harder than it seems! Mark this on your calender so you can enjoy this special day with us!
We promise the date won't change again (well we hope not)!

Missions...

You may have noticed this past week a new item on the right side of our blog for the unreached people of the day. This is a subject that is close to Alexa and I. Two years ago for spring break we went on a mission trip to Piriti, Panama in the Darien Jungle. This was something that we had been looking forward to doing for a while and when the opportunity came up and we signed up right away.

Our trip was one of the best experiences of my life. We were able to help these people out and get more things done around the village in one week than they do in a month's time. The best part of it all was their appreciation towards us. They didn't take us being there for granted. They were accepting of our help and were glad to answer questions and talk with us whenever we wanted, even with the language difference.

There were so many great experiences that I still wish I could go back and spend another week there. If you have never lived a week with no worries, no cares, and no stress you would understand what I mean. These people aren't worried about who is winning the football game, who was elected president, or what time of the day it is. These people continue to live their lives as though it is their last day, always smiling and showing their gratitude towards you.

The joy of all this is that these people know who God is and that Christ died on the cross for them, just as he did for us. This is something that we take for granted so much. We grow up in churches being told what to believe, but never understanding why it is we believe it. We have trouble understanding that Jesus really was a man that walked on this earth just as we are now. He came with one purpose, and that was to do the will of the Father who sent Him. We were able to spend our nights in Panama worshiping God for what He is and what He did for us. If you have never heard someone in another language pray or sing praises it is an amazing experience and sends chills up your spine. To think that one day we will be walking around in heaven with these people all in the presence of the same God just blows my mind.
Here, though is where the bad news comes in as you can see in the map above. There are 6,630,000,000 people on this earth, 2,670,000,000 of them have never even heard of Jesus. That is just over 40% of the people on this earth who have never heard that there is one true God and His Son came to this earth as a man only to die and be raised to life in order that our sins would be forgiven. This is tragic because we who know this keep it to ourselves. We are commanded to spread the good news, so what are you doing to help the kingdom of God expand? What about that person you work with, or the person that always sits next to you in class? Ever thought about asking them?

We tend to hear big pushes for people to go overseas to go on mission trips, but I am starting to realize more and more now that there are so many people around us who don't even know. They could even be sitting next to you in church. How will you know unless you ask? The people in Panama just a couple years ago were walking around wearing loin cloths living off the land and being self-sustaining. They now are wearing clothes as we do and taking trips into the city to buy things to make life easier. A couple years ago they were worshiping spirits, in touch with the evil side and doing powerful things with it. They now know about God and His Son from people who cared enough to learn their language and teach them about God. There are billions of people out there just like them and we have everything necessary to give them this message, will you be ready when your time comes?

my better half...

A special thanks to Lisa Coots and Davis Photography
for our amazing engagement pictures.
You can see them here.

she cooks
she cleans
she cares and
she shares

she is gentle
she is kind
she loves and
she laughs

she smiles
she cries
she frowns and
she hugs

she prays
she reads
she listens and
she loves God

she is cute
she is loving
she is beautiful and
best of all she is mine!

Thanks for being so great that I had no trouble coming up with these!

look at my gun...

So Saturday was another big step in the marriage process for Alexa and I. We spent about 6 hours in the afternoon starting our wedding registry at both Bed Bath and Beyond, and Target. We started at Bed Bath and Beyond after doing some other shopping at both malls in Des Moines. The malls were so busy in the afternoon it was difficult to move around in any of the stores. I've never seen it that busy before, everyone must have needed something to get them out of the house and out of the cold.

It was an interesting process doing our registry and I had no idea what to expect once we decided to start. I figured you just sign a sheet and they give you the scanning gun and you go to work, but boy was I wrong. Bed Bath and Beyond had a couple special employees who specifically work with wedding and gift registries. So we were placed with our registry specialist who took us through the whole plan for our afternoon. It was a good thing we left a lot of time open because it took us a lot longer than we ever expected.

She started by helping us choose our dinnerware by placing it on a table with everything set up so you could see the placement of the dishes and how they all looked together. I'll admit, I was very overwhelmed and let Alexa make the decisions in this area. We decided after picking all these things out that they were all too expensive for our tastes and planned to delete them all from our registry on the internet after making her happy and picking them out. We thought it was a little outrageous to pay $12 per plate and $50 for 4 glasses so we shopped in the "cheap" area later and found more reasonably priced items. I personally think the "registry consultants" were just scam artists to get you to pay more money than necessary, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

We then got to pick out our cookware which the in-store manager who worked in the resturant business helped us pick out the best value for our money (Or I guess in this case our guests money). It was after this that we tackled the wall of kitchen utensils. This was crazy! A 20ft wall that was about 100ft long just full of everything you might need for your kitchen. It was then to all the mixing bowls, pans, cutting boards, storage, etc. that you could ever want. By this time both of our feet hurt pretty bad. Neither of us chose comfortable shoes for the journey and were reaping the benefits of it. We ended by randomly wandering throughout the store and finally picking out our towels. It was pretty difficult picking a lot of the things we might end up needing because we have NO idea where we are going to be living.

We then, after refueling with some pizza at Nick and Willy's (small place across the street from Jordan Creek in a strip mall that we randomly found one time), for some excellent pizza headed to Ankeny on our way back to Ames to register at Target. This was much more relaxing and is more what I expected with registering and then getting the gun and running around scanning things. This was the store that Alexa started to get annoyed with me scanning a bunch of random things, but the gun they gave you was touchscreen and a lot of fun to use.

That IS me scanning a large Sony TV on our gift registry.

We spent a couple hours in Target going up and down each aisle throughout the entire store (except the food) to find the things we wanted. This store was a lot more fun without such a strong emphasis on the utensils and hardware, but had more games and fun things that we got to pick out. We found a lot of things at Target that we liked better than what we picked out at Bed Bath and Beyond so we had to make sure and delete those things later.

If your interested in checking out our registries for either place click on the links to the stores below and it should take you there.

In the end we had a great time and I hope that we find out we forgot a bunch of stuff because I'm ready to go, gun in hand at those stores again and this time come out the winner. We're looking for your help though! Did we forget anything? Is there something that you just can't live without that we might want to add? Let us know in the comments.

Starting a career...

After coming to ISU in the fall of 2006 I joined as an undecided engineering student. I was trying to decide between Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. After taking an introductory class to engineering in general I was exposed to each of the engineering disciplines and it made it an easy decision to pick Mechanical Engineering as my major.

Shortly after making the choice to go into Mechanical Engineering due to the variety of possible jobs that I could have I attended my first ever career fair. If you have never been to an Engineering Career fair let me try to show you how it looks and feels. With over 300 possible employers and just under 1000 recruiters that come to this career fair just the sheer size and number of people is intimidating as you can imagine from below.

After going through all the various options for employers I left feeling satisfied that I might get some calls back for possible internship opportunities. It didn't take long and I got my first call for an on-site interview with Terex | Cedarapids (www.cedarapids.com). After my on-site tour and interview I felt very confident that I might receive an offer. I tried not to get my hopes up, but a week later I received a call that they were impressed with my resume and job experience and were willing to give me an internship opportunity for the following summer.

The experience I received from the internship has been great and it has made the classes I am taking more real and easier to see applications to classroom problems. I spent most of the summer working on a portable rock-crushing plant. At the end of the summer I was asked to come back again and accepted.
So this past summer I continued my work experience in Cedarapids working for Terex. I got to do many things this summer I never imagined. Shortly after joining for the summer there were some issues for a new set of plants that were in operation out in Utah and I was given tasks to fix the design to solve these problems. The best part of it all was the chance I had to take a trip out to the Salt Lake City area and spend a week working on the machines to fix the issues that came up. It was a very difficult week, working about 14 hr/day in the 90-100+ degree heat, but the experience I had was invaluable. After returning I was able to spend more time making design changes to the plants being manufactured, which also allowed me to spend a lot of time in the shop overseeing the changes made. This gave me a lot of experience in overseeing a project to completion as I was able to see the equipment make its way to Australia.
It has been a great place to work and has been great being able to live at home and still be able to have a great job. About halfway through the summer I was offered a full-time position with Terex and I happily accepted it at the end of my summer. So it continues the journey Alexa and I are on, with being engaged and knowing what my job will be. It also tells us the area we will be living in which I'm sure will lead to more blog posts in the future to update you as we make plans for that future area of our lives.

American

It was a privilege this year to practice our duty as American citizens and vote for our next President. We tried our best to keep up on each candidate and work to be the best informed about each man that we could, not worrying about which party we belonged to. We wanted to be informed voters so that we could completely say that we supported one man against the other. And I would say that we did a good job of that by watching two of the three debates, keeping up in newspapers and even from some websites. We also took into account others opinions who we look highly upon to make our final decision as to who we would vote for.
I think more of our vote was for the moral stands that our choice declared and yes that candidate was McCain. However, because our choice for President did not win we will still hold pride in our country for how far we have come, regardless of the differences. And as Christ followers we are called to pray for our nations continuously as 1 Timothy 2:1-4 states.

"I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior,who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth."

This is our prayer and we hope you to will remember this no matter who your choice for President was.

God is good, he is sovereign and has provided. He is in control above all powers and authority. And the beauty of it is He always will be!

So our congratulations goes out to Barack Obama and his family.
Our prayers are with you!

(If you were wondering what a prayer for our nations leaders might look like, check out this great blog post from Ed Noble here.)

Comments?

Have comments for us and our blog? How about questions you would like to ask us? Have an idea for a future blog post? Let us know in the comments!

Some people have mentioned they were having trouble posting comments without a google account. We're happy to announce that commenting is now open to everyone! Enjoy commenting!

Do you want to follow our blog closer and get updates when we post? Click on the Follow This Blog link on the right side. This does require a google account, but there are many advantages to google and all the things they offer.

The faces of Champions

We didn't have a picture of the entire football team to post on here last week, but now, here it is.

1st Row (Left to Right): Adam Crim, Eric Brumm, Jon Jensen, Mitch Cline
Back Row (Left to Right): Grant Stephas, Kaleb Applegate, Payton Schirm, Jeff Messerly, Dusty Schirm, Steven Walter, Bob Bronson