One Year in Austin

This past year has been amazing. One year ago, August 4th, Hilary and I made the move to Austin! We left our homes, our families, our friends, our state and headed south!!!
I can't believe that it has already been a year. The time went by so fast.
I can't even begin to recount the amazing blessings that God has poured out on me over the course of this last year. But I wanted to try and pinpoint a few...
Literally 4 days before we planned to move we still didn't have jobs...we still didn't have a place to live. We were leaving on a Friday and on Monday we get a message from Denise Stephens, who we had met on a visit to Austin previously, through a friend of a friend of a friend. She had discussed with her family the night before and all agreed to let us stay with them until we found jobs and a place to live.
The Lord provided in ABUNDANCE!!! Not only did they take us in to their family, but Denise has been a great friend, a spiritual mentor and an example to me of a Godly woman, wife, mother and friend.
I am so thankful for them. We stayed with them for 2 months until we found an amazing apartment, central/downtown Austin.
Another amazing God thing. We have such a great location, we are so close to everything. Less than 1o minutes for both Hilary and I to get to work. We can walk down to 6th street and go to Whole Foods, or ZTejas or Waterloo Records. It's so great!!!
At the end of September our lease will be done and they are in the process of turning our apartments into condos. ($285,000 condos...uh...no thanks!) So we are out. :(
We are trusting that God knows what we need and where we are supposed to be in this next year we are in Austin.

I'm SO thankful for my roommate. Hilary and I are SO different!! I love it!! It has been amazing, and humbling. We have walked through a lot together this past year and we have learned and grown so much. God is revealing so much in both of us, both strengths and weaknesses. Areas of sin and areas of our lives that God is refining. It has been so good to walk through life with her and to pray together and encourage each other, love each other, cry with each other and most of all LAUGH together!!! She has been such a blessing!


Another amazing blessing is my church. Austin Stone. I can't even begin to describe how Spirit filled this church is. I have learned SO much and have grown SO much. The leadership and the people have a love for the glory of God that inspires me and is so real. I have felt such a sense of freedom in worship and has put in me an anticipation for what heaven will be like!! I seriously sometimes feel like I'm going to throw up after worship!! Like...throwing up in a good way...if that's possible!!! And I feel like my legs are going to give out on me. It's awesome!!! (really...it is!) After the message I am usually challenged in such a way that I desire to live out my life and fully live out my relationship with Jesus, instead of just showing up on Sundays for church. I have such a desire to grow more in my knowledge and love for God's word and for His glory to be known to all nations.
Another blessing has been my community group. I have met some INCREDIBLE people. I have been SO blessed by this group. Marcus and Jocelin were our leaders and they did an incredible job of facilitating our group. Everyone gives Marcus a hard time because of his organizational skills. He is very precise on his timing and at our last meeting this last week he made a slide show presentation of the stats from the last year. ie: attendance, ratio of men and women, marrieds and singles, timeline of how many meetings we had etc. It was GREAT!! If you want to check it out you can go to their website here. It was hilarious! We also had several different couples lead the discussion each week. Our group was so good about meeting the needs of people, anytime someone needed help with anything...moving...meals...whatever...people were there. God has been glorified in this group, the lives of these people have been touched and moved powerfully by Jesus and it overflows to other people. Here are the group pictures that we took that night too.

The serious one...

The Funny one...

It all started when my friend Melody invited me to come and check out her community group. She claimed that it was pretty much the best and coolest community group EVER. I would have to agree with her!!
Melody and I have had several adventures together as we usually ride together to community group.
It basically consists of me picking up Melody and us trying to remember which house we are meeting at and then trying to figure out our way there. (you would think that a year of going to group at only three different houses...we would have the directions figured out.) Then some sort of adventure happens. There have been several times where we have gotten lost...once was when I was supposed to be leading worship....instead of showing up at 6:45... we didn't make it until about 7:15. oops. I think I also had a gas problem that night...gas as in gas for my truck! I was running out in the midst of getting lost.
Melody is good at directions...most of the time...I am not...so I think we are a good pair. But we still get lost. :)
One other time we got lost we happened to find a "famous person's" house. "Famous Person" meaning that we noticed a "tour bus" parked in the back of their house and so we figured it had to be a famous person...right?! We then were determined to figure it out. After group that night we came back to the house...in the dark...and decided to get out and walk around to see if we could get a better look at "the tour bus". So Melody and I start walking down the street trying not to look suspicious as a guy was walking towards us. We decided that we looked harmless...because Melody was wearing a skirt. But then we realized that we both had "mohawks" (sidenote...Melody's hair is growing back and it's short and REALLY cute! She dried it the other day and it dried in a mohawk and decided that she wanted to be like me when she grew up!) We decided that because of our "mohawks" we maybe looked a little suspicious!
After doing some research on Melody's part...turns out the people that live there aren't really famous people and we concluded that the "tour bus" was probably because he showed dogs, or was a chess champion...I thought that maybe it was just a rich guy that wished he was famous and so bought a "tour bus" and would randomly go on "world tours" in his "tour bus". We also concluded that if he heard me sing he would take me on his "world tour" in his "tour bus" and then I would make him bring Melody since she is good at directions...sort of!
Oh the adventures...
One more quick adventure that we had last week...
Melody is in the process of moving and so that night we loaded some boxes in my truck and were going to drop them off at the house of a family she will be living with. After group we head to the house and pull up in the driveway. We noticed several cars in the driveway and thought YES!! We have helpers! We start unloading the truck and Melody heads up to the house with her hands full ready to unload...but she returns quickly to the truck and says..."this is not the right house...this isn't the house...this is the neighbors house! We need to go next door!!!!!"
I automatically bust out laughing...we quickly try to shove everything back in the truck...but I'm having a hard time controlling myself and was trying to make sure I didn't pee my pants...then a couple of guys came out and said..."Can I help you?"
We were like..."uh...yeah...sorry! we have the wrong house!"
So we pulled out of the driveway and then pulled into the next driveway right next door to the correct house!!
It was SO funny! We couldn't stop laughing!!!
I actually couldn't stop laughing about it the rest of the week...
I'm STILL laughing about it!!!
Oh good times!! Melody...feel free to add anything about any of our adventures together!!! Love ya girl!
We have also had some serious moments this year too. With Melody's breast cancer we walked through her chemo and surgery with her and we got to see how God provides and loves and lifts up in the middle of sickness and suffering. Her heart and her life glorify Jesus! It's beautiful!
Just recently Jocelin was also diagnosed with Breast Cancer. It's amazing that God has allowed this to happen. It has been cool to see how He is using this for His glory. Because of Jocelin and Marcus' testimony of God's goodness in the midst of this, one of their good friends gave his life to Jesus!!! It is amazing! If you want to hear more of their amazing story...check out their website.
I'm going to be focusing on the college ministry in the fall and will be leading a freshman girls group. I will probably not be able to attend many of the meetings this year. But I am so thankful that I got to experience this group this last year. SO thankful!
Here is a video of pictures that Jocelin put together that they showed at the end of group.

Another thing that I love about Austin is the music. I have seen some amazing musicians. Austin is the "Live Music Capital of the World."
Some of my favorite local musicians that you should check out are:
Amanda Leggett
Miranda Dodson
Sarah Monteen
Megan Melara
Threads
David Ramirez
Megan McCallon
Joy Boven
Patty Griffin
It has really given me a push to write more and get better. I have started taking some voice and guitar lessons and it has been really good. I don't know what God wants to do with me and music, but I know that it is in me and part of me and I continue to pray that He will do what HE wants with me. I'm surrendered.
Okay...this post is extremely long!! So I'm ending it now!
LOVE to all you who read my blog! Whoever and wherever you are!