We are back to Colorado. She lovingly welcomed us with about 4-6 inches of snow and temperatures in the 10's. Needless to say, we haven't turned our heat off since arriving home 6 hours ago. A few lessons have also been learned in the last 6 hours.
1. When your husband and you are both sick at the same time, its nice to just lay in bed and watch movies, something that never happens in medical/nursing school.
2. They don't always plow the roads here, meaning I got to drive to costco on packed and powdery snow.
3. Pushing a cart in the snow is a lot harder than one would think. It was really hard!
4. When your wearing 4 layers, it can sometimes be hard to walk :) Add this to a slow cart and grocery shopping takes a lot more time.
5. When your at the grocery store and you have a really runny nose, go pick up some nice tissues, open them, and then pay for them later at checkout :) 

All this to say, God is gently reminding both of us of our need for him. He is our strength both when we are weak and when we are strong, but so often our "strength" leads us to confidence in our selves and away from trust and dependence on him.

So before moving on, some big prayer requests:
-we both start school on monday (jan 3) so prayer that we would get over our sicknesses and not share what we have with each other (since we have 2 completely different bugs).
- I am walking into a whole new nursing school on Monday, so prayer for contentment and strength would be awesome. And that I would "bloom where planted".
- That as Stephen starts, he would be refreshed and rested and ready to go

On another subject, we got a camera cord for Christmas :) so here's the update from the past 3 months

This is my car that I arrived home to :) I just loved how it looked like it had nostrils

This is back to CA over Christmas break. We went Jeeping with Jogi (Stephen's brother) Other than getting stuck several times and the thought in the back of my mind that we might be stuck all night, It was a blast! 

The Downtown Denver Parade! It was awesome! A little cold, but we felt like it was a "real" parade (real meaning its in the category of the macy's day parade, etc.) 

Picking out our 1st Christmas tree. "This looks pretty good"  as he spun it for me to see 

 "Yep that looks great, lets take it" :)

This is the week before thanksgiving when my family stopped by for a few days on their way to Texas. My mom helped me cook a turkey so I would know how when the big day came. (p.s. miss these guys already) 

And back to October. This is Stephen and I (and Jess and Jenn) helping out at our churches "harvest party" (and yep you guessed it, with a candyland theme, who could resist dressing up like cotton candy.) 

Halloween Party at Jess and Jenn's. Carving competition between boys and girls

Group Picture. 

So there you go :) Blessing this new year!
Hannah

God's hand of control (and his ways of utter wisdom)

Well, we are closing up the semester. It feels so nice. I am currently in the middle of making double chocolate almond biscotte which my wonderful friend Jenn gave me the recipe for.

In the last 2 days God has taken our hand and walked us through some decisions and developments in such a gentle way so as not to upset our frail, easily wayward, and fearful tenancies. The First is this: Stephen's Subaru has been having issues. Ever since we drove it across the 120 degree desert to bring its to Coloradan it hasn't been cooperative. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving (when all our guests arrived) it wouldn't start, even with a jump. So we took it to a shop about 15-20 min away. When we arrived we noticed that right next door was a Subaru specialized car shop. So we thanked God and went in (hoping the guys next door wouldn't realize that the people that had just called ended up next door). Anyways, to summarize, they discovered many problems with the Sube. For the last month we have been praying, talking, and trying to decide what we should do with the car. Today Stephen took it in again to get a final estimate. The owner was great! Gave us a discount off parts and labor, and is going to take care of the car while we are in CA for Christmas. I don't know how well I laid out this sequence of events, but God's hand has definitely been in every part of it.

Second: A few days ago I got an email. It said that the Denver School of Nursing had canceled pharmacology for the quarter which adds another quarter and 3 more months onto my schooling. I will graduate in September 2012 and my 1st two quarters will only be part time because of the Biola nursing units they are accepting. Although this was hard to hear, God had been preparing me. The day before, I had been going over our budget and the added costs my school is going to bring. So upon receiving this email, instead of being completely devastated, I was ready to hear it, knowing that this would allow me to work more during school, helping ease our budget a little more.

All this to say, God is so good to us. This morning I was reading in Genesis 50 when Joseph tells his brothers "What you meant for evil, God meant for good". There is so much in this statement that impacts so much of how we live and how we face situations.

On a lighter note, we fly back to CA in 3 days! YEAH! We can't wait!

Tonight we are off to a CMDA (Christian Medical and Dental Association) Christmas party at a Doctors house. Really looking forward to it! Its a big gathering with other students from the Denver University Medical and PA school, along with doctors from the community.

Love and Merry Christmas to All!
Hannah

Prince of Peace

Today at church Stephen and I were presented with the opportunity to share about this weeks advent theme of peace. It was so wonderful this weekend to sit down together and study peace and what it means. So we pulled out good ol' Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, and a few other internet resources to study what God's character of peace is. We were both struck by Grudem's definition of peace: "Gods peace means that in God's being and in his actions he is separate from all confusion and disorder, yet he is continually active in innumerable well-oriented, fully controlled, simultaneous actions." (203). Peace is a communicable attribute of God, meaning that in God's grace he allows us to participate in his peace and it can actually become part of our very own character! This is in contrast to God being all knowing, because we will never obtain this part of his character.

God's peace is in no way associated with inactivity. As we seek after Christ this Christmas season, He in his character of peace both removes distraction and gives clarity as we consider and mediate on the true events of this holy day. We often think of peace as stopping, going on vacation, escaping. But God’s peace is characterized by his ordered actions.What a wonderful thing this is for us to learn amidst all the busyness that come with medical school, working, and nursing school. I am still just amazed by the simple fact that God allows us to participate in his character.

I am taken back to last year at this time when I was in Theology 1 at Biola, finishing up a study on the Character of Jesus Christ, his full humanity and his full divinity, and what a miracle and amazing thing this is.

In 2 weeks we will be celebrating 6 months of being married (although, in a great way, it feels like its been so much longer), and will be packing our bags and printing our tickets to fly home the next day :) What an exciting time this is!

On Friday we decided to spend our date night downtown Denver at the parade of lights. It was the most legitimate parade I have ever been to! It was chili but SO fun! They were expecting 350,000 people there!


Stephen has a very busy few weeks before we take off, with 4 tests in the next 2 weeks, so your prayers for strength and focus would be much appreciated!


much love,
Hannah