Goin' To Greece!

Well, months after first hearing about this trip to Greece and making the decision to go, the time is finally upon us! Nikki and I leave in the morning to go to Greece, and we are SOOOO EXCITED!!!! We will be arriving at school at 8 in the morning, where we will get on a charter bus and drive to Miami. We will fly from Miami to Paris and Paris to Athens, arriving at our destination sometime on Tuesday evening their time (we'll be 7 hours ahead of all of you). Mixed in this trip is of course a class I will be taking, but there will be plenty of time for sightseeing, adventures, hanging out with friends, and taking lots of pictures. Picture taking is actually one of the things I am most excited about. I can't wait to pull my camera back out and take some amazing (hopefully!) pictures of a beautiful area of the world. And yes, I'll share as many as I can. It is my plan that I will be able to update my blog on a hopefully daily basis with pictures and stories of what is happening in Greece so you can all follow along on our adventure. Since I'll be traveling all day tomorrow and part of Tuesday, this entry will have to hold you over until I have access to the Internet again. :)

To start my journal of pictures, I have a couple to share with you. Before I share them, however, I have a story to tell you. Nikki and I have known each other for 8 years now. In the early years of our friendship, we used to talk about how we wished we'd known each other earlier in life so we could have been roommates. We had so much fun being friends, we figured it would have been really fun to live together. We also had grand plans of traveling together - going as couples to backpack across Europe (something we all wanted to do) or doing stuff as families someday. Obviously our stories didn't evolve how we wanted them to. But God has shown us such great love and mercy in the gifts He has given us instead. We are about to start our 3rd year of being roommates. (Yes, it has been as fun as we imagined it might be!) And tomorrow, we will be going overseas and taking a trip together. It might not look exactly like we thought it would, but God is still at work redeeming our stories and allowing dreams to come true. And we are grateful.

With that said, here are two pictures of Nikki and me from four years ago, right before I moved to Boston.


At the time, we had no idea what God had in store for either of us - we were just trying to survive. Now four years later, we are living proof that God really does bring beauty out of ashes. Steven Curtis Chapman has a song that is called "All Things New". Below are part of the lyrics...

"Then the world was broken, fallen and battered and scarred
You took the hopeless, the life, wasted, ruined and marred
And made it new

You make all things new
You make all things new
You redeem and You transform
You renew and You restore
You make all things new
You make all things new
And forever we will watch and worship You

You turn winter into spring
You take every living thing
And You breathe Your breath of life into it over and over again.."

I am thankful that God is continually at work, redeeming and transforming and making all things new. I invite you to join us on this journey as God keeps breathing life into us in new ways over these next 16 days. Thank you in advance for your prayers for traveling mercies, safety, and an amazing time with old friends and new! God willing, my next entry will come to you from Greece!!