I would love to have more time

Aubrey graduated with her masters degree a few weeks ago and today starts her real Job. I am so incredibly proud of her and what she has a accomplished. She is going to be working for a woman  that is intentionally trying to "subvert the male dominated business model that has been propagated in the world." I guess that fits my wife. Aubs is going to be doing speech therapy with children birth to three the spanish speaking community around Denver. All of her cases will be medicaid cases and this is exactly what she wanted... she is amazing

we also took a trip to N.C. and saw some amazing friends. Catching up with this group of people continually reminds me that how fortunate we are to have people in our lives that push us to be better and more caring humans. We had a great time and got to see some of melissa and robby's life and seeing where robby does ymin was wonderful. His community there is very fortunate to have such a high quality youth guy. Plus we have fun when we are together. Oh and aubrey also joined the rank of us that are pouring ink into our skin. 

 

Also my youngest brother taylor graduated from high school two weekends ago, and I cannot tell you how much fun we had celebrating that with him. He even made it into the local paper.  It marks 12 years of shelstas being in that high school and I am sure the administration is glad that phase is over.

I am still working at the fruit themed company with most of my time but the rest of my time is taken up by working with Origins and it is these thing that give me life. I am more and more impressed with our church community. With the launch of iE and the start of a co-housing community in the works, I am drastically grateful for the community that I find myself in. I am excited to be part of something that stretches me. The strange thing is that Origins comes from an Assembly of God stream of church, and I am definitely not from that stream. But the people there are amazing... if you would have told me after graduating from college that I would be working for a forward thinking A.O.G. church, I would have asked you "Do those exist?"  But they do! 

We are in the process of of starting a group of musicians that write all the worship music for our community. We are about to embark on some education initiatives for the community that could start some some amazing transformative conversations. Our students are finding out what it means to be on mission in the world and how to live a life that follows hard after the kingdom but still defies christian stereotypes, not to mention they have awakened my love of frisbee golf. I am so ridiculously fortunate, and maybe blessed would be appropriate to say. Yes, Blessed. 

The months coming up are going to be as busy as ever. I have a student camping trip coming up in few weeks that will be fun. I am going out to be in Tyler Haakana's wedding in Mammoth at the end of july. I am going to see some good friends in L.A. at the beginning of august, and I am going to do my first wedding in seattle shortly after that (I will be marrying my father-in-law and his long time fiance... weird!!!). Busy up coming months, but I can't wait to see where they go. If they are anything like the last year... we are in for a ride. 

Comments

[Steven Johnson]

Can't wait till you come out here in August! Tyler's wedding is going to be so much fun! Let us know when you are going out there so we can go up there and hang out as much as possible with all you guys! _love you brother

[aubrey]

i'm so proud of you

[melissasmernoff]

man i miss you guys so much already! it was so great hanging out.

[JBallard]

If I was every wealthy, I would pay you and Aubs to live near us.

--jason