To remember: A list of joy

Yes yes, I still have not said anything about Korea. I will get to that. Don't worry. But for now... Iowa Things I want to remember: Mom and Ricky visiting. The Two Year Old Birthday Bash with jumping castle and all. Ricky talking politics. Robert loving on his girls. Mom and Ricky's enormous generosity. The generosity of my past coworkers. (past...gosh that makes me sad). Food and Bev on Batista's porch. Jeff being called the most luke warm conservative Sam had ever seen. Jeff and Olde Main. (Wow. Port Barrel Pilsner) Batista's laugh. the carpool. The Iowa State Fair with Steven and Kim. Glorious sucker punch me in the gut food. Rain, oh how it rained. Running blind in the rain. Minneapolis with Adam and Kara. Dancing with people far too young in the same vicinity. Old Mexican man dancing up on Kara. Trivia Night. Kara's coworkers. Solidarity... always Stopping by to see Alison. Fruit salad. Alison's set up blind date. How she tells a story. How Kate feels around her. Goodbye to great grandma Our goodbye party with friends: The distance they traveled. Steve dropping his rap on Josh McCabe. Mikael on a motorcycle. Bonfire. Wedding Fireworks. Steve prepping the grill. Burgers. --sleep Goodbyes. Goodbyes. Goodbyes.

Farewells pt. 1

Emotions. They are weird and can creep a guy out. I went into this thing (moving across the world) with avoidance behavior. It is much easier to distract yourself with a checklist of duties than it is to consider goodbye. I found myslef working in the basement tyring to fix the flood problem, rather than soaking in my time with the Schmidts. What are you doing with your your stuff for a year? Yes, we are storing it at Kate's folks home in their basement. Wait, didn't you just say flood. Yes Flood. That fickle endless seeping in and " you're never gonna git rid o' me" freaking flood. More than half of our belongings are stacked there and the other half was waiting in the garage. However it couldn't be moved until that putrid water was tossed out. That was my job. The water sucker upper. So hours upon hours and gallons upon gallons were spent there. The whole time I'm just concentrating on doing the job, while in the back of my mind is "you're really leaving. This is going to be hard. You're going to miss out on too much" But truly it was just back there somewhere waiting to gush up and show itself whenever it felt convenient. Now see I longed to see all the friends and family I could, but I never new which time would truly be goodbye. We couldn't have plane tickets until we had our visas so our goodbye's felt iffy. There were plenty of "goodbye maybes" and "don't worry we'll be back" (even though we are beginning to hate all the driving). People we didn't get to say truly bye to: Dad, Halls, Halls, my old co-workers, our church, Webbs, and more. Goodbye wasn't real until the end. Kate and I just kept getting kicked in the face. Out of nowhere sorrow would rush over us. It didn't totally hit me with my family. It did, but we Engelkes can hide pretty well. But there is a deep love and concern that needs to be acknowledged. My brother, who I see rarely, came and visited us two days in a row. TWO DAYS IN A ROW!! Not only that, but we had a really good farewell party. Pat hosted and it was splendid. Jen, Greg and Holly, Joe and Rosie, Lisa brought her little ones, Conner, Grandpa, Grandma, Jon, April and the girls. Our family has been seeing each other more than twice a year and it's been really nice. Honestly when I was younger, I felt awkward around my family. Mainly because I felt we were like strangers. But now, now it is incredible. Olivia and Aliyah really bring people together too. When we visit those girls, everyone is happy. So much joy comes about simply because of them. I'm a bit sad I won't get to see all these faces for a while. Our connection to April has become so strong. Our thougts continually resonate. Who knew me getting married would increase my friendship with my sister? She is a tremendous blessing to us. We will miss her dearly. I will say more on farewells later. There are the grandmas I must write about as well as our little going away shindig. And yes I know I haven't blogged about Korea. I will get on this. Future Thoughts: encouragement God in all this night one day one our jobs