Jon Bonker was one of the best men in our wedding (Eric had two.  So did Jon.  So did Brian).

Katie and the best men

He is like a brother to Eric and I am SO grateful to God for his faithful provision of this man who sharpens my husband and encourages him towards grace and godliness.

Up until now, Jon has been our only teammate for South Asia.  He had been there already for two years this past summer, when this  wonderful young lady contacted MTW about joining the work there and eventually got in touch with Jon.  That was August. I’ve had the amazing privilege of getting to know this amazing woman of God over the last several months via phone, and “watching” these two fall in love (as much as you can watch two people in Asia and California from Florida).  Seeing the Lord work in their relationship these last 5 months and bring them to their wedding day on January 7th was such a blessing to me, reminding me in many ways of God’s provision and grace and kindness to his children.  Besides the obvious blessing that they are to each other (if you could only see the in-love-ness of these two!), I am grateful beyond words for the provision of Katie in my life.  Not only has the Lord used her to encourage and bless and challenge me in the few short months since we became friends, but I am over the moon that the Lord has provided another woman for our team, a friend and sister to labor with when we are on the mission field.  What a tremendous gift!

So here’s our new team picture (we’ve grown by 33%!):

The other incredible blessing of the wedding was being with so many dear friends from college:

The wonderful Bonker family:

Me and my only best man:

It was such fun to be in a wedding together again!

All the goofy guys doing their thing to the car:

Krisha also posted on their blog with some great photos and some amazing marriage quotes to chew on.  You can see those here.

You can also see a slideshow of really great photos from the wedding here.

Eric and I stayed in San Diego for an extra day and a half to have some much-needed time together.  We had an absolutely fabulous time.  We enjoyed old-town San Diego, riding the trolleys around to see the city and harbor, some great food, and sunset over the pacific from the cliffs.

We watched the sun go from this:

to this:

to this:

Absolutely glorious!

We are so grateful to have been able to celebrate our dear friends’ marriage, be with several other dear friends, and also celebrate our own with some special time with just the two of us.  God is so good.  We are also incredibly thankful to our friends Greg and Christie who stayed here with the girls and loved on them so well while we were gone.  Kimberly and Danny also helped out by caring for them during the daytime a few of the days.  We are so blessed and grateful, because we really could not have gotten away without their sweet service to us.  What a gift this was!

So thankful!

]]> http://www.thenollfamily.com/missions/2012/01/23/bonkers-of-fun/feed/ 1 http://www.thenollfamily.com/prayer-requests/2011/03/12/heartbreaking/ http://www.thenollfamily.com/prayer-requests/2011/03/12/heartbreaking/#comments Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:54:12 +0000 Sara-Beth http://www.thenollfamily.com/?p=2546 I can’t get my mind off my precious homeland, Japan.  The news of devastation is heartbreaking and I know the news will only get worse before it gets better.

I hate that it is so awful in so many places, but I have to say I weep as much in sorrow as I do in thanks.  My parents and brothers are fine, as are many of our dear friends that we have heard from.  As far as I can tell, those we know and love in Japan are fine. I can’t stop thanking God for sparing them, yet my heart breaks for those who weren’t – unknown numbers of lives lost, all of whom have families and friends who aren’t thankful right now as I am.

I keep thinking of my big brother who was on the west coast Thursday night, and heard about the quake from the news.  That would have been so scary – to sit and wait for news of our loved ones.  I know so many are still…

My family is probably not sleeping.  The aftershocks are pretty regular and scary. But if they are, they’ll awake soon to Sunday morning and will gather with God’s people in worship.  My dad will preach – pray for words that minister to those who hear – whether they have hope in Jesus yet or not.  Pray for Christ’s peace to permiate amidst the fear of the aftershocks and the devastation.

They’re heading to disaster zones as soon as they can.  They’ve rented a truck and are filling it with supplies.  Pray for the team that travels – probably leaving Sunday night – that they would be ministers of mercy amidst the chaos and pain and fear.  That the Lord would lead their steps to where he wants them.  I think my dad and Micah are going, and I know many others will join them… they hope to bring several vehicles.

Please pray for Japan.  The reality is that Japan is a country that rarely looks needy on the outside.  My prayer is that as many come to their aid in this horrible situation, they realize that their (and our!) greatest need is the Rescuer of souls.  May HE shine brightly through the darkness of this devastation.

Because of the snow/ice storm, the plans for the week had to be changed, but it was still great.

It was the perfect environment to be challenged, and we had a lot of wisdom spoken into our lives in a very loving and God-honoring way.  It was both humbling and encouraging, and we came away with many insights into ourselves, our walks with the Lord, our marriage and family, and the realities of overseas ministry.  We also met some amazing people, and were honored and blessed to share life and “work” with them for a week.  It was such a gift.

We’re excited and thankful that MTW gave us a “green light” to move forward in pursuing a call to serve with them long term in S. Asia.  We had prayed and hoped that this would be the outcome, but were really open to anything, and it was just such a joy to have so many others affirm how we believed the Lord was leading us.  We still have several steps, but this was one of the bigger ones.

And, while it was a great week, we’re thrilled that it’s over and we are home safely with our family.

Praising God!

Eric and I enjoying the snow... We thought we had avoided it by not going north over Christmas, but we still managed to "get" some.

On another note, as we were driving into Atlanta last night the snow hit quite hard and we weren’t even sure we’d make it to our hotel.  After our crazy adventure driving north in a snow storm last year, we were pretty nervous.  Praise God we made it safely (though much later than we had expected).

Thanks for your prayers for us. Much Love!

So, last fall Eric and I completed pages and pages of applications, short esseys, theological tests, psychological tests, you name it.  And the people who will be assessing us next week, from what I undestand, have it all and are going over it this week.  I think these people will probably know more about me than I know about me.

Anyway (onto the point of my post), one thing that we just added to the piles of papers they have about us is a little statement they asked us to include about our plans to adopt.   And since many of you might be wondering how our call to missions and our call to adopt overlap, I thought I’d share what we wrote with you too:

We are currently in the process of adopting two children from Ethiopia.  We have been interested in adopting for years, but since early 2010 have felt the Lord’s specific call to pursue it at this time.  He used many people who have adopted sharing their stories with us, as well as increasing our understanding of the orphan crisis around the world and opening our eyes to the many times in his Word where his heart for orphans and “the least of these” is so evident. We have come to understand how adoption, like marriage, is such a beautiful picture of the Gospel and what our Father God has done for us.  We long to live out the Gospel in response to what the Lord has done for us; and for us, part of obedience in that is pursuing adoption.  Beyond that, we have always wanted more children and as we’ve learned of the many children in the world that need families, it just makes so much sense to us that this is how the Lord is choosing to grow our family.

In regards to this call and it’s place in our call to overseas missions, we have prayed and sought wisdom about this.  We have felt the Lord’s call to long-term missions and don’t see these as conflicting calls at all, but rather, as in missions, another way the Lord is calling us into obedience by graciously letting us do things we are passionate and excited about.  We have felt convicted that we could not knowingly accept the referral of a child with chronic disabilities or illness, as life on the mission field may not be conducive to meeting his/her needs.  We also acknowledge God’s sovereignty in building our family – whether biologically or through adoption – and view our call to overseas missions through the lens of our primary call to be parents and our responsibility to see to our children’s best interests.  At this time we feel certain that life as missionary kids is in our children’s (and future children’s) best interest and so we pursue both of these calls wholeheartedly.

Can you find the team?

Here they are:

They get around a little differently than we do…

There are big cities,

… and beautiful countrysides.

People work hard.

It is one of the poorest places on earth.

(walking in a city slum)

Precious faces.

If you want an idea of what we will be praying about you can check out this website http://www.mtwtokyo.com as well as this video that we made when we were in Japan http://vimeo.com/6524087 (password: japan).

We do this every first Thursday of the month. Our next meeting will be in February and we will be praying for India and praying for the ministry of RTS alum and family, Jonathan & Maggie Iverson as well as the ministry of a current RTS student and family, Tom & Jennifer Frakes.

Below are some pictures from Japan.

We arrived in the big city on Sunday afternoon.  We left the airport with a cloud of begging children following us to the van, and they only dispersed when rifle-armed soldiers came to chase them away and practice their limited English phrases with us.

Honestly, my first impression was that this city is the dirtiest, trashiest, ugliest, poorest, hottest place I have ever been in my life.

And that’s still my impression.

But even in those first few hours, amidst all the this-is-totally-like-nothing-I-have-ever-seen-before shock, God showed us the beauty even there.

Like the smiles on these kids’ faces to see something new and different from their ordinary: white people!

Like learning that even though we have not one word in common, we can share a walk together and learn about each other.

Like seeing the balance of people who are busy at work…

… but not too much to have a moment to just stand and watch the people around you.

Even in the city, God started to work in my heart a love for these people and this country and, while I was certainly overwhelmed, made the possibility of our family serving Him there an exciting and thrilling prospect.

But, I was happy when we boarded a plane (that I swear has been in service since the 70′s) and went to a smaller city later that evening, and were one step closer to our final destination of the Hill Tracks.

Now, the Hill Tracks… WOW! They were beautiful.  I couldn’t snap enough pictures to give you an idea of the lush, breathtaking, scenes that we took in day in and day out as we toured the village churches in this, some of God’smost beautiful (in my opinion) handiwork in creation.

This is the view from one of our hotels:

But the beauty of the greenery doesn’t even come close to the beauty of how the Holy Spirit is working amidst the His Church in this place.  Stay tuned for more from our trip in the weeks to come.

And please pray for us! The countdown in on and we have 15 days left here in Japan.  I’m not even going to try to tell you how I feel about that, but we would really appreciate your prayers.  Thanks!

And thank you for your prayers.

We had an amazing trip and have so many things to share.  We got home to Japan at 6am this morning and have had a great day being back together.  Tomorrow starts back the busyness of life here, which will be especially crazy these last 4 weeks for us. I will still try to post and share about our trip as soon as I can (it will be a nice break from packing!), but for now, enjoy these, some of the hundreds of beautiful smiles that we saw and fell in love with:

There has been so much that has led up to this trip, and it has been truly amazing to watch the Lord lead and direct, and move in our hearts.  This is a vision trip so we are going to explore the possibility of becoming long-term missionaries there after seminary.  We’re praying for hears that are open to hearing God’s voice as we see and experience a life and ministry unlike anything we have ever even come remotely close to.

I would love to share more, but it is late and we have to leave early.  Plus, my glasses are broken and I already took out my contacts, so I can’t see this screen to save  my life.  I have to pull the computer real close every few minutes to make sure I am typing what I want to type

Anyway, please be praying specifically for these things:

~Our family as we are apart.  I feel like I may stop breathing when I think about about saying goodbye to my babies tomorrow morning.  I know they will have a fabulous time at Baba and Gigi’s house (Noa has been talking about it for weeks!), but It is literally painful for Eric and I to be leaving them.  Pray that we would trust God with them and be able to focus on the purpose of this trip.

~Safety.  We’re not going to the most politically stable country, and there are also significant risks for physical illness.  We have taken a ton of precautions and will continue to do so, but please pray that ultimately the Hand of God would be our protection, especially for my body and little one  inside.

~Vision.  This is a vision trip so please pray that God would use this to broaden our scope of what he is doing worldwide, and that he would be gracious in revealing his specific will for each of the members of our group.  Please pray that we would come back with much to share with our church family about how God is building his kingdom.

Thank you! Can’t wait to share with you what we sea and learn!

Our family at the park this evening having "Super Family Fun Night"