At the beginning of this month, Eric and I had the great privilege of heading west to San Diego to celebrate the marriage of these dear friends:
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!
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