Update in our Lives

Shame on me. It's been almost 8 1/2 months since my last blog post. I guess I'm not very good at this - there's a lot of catching up to do.
A lot has happened in our lives since last summer. We suffered the loss of our first baby in late August. It was a difficult time, especially for me, but it has given me great peace and hope to know that my life, and the life of my loved ones are, and always have been, and always will be in the hands of our merciful God. They belong to Him first. We look forward to meeting our little one in heaven one day.
Our sorrow turned joy, when weeks later we found out that we were pregnant again. God has give us another child. I am now almost 35 weeks pregnant. I've wrestled between the fear of losing this little one for this entire pregnancy, and trusting God; that He does have good in mind for me, and loves me and our child, so I don't need to be afraid. We're excited to, Lord willing, hold our baby in our arms in the next 5-7 weeks.
My pregnancy has gone well. Physically, I've been very blessed, as my main difficulty has probably been heartburn. The last few months, I've also been having trouble with gestational hypertension (high blood pressure that develops in the last  weeks of pregnancy). As of right now, I'm going for weekly prenatal visits, ultrasounds, NonStressTests, and blood work to make sure the baby and I are okay and stay that way up until delivery. My last appointments showed that my blood pressure has gone down, which is a huge praise and answer to prayer. If it goes up again, there's the possibility that we would have to induce labour at 37 weeks, but we're praying that is not the case. As of right now, I'm feeling healthy, and all tests show that baby is doing great! God is so good!

Last October Jesse and I moved from our old apartment to a basement suite on the southeast end of Vancouver, very close to the Vancouver-Burnaby border. It's great to have more space (we have two bedrooms now, as well as in-house laundry) and it's a great neighbourhood with lots of families around, and we are close to most places that we would need to be close to (including the library, which I really appreciate).

Jesse and I are very thankful for our church family. We're still a part of the worship team, and have been working on powerpoint and bulletin for the services as well. There have been days where I haven't been physically up for leading worship during the service, but Jesse has taken steps outside of his comfort zone and led singing by himself. I'm so proud of him, and thankful for this growth in his life. We'll probably take a break (myself especially) after the baby is born; but are grateful to be able to serve right now. I'm also grateful for all the moms in the congregation and their advice, and interest they've taken in my pregnancy and our baby.  
While we are grateful for our church family, Jesse and I are both finding it difficult to really connect with people, and neither of us have made any really close friends with anyone since moving to Vancouver. This is one of our prayer requests for us at this time. Everyone from church is so spread out all over the area and is so busy, that it's difficult to get together on a regular basis throughout the week.

I think that's a lot of the big stuff for right now. :) We'll be sure to post pictures (sometime) after our little one is born.
Blessings on you all, and may you walk closer with Christ each day.

Abby Groenewold

Our Adventurous Summer

My sincerest apologies for our long absence from our blog. Some of you are probably wondering what these two crazy kids have been up to all summer. Well, it's been fairly eventful - we've traveled to different places, some of which we'd been to before and some of which we hadn't. We saw many things; some of which we had seen before and some of which we hadn't. Needless to say our great adventure continues, and we look forward to seeing what God has in store for the rest of this year.

Kicking our summer off in, Jesse and I traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to witness the blessed union of two of our best friends from college, Austin and Brittney Zeller. We'd been waiting to celebrate this day with them for quite a long time, and it was a day of much rejoicing in the Lord with them and their family and friends. God bless you richly, Austin and Brittney!

After traveling to Minnesota, we came back home to Vancouver and here we stayed for the majority of the rest of the summer. In mid-July, another college friend, Jennifer Nelson (for those of you who remember, she was the maid-of-honour at our wedding) flew into Vancouver to spend a week with us up here. We had a pretty eventful week! We drove down to Bellingham where we had dinner with the wonderful Nicole Van Regenmorter (also a college friend!) and caught up on each other's lives and had many a good laugh talking about different crazy things we had done in college that we had previously forgotten about.
We drove back up to Vancouver and planned out our week.I decided to take Jen to Granville Island for a day. We saw lots of great shops, neat boats, ate ice cream and chocolate eclairs, saw a seagull attack a poor unsuspecting woman for food, and tried on goofy hats in the children's market. Now we couldn't have Jen come up for a visit and not take her to the very beautiful Vancouver Islalnd, so that weekend we hopped on the ferry, and set up camp at Rathtrevor Beach in Parksville for a wonderful time of camping!!! The first afternoon there we ventured to the ever-popular Coombs, where we ate ice cream, saw neat wood carved statues, took pictures by the crazy castle thing, and of course went to the market with the Goats on the Roof. Sadly there were no actual visible goats on the roof when we were there. I'm beginning to wonder about whether they actually exist or not.

That Saturday, we met up with Vancouver Island friends for sand castle building and a hot dog roast. During this time, I discovered that I am not very good at applying sunscreen to my back. My oh my was that sunburn nasty! Thankfully I've recovered, and am now much more careful about being thorough and asking for help with the hard to reach places. Anyway, it was a wonderful reunion with good friends, and we had wonderful fellowship, so it was worth it.
Upon returning to the mainland, Jen and I decided that there was one more place she probably needed to go before leaving Vancouver: Stanley Park; and because I had never been there before either, I tagged along;) Unfortunately, Jesse had to work, so he went on another day. We walked and walked and walked and walked, and in our walking saw many beautiful things, but decided that next time we would try and rent bikes, because it was an awful lot of walking.

The next day, w e dropped Jen off at the airport, and she flew back to the ever-sunny California, where she is from.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Jesse and I flew out to Colorado for no reason at all. Just Kidding!!! My brother got married to the wonderful Alli Berkompas! It was a beautiful, comfortable wedding. It was a beautiful day and every one was relaxed and happy, and apart from a few cute mishaps by the flower girls, and a bit of confusion with boutonnieres and corsages and groomsmen, everything went splendidly.

That night, Jesse and I climbed into a car with two best friends: Samuel and Megan Fopma, and drove to Steamboat Springs, CO, where we spent the next week. As a result of this vacation, I am pretty confident that Colorado is one of the most beautiful states in the USA. I've never had my breath taken away like that by God's glorious creation! The mountains and rivers and lakes were astounding. It was incredible!
Megan and Sam had a lot of fun activities planned for us while we were there, so we stayed busy the whole time, and the weather was amazing for us all week. We went hiking, canoeing, kayaking, stand up paddle boarding (during which I was able to dump Jesse in the water... hee hee), white water rafting (there wasn't much white water, thankfully) cliff jumping (I didn't, but Jesse went 3 times, Sam twice, and Megan once) swimming, fishing, mini-golfing, soaking in the hot springs, and spending a day in Rocky Mountain National Park. On our trip we saw elk, deer, foxes, porcupines, marmots, ground squirrels, chipmunks, fish, crayfish, bluejays, and moose. And the most amazing animal siting came right to our back door, literally. There was a tree about 15 feet from the condo we were staying in (we were on the third floor), and early one morning Sam woke us up asking if we wanted to see a black bear. We went out onto the back porch, and sure enough, there at the base of the tree was a full grown black bear staring up at us curiously. It then proceeded to run up the tree (YES, RUN! Don't ever try to climb a tree to get away from a black bear) until it was even with us, and then it stared at us some more. At this point, I decided that I didn't want to find out if a black bear could jump 15 feet from a tree to a balcony, so I went back inside. After we left, the bear climbed up higher in the tree and spent the whole day up there. When we checked for it later that evening, it had climbed down. Needless to say, it was very exciting.

After a very full week, Megan and Sam dropped us off in Denver, and we flew back to Seattle and drove home.

Upon getting back to Vancouver, we settled in again, and life is beginning to get back to normal. Jesse is working again, were back to doing praise team on Sundays, and I'm staying out of trouble. Mostly. :)
We've been blackberry picking a few times in the last week, so I see much blackberry jam in our future (some has already been made). My brother-in-law Sean is staying with us for a few days while he's doing band-stuff here in Vancouver, and Jesse and I are fish-sitting for our Pastor's daughter while their family is away in Alaska for a much deserved vacation.

Apart from that, life is pretty much normal; and today is just another day in the Lord, in the Groenewold's Great Adventure.
God bless!

A Little Too Much Excitement

Hi Everyone! Sorry it's been so long since our last posting. I think we all have those times when we promise ourselves we're going to make a habit of doing something whether it be exercising, eating right, reading our Bible, brushing our teeth...... and the like, but often we start off strong for a little while, then things get busy or it slips our mind, and it dwindles until it's every once in a while or non-existent. This is my attempt at keeping our blog updates from becoming non-existent.

Jesse and I have been doing quite well. We're feeling quite settled into our apartment and neighbourhood in Vancouver now, and are starting to do more things with the people around us. For the month of May, every Tuesday, after work, Jesse will be staying down town and playing soccer with some of his co-workers for an hour or so. He had the pleasure of doing this this past week, and while he was a bit nervous about just how rusty he'd gotten in the last while, he managed to enjoy himself quite nicely. I (Abby) was able to join him and watch them play, as well as chase after a rogue soccer ball every now and then. I guess they were slightly impressed (only slightly, mind you) by my soccer ball chasing abilities that they invited me to play with them next week. :) I think I just might take them up on their offer, and discover just how rusty I have become at playing the wonderful game called soccer, or as Jesse's Irish co-workers call it: "Football".

While playing soccer was very fun for Jesse, we discovered something not so pleasing after the play was finished and people started filtering away: Jesse's backpack was missing. We racked our brains and distinctly remembered bringing it with us and placing it amongst all the other players bags before playing, but now it had disappeared. Unfortunately, the park we were playing in was near East Hastings, which is the low income area of Vancouver, where many homeless people live. Apparently someone was very desperate for some food, because upon making some phone calls, we discovered that someone had used Jesse's credit card to eat at a pizza place and an A+W - neither of which we had done. We found it a bit ironic, and sad that someone stole Jesse's entire back pack in hopes of finding a wallet and being able to get some food, because if they had asked us if we could buy them some food we would have gladly bought them as much as they could eat. But instead we ended up filing a police report, cancelling our bank cards, looking into how to replace many other cards, figuring out what we need to do to re-lock/key our apartment (his keys were in the backpack too), and several other things. On a slightly lighter and more amusing note, though it's also sad in it's own way - Jesse's favourite pair of work pants were also in the backpack :( So we bid them farewell as well.

Something good did come out of the whole ordeal, though. For one, we both were reminded of what forgiveness really is: Taking on the consequences of the others actions, and not hold it against them. It took me a while, but I think we are both at the point where we can say that we have forgiven whoever took Jesse's backpack.

Another blessing, that we realized after happened when we were walking around the park fields, just to see if anyone had dumped the backpack after finding the wallet, and we came across a group of young people. One of them had hurt her ankle quite badly falling down some stairs and needed a doctor. Unfortunately her friends were so intoxicated that they refused to let her call an ambulance, and wouldn't call one for her. That's how we found them - one girl in tears, and the others so drunk that they could hardly talk coherently or stand up without swaying. I'd never been in a situation quite like that before, and I look back at it thanking God for His grace. We were able to call an ambulance for the girl and wait for it to arrive. Jesse waited by the street to tell the aid people where we were, and I got to sit with the young women who was hurt. One of her friends was very argumentative and pushy, and I was afraid he might try and do something violent. I was thankful that God gave me words to say that were calming that he couldn't argue with. Eventually he calmed down and sat off to the side with the other friends while we waited for the ambulance to come.
Afterward, I was kicking myself mentally, wondering if there was anything I could have said to them to share the gospel. How do you evangelise to people who are drunk and won't remember what you say the next morning? After worrying about it for quite a while, God gave me peace that while we hadn't necessarily spoken God's word, we did show Christ's love to them, and He is able to work with that. I can only pray now that He does, and that they may come to know Him and His love, and love Him in return. Maybe we will meet them again and be able to share. If not, they are and always have been in God's most capable hands.

I think that's all for now. I need to go get some housework done before the hubby comes home. ;) Have a blessed weekend, all!
~The Groenewold's

Life, Worship, and Chaos.

Hello Family and Friends! Our sincerest apologies for not having posted for a while. There have been some changes in this Groenewold household in the past couple weeks.
I (Abby) am on my way to getting the much needed "life" things of a BC Permanent Resident. I have my SIN number and card, am in the process of getting my BC drivers license, am waiting on my PR Card in the mail, and am figuring out the process I need to go through to finally get my BC medical status figured out. Some days have been frustrating, but it's exciting to be making progress in the areas. I'm thankful for the blessing of having some of these things taken care of and finalized.

Another new thing for Jesse and myself - we are now worship leaders at our church! For those of you who don't know, Jesse and I are attending a small church plant in the Marpole area of Vancouver called Cornerstone Community Church. It's a small congregation - only about 2 dozen people on any given Sunday - but we're glad to call it our church home and our church family.
It seems as though many people in the Christian Reformed Church (as well as others) have been gifted musically, and I've always been a part of a congregation that has numerous talented singers, pianists, guitarists, and other instramentalists; but our church now is an exception to that. They are a passionate body of worshippers, but their musical resources were lacking. Our Pastor was leading singing with recorded music on a flashdrive plugged into a keyboard. Now our worship team has grown to 4 members!: Pastor Keon, myself, Jesse, and our new friend Richard, who recently started coming with his wife, Maria. I volunteered to help lead singing, and Jesse graciously stepped up to help; Richard plays guitar, and now Pastor Keon is able to hand over the reins to us in a sense, and focus on other very important things. Jesse is now welcoming the congregation to worship each Sunday, reading Bible passages, and leading the congregation in prayer, as well as singing every Sunday morning. I make the power point presentation and co-lead singing every week. It's been such a joy for me to be involved in leading worship through singing again. I didn't realize how much I missed it until recently. Jesse has been taken a little outside his comfort zone in these new rolls, but it is so awesome to see him growing through this service he has taken upon himself by the grace of God.

We've also been busy working out our summer plans - and it looks like things are going to be pretty eventful starting this month! My parents are coming to visit in about a week and a half, which I am really looking forward to. Mom and Dad Groenewold are coming to the mainland sometime in the middle of next week as well (I think) so we're really looking forward to seeing them too! The next weekend we are going to PASSION 2012 here in Vancouver. For Easter we are going to be driving south to Hilsboro, Oregon and staying with my sister, brother-in-law and niece.  It appears as though we'll have a slower month in May. In June, we'll celebrate our first anniversary, and then we'll head out to Minnesota to see two of our best friends get married.  In July one of my other best friends is making a road trip up the west coast from California with a friend, and their going to be spending a few days with us, and then in early August we'll fly out to Colorado to see my brother and his fiance, Alli, get married! After that, we will join two more friends for vacation in Steamboat Springs, CO. It will be eventful, and even a bit crazy at times, but we're thankful for God's faithfulness and his blessings to us.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading! Rest in the grace that we have been given through Christ Jesus, who mediates between us and the Father.

Mini Adventures

New mini adventures in our Great Adventure!!
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in a must-do Vancouver experience. It is especially a must do if there is a nerdy bone in your body. Because I am married to an engineer, it seems the amount of nerdy bones in my body have been multiplying. Thankfully, this nerdy, must-do adventure was also very fun. I mean, who doesn't like to be around hundreds of little kids, solving puzzles, learning about friction, air, pulleys and levers, and all sorts of other scienc-y things? Can you guess where we ventured to? Drum Roll please......budumbudumbudumbudumbudum................THE TELUS WORLD OF SCIENCE! (read this with Bill Nye the Science Guy's voice in your head, because that's how I pictured it).

From bear pelts, to air canons, to animatronic dinosaurs... they had it all!
As we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words..... and because we forgot the camera (oops, oops) and because I don't know which thousand words to type; the above paragraph is all the information I will share about Science World at present.

Many have found that adventures can be both voluntary and involuntary. The above adventure was voluntary. Today we were launched into some not so voluntary mini-adventures.
How many of you have had to get up at 6:20 AM due to a fire alarm going off in your building? That was the joyous experience that Jesse and I had this fine day. (Well, Jesse was actually already up getting ready for work, but I was still curled up in comfy, cozy, fuzzy, warm blankets until this "wonderful" occurence.) By 6:22 we were waiting outside the building with many other pajama-clad individuals, waiting for the fire department to come and rescue us from the cold.
Thankfully, it was a false alarm, because the fire department didn't show until a half hour later, by which time our really old apartment building probably would have been nothing but smoldering ashes in the case of a real fire.
Some good did come out of it all though. For the longest time Jesse and I have been wondering how to best connect with our neighbours, and nothing helps camaraderie more than being forced out of your building at 6:20 in the morning. :) It took me an hour or so to realize how great a blessing it actually was but once I did I was like "AHhhhhh, I see what you did there, God. You are more creative than I." Needless to say, now we know our next door neighbour. :)
Also today, we found out that our car won't start. I guess since the tires decided to hang on for a bit longer, the battery is deciding to go instead. We haven't taken it in yet, so this adventure is not yet concluded.

All in all, today was a somewhat hectic day,  but it was a GOOD day. And now that my husband is home, our tummies are full, and it's evening, I can say it is most certainly a GOOD night as well. God is so good, and his mercies never cease.  Even when fire alarms go off, and cars don't start...

Good Night, All!!

Bountiful Blessings, EH?

Great News in the Great Adventure of the Groenewold's!!! (Say that 10 times fast ;) ) As of yesterday, I am officially a permanent resident of the country they call the Great White North; the place where beavers and moose roam free; where red-coated mounties ride keeping the peace; where dog sled is the main mode of transportation; the place called..... wait for it......... CANADA!!!!!! Well actually, most of that isn't true; but it IS true that I am now a permanent resident of Canada. This means that I now have all the rights of a citizen, except for the right to vote. SO I can have a job, go to school, get a BC drivers license, and I can finally have a joint bank account with my husband!!! Hurray!!! It happened about 5 months sooner than we were anticipating which is a marvelous answer to prayer.

Yesterday, Jesse and I drove down to the United States/Canada border at Pt. Roberts, where we crossed the border, and promptly turned around to re-enter into the country we had just left. Has anyone else noticed that the States' border guards seem to be a lot more personable and cheerful than the Canadian ones? Maybe that's just the history of our experience..... Needless to say, all went well, they let me back into the country, AND named me a permanent resident. Now I just have to wait for my permanent resident card to get here! Then I'll feel super-de-duper official. :)

God was blessing us so much yesterday (He does every day, but these are not every day occurrences), because we got a problematic tire fixed on our car as well! The past few weeks, we've been having trouble with our left rear tire. We don't drive very much, so every time we drove we were pumping up the tire, then four days later when we were ready to drive again, the tire would be down to 0-10 psi. Trouble EH? So we'd pull out our little car air compressor; you know - the kind you plug into your cigarette lighter in your car (thanks mom and dad B. for that car kit Christmas present from a few years back - it's definitely come in handy), and we'd fill it just full enough to limp down the street to the gas station to fill it up the rest of the way. Needless to say, we're very thankful that the only gas station that we've found with a FREE air compressor is just 2 small blocks from our very humble abode. After weeks of the same old story, we finally made a point of getting our tire looked at. Thankfully, there's a tire place right across the street from where we live too! They took a look at all our tires and said - "You have great tread still." YAY! "But your tires are old and cracking." Oh.... "But they should last until next winter probably." Yay!!?! At least we don't have to purchase new tires quite yet. :) They took off the back left tire, patched it up, and good as new!! Well, I guess not as good as new... we'll still have to replace them within the next year most likely, but better than it was! So far so good - as far as we know it doesn't need re-filling yet. :)

The blessings I was speaking of is that both of these things were taken care of very smoothly, without difficulties. We had the finances to be able to have them taken care of without worry. We had access to these places without having to travel great distances. And despite all that - even if it didn't go smoothly - we still have a God to trust and put our hope in; a God who promises to add unto us all the things that we need when we seek His kingdom first, and His righteousness. At the beginning of the day, I was nervous about how the things at the border would go, and about what we should do about the tires on the car, or if we'd have to get them all replaced, and how we would go about paying for them; and then my WONDERFUL husband reminded me whose hands the day and every event of the day was in, and he prayed over us, and I was given peace. And God added unto us all the things we needed and then-some. God is great! May we sing of His Great Mercy every day!

We look forward to seeing what He has in store for us in this day.
As they say here in Canada, Adieu, eh?

This is the Great Adventure!!

Hello to all who have taken an interest in what is going on in the lives of Jesse and Abby Groenewold!

Much has happened in the past year - last May, Jesse and I graduated from Dordt College; Jesse with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and myself with a degree in Theology, with a missions emphasis.
Not long after, we professed our love and commitment for each other in the Covenant of marriage; becoming husband and wife on June 4, 2011. It's hard to believe it's been 7 1/2 months already! As Jesse often says, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." ~ Groucho Marx
God has been so good to us in our marriage thus far. 

Since our wedding, we've added a variety of odd jobs to our resume's. Beginning with orchard pruning, housesitting, horse feeding, becoming buddies with some great kids who happened to by a bit hyperactive (ADHD), and only recently ending with Jesse working as a Mechanical Engineer in downtown Vancouver, and myself currently unemployed serving as a homekeeper for my wonderful husband.
Amidst all this,  we've lived with both our family's for a total of about 5 months, before acquiring our own home in South Vancouver about 2 1/2 months ago. We were so grateful for the time with both our family's, but were also very anxious for the "leaving and cleaving" part of marriage. So we rejoiced on November 1 in finding out Jesse had a job! In less than two weeks, we packed, found an apartment, moved, unpacked, and Jesse started work. I must mention that moving onto the 3rd floor of an old apartment building that doesn't have an elevator is very taxing. Needless to say, after 4 1/4 hours Jesse and I decided to order pizza instead of cooking.

So far, Jesse has really been enjoying his job as an engineer. He is learning a lot, and has many nerdy moments at home (doing calculus for fun...), and is eager to learn more, and be more greatly challenged in his work. He has been becoming friends with many on his way to and from work; on the streets and in the skytrain.
I've conquered some of my fears of living in the city - things like driving by myself, taking the public transit system by myself, talking with strangers, and seeking to show compassion to the homeless. It's amazing how quickly we can change when we need to. I'm so thankful for God's amazing grace in these learnings and transitions. I don't know that I'll ever be a "city person", but I'm comfortable enough to call it home for the time being and eager to learn more about what it means to be a God follower and professor in this time and place.

Yet another joy of having our own place - I get to make dinner almost every night, and so must I do now, thus ending this post.
God's richest blessings through Jesus Christ to each and every one of you.