Christmas Card Update

Merry Christmas to all! This is my favorite time of year! We sent out our first Christmas card this year! It was very exciting to have our own and not just be included in our parents’. Rather than adding a letter in our Christmas card telling everyone about our lives over the past year, I decided to update our blog and include a link to it in our card instead. It seemed the easiest way and would allow for more communication throughout the year.

For those of you just reading this blog for the first time, I’ll try to condense what we’ve been up to over the last year. I guess I should rewind a little before that. We moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2011, just a few months after getting married in March. Josh started working on his M. Div. at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I was teaching 2^nd grade at a school outside the city.

This past summer, we made numerous trips back and forth to Georgia to be in various friends’ weddings. It was so nice to relax and spend time with friends and family. We also got to visit Josh's sister, Jennifer, who lives in Washington D.C. and show Josh the sights for the first time. Sadly, during this time, Josh’s Maw Maw passed away from Ovarian Cancer. It is good to know that she is cancer-free and pain-free, but we still miss her a lot, especially around the holidays.

After much prayer and consideration, I decided to apply for jobs at a different school for this year. The environment I was working in was very difficult, and I was losing my passion for teaching. A friend from seminary helped me get a job at Belle Chasse Primary School teaching 4^th grade. Up to this year, I thought I didn’t want to teach children older than 3^rd grade. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I love the older kids! They are old enough to know the basics but at this prime age where they still love school and are so curious and excited about learning! Unfortunately, 4^th grade is the year of high-stakes standardized testing in Louisiana. I do not enjoy the pressure that puts on me or my students, but I won’t get into that . . . :) This year has really helped me grow to love teaching again.

Josh started working at Village Coffee Shop in the city last year, and he continues to work there part-time when he is not taking classes. (I must admit that I am drinking a delicious Peppermint Mocha made by him as I write this!) He took Greek this past semester, and I do not envy him! He has spent many hours going over flashcards, and I have fallen asleep to the sound of him saying random Greek words out loud in his office.  He feels called to plant a church after seminary. Maybe New Orleans, maybe anywhere; we are still praying and thinking through that and have time to decide.

We are really enjoying our time in New Orleans. We love it here! We have joined a church, and enjoy our weekly Community Group in addition to serving with the Kids’ Ministry. There are always festivals to attend. Josh’s family came to visit us in the fall, and we took them to the Blues and BBQ Festival as well as the Lousiana Seafood Festival. In November, we attended our favorite one, Po Boy Fest.

We have officially become Saints fans this season and got to go to our first game this fall. It was SO much fun! I won’t tell you who we were playing or the score of the game when we broke their perfect winning streak, but I will say that we had family members disown us over Thanksgiving break when they found out. ;)

We have decided that rather than pushing Josh to finish seminary in three years (which they tell you is doable, but is hard to do), we are going to continue to enjoy our time here and make it four years total. One and a half years down, two and a half to go. This year seems to be flying by. I’ve always heard the older you get, the faster it goes. I am finding that to be true.  I am sure it will feel like no time at all before we are saying “Remember when we lived in New Orleans . . .” For now, we will continue to make the most of our time here. Come visit us in the Big Easy! We love having friends come so we can show them around and eat some beignets.

We hope this finds you doing well this holiday season. 2 Corinthians 9:15 says, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” We are thankful this Christmas for our many blessings, for the gift of Jesus, and for our friendship with you. Merry Christmas and love to you all!

We Survived the Storm!

This was written Sunday, 9/2, but we did not get internet back until recently, so I am just posting it a week later. 

Well, I feel that we have experienced a New Orleans rite of passage this past week. Against the pleas of family, we decided to “shelter in place” for Hurricane Isaac rather than evacuate. I feel it necessary to blog about why we decided to stay.

Last weekend, talk of Tropical Storm Isaac turning into a hurricane became serious. This year I work in Plaquemines Parish, which you have probably heard of on the news recently. The southern part of this parish experienced total devastation during Katrina, and many of the teachers and families of my students lost everything. Understandably so, they do not take hurricanes lightly. On Sunday, when they could see that Isaac was making its way towards us, they cancelled school Monday through Wednesday. The seminary did not decide until Monday afternoon to cancel its classes Tuesday through Thursday, which did not give us much time to decide if we should leave or stay as they were predicting Isaac would make landfall on Tuesday.

When that happened, Josh and I talked through our options. We could evacuate to Georgia to stay with family or go to Mississippi to stay with friends. Either way, it was spending a lot of hours in the car and a lot of money on gas (which, if you remember our summer, was not something we really wanted to repeat). Isaac was supposed to only be a Category 1, come in Tuesday, and be gone Wednesday, so we decided to stay and weather the storm!

On Monday, Josh and I read up on hurricane readiness, filled our refrigerator with water, our pantry with nonperishables, and our freezer with ice. We got our candles ready and charged our cell phones and laptops. Tuesday was a little vacation. We slept in and spent the day cooking and baking in order to use all of our food that might go bad. I joked about not knowing that I would gain weight during a hurricane!

Tuesday night, while we were asleep, we lost power. We woke up Wednesday to a dark apartment, so we opened the doors and windows and listened to the falling rain and wind. It sounded liked the waves at the beach. We played Monopoly by candlelight (Josh won) and ate the rest of our cooked food. Isaac had slowed down and didn’t really hit New Orleans until Wednesday afternoon. We were good waiting it out.

Wednesday, the hurricane hit and there was a lot of rain and wind, heavier than a typical summer storm. On Thursday, Isaac moved out, the wind and the rain calmed, and with it, our breeze. Our cell phone service never died, so we were able to talk to family and friends and let them know we were ok. (We would take turns keeping our phones on and charge them in the car when necessary. We also rationed out our laptop power and watched movies on them every night.) We drove around campus and surveyed the damage. There was a small amount of flooding (not much more than when there is a heavy rain here), and most of the water was already receding. There were a lot of smaller branches all over, and about ten trees had fallen, but there was no major damage to buildings or cars. Overall, campus had survived pretty well!

Thursday night was warm, and when we woke up Friday, it was hot and humid! Josh went to the coffee shop he works at to help them set everything back up. That was the first time either one of us had left campus. When he came back, I was sitting on the couch “grumpy” (as he called it). The air was so warm and still. And without a water heater, our showers were ice cold, which should have felt good, but I didn’t like going from sweating to shivering. I’d had to clean out our fridge and freezer and throw away food, which aggravated me. And the smell was not pleasant either! All in all, I was not in a good mood. Josh kept assuring me that the power would be on soon. We’ve realized for future reference that Day 3 is my breaking point without power! (I’m more high maintenance than I thought!)

That night was pretty miserable, so we woke up Saturday morning and headed out to somewhere, anywhere with air conditioning! We used a gift certificate we had to Cracker Barrel for breakfast (thank you, Nana!), walked around Wal-Mart, went to the mall, ate some FroYo, stopped by Target. We kept checking back on campus and found power trucks working on the lines! We came back and joined some other seminarians, sitting in the grass, staring at the men in the bright yellow vests, hoping that somehow our desperate stares, fanning, and wiping of our brows would help them turn the power on faster! :) At 6:45, one of the men hollered, “Go inside and check your lights!” They were on! And the air conditioner! And the oven! And the refrigerator! And the TV! And the washer and dryer! And the hot water in the shower! All the little things we take for granted. It was thrilling!

Tonight at church we sang the lyrics, “And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us? And if our God is with us, then what can stand against?” A hurricane? And that’s when it hit me. God was with us through all of this. I never felt in danger. I didn’t lose anything. I didn’t feel liked I “needed” God. But He was there, and He did protect and spare us. I thought that not having AC for four days was horrible, but for some Isaac was truly horrific. The city itself was spared, but the surrounding areas have experienced tragedy yet again. I’ve already heard of one teacher at my school who lost everything in Katrina and has now lost everything in Isaac. People had trees come through their roofs, flooding, and more.  “What can stand against?” Nothing; not even hurricanes. Yet it’s still so hard to understand the “why.” Why does this happen? I’m not writing to answer that question, but to simply acknowledge that this storm has changed my perspective in some ways. I will be thankful for all the little things that I take for granted . . . at least for a little while. And then God will send something else to remind me that he is taking care of us and watching over us, and that I’ll always “need” Him.

Tomorrow we are doing disaster relief work in the city. I’m sure I’ll have an even bigger perspective then of all that has happened. For now, please pray for the thousands who are still without power, the areas where the flooding is not expected to go down for weeks, and those who cannot afford the repairs that are needed to their houses or businesses. Love to you all. We’ll keep you posted.

Hip, Hip, Hooray! It's One Year Today!

Today marks one year of the little Cooks living in the Big Easy! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been away from Georgia that long. Looking back on it, the time has flown by. It seems like we were just unloading the moving truck in the NOLA heat. So much has happened over the last 12 months. There have been challenging moments, but overall it has been a good year, and we are glad to be here.

When I last wrote, summer was just beginning, and now summer is coming to a close.It has been wonderful to take a break from our normal hectic schedule. In June we spent almost three weeks on the East Coast. We traveled to Georgia first for Josh to be in a friend’s wedding (number 4 out of 5 this year). Then we headed up to Washington D.C. to spend the week with Josh’s sister Jennifer. She has been working for a Congressman for about a year and a half now, and we really wanted to visit while she’s living there. We walked our feet off but had a lot of fun exploring all of the national monuments and Smithsonian Museums. Jenn even hooked us up with a special night tour of the Capitol, and we got to see areas they don’t show people on regular tours. It’s nice to have connections!

                Sadly, we ended our visit to D.C. by learning that Josh’s Maw Maw was not doing well. She had been battling Ovarian Cancer for almost a year and had quickly gone downhill. We had visited her in the hospital when we were in town for the wedding, but since we left she had been sent home with hospice care. Josh, Jennifer, and I quickly traveled back to be with their family during the last week of her life. On June 15^th, she passed away. While we are glad that she is no longer in pain and is celebrating in heaven, it was very hard to lose her. Meanwhile, Josh and I had to leave at the end of the week to travel to South Carolina for Josh to be in our fifth and final wedding of the year! It was a bittersweet time, enjoying a happy occasion with friends but also hurting from the loss of Maw Maw. We traveled back to Georgia for her funeral on Sunday and then headed back to New Orleans late that night. It was a crazy trip with lots of traveling back and forth. Total, we estimate that we drove around 2,855 miles and spent about 39 hours in the car!

                The rest of the summer was full of little trips. We went camping at Gulf Shores with some friends over the 4^th of July, to Panama City Beach with Josh’s family to spread Maw Maw’s ashes, and I took a solo bus ride to Atlanta to spend time with my family since I had not seen them at all this summer. I realized that I had jumped right into school the day after we moved to New Orleans and had not come up for air until this summer. It was not until summer break that I’ve had time to get homesick. So the trip home was good for me, although I was sad that Josh had to stay behind and work.

                School is about to begin again, and I will be starting my new job at a difference school as a 4^th grade teacher. This is my third year teaching, third new school, and third new grade! Please pray for me as I transition into this new role. The pressure on teachers for their students to do well on the 4^th grade standardized LEAP test can be overwhelming. Pray that I enjoy my new job but that I can find a way to organize my time and separate school life from home life. Josh has been working all summer. (I’m so thankful for his hard work!) He is starting his second year of seminary in a few weeks. Please pray for him as he gets back into the school mode and all the extra work that comes with it.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support! Hope you’ve had a wonderful summer as well!

Sweet Summertime!

It’s summertime! We made it! Woohoo! One of the perks of both of us being on a school schedule is that we have this summer off! Last summer, we worked at Ingleside Baptist Church right up until the day before we moved to New Orleans. This summer, I finally get to enjoy one of the greatest perks of being a teacher . . . 9 weeks without students, lesson planning, grading, or getting up at the crack of dawn! Josh claims that I will quickly get bored, but I promise him I will not. I plan on cleaning the apartment, reading lots of books, and enjoying time at the pool (something I did not get to do last year). 

Josh finished his 2^nd semester of classes. It’s hard to believe he’s a third of the way through seminary, in theory – we might stretch it out a little longer. He will continue to work at the coffee shop this summer but is not taking any classes. Between the two of us, we were/are in 4 weddings this summer. Mine were both in May, and they were beautiful! (Congrats to Caroline Niziol and Christy Link!) Josh’s are in June, so it just didn’t work out for him to take classes with all the traveling to Georgia, South Carolina, and even Washington, D.C. to see his sister, we will be doing over the summer.

Another answer to prayer is that I have a new job next year! I just found out last week that I will be teaching 4^th grade at Belle Chasse Primary this coming August. Fourth graders will be a huge jump from my little 2^nd grade kiddos this year, but I am very excited about it. Plus, one of my friends from seminary campus works there and is moving from 3^rd up to 4^th to teach with me! I feel so honored and blessed and can’t wait to see what this next year has in store. While I’m not naïve enough to think that it will be easy – 4^th grade is the big year for standardized testing in LA – I have prayed a lot about what to do next year and feel like this is where God wants me.

It’s been a while since my last post. Josh went to Canada back in March with his church planting class and it really confirmed that is what we’re supposed to do after seminary. We’re not sure where, but we do know that God is calling us to start a church. So that is something you can join us in praying about. We still have at least two, maybe three, more years here at seminary. We love our new city, but we’re also eager to see where God wants us to go next. Always an adventure with the Cooks!!

For now, we’re content to rest and enjoy this time off with each other, friends, and family! Goodbye for now.

How Can It Be March Already?

Wow, it’s already March. That’s hard to believe! We’ve had a very busy few months since I last blogged. I recently had a week off of school for Mardi Gras break (one of the perks of living here!). Now I know what you’re thinking, “Gasp, Mardi Gras. That dreadful time when the city is full of partying and debauchery.” Yes, we too thought this until we moved here and found that seminary people even go to Mardi Gras. Hard to believe, I know. J Now I wouldn’t suggest taking a stroll down Bourbon Street during this time, but other parts of the city actually have very family-friendly parades that are a lot of fun! We tried to eat as much King Cake and go to as many parades as possible. At one point, I found myself reaching, hands outstretched, towards a float, yelling at a man in a mask, “No, pink ones! I want the big pink beads!” or “Come on, you know you wanna give me that coconut.” (Yes, in addition to beads, they throw crazy things like shoes and coconuts at certain parades.) Who was I, and how had I become this person?! I’m not so sure looking back on it why the pink beads were so important, but Mardi Gras has a way of sucking you in, and they definitely were very important at the time. The whole city shuts down and comes out for parades. It’s great! Our craziest moment was trying to leave downtown after a parade when the person in a van in front of us got out and started dancing on top of it. People were dancing all around us in the streets. It was like a movie. All of that to say, I hope this has changed your opinion of Mardi Gras and that you’ll come visit us next year for it! J

You can check out some of our pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.680043201254.2120091.44305180&type=3&l=309317901b

In the midst of Mardi Gras, we actually made a whirlwind trip to Georgia for me to be in the wedding of one of my good friends from college, Bonnie Keel. It was beautiful, and we loved getting to see Mercer friends. Between the two of us, Josh and I are in five weddings in Georgia this year, so we’re trying to visit as many people as possible with each opportunity.

Aside from all of that, Josh’s semester is not quite as busy as last, which is good for him. He is actually taking a church planting class this year to see if that might be the direction in which the Lord is calling him. In a week and a half, he is going to Toronto with this class to visit some church plants. Toronto is apparently the most diverse city in the world, so it will be exciting and challenging to see how pastors there are uniquely reaching the city.

As for me, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve almost made it through my first year teaching here. It has definitely been a year of challenges and growth. I absolutely love my 2^nd graders even if they do make me want to pull my hair out sometimes. My heart breaks for some of their home lives. Teaching in general, and especially at my school, is very stressful. I love listening to music, and I’ve found that different songs “represent” different times in my life. I can think back to certain stages, and a song comes to mind. As I’ve made my way through this challenging school year, I really identified with Matthew West’s song “Strong Enough.”

You must

You must think I'm strong

To give me what I'm going through
Well, forgive me

Forgive me if I'm wrong

But this looks like more than I can do

On my own
I know I'm not strong enough to be everything that I'm supposed to be

I give up

I'm not stong enough

Hands of mercy won't you cover me

Lord right now I'm asking you to be

Strong enough

Strong enough

For the both of us

I can do all things

Through Christ who gives me strength

And I don't have to be

Strong enough

Strong enough

Fortunately, Mardi Gras break really rejuvenated me. It’s given me the rest and clarity I need to make it through the rest of the year. Recently, Christy Nockels (one of my absolute favorite singers), released a new song “Ever Lifting.” My attitude and outlook have recently been more like the words to this song:

You’re lifting my head so I know You’re near me
You’re lifting my eyes so I see You clearly
Where I belong…You are where I belong
I’m lifting my voice just to sing a new song
I’m lifting my hands just to show You I know where I belong …
You’re where I belong …
You are ever lifting me …
You are ever lifting me …

You fill my heart to know, the length of Your great love
And where You go I’ll go, You set my heart above
And nothing on earth compares, Oh God when I’m with You
You take me higher, You take me higher

So please keep praying for both of us – perseverance to keep going, wisdom as we make decisions about our future, and time management so that we can make the most of our years here in New Orleans, however short or long they may be. For those of you in GA, if we missed you this last trip, we hope to see you soon! Love you all!