Pretty crazy right? We've done our best to talk to people personally about such a big change in our lives, but figured it was best to get the facts recorded properly...so why not go viral!
Angie and I are called to be missionaries, that is, dedicated to making the love and salvation of Jesus Christ known however and wherever we can. We are confident that in preparation for this life we need to be ready in many ways, and one of those areas is our education. We have been successful as "short-termers" and although willing to forsake home and country and leave for Asia tomorrow know that for the dreams in our heart to take place, there has to be more than passion to succeed. Getting our degrees will set us up for the future...long term. We may be welcomed in on paper as a business man and English teacher, but our motive is for the cause of Christ, making him known where he is not.
Angie will be done with her teaching degree in a little over a year, and as for me...well it has been pretty rough. I started last fall taking courses online and realized after a year that that method of learning was not for me and quite difficult, I needed a classroom with real people!
In the beginning of the Summer I was ready to enroll at a University in our area and soon realized the tower of school loans and debt that would come along with it. Because of that, for the last few months we've searched for better paying jobs that would help with school costs to no avail. So I started looking outside of Napa, Napa County, and eventually California in general.
While getting ready for our vacation and chance to see our family in Alaska, we literally prayed...God even if you open up a door there, away from friends, family, and everything we know, we'll go. And so it did. I am excited about a job opportunity working as an admitting rep through the Fairbanks hospital and potentially another job through the University of Alaska. Angie also has a great opportunity with North Pole Roasting Company, a growing coffee chain and distributor. We are blessed to have an apartment available to us soon at a great price, and even a car thanks to Angie's parents.
We know that this is the right step for us, whether you can believe it or not, and are ready as we can be for such a dramatic change.
We leave August 10th. It will be sad to say goodbye to friends and family, but like we keep saying...our life keeps proving to be an adventure, and adventure rarely happens in familiarity.
Thanks for everyone's support and love over the years, we hope to see you before we leave for a while and of course want to stay in touch. We'll be making a trip back to Gustine for a few days next week, and will have one more Sunday to share with our Hillside family.
Love You All
Manny & Angie
""It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
