Saying Goodbye

 As I mentioned in a previous post, Brandon and I had a very interesting conversation during my car ride home from my parents.  In order to fully understand the conversation I have to rewind a bit to fill in come context.  

In the spring of 2019 our church hired a new youth pastor.  Michael was a huge blessing to our church family and specifically to our family as well.  M loved him!  He met with him each week and they had a special bond. This Memorial Day weekend Michael told Brandon that he had accepted a new position and would be ending his time at our church at the end of June.  We were so sad, and we knew that our sad was small next to the sad that M was going to feel.  Michael told M before he told the rest of the youth group.  There were many tears and lots of anger.  

As soon as Brandon told me I started to process this logistically from a ministry perspective and then a personal perspective.  Brandon and I both were wondering about another search process, a fall without a youth pastor, would Brandon have to do both roles... so many questions.  Our minds both quickly went to the last search process.  The other search process was long and opened our eyes to types of applicants etc. There had been two top candidates, Michael being one of them. We both wondered what the other top candidate was up to. Brandon and I prayed and prayed and he spoke with the board, the search team (which was pretty much the same team as the last search) and the EFCA District youth person and they all agreed that reaching out to the other candidate would be a great (and unconventional) idea.  While we were in MN Brandon worked many, many hours crafting an email to this person.  He sent it while I was there and quickly heard back from the candidate.  The day we were driving home he had a two hour phone call with the guy and it was very encouraging.  Wow!  Only God could create this situation.  IT was so fun to be driving home and hearing about this wild God story. There are many more details than I really want to get into on this blog, but we feel like God set aside this man for us.  The day before Brandon send the email Matt's (the candidate) wife told him they needed to leave their current situation.  God's timing was/is perfect.  The interview process went so smoothly.  Amazingly, Matt will assume the position here the day after Labor Day.  The whole search process happened this summer!  God is faithful. 

OK, so back to Michael.  He was with us through June and M made the most of every moment with him.  During their final days here we were able to host them for grilling hotdogs and having a fire.  It was a great night together. We were so blessed by Michael and Katie and while we are thrilled to hear about their new church, the goodbyes are bittersweet. A huge blessing in Michael and Katie's move is that they are not going too far away and our goodbyes are just see you later!

Both kids love Michael and he patiently played LOTS of tic-tac-toe with them.

Such focus.

So sweet!

M could not get enough Michael time.

Look at all those rounds played!

Such special friends.

T warmed up a bit!

I was looking through pictures and found a couple from our first time having them over for dinner, pretty much exactly two years before our last time (for now). 

Summer 2019

Tough Guys!

Almost exactly two years later!

What a difference two years makes! M has grown so much!