Nothing Sweet About Parting

Shakespeare was wrong. There is nothing sweet about parting. Maybe Romeo was pumped because he knew he would be seeing Juliet soon (or so he thought!), but we don't know when we'll get to see our friends again. My friend Jason from Appleton asked me some monthis ago if it was hard to leave Minnesota. I told him it was. In many respects it was very hard.

Physically, it was a strenuous, cold, and tiring move. Spiritually, it stretched our faith far wondering when God would sell our house. Relationally, it was tough to have to leave behind so many friends. We had already done it once in 2004 when we had to leave our dear friends at Emmanuel Baptist in Appleton, but this time seemed even harder since we had such a wide circle of friends there in Minnesota.

Over the next few days, I am going to finally post many pictures from the last year. To start off this series of posts, I want to honor just a few of our close friends that we miss so much.

Our children had just as hard of a time leaving these friends:

The Sorensens



The Rich children (of course this is only 2 of the 7!)


The Levy children (this is just Anne, but they miss David, Abby, and Alyssa as well!)

Our hearts were torn as we had to leave these dear friends:

Our small group from Redeemer Bible Church (this group made us feel like family and was such a blessing to us in the short time we were able to be with them).


Christian King (Our friend who has returned to his homeland in Liberia.)


Alyssa Levy (Our reliable, creative, and loving babysitter.)


Bob and Lorraine Meredith (Our pastor and his wife from Emmaus Baptist and a testimony to God's amazing grace!)


Dave & Glorianne Levy (of course the parents of the children above, but also the ones we forced to be our friends when we first moved to Minneapolis)


Jason & Dana Klohs (friends from Emmaus who showed us what it looks like to trust God even when you don't know when your next dollar's going to come in)


Mark & Roxy Prins (friends from Emmaus who loved us like we were their own children and whose girls [Kelsey & Ashley] had a Barbie collection that put ours to shame :) )


Kathy Gilder (another friend from Emmaus who we loved dearly and always looked forward to hearing about her many adventures)


Jeff & Jodi Rich (friends from seminary whom we would love to serve with in ministry together someday!)


There are so many other friends we could highlight from Redeemer, Emmaus, Central Seminary, and even our neighborhood. What is amazing about being a Christian is the almost instant fellowship that can occur between brothers and sisters in Christ who have never met. While it was painful to leave Wisconsin and Minnesota, God has blessed us again with a whole new pack of friends! God is so good.