Our guatemalangunkel blog was a way to document our journey to Jadon. It began as a blog to journal and share our experience with our out of town friends and family. GuatemalanGunkel turned out to be much more than that! So, now that we are completely sucked in to the world of blogging, we want to move to a more permanent blog that we can keep to document our entire family journey over the next several years.
If you are interested in keeping up with our family, please update your blogroll and join us!!!
We were at our brother and sister-in-law’s church in Nashville this morning and this amazing 16 year old girl stood up and talked about her adoption. For the majority of her life she lived in an orphanage in Moldova. A year of so ago she was adopted by a family in the congregation. She cried as she told the church how much the mission trips these people take mean to the children in her orphanage. Tears streamed as she explained that these children who have never received love before get to be held, cuddled and sung to for the first time in their lives. She had everyone in tears as she spoke of the love she needed and of the love she has received.
Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in -behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. . .
. . . Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Romans 8:28a
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him
And not a moment too soon, she’ll have a new brother or sister a couple weeks (hopefully) after she comes home!! Click on her name if you’d like to see her blog.
We are moving blogs to continue into the development of the rest of our family. (not all of our children will be guatemalan)
We need your help to brainstorm titles. We wanted it to be titled www.globalgunkels.wordpress.com but we’ve decided not to have our last name in the title.
So, what are your ideas? Something global-ish. . . .
check out our latest posts if you haven’t already (lately we’ve been blogging MACHINES!!)
This picture takes my breath away. This is from the blog Whittaker Woman (or bringing LA to the ATL) She was with her husband blogging from Uganda. If you’d like to check out more of the amazing photography and stories, click on her blog.
I desperately want to be the woman holding that little girl’s hands.
Well it has been almost 2 weeks since I got back from my trip to Italy and Switzerland. Let me just tell you that this was one of the most amazing, adventurous, crazy things I have ever done.
I have always wanted to backpack around Europe and my dream came true on this trip. It started in Rome Italy Sunday January 26th. That day I found myself driving all over the place before I finally arrived at my hotel in Spello Italy. That includes Rome (all the way to the Colosseum), Orvieto, Perugia, Assisi, and Spello. I stayed in Spello which is a really cool hill town in the middle of Umbria. Not your regular tourist location but I definitely recommend it and you will see why in my pictures.
On Tuesday, I did a self guided walk through Assisi which is an absolutely spectacular city.
On Thursday I hoped on a train en route to Brig Switzerland (via both Florence and Milan). Once I arrived in Brig my friend Jeff met me. Jeff flew in just to do the backpacking of Switzerland with me. During the next 3 days we went to Zermatt which is an amazing ski town in the shadow of the breath taking Matterhorn mountain. I loved this place. The architecture was beautiful and the views of the Matterhorn were just amazing. From there we went to Interlaken where we stayed 2 nights. From Interlaken we traveled by train up to the Jungfrau region of Switzerland. This is a really cool place where you have the opportunity to go from about 1000 meters to about 4300 meters in just a couple hours. That is about 10,000 feet! We didn’t go all the way to the top because of the weather but it was quite amazing to see all of these peaks.
We stayed another night in Interlaken then the next day we set out on our journey to reach Zurich where we would fly back to Atlanta from. En route we stopped in both Breinz and Lucerne. Both really cool towns on absolutely amazing lakes.
I have so many stories that I wish I could tell on this blog but in order to keep this short I will just put these highlights. I put most of the pictures on our flickr website that you can get to from the link on the right but here are a few of my favorites from the trip anyways.
Josh
Street I drove the wrong direction on in Spello. I hope to tell this and a few of my other driving stories in a later post so stay tuned for that one.
San Francesco (St Francis) church in Assisi
Jeff and I at the top of Gornergrat which is above Zermatt
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Posted by Josh & Jessica
