In middle school Spanish class we would sing a song about the days of the week.

Fun fact: the week starts with lunes (Monday) because common sense. Things I get irrationally passioante about: why do our weeks start with Sunday? Why can I never remember that my week starts with Sunday?

Anyway, the song began with lunes and then miercoles, jueves, etc. And each name would get a note higher until the very end, domingo. And for whatever reason my class would scream DOMINNNNNNNNGO in the highest voice possible.

Sundays make me wax nostalgic about middle school Spanish apparently.

But, seriously, Happy Sunday y'all.

You know when you move and you feel like the first couple of days you are just treading water? Just trying to keep your head above the waves?

Well I finally feel like...maybe...I'm past that point. I mean, I'm sure I will feel it again BUT now all my stuff is (basically) put away and I have groceries in my cabinet and I've finally met some students.

Praise the Lord.

Exciting CA news in 3 bullet points!

1. At 3:20am there was a magnitude 6.1 earthquake in Northern CA! You guys! It was crazy. I've never experienced an earthquake before so it was nuts. My teammates share a room so we all woke up and waited until it was over and nothing feel over or off the walls. Literally the only damage is that our floor lamp tipped over (but didn't fall)...but also it's old and jankey so that may have happened before.

But pray for Northern Cal, especially the Napa area because it was rowdy up there; fallen furniture, fires in trailer parks, no electricity, etc.

2. So John and I are getting married in November which means our teammate Carlos needed to find a new roommate. And today there was 2 (two) people who got in contact with him about living with him. A great problem to have.

While he figured that out, John and I hip hopped over to padmapper and began to hunker down on our own apt search.

Carlos took a picture because it was "Sooooo cute".

And then he asked what a garbage disposal was and we rocked his world.

Do you ever have those weeks (months) where the last thing you are able to comprehend is what day of the week it is? Seriously, I don't know why this has been such a struggle but my days all run together and about 50% of them are Mondays.

My teammate Carlos is pretty much one of my favorite human beings in the whole world. He's hilarious and insightful and brilliant and also sometimes just waaaaay too gullible. While we were in Napa I asked him to take some egg shells out to the compost pile and I was met with the blankest of all stares.

"What...?"
"The compost pile...?"
"..."
 "Carlos, the compost pile?"
"What is that?"

 It literally took forever for him to get to the actual question.

Other things that are hard, what is a plus-one, and the difference between lemons and limes.

Later he asked when we would grind up the compost pile to make dirt.

Berkeley is amazing because the people here are straight up weird. They say whatever, wear whatever, do whatever. This poses some problems as missionaries, but it also makes getting dressed in the morning really easy because no one cares.

We had dinner with our Newman Center priests last night and, because we are near wine country, we had some wine. It was CVS wine, but still.

Specifically, it was Menage a Trois wine. It's a mighty unfortunate name because the wine itself is pretty good for cheap wine, but a sketchy name. Anyway, Fr. Al who is literally almost 100 years old (93) looked at the bottle of wine, turned to Carlos and said, "That's a pretty sexy name for wine." And then he laughed and laughed.
And we nervously laughed.

Will you guys pray for us? Missionary life is hard and trying to do everything at the start of the semester is pretty overwhelming.

I also accidentally spilled the beans to John that I have a blog. He wasn't aware of it. Whoops. So now I need to zip back into the archives and make sure there isn't anything embarrassing about him written on it before he finds it. If y'all find something, holler at me.
 

I knew there would be a lot of perks to moving to Berkeley and being a missionary here.

1. I would be with John. That's the main one.
2. Berkeley is a cool place.
3. Our offsite retreats and planning weekends take place in Napa Valley.

Game changer.

It takes a lot of get FOCUS onto a campus, but it takes even more effort to get it into a diocese or a state that's new. Getting FOCUS to CA took literally 15 years. One of the main reasons why there are even missionaries out here is because of Judy Barrett.

Judy and her late husband Jim own a winery called Chateau Montelena. In 1976 there was a wine tasting in Paris, now called "The Judgement of Paris" and no American wine had ever won the competition, or taken seriously, but the Barrett's entered their chardonnay and it won a blind taste test and won the whole dang thing. They basically put Napa on the map. Also there is a movie about it, which is grossly fictionalized says Judy.

Anyway, they are amazing people. They love FOCUS and Judy is our Berkeley Mom. She has a sweatshirt to prove it.


She just loves us. And we are so grateful since we don't know a lot of people out here and we are desperately missing our family and friends. It was such a gift to be in a home and not a barely unpacked apartment.

She gave us strength for the journey and I am so grateful.

Stoic black-and-white dad shot.

With the matriarch

Okay let's just jump right in! Sorry I haven't been blogging. I basically started this blog so I could better document all the changes that are happening in my life so when big changes started happening...I stopped blogging.

Whoops!

So, good news...

I made it to Berkeley!

This is what we packed:



Yikes. John and I for sure don't have that much stuff on our own. However, apparently, when you get married you need to have furniture to, like, use. So we packed a queen size bed (wooooot) and some dressers and a kitchen table and chairs etc.

And all the sweet bridal shower gifts!

But it all went right into storage because we decided (begrudgingly) to wait to use our sick stuff until after we are married. Only eighty-some days until we are united, Crock Pot.

Here are some photos I snagged while driving for 23849237 hours through NE, WY, UT, and into CA.
Also if you follow me on instagram you've seen most of these, sorry not too sorry.

Salt flats in UT, c-r-a-z-y

Driving for s-o-m-a-n-y-h-o-u-r-s

Sierra Nevada Mountains

But now the whole team is here and it's great. I'll update you all on even more exciting details (I'm sure you can't wait) and post some thought provoking questions like; what the butt is kombucha and why is everyone drinking it here?