A Time of Sadness & Rejoicing

No, it has not all been bad since we left Wisconsin. We have met some wonderful people and already started building friendships. The day we moved in we were blessed to have so many helpers and to meet Drew and Stacy (thanks Amy and Jon for the contact). We also met Neoni and Jana who live in student family housing. Neoni was the one that helped us try to clean our mattress and couch cushions with the handheld Bissel cleaner. Jana brought over the mattress for Jamie to sleep on. A few days later we met Jana's husband Philip who invited Ryan and another guy to go out for happy hour. Ryan had an opportunity to have some good conversation with the guys that night. We've had neighbors introduce themselves and bring us baked goods, we've been invited to various events in the family housing community and we even had dinner with Philip and Jana one night. We have been trying to get together with Drew and Stacy, but so far our schedules have not aligned to make it possible, but we are still working on it. We are truly enjoying our international community that we live in and can't wait to meet more people and dive deeper into relationships.

Another blessing has been the Horizon's ministry that we have connected with. We visited the director's (George) church where he is the pastor and met some very nice people. In fact, Jamie went to their women's retreat the following weekend. We also met George's family and visited the Horizon's ministry over lunch. They continue to check up on us and include us on various events. This weekend the whole church (it is a fairly small church) went on an overnight camping trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, we were unable to stop by due to childbirth education classes on Saturday and Sunday, but we appreciated the invite.

We were excited to finally choose our midwife as well. Jamie had interviewed one midwife over the phone before the move and had spoken with another, but planned on meeting in person once we arrived in Boulder. We interviewed three midwives in person and had some amazing connections to the third woman that we interviewed. Judy Roberts is our midwife and two of her daughters spent time in Nepal with friends of ours who are now back in Milwaukee. We are blessed to have found her.


Despite traveling to WI for a sad occassion, it was a wonderful time to celebrate Ryan's grandmother's life. The entire family was there - Jamie finally met everyone from the Del Balso side of the family. It was great to have time again to see family so soon after we moved and we really enjoyed spending time with Ryan's siblings and neices, who we rarely get to see. Having taken advantage of the bereavement fare option on Midwest, our flight options were somewhat limited which actually extended our time in WI longer than we would have anticipated. Because of this we were able to go to Meadowbrook Church on Sunday and the state fair on Monday, one of Ryan's favorite WI summer activities. Of course we had some fried cheese, corn on the cob and cream puffs - what a treat to be able to enjoy this time with family. It was fun to see our nieces, Pacita (6) and Parker (2), enjoy various rides and activities at the fair. We look forward to being able to bring our little one with us some day.



Today we tried a new church - one that had an early enough service that we could go to and still get to our birth education class on time. It is amazing how many churches around here only have one service at 10:30am - which would not give us time to get to a class at noon on the other side of town, plus eat lunch. God really met us there and spoke to some of our recent challenges. We also met some young couples - one that currently lives in student family housing on the other side of campus, another that recently moved to Boulder and another that used to live in the same family housing area that we currently live in. Unfortunately we had to decline their lunch invite as we needed to get to our birth education class. Jamie was also invited to attend the MOPS program at the church, the first meeting is the day after her due date; not sure that she will make that one.