I apologize for letting two months pass without another blog post.  People have been asking us if we were going to send out an update, but I don’t think either of us have had the energy or motivation to do it.  Please bear with us during this crazy time of transition.

May 22 was my last day of work.  This was a hard day because I had to walk away from a job that I loved and the best coworkers anyone could ask for.  This day was most difficult because late that night we got a phone call with news that my brother, Mike, had died.  We had a lot of tough goodbyes, but saying goodbye to Mike was by far the toughest.  This is the main reason we got backed up on thank you cards/emails, blog writing, and well—everything else.  Even though we postponed our move to Haiti by a couple weeks, we still left a lot of loose ends.  If we didn’t get to say goodbye to you, it wasn’t because we didn’t want to see you, but life got pretty hard for those weeks leading up to our move.  We were dealing with the loss of a brother on top of leaving jobs, saying goodbye to friends, leaving our home of six years, saying goodbye to our church family, shopping, packing, fitting our entire lives into one vehicle, traveling, saying goodbye to family, selecting new health insurance, getting vaccinations, buying medication, and all the other time consuming tasks that go along with moving to a third world country.  Grief is hard.  Moving to another country is hard.  Experiencing both of these at the same time is really, really hard!

Despite the really hard stuff, we had a great sendoff for our move.  Old friends and new friends in Nashville made sure our bellies were so full of good food and drinks and that we got plenty of encouragement during our last two weeks there.  Leaving Nashville was much harder than we ever could imagine.

We then spent two weeks in Pennsylvania trying our best to relax but also see family and friends.  Despite the loss of a brother, my side of the family still gathered as planned to make a week of memories together.  It was very healing for us to all be together, but it certainly made it much more difficult to say goodbye.  I think we ran out of tears by the end of our month-long goodbyes.

We had one last night of fun spent in Pittsburgh with family and friends and ate everything we wanted to.  I was having a high anxiety moment just before we got to the airport, and my brother, Chris, comforted me by saying I could just back out and he could turn around and go home.  These were the same comforting words he gave me as the music began playing at our wedding.  :)  Obviously I do not always take his advice.

We have been in Haiti for a full week now, and we have lots to share.  Stay tuned for another update soon.  If you are praying with us, please continue to pray for energy and peace as we are transitioning and grieving on many levels.

-- Steph