When I look back to my days over a year ago I see a totally different life. I was pouring myself into youth and yearning to have God change my life in amazing ways. These days I find myself plugging away at work and occasionally giving a hand at church. I wonder, have I lost site of what’s most important? Have my own desires of a wife caused me to forget what God has really called us all here to do? Tonight at our Family Life Ministries gathering we were challenged spiritually so that we could be the leaders God had called us to be. I was even honored for my service at Daybreak. I felt like there were so many others more worth to be honored than me. So many others there were pouring there lives into other people, all I was doing playing with a sound board.

I think a lot of my struggle is seeing this new chapter coming in my life and I have no idea what I’m doing. In my heart I want nothing more than to serve God and give Him all that I have. As I begin my new life with Vanessa I have a hard time seeing how that will take shape. I want to be the kind of Godly husband that I’m called to be. I want to take care of Vanessa and be the kind of spiritual leader she deserves. I know that once I come before God with Vanessa and make the life commitment to her that I am called to put her first in my life only next to God. I am to love her as Christ loves the church. All other relationships in my life will second to my wife. I think what I have a hard time with is that I’ve only ever had to worry about myself, and I didn’t worry too much about that, and I would always put myself aside for others. I now see that I must work at not letting my desire to serve others come before serving my wife. This is a big change for me, and I ask God to work in me to live that way.

I think that I have, however, been challenged to return to the Life Shapes. I really desire to keep the balance in my life. I think of the triangle “Up-In-Out” and keeping the relationship I have with God, fellow believers, and the rest of the world in balance and not letting any of those suffer. I want to be actively recognizing the kairos moments in my life and learning from them. I see a great challenge before me, one that I must rely on God for, that is the next chapter in my life. I see myself on a great adventure and I can’t help but me amazed, and terrified, overwhelmed, yet at peace, and all because I know that at the center of it all is God’s hand.

Well, of course, once again this “short” post turned into an hour long session. This sounds a little bit like old times. This week is going to continue to be crazy, but perhaps I still might have a chance to post some more. Things seem to be coming together well before the big day on March 24th. There are so many out there that I wish could have joined me for this very special day, but I know that you all are supporting us in so many ways. You can be sure that I’ll be looking to post photos and notes from the events to come. I can’t wait to heard those words Mr. and Mrs. Nolte, and they won’t be about my parents! I can’t wait to spend an amazing week enjoy God’s creation and time alone with my wife (and love of my life)! Alright, I better quite so I can get to bed. I’ve rambled on enough this even. I close this with two requests. I’d like to ask for your continued prayers for Vanessa and I as we begin our new life together. We know that our marriage can’t be what it’s suppose to be with God at it’s center. The second thing I’d like prayer for is for me. Pray that I might continue to have eyes to see God’s calling and challenges for my life, and that I have the faith to follow Him in each of those things. Ok…signing off.

Only 19 more days until I’ll be a married man! I really can hardly believe it. And the thing that seems even more amazing is that I’m going to be marrying an unbelievable and amazing woman like Vanessa. I only wish that it was easier for everyone that I know from back in MN to have the time to get to know her as I do.

I still wonder at times what there can really be about me that has put the desire in Vanessa to want to be my wife. It really seems like she could do a lot better than me. The thing that I truly believe however, is that this wasn’t something that Vanessa and I did. I can only see that God has had a bigger plan for bringing us together than we could have ever seen. I know that both of us can look back on our pasts and wonder how it is that it took those things to bring us together now. Why couldn’t we have found each other years ago? I think God’s plans and timing are always better than anything we can come up with. Yesterday evening, after watching a wonderful movie “Facing the Giants”, I broke down in tears of joy as I looked back on how God took the last 10 years of my life to prepare me for the life I’m about to begin with Vanessa. And I was amazed at how God answered my desire in His perfect timing. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t thank God for bringing Vanessa and I together. How great, how true, and faithful He is. We serve an amazing God!

Let’s begin with things on the work front. For those of you that didn’t know I work for iPCS Wireless, Inc. which is an affiliate company of Sprint. We own the Sprint cellular network for much of the area from Iowa to Pennsylvania. My official title is Network Planning Associate. I’m on the Network Planning team which is responsible for helping create web tools that help to plan our network expansion. We keep pretty busy keeping everyone happy. I’ve learned so much about cell phone technology and refined and enhanced my web-service programming and database administration. Lately I’ve had the opportunity to dabble in AJAX for a couple of the projects I’m working on. I work with a couple of great guys at our location too.

I’ve also been pretty busy with things at church. The church just opened the doors of it’s new youth building and also kicked off a new Sunday morning ministry call Splash. I’ve been involved with the Splash ministry running sound. It’s been sort of hard as we haven’t had anyone else really on board to dedicate to helping run sound for Splash, but we’ve been getting by. I’ve also worked on setting up a new online bookstore for the church. As soon as the new website design goes live we should be launching that new store as well. There is always plenty going on at church. I’m also apart of a small group that meets on Thursday nights. We’ve been going through a series by Andy Stanley that has been excellent. We only get together a couple times a month so I’m still getting to know people.

I’ve also been getting together with some people in the area to play card games/board games/party games. I became apart of the group through Meetup.com. I’ve gotten both Vanessa and her brother involved in the group too. Vanessa’s only attended once recently. It was so fun to have her join me! They only meet a couple times a month too. It’s been fun to just meet some new people and play some fun games.

And of course I’ve had the joy of spending lots of time with my bride-to-be. We’ve been having a lot of fun planning all the details of our wedding. We’ve gotten the ceremony location booked at Frederik Meijer Grardens as well as a small reception dinner there to follow. I know many of you are bummed about not begin able to come to the wedding. We’re hopeful that a summer celebration will work for many. We’ve gotten our wedding rings, the wedding dress is on order, and the honeymoon is booked. Doesn’t seem like we have too many more major things to cover. It’s all coming together so nicely.

This month will be quite busy with Christmas parties, and a Christmas vacation out to the great state of Minnesota. I sure hope that we’ll get to see a lot of you while we’re visiting. Well, that’s all for now. Till the next update!

Vanessa and I have just completed the 4th week of our dance class. We’ve learned both the waltz and the foxtrot so far. We had so much fun tonight, especially whiel practicing before class at my house. I love all the laughter we share. We’re not doing too bad, the key of it all is practice. I think we may need be sure to consider keeping up on practicing even after the class is done. I’ve bought some waltz, foxtrot, and swing music that we can dance too so we have what we need to practice. The only thing that we run into, quite literally actually, is not having enough room. Actually, as I just thought about it, we should really use Vanessa’s basement to practice.

Well, other things in life…work is going good. I do enjoy my job quite a bit, but there are things that do frustrate me at times. I’m pretty sure that is the case with all jobs really. There does seem to be a lot I need to learn yet. Learning is good.

I’ve been pretty involved with church too. I’ve been running sound for Splash, I’ve been working on a new bookstore website, and I’m a part of a small group that meets every couple of weeks. I really enjoy the series we’ve started in small group. I am hoping to start getting to know the others in the group though. I’d be nice to have some sort of social gathering. I haven’t exactly found someone in the group that I click with. I guess it has partly to do with finding that common ground of interests.

This Thursday I’m hoping to attend a meet up that just started for playing board games & card games. I found out about the group through Meetup.com where you can find other people in your area with simliar interests. I’m hoping to start playing some Settlers with this group.

Well, the time is ticking away, off to bed I need to be heading.

Life has been a little out of the ordinary lately. I ran sound again this week for Splash, it was a little crazy once again. Things should settle down eventually once everyone gets in tune with everything that needs to happen. Hopefully the next couple months will start to show some normalcy.

I’ve been kind of struggling with the whole podcast thing lately. I’m finding it hard to have the excitement to get things going. I think in part with so many other things going on the podcast seems like just one more thing to tackle. Perhaps there was a time for that podcast and now it’s over. To begin with my hope for the podcast was to included others besides myself. I’ve always gotten some very good feedback from those that have listened to my podcast. We’ll have to see what God has in store next for my podcast.

Well, I know that this was a very short update. I’m still working on trying to get back into some regular updates. I’d like to get myself back to posting a little of my thoughts each day. I think I’ve perhaps been a little more apprehensive because of perhaps the fear of saying something that would get misinterpreted by people around here that don’t know me very well. It’s kind of strange to feel that way. I used to feel so free with my thoughts. I wish that I could have that freedom again.

I’ll need to be going for now. Until the next post.

BTW, I think I might have finally found a base template that I like. I’m still feeling the need for some heavy customization though. I’m missing some of the little features I had before. Although, I do have to say that things are a bit less cluttered and out-of-hand. We’ll have to see what features I actually bring back.