The Center

Here are a few pics from the new building!  We are currently in the process of painting all the walls and redoing the floors but it seems to be moving along pretty fast!

We had the congregation come and write prayers on the walls before we painted

One of the prayers

This will be Nick's office

Sanctuary

Other side of the Sanctuary

Nick and Karriann painting the walls

We are all really excited about this project!!  Hopefully we will have some finished pictures up soon!

--Carmen

Snow!

It finally snowed here in New York! It's not nearly as exciting as what Colorado got but we'll take it!!! Can't wait til it snows again!!!!

Some fall pics!

Here are a few pictures of outside our house! It's getting colder here...Saturday the forecast is high of 45 and low of 38! Better get some sweaters out! :)

Autumn in New York

Well, the leaves are changing and falling here and the temp is dropping!! I love this weather so it's fine with me!!

The hurricane has caused a lot of flooding in the southern part of NY...Three Nazarene churches on our district have been damaged pretty badly. They have sent us pictures and it's just insane!! They are having teams come out and help but it's too far for nick and I to go right now! :(.

I have a couple different sub jobs next week at a school that's about 20 minutes from Livonia!! I am very excited because I figured I wouldn't get many jobs until October!

Well that's about it for now!!

Adios!
Carmen

Hurricane Info

So we were "in" our first hurricane! We didn't really think it would be too bad for us out here because we are quite a ways from New York City. We knew that the national guard and other people were waiting the storm out in Rochester so that they could go help when it was needed so we figured we were probably pretty safe. We only got the very edge of its path, which just included wind and rain and it was a lot colder than it has been here in a while. Never thought that we would have to worry about a hurricane being this far north but I guess you never know! :)

Nick and I went and walked along Lake Ontario last Thursday. I actually didn't think that you could walk along it, but there is actually a public beach and everything. We have some pretty cool pictures but they are on our phones since I forgot the camera. Once Nick gets home, I will have him show me how to take it off of our phones!

Well, I just thought I would give you an quick update!

Talk to you later,
Love,
Carmen

August

Sorry that it has been so long since I have updated!  We have been having a good summer!!  My parents got to come at the end of June...we got to see a lot of new stuff that even Nick and I hadn't seen before.  July 3 is their annual "Ring of Fire" around the lake. ( Every year they surround the lake with emergency flares.) Nick and I thought we better go check it out because seemed kind of weird but kind of interesting at the same time.  We were definitely glad we went!  The flares looked really cool along the lake but there were also TONS of fireworks!!  And tons of people, but Nick and I actually managed to find a good spot anyway.  We have had two community events recently.  One was a free music and ice cream night, there were quite a few people but most of them were from our church or Calvary so there weren't very many actually from Livonia.  The second one was an outdoor movie night and we watched "Tangled".  It was definitely a good turn out.  We had over 35 all together and only 10 of them were actually members of the church!  We are having another one next Friday so we'll see if that has the same kind of turn out! I have been searching for a teaching job...no luck so far but that's ok! :)  Just praying that God will send the right thing along! :)

I will try and post some pictures soon from some of the events!!

Love,
Carmen

May in New York

Well everything has finally started to bloom!  Everyone kept saying how pretty New York is in the Spring and it turns out that they were right!!  The lake has been ice free for a while now and that has been a really cool view for us as we drive through town! 

We had a great Easter week but it certainly was busy.  We had a Good Friday service that Nick put together which was the Tenebrae service or the service of shadows.  It was a really cool and powerful service and we got lots of great feedback from everyone.  We had an Easter sunrise service at the house of one of our great congregation members and then had another service at our regular time. 

This week is District assembly which started last night.  Nick is in charge of making sure all the media presentations look right on the screen so he has been very busy doing that and I am helping with the music tonight and all day tomorrow!  It definitely has already been a crazy time.  But it has been a good start so far! 

That's about all of the news I have for now! 

Love you all,
Carmen

UPDATE!!! :)

Sorry that it has been so long since we have updated!  We have done so much since the last time I posted.
 I will try to fill in some events that have happened since moving here.  One weekend, we decided that we needed to go into Rochester and get some errands done in town.  After we finished all of that, we were going to Walmart in Geneseo.  So we set our GPS to take us there.  And we thought something must be wrong because it said it was going to take a whole hour to get there and that didn't seem like it could be right.  But we had specifically entered in "Geneseo" so we were like "Oh well, maybe we just don't know..." So we continue on.  After an hour or so, we see the sign for walmart...but we do not recognize ANYTHING around it.   Then we see a sign for the town of "Saltvale" and just cracked up.  If we had known anything about the area, we would have realized that we were no where in the right area but we didn't.  We set the GPS back up and it said that were 45 minutes from the Walmart we were trying to get to.  Oh well, it was a pretty drive and it was an adventure but also, hilarious!

The church had a game night with the whole congregation.  They played the newly wed game and Nick and I won!!  It was a blast.  Everyone had to bring a dish and we struggled to figure out what to bring.  Finally we decided to bring a Runza casserole.  So they could get a taste of Nebraska! :)

My parents and Jake just came and we had a lot of fun.  We ran all over Rochester and even went to Canada! Here are some pics:

Nick and I in front of Niagara Falls.  

Lake Effect Diner in Buffalo, NY-Guy Fieri Ate Here

My food from Lake Effect Diner

Lighthouse at Old Fort Niagara

Frederick Douglass was buried in Rochester

So was Susan B. Anthony

Our delicious NY pizza from Great Northern.  

Well I better get going, I'm going to make cupcakes for tonight's Caravan badge ceremony. 

Love you all!
Carmen and Nick

Update

So we are still trying to get settled in here in New York...Still have more boxes to unpack but we are getting there!!

Saturday we went to dinner with a couple from church at a restaurant in Geneseo (about 15 min away).  We realized that there is a lot more to Geneseo than we realized!!  There was a bowling alley, a Tim Hortons, a Wendys AND a movie theater!!  (and a lot more but we had never made it that far!)

Sunday went really well.  Nick did his first communion service.  They had a little reception for us afterwards with coffee and hot chocolate and cookies.  And they also collected a little food pounding for us.  Immediately following the reception we had to go make a trip to the Walmart in Geneseo because we discovered that we had a flat tire... :( 

Monday we got DISH set up (and we have a DVR now too!)  and we also got internet!!  It feels good to be back in touch with life again! ;) 

Today Nick had a staff meeting with the group at the Rochester church all day and has another one tomorrow.  He really is enjoying getting to know the new people.

I tried to watch Rachael Ray today and I thought I was being really smart by watching it an hour later than in comes on in central time.  I did not, however, take into consideration that 12 pm is the start of the local news...so I missed it!  Here it comes on at 9 am!!  That's a good excuse to get up early every morning! ;) 

Tomorrow night I get to go help with Caravans at church.  The girls are going on a field trip.  I can't remember where they said they were going but I know that they have been learning about fire safety and about CPR and stuff like that.  Should be fun! :) 

Tonight we got to go on our first Wegman's shopping trip.  That place is insane!!  They have just about everything you could possibly ever think of in a grocery store, including an Olive Bar which my mom is especially excited about!! ;)

Well, That's about all that is new so far!

--Carmen and Nick

Unpacking

Well we are busy unpacking boxes!  (well not right now, because right now I'm sitting at the library :))  My dad got stuck here another day because of the weather in OKC so we were able to get a lot done.  The kitchen stuff is almost totally unpacked and most of that actually has a place right now ;) 

It will definitely be an adventure for the next few days as we try to figure out where all of our stuff is!!!


Well I better get going...need to go home and see how much more we can get done today!!

-Carmen and Nick

We made it! Woohoo!

Journey to New York

We made it to Cleveland, OH tonight!!

We spent the night in Saint Louis last night and got up bright and early to keep truckin' today.  We should only have about 4 ish hours tomorrow (depending on the weather!).  The weather so far has been great.  The biggest problem was right outside of Tulsa. 

Just thought that I would update ya'll!!

-Carmen

Stuck in rochester! Hopefully we will make it back to OKC by tomorrow!

Summary

Today was our last day in NY...

The church board voted unanimously for us to come out there and we officially accepted today...we found a house and are looking to move to that are in early February. 

More details will come late...we are worn out! 

Thanks for the prayers...we are very excited but very nervous also...


--Carmen and Nick

Church Today

Well, the service today went really well.  A lot of them seemed like the really liked Nick's sermon.  The people were very friendly and they were like one great big family. 

This is part of the sanctuary...That stuff in the very back is stuff from the thrift store downstairs...

I love this window...It's a great view!!

They had dinner for us at the current pastor's house afterward.  We had tacos and it was delicious!  However, they were two ladies there that had never had tacos before!  Weird!!  One of them had never even seems a soft shell taco before.  They brought out the tortillas and the lady said, "What are those?" and another lady said that they were just tortillas.  The first lady said, "Oh I get it! They just haven't cooked them yet!"  At first, I (carmen) couldn't tell if they were joking or not but it turns out that they weren't!!

Crazy!!

Well we have about an hour of down time before supper and the board meeting so we'll hopefully post again after that!

Love,
Carmen and Nick

Funny Story

We forgot that we had a funny story to add to yesterdays post! ;)

When we were driving around Livonia, the pastor was giving us reasons why he liked the area so much.  On his list was that they never got any bad weather, like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.  He told us that there was a tornado one time that he remembers and he went outside to watch it with his sons (It was close enough to see but not extremely close) and his wife was freaking out telling them all to get back inside.  Nick laughed and told him that it was not that way in Oklahoma because when the sirens go off EVERYONE goes and looks outside.  We thought his response to that was pretty funny.  He said "Sirens?  You have sirens for them?"  He had NEVER heard of a tornado siren....weird..... 

Anyways, that cracked us up, just thought we would share!

Nick and Carmen

Tour Day

So, today started out with a tour of Livonia.  The scenery here is really pretty, it is a lot like Nebraska or at least Nebraska in the winter.  We got to see the church there and were actually surprised at how large the sanctuary was!  It was an old Methodist church so the sanctuary is beautiful!!!  In the basement of the church the methodist church is running a thrift store, we went and looked through and there was a lot of really neat stuff!  It really is a cute little town.  We also got to go through some of the other towns like Lakeville, Geneseo and Avon.  Geneseo seems pretty good sized, it even has a SUPER WALMART!!!!!! (As Nick proof-read this, he rolled his eyes).  It is located like 15 min from Livonia.  Lakeville is like 2 minutes away but it really just makes it seem like it runs together! 

Nick was excited to hear about all the fishing and deer hunting in the area.  Hunters here can tag several deer each year.  On one of the lakes at the edge of the township of Livonia, there were dozens of people in tents ice fishing.  It was cool to see... but I think we'll stick to summer fishing.

We ate lunch with the current pastor and pastor's wife at a restaurant run by a family in the church.  They're really a very nice couple.  The restaurant was called Strawloo's and it was really good!  We also met some people from the Rochester church there because they just happened to be there at the same time! 

This afternoon the pastor at the Rochester church took us on a tour of the Rochester area.  We started out by driving by R.I.T. and University of Rochester.  It was very cool.  The University of Rochester has a section of it called the Eastman Conservatory  of Music.  It is located downtown and has many different music halls and everything.  George Eastman is the founder of Kodak and he was from here so he invested a lot of money into that conservatory.  He also took us by Eastman's house which is ENORMOUS!!  Nick and I decided that it probably is bigger than the town of Hershey!  ;)

We didn't actually get to go see it, but we got to drive by the burial sites of the founder of Rochester (Nathaniel Rochester), Frederick Douglas, & Susan B Anthony.  He said that Harriett Tubman was from very near Rochester also.  Part of the underground railroad went through here and he pointed to a place where the runaway slaves could be transported by boat to Canada where they would be safe. 

We also drove by the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario (which was beautiful!).  We even got to see a lighthouse! 

Then we got to have Gelato at a little Italian restaurant and we also go sandwiches from there but we haven't had a chance to eat them yet. 

Tomorrow Nick gets to preach in Livonia and then we have a dinner with that congregation.  Please keep praying!!

Well I guess we better go enjoy our sandwiches!!!

--Nick and Carmen

Well we made it!!

We landed in New York at about 5:15ish...we ate dinner with the pastor of the church in Rochester at a place called "Five Guys" and I (Carmen) don't even like hamburgers all that much and it was DELICIOUS!!!!!  Tomorrow we get to go on a tour of Livonia AND Rochester. 

Well, Nick and I are both wiped out from flying all day so we are going to bed early.

Adios,
Carmen and Nick

In NY!!! Love the snow!!!

Made it to atlanta! Just one more stop :S

Made it to dallas with just enough time to scarf down a pretzel from auntie annes before our next stop...atlanta!!!

Well, after spending all night weighing and measuring our suitcase, I think we finally got it down to the right size and the right weight!  Ugh, what a pain!!

In twenty minutes, my grandma will be here to take us to the airport...I think we both are kind of freaking out right now!  :S 

Well...Here goes nothing!!!
--Carmen and Nick

"We've only just begun"....

Well, I can't believe that we are actually flying out to NY tomorrow to interview and see if we think that we can live there! :S  Since many people still don't know about this, I wanted to make a place where we can update people without Facebook!  We will try to update as much of possible for those of you who care and maybe add some pics and everything!! 

Please keep us in your prayers!!!!


--Carmen and Nick