Our first week

(Chase writing)
Sorry we haven’t blogged sooner—it’s been a crazy few days! We made it in to Managua, Nicaragua safely Thursday night at about 8:30. My brother David picked us up and we somehow managed to cram all of our luggage in the back of the van.

For those of you who don’t know, we are living with David and his wife Kristina and their baby Beckett. He is a high-school teacher here at a well-respected school called Nicaragua Christian Academy. They have graciously offered to share their apartment with us, and we are already so glad we decided to! The transition alone has been so much easier already knowing people and having the basic living essentials.


Friday: We were able to send down several crates of our stuff with a short-term team from Woodcreek in June, and it was a little strange to be reunited with it…a bit like an early Christmas. Friday morning, we immediately set out to trash the place with unpacking (yay for not living out of a bag anymore!). A lot of our packaging had molded over the months, but nothing was ruined with it, and only a few of our items had broken in transit.

We went to Subway for lunch and Beckett threw up on the floor. I was slightly traumatized. I drove for the first time in a foreign country, and, similar to planting a flag in a new territory, we had Russell nachos for dinner.

Saturday: We went to our first kids service with One by One in the morning. Unfortunately, we don’t speak Spanish well enough to have understood more than about 5% of what went on, but we still got to play lots of games with kids beforehand. One little boy latched on to me for the whole service and later told Julie he wanted me to be his uncle.

In the afternoon, we went to Sinsa (the Nicaraguan equivalent of Ace Hardware) and found out just how expensive commodities are. A plastic, mountable medicine cabinet/mirror was $45, hangers were $5 for a 10-pack, a 13-gallon trash can was $24 (on sale), a countertop dish rack was $50, oscillating fans were $60, etc. Needless to say, we were blown away by the cost of living and are having to reconsider what our needs actually are.

In the evening, we attended the One by One “youth” (meaning age 15-30) service and again understood almost nothing! Still, it was good to get a feel for how things work, not to mention being able to finally see these things we’ve been talking about for months.

Sunday: We went to the English-speaking church that meets at Nicaragua Christian Academy. As it turns out, the worship team was short one person, so David asked me to fill in on the keyboard that week! That was a lot of fun, although it was a little awkward when the pastor asked if there were any first-time visitors and I was introduced while still standing on stage. We both took naps that afternoon, which were much needed and quite refreshing! That night, Dave and Kristina hosted a “coffeetime” event at our apartment so we could meet their friends and neighbors. It was great to meet people here, but also made us sad as we miss our close friends from home quite a bit!

(Julie writing)
Monday: We started Spanish class! We go from 8-12 and this week, we have one teacher named Armando for the first 2 hours and another one named Jeffrey for the next 2 hours. It’s great because it’s 1 on 1 – or, I guess 1 on 2 in our case. We are at similar levels, so we just started in level 2 for class and bought the book for level 1 to refresh ourselves. In addition to Spanish, we’ve learned a little bit about the culture in class. Apparently, people who are stuck-up and think they are better than everyone else or are rich are called “fresas”, which in English means strawberries. Odd :) Anyways, after class, Kristina picked us up and we went to the market to find some furniture. We found a great bookshelf and a little desk! We got home and immediately uncluttered our room a little bit, which helped it feel a lot more like home.

Tuesday: Spanish Class again – 4 hours a day is a bit tiring! But I think we are learning a lot and hopefully will be able to pick up Spanish quickly and have comprehendible conversations soon! After class today, Jeremy (the One by One director) picked us up and we went to the mall (MetroCentro) to have lunch. I started feeling a little sick today so I stuck with something safe – Quizno’s, but Chase had “Rostipollo”, which I think is Nicaraguan fast food. Jeremy also took us to buy phones, which we got for $19! Again, getting a phone helps it feel a little more like home, like we are a little more independent. Afterwards, we looked around at furniture a bit – we are needing to buy a bed soon (we’re sleeping on a borrowed one), so it was good to see prices and compare. They are pretty comparable to the States – a mattress is probably around $450-$500 for a good one, and even repels mosquitoes! Then we headed over to the Camino de Vida building (our church) to go through the staff handbook with Jeremy and learn a little bit about being in charge of the children’s ministry from Katie, who is the current children’s director.All in all, it has been a busy few days, but we are enjoying being here in Nicaragua. We are so thankful to have Chase’s brother David and his wife Kristina here, and we love living with them and baby Beckett. However, I am a little bit lonely and missing all of my friends a lot. Pray for us to be able to make friends quickly here! Also, as I mentioned earlier, I am a little bit sick and unfortunately, the medicine I need, I can’t seem to find anywhere here, so pray that we could find a pharmacy that has it! We love and miss you all and we appreciate you all greatly.

Oh, and just for fun…here's a picture of a bus we saw yesterday morning on our way to school…

Catching Up

The last month has been super busy so we have not had time to blog! It's catching up time! Since September 11th, we have traveled to New York, Atlanta, South Carolina, Orlando, Ft. Myers, Peachtree City, Dallas, Southern Illinois, Chicago and then back to Norman. We have visited aunts & uncles, cousins, grandparents, siblings, and friends. It's been a whirlwind of activity and it is nice to rest a bit before "The Texas Tour" begins on Thursday.

We left Norman last night and that is weird. Norman has been our home for the last 5 years and I really can't believe that time has come to an end. We had lunch with Whitney (Chase's sister) before we left town and we were reminiscing on our beginning in Norman, when we had no friends and nobody to hang out with on the weekends except for each other. Thankfully, that didn't last for more than a semester and over the last several years, God has provided incredible friendships for us. After graduating from OU and getting married, we both got incredible jobs that we loved and were sad to leave.

Julie: Republic Bank and Trust was a great place to work. I loved my co-workers, our customers, the atmosphere, the community focus, and the work itself. Jeff Miles was my boss from day 1, even though we both changed positions along the way. We really worked well together as a team and I really miss our sometimes ridiculous, sometimes professional friendship. Under his leadership, we created a pretty great training program for new tellers, and I got to help train probably 30-40 people (one or two at a time) over the year and a half that I was a "Customer Support Specialist". I miss working with my friends at RBT and wish I could take a few of them to Nicaragua with me! :)

This is Becky. Becky used to work at Midland Mortgage with Chase (he helped train her when she started there). Then she came to work at Republic and I got to train her to be my replacement. Becky is awesome - we pretty much became instant friends. She loves Jesus a lot and on my last day, she made me cupcakes that were so delicious - both great things! Jeff brought us all Chick-fil-A chicken biscuits (my favorite!) and we got to go out to lunch as a CSS team (me, Becky, Jeff, Stephen and Darrell). I really love those people and miss working with them quite a bit.

Chase: I worked for Midland Mortgage (MMC) for almost two years and it varied between being premature-aging stressful and rewarding. The last 7 months I was there I felt like the favored child--they created a new position for me that took me off the phones and had me designing/playing with Excel spreadsheets all day while still enjoying the company of my fun co-workers. It was like having privileges and esteem without much responsibility. I really enjoyed the new job, but every time I explain to people what it entailed, I end up boring them. I'm just a nerd, I guess. On my last day, the main team I worked with threw me a mini going-away party, complete with cupcakes, chips and queso, and a goofy poem. They had even taken up a collection for me to help with our traveling expenses! I miss the mental challenge of the job and all the fun I had with my co-workers: finding people with funny names, creating weapons out of office supplies, and coping with impossible policies with laughter. I especially miss Chad, Heather, Laurel, Sergio, and Steven--my accomplices in mischief, and I'm sad that I had to miss the MMC Olympics (which included office supply sculptures, remote-control car races, paper airplane throwing, and a paperclip chain-making race).

We both miss our jobs but look forward to what lies ahead! Speaking of which - our goal for when to leave the country was after we paid off all of our student loans ($40,000+) and... drumroll please...We made our last payment this past Friday! God provided for us in incredible ways and we are so grateful! We celebrated by going out to The Melting Pot for dinner. We love fondue and it was so delicious! Yea for being debt-free! Dave Ramsey would be so proud of us - we did the debt snowball and everything!

Sunday was our last day at Wildwood and Chase's last day to play piano with the worship team. It was bittersweet. We sang "Mystery" by Charlie Hall and when I sang "Sweet Jesus Christ our family, Sweet Jesus Christ our unity", I couldn't help but cry (for the first time) about leaving. I'm thankful that even though our location is changing and everything will be different, we still have unity with our family in Christ. Norman has become our home over the last 5 years, just as much as Dallas was our home for the first 18 years of our lives. We will (and already do) miss our friends there like crazy! But Jesus will sustain us until we're together again.

Thanks for reading all the way through if you made it!

A Broken Heart

So I just started reading Richard Stearn's book (the president of World Vision) called "The Hole In Our Gospel". I am only through the Introduction and I can already hear the Lord speaking to me through the words on the pages. He discusses the prayer "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God". Although I've heard this and even prayed it a few times, I haven't really thought about what that looks like. Praying for a broken heart. Who wants to be brokenhearted? Generally, we pray for healing, not brokenness. But I do want my heart to be aligned with that of Christ, and his heart was certainly broken for the poor, the helpless, and the needy. What does it look like for me to be truly broken about these things? And how do I get from here to there? In a few months, I will be moving to Nicaragua to work with children living in poverty. At that time, I will be face to face with this brokenness but before I go, I have a lot to do. I'm praying that despite the other things (no matter how important they are) that often successfully distract me, God will break my heart by those things which also break his.

It's my birthday!

Today is June 9th. Today I am 25. 25 years is one quarter of a century. One quarter of a century is very old. Let's not think about that anymore.

Instead, I will tell you about my day. Chase and I got up at 5ish this morning (ok, maybe I laid in bed til 5:30 and when Chase tried (for the second time) to get me up, I told him getting to lay in bed longer was my birthday treat!) and we went to IHOP for breakfast. It was fun and delicious - a great way to start the day. Afterwards, we made a visit to the Starbucks where Craig and Denny "treated" us to some free birthday drinks! Thanks guys! This ended our early morning birthday fun and we both headed off to work.

For lunch, I went to Which Wich (a great sandwich place on campus corner) with my friend Anna Miller, who, if you don't know her, is just wonderful! She made me homemade strawberry jam! In addition, she gave me a homemade card, which is funny, but I didn't realize how funny until I got back to work. Even though it's my birthday today and the card is from Anna, she must have gotten confused because she put her own name on the envelope of the card! You're funny Anna and I love you! Let's get Starbucks together sometime soon...I got this giftcard for 2 drinks for my birthday...

Back to work after lunch, and the day seemed to go by relatively quickly, which was nice! After work, I got to go the gym, which was desperately needed after IHOP and Which Wich. I was entertained on the treadmill by the shows "The Little Couple" and "What Not to Wear" on TLC. Man, TLC is great. In addition, I received my Real Simple magazine today, which is the absolute best magazine in the world, I'm convinced.

As if I needed any more calories, we had Whitney, Kelly, and Candice over for Cheese and Chocolate fondue. My amazing husband made it for us (Wayne, you abandoned Chase to hang out with only girls!) Whit made these Rosemary Sweet Potatoes to dip in the cheese fondue and they were excellent! Dinner was incredible. The whole day was incredible. Other delightful treats included Pink Truck, laughter, and fun presents from fun people. Birthdays are so great.

How can you go wrong with the best husband in the world, delicious food, great friends, TLC, Real Simple, the treadmill, and Starbucks. All in all a great day!

2 years!

Chase and I stayed at The Maverick Hotel (http://www.themaverickhotel.com/) in Tecumseh, OK last night to celebrate our 2 year anniversary! It was simple and adorable and we highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get away for the night. It's owned by Amanda Oakes' (the wife of the Children's pastor at Wildwood) parents and they have done an excellent job with the place! It's about 40 minutes from Norman and not too expensive. A great place to relax and celebrate.

So...two years almost...that's crazy. Hard to believe that we got married almost 2 years ago! I can't imagine life without Chase (I guess we have been together for 7 years!) and I am so thankful to have him for my husband. He is really an incredible husband - constantly finding ways to love and serve me and forgiving me over and over again for leaving the closet light on or a cold cup of coffee in the microwave (though it's been awhile since I've done that). He is a man of integrity and faithfulness and he really cares about people. Not to mention that he's a great piano player. I definitely found a man with skills. :) I have loved our last 2 years together and I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with him. I love you Chase!

April 15, 2007 - a good day

Welcome to our blog!

We have finally done it. It has been on the to do list since the beginning of the year and today is the day we can cross it off! For the the past several months, we have kept up with friends' blogs religiously (Abby, yours never changes...you need to update it!) and love hearing about our friends' lives in New York, Nicaragua, Colorado, Kansas, China, Texas, and of course, Oklahoma. But we realize this has been a one-sided blogging relationship and we would like to give you the opportunity to blog-stalk us as well! :) (Though Chase feels that we had to decide to move
someplace exotic to warrant a blog).

We currently have this blog named "the traveling russells" because that's what we do. We travel. Almost every weekend. And we are topping it off with a long term move to Nicaragua (the above mentioned "exotic place"). However, as soon as we think of a better name (suggestions anyone?), "the traveling russells" is history. You see, "the nicaragua russells" is already taken. We will no longer be "the norman russells". We could do "the youngest russell couple" but this might chafe "the eldest russell couple". Chase suggested "russells on rye" but as this made no sense whatsoever, it was quickly discarded. Thus, we are left with "the traveling russells," and since this is our temporary name, we will provide you with some of the many pictures of our travels.