God certainly has perfect timing. We received our referral on a Tuesday, while at Asbury. Wednesday we went to visit with Randy’s family in TN. Upon arrival one of the first questions was, “What’s your theme?” We had no theme. We had decided not to do any preparations for a nursery until we had our referral.

So while in TN we went shopping for a theme. As the question became recurrent from Randy’s stepmother, we figured something was up … and sure enough, the Saturday after our referral, Randy’s family gave us our first baby shower and Pooh and Friends was the theme of the evening!

It was great having pictures of our little one for the occasion. Randy hooked his computer up to the big screen TV and we had a slideshow with the six pictures we had received just the day before playing throughout the evening.

As we loaded up the car for our return trip, we realized that it was a sign of things to come. Our lives are going to change in a big way and it has already started as we packed a box of diapers, a bag of baby clothes, crib bedding, a portable crib and more. All we needed was a car seat with our very own little one nestled in the back seat!

A little about our dissertations.

So far in our doctor of ministry / dissertation journeys we have not said a whole lot about our specific topics. However, we just noticed that Asbury’s current proposal’s page now lists our dissertation proposal topics:

Joleen: The Integrated Small Group: Bible Study, Community, Ministry, and Mission

Randy: Leadership Communication: The Relationship Between Communication and the Shaping of a Missional Culture

We’ll say more about these topics in the days to come, but once we return from vacation in a couple days, we will jump back into work on our dissertations for what will hopefully be the home stretch!