A Wedding, A Boat, and A Few Reflections

I'm still waiting on some pictures from my sister of the quirky goings-on at my house on Christmas, but I think in the meantime I'll tell you about the New Year. It's slightly backwards, I know, but I think you can handle it.

On the Friday after Christmas, some friends and I drove to Irvine, California to go to the wedding of Sam and Tivian Nguyen and to celebrate New Year's. We took Lolly Joy (my CR-V), and I have to say, she was awesome. All that room... Four people's stuff for five days, a guitar and a snowboard (with boots!), and there was room to spare. This is why I got this car. Plus, she did great on the road, making the 7-hour trip quite nice. At least I thought so.

Anyway, the wedding was on Saturday, and Lolly Joy came in handy once again as we helped transport centerpieces and chauffeur important wedding guests. I felt very privileged to get to help out where I could, and I was honored to get to see and hug both the bride and groom before the ceremony. I was particularly grateful for this later, because there wasn't much time with them at all at the reception.

Bryce sang during the ceremony, so I helped keep the kids contained (sort of). To entertain ourselves before it started, we thought we'd take some pictures...

Sims is such a charmer, isn't he? I grabbed Lydia and said "everyone smile!" and this is what I got:

I love that in typical younger sister fashion, Lydia's checking out what Sims is doing, so that she can be sure to do it as well. And that leads us to this:Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

Being so occupied, I didn't actually get any pictures from the ceremony, so I stole this one off of my friend Mikey's blog.Sam and Tivian started dating while he was on staff with us here at the UA. Having watched the process of God moving them toward this day over the past few years, I was so delighted to get to celebrate with them.

The reception was unlike any I'd been to before, but I'm told it was pretty typical for a Vietnamese wedding. There was a sit-down dinner with multiple courses of traditional Vietnamese fare. One of my friends, Cori, sat down, saw the menu, and thought she got to pick one. No, no. We got some of everything, from crab and asparagus soup to fried scallops to duck with some sort of dumplings to fried rice and a bunch of stuff in between. I was more than full by the end.

I think there were close to 500 guests at the reception (far less at the ceremony), and while everyone ate, Sam and Tivian went around to greet each table. Like I said, we didn't get much time with them, but we did get enough to take this picture:As far as I could tell, Tivian changed twice during the course of the reception, back and forth between her wedding dress and this one. She was pretty much stunning in both of them.

During dinner, and even beyond it, several of the family members got up to sing karaoke. At one point, I think around 15 men got up to sing, and I was told that they sang the National Anthem of Vietnam. I felt a little out of place, but it was fun to experience some of the culture.

Sam had asked Steven to come up with a playlist for dancing, so toward the end of the evening, he kicked it off with "Play that Funky Music, White Boy", which I thought was absolutely perfect. This was more my element, and we definitely got our groove on.

In the days after the wedding, we got to spend some good time with our friends who are on staff with The Navigators in California. Mikey hosted the guys, and Joni hosted us girls. We had a few pretty chill days, having a picnic in the grass, group quiet times in coffee shops, and even a boat ride on the lake behind Mikey's mom's house. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the boat ride on the last day of 2007:

We stopped at a playground offshore which provided for some fun picture opportunities as well.

Alice Chen threw a New Year's party, so we got to celebrate with friends, which was good. Joni and I actually left early (I know, it's kind of a major faux pas), went back to her apartment, and spent the last minutes of 2007 and the first minutes of 2008 journaling and praying. I loved it. It was good for me to reflect on the things which have happened over the last year, and how I have seen God move in my life through those things. From the really big hard stuff like having to say goodbye to my grandpa and Heidi in February or trying to minister to a student who had murdered her roommate in September, to the really big fun stuff like standing up next to my friend Krista as she committed herself in marriage to Brian in May or throwing myself off of a bridge in Zambia in July, 2007 gave me myriad opportunities to look to the Lord and praise His Name.

We drove back from California on the 1st, which provided great opportunity for look toward 2008. What am I excited for? What are my hopes? What would I like to accomplish? What are my fears? We talked through these questions and more (predictions on the presidential election, anyone?), and again it was good for me to look to God. I suppose most years have a lot of unknowns, even the ones we think we have planned out, but I feel like this year in particular is a year of unknowns for me from the outset. Typically, that is totally unnerving to me, and I'll admit that even in these first few days of the year, I have had some anxiety about that, but for some reason, by God's grace I have a prevailing sense of peace about it.

I won't go into all of that, this already being a long post, but it leads me to this: I await with breathless expectation what God will do in 2008.