Top 10 Happenings Of 2008

Happy New Year! 2008 was a year of big happenings in our lives so we decided to put together a top 10 list. I added a link to previous posts if there were any so you can read about the event. These are in order of occurrence because it was too hard to rank them by significance.

1. My sister Sandi got married to Jay and we were in the wedding.

2. We finished our basement with the help of family & friends.

3. Our friends Dave & Holly & their son Jaden lived with us for a while.

4. We went to Romania to help with summer camp for orphans for 5 weeks.

5. We celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary.

6. We put our house up for sale.

7. We were accepted to be full time missionaries to orphans in Romania.

8. We went to California to vacation, go to a wedding, and plan for Romania.

9. We joined techies everywhere by starting a blog, getting on Facebook, and buying a Macbook.

10. We went to Canada over Christmas to celebrate Rebecca's Oma's 100th birthday.


Links:
1. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/05/sandi-jays-wedding.html

2. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/wrapping-things-up.html

3. See above.

4. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-upcoming-romania-mission-trip.html (+ 26 other posts!)

5. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/10/very-memorable-5-year-anniversary.html

6. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/09/missionary-application-selling-our.html

7. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/it-is-official-we-are-going-to-romania.html

8. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-1.html & http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-2.html

9. None really.

10. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2009/01/omas-100th-birthday-celebration.html

Some Pictures of Us

Here are some pictures of Rebecca and I at various times, just for fun.

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At Niagara Falls on our big camping trip of 2007.

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Us with our kitties Chewy and Smokey.

Us at the pictured rocks in Michigan's upper peninsula during our 2006 camping trip.

Chewy as a little kitten.

Smokey as a little kitten.

Hello out there, and a little about us...

Hello, welcome to my new blog. I am Mark Essenburg and my wife is Rebecca. I started this blog so that we could share with you our life experiences and our thoughts on the many things that we are interested in. There are a lot of things we've done before being able to write about them, so I am going to be periodically posting on those things, in addition to the new things that are happening.

We have been married for nearly 5 years already, our anniversary is October 4, 2003. We now live in west Michigan, in our very own house that we bought new 3 years ago. I am a mechanical design engineer for Extol Inc, and Rebecca periodically works grading standardized tests. We have two cats, Smokey and Chewy, and they are big mischief makers, but we do enjoy them. We enjoy getting together with family and friends and are also quite involved with church. We are part of a great small group and we enjoy leading a small group of kids for the Wednesday night ministries. We are also on the LifeGroup Lead team, which oversees all the small groups.

We love God with all our hearts and we enjoy worshiping him in church and throughout the week. We are both still growing in our faith, that is a never-ending journey. Our faith in Jesus Christ is what gets us through the good and tough times, and we thank God for all he has done in our lives and how he has used us to bless others. We are very passionate about caring for orphans, which you will be able to hear a lot more about soon.

Well, that was very brief, but I'll be posting on all these things in much more depth later. I hope you enjoy reading our blog, and I hope that it can enrich your life.