Alpha Star

Happy New Year!

We hope your holiday celebrations were full of joy and peace.




We had a wonderful Christmas celebration with Lindsay's family in Orlando before driving back to NC to spend actual Christmas day with my family. What a blessing... my mom, dad, older sister Rachel, brother Aaron, younger sister Elysia and Grammy were all "home" as well. We cherish time with our families knowing that it will be limited in the coming months and years.



After three months as house guests with Lindsay's parents and Terry and Betty, it is great to be back in our own apartment. Sadly, we are now preparing to pack it up. On January 21st we leave for cross-cultural missionary training school in Colorado and our lease will end that same weekend. Between now and then we need to sort through all of our belongings to determine which go into storage and which get placed aside to be packed and carried to the DR by short-term missionaries going down to Santo Domingo throughout the spring and summer. We have decided not to ship anything into Dominican customs to avoid the inevitable bribes and hassle required to get anything out on the other side. As of now, if it's going down it's going in a suitcase...

Our first sorting/packing challenge was the 19 bins worth of stuff that has gradually accumulated in my parents basement since my 8th grade graduation. Lindsay claims I am a bona fide packrat, and I must admit that after sifting through the items such as those listed below I have to agree:
- Mardi Gras beads from 1990
- A collection of pewter dragons
-Two years worth of pay stubs from my first job
- Newspaper clippings from Michael Jordan's biggest games
- Scratch 'n Sniff sticker collection (complete with Garbage Pail Kids)






Of course, the Rubbermaid treasure chests contained some real gems including my Alpha Star space shuttle and moon rover!





Needless, to say, the trash bags, recycling bins and Goodwill piles are building. I feel silly to have collected so much stuff, but relieved to know that all these years I've been hoarding only junk that no one else could use or want.

About two years ago I stood proudly on my soapbox and preached to friends about the tragedy of American storage units. "In the DR there are no storage units!!! In the rare case that someone has something they can't use, they give it to someone who can use it. We wealthy Americans have so much stuff that we have to rent 10x10 rooms just to store what doesn't fit in our huge houses! What is wrong with us??!!" Yesterday Lindsay and I reserved a storage unit for our furniture and winter clothing, so I've officially stepped down from my soap box.