Week in Review

Greetings from, Nebraska!  Here’s a summary of our week…

1. Sung and I were working all week on our Perspectives final project– so excited to be almost finished!

2. Cherry blossoms are blooming everywhere–  I feel right at home!

3. We have been able to make our wedding photos public this week, thanks to our extraordinary photographer, Jeff Sellenrick!  Check out our photos with the password: wabanna

4. Sung and I hosted our first ever potluck at our house!  Nine friends, from our Perspectives class and small group, brought food to share.  Everyone was impressed with Sung’s awesome cooking– he made 4 or 5 dishes!  This picture doesn’t do the authentic Korean and Chinese food (brought by our friends) justice but here it is.

           

5. This week we skipped our last official Perpectives class (next week we still have homework due and we will have our “graduation”) to attend the International Worship Night at our church.  It was too amazing to be described in this post so hopefully I will be able to tell your more about it soon.

Thanks for reading!

All my love, Margot

14 for 2014

This is not a list of goals but just a few little blurbs because I have been so bad at updating this thing recently!  I have started so many entries in my mind and they were all really good but never made it to the page haha.  I realized that, while I always want to write super-profound stuff on here, many folks back home would probably just enjoy knowing how the heck we are doing.  So here’s how we are doing….

1.  We cut down our first Christmas tree.

 

   

2. We started experiencing some Nebraska winter but we have had less snow than any of you states on the East Coast.  

3. We went to the Medical Group’s Christmas party.  It was at an aquarium.  Sung danced in front of hundreds of people and won a prize.  I am not even lying. 

4. Sung won a Christmas sweater contest.

 

5. We ran the “Holiday Hustle”, my first 5K.

6. We celebrated our first Christmas together by opening gifts, making Peking duck, and watching Sung’s favorite holiday movie, Die Hard.

 
7. Sung turned 27.  He is still younger than me.  We ate sushi out and cooked Korean food at home.  I got him a helicopter.

8. We celebrated New Year’s with Sung’s work friends.

9. We drove to Tennessee for a wedding and drove home in a blizzard.

10. I started a new job.

11. Sung and I started taking an amazing and mind-blowing course on the Bible and missions, called Perspectives,  http://www.perspectives.org/

12.  Sung started applying to schools for this fall!!

13. Sung started making iced green tea.

14. I joined Instagram @margotannehwang.  Oliver now has his own special feed, #oliverhwang

I’ll try to update more frequently!  We miss and love everyone back home.  Also– guess what?!?!  I turn 30 one month from today!!!!!

Home Sweet Home

Well, since we’ve been here for over two months and are finally “settled in” I thought I’d take you on a virtual tour.  Let’s start with the front entrance….

Ok, just kidding.  This painting was a wedding present from Jackie and Gints.  Anyway, here is our living area (living room, dining room, kitchen are kind of all together).

     

  

    

  

We have a balcony and I’ve enjoyed watching the trees change color from this window this fall.  (Leaves not pictured 😦 )

  

Next, I’ll show you the lovely guest bathroom and office which quickly converts into a guest room with our very nice air mattress!  Could this be your next vacation spot?!?

      

Finally, I’ll show you our bedroom.  People who have lived with me may not recognize it without the clothes all over the floor.  I have actually REALLY improved in this area but, I should probably admit my parents were coming to visit just before these photos were taken.

         

As you can see, we are putting our wedding gifts to good use.  Thanks everybody!  All my love as we head into this upcoming Thanksgiving week!  ❤ ❤

Thank You Notes Officially Out!

Coming soon to a mailbox near you….hopefully.    We had some sender-identification issues (thank you Target gift registry, a cross-country move, and my own pre-wedding scatteredness…) so if you sent a gift and don’t get a note from us by next week sometime… Please do the kind of awkward thing and let me know!  It will help me sleep at night.  Seriously.

Also, check out how sweet the wedding “Guest Book” looks in our apartment.  THANK YOU for helping decorate our home! ❤ ❤

Gratitude

About a month ago Sung and I heard a sermon at our church about giving.  As in cash.  To the church.  And it was not even a remotely irritating message.  One thing the pastor said really stuck out to me and I have been turning it over in my head ever since.  He said, “If your giver is broken it is because your receiver is broken.”  He started describing a person who is stingy with giving to others and explained that that person may have the real problem when it came to accepting from others.  I knew he was talking about me.

I am frequently “frugal” when giving gifts but often just lazy or even this word the pastor used– stingy.  I didn’t think of it that way until he said it but it’s true.   With others, with myself, I really don’t like spending money.   I thought it was because I was “non-materialistic” but after further examination, I’m not so sure.  If there is someone panhandling I feel no guilt whatsoever about passing them by because “giving them money isn’t the best way to help” even though I am not actively finding a better way to help.

Sung, on the other hand, is extremely generous.  He usually gives food or money to people we see on the street.  He doesn’t worry so much about spending money on things because he is responsible about paying his bills and he does not tight-fist his income.  This used to bother me until I saw the one who really struggled with money was me, not him.  Emotionally, it is difficult for me to spend money.  Little did I know my tight-fist may be a result of my response to receiving.

I first noticed this problem with my “receiver” last year when I didn’t let my mom buy me a new coat for Christmas.  Yup, you heard correctly.  I told her she couldn’t do it, that I didn’t want it.  It took me two months to realize it was WRONG to tell someone, especially your mother, that they couldn’t be generous towards you in the way their heart was moved to be.  I apologized.

Then things started getting serious with Sung and I was tested in my newfound conviction that accepting gifts was important.  First, he bought me an unsolicited birthday gift– a Kindle!  Thanks to God’s grace through my prior experience, I received it gratefully rather than worrying over why he spent so much.  When we were going to get engaged I thought we should save money and buy an opal ring but Sung really wanted to go all out and get me a diamond.  Again, I was able to keep my big mouth shut, remembering that I am not supposed to dictate how generous people can be towards me.  Anyway, we compromised… he got me both… haha.

Some other things of note happened during our engagement besides the purchasing of the ring.

I dealt with some guilt, worry, and fear about getting married.  One of the things I worried about was that it might be self fish.  I felt so loved and cared for in this relationship but perhaps I was more available to serve God as a single person.  I also felt bad about leaving a ministry I spent years investing in to move to Nebraska just so I could be happy in love.  I realized, then, that SUNG was a gift, a very generous gift, from the Lord.  Was I going to return this gift, as I did my mother’s offer of the coat, because I wanted to dictate how God was allowed to bless me?

The final big test came as we made wedding preparations.  People were SO generous with us.  The gifts flowed in for weeks– really, really nice, costly gifts.  More than that, people came around us with so much love and support.  We had friends give so generously of their time and talents, making and doing things for us to make our day beautiful and special.  I got to a point where I realized we could never repay all the kindness that was being show us, never even form the words to say a thank-you deep enough to express how we felt.  I reflected on the fact that as people gave us “gifts” of presents and time and talent– they really were just that– gifts.  All I could do was say thank-you, feel thank-you, and cherish them.

The broken receiver is really an issue of pride.  Am I able to receive without being able to repay?  And isn’t this the true story of the Gospel.  God has given to us far more than we ever can repay.  Yet, for people like me, it is so hard to receive.  I frequently find myself trying to earn the gift God has given me for free by focusing on the good I can do or how much bad I don’t do.

I have a lot to learn about the art of giving, MORE to learn about the art of receiving… good thing I married such a generous man!  I notice that Sung is not afraid to give because he knows he has enough.  With my eyes fixed on the grace that has poured out on me from Jesus, I am hoping loosen my grip on the resources flowing in and out of our household.

We moved!

Dear Friends,

Sung and I are happily (blissfully?) settled into our new home in Nebraska so I thought I’d share some highlights from the past month and a half…

1. We wed on September 1st, on a perfect summer day, amid many, many of our closest friends and family members, at Camp Wabanna.  Thank you to everyone who came out, supported us, made stuff for our wedding, and helped us!  We are so grateful to God for giving us such a great wedding and such a great support system.

2. I got to spend some time bonding with Sung’s family, visiting from Korea and Japan.  I have now tasted raw crab, raw eggs with rice, dried squid, and spicy peppers dipped in spicier pepper sauce.

3. Sung and I honeymooned at Myrtle Beach.  The week after Labor Day, the beach is still the beach, just minus the herds of small children. 😀

4. My roommates in Baltimore threw us an amazing going away karaoke party.  Neighbors came, sang to me, and also made me a Sandtown quilt to remember them by!  I will always remember my time there and I miss my old friends and neighbors so much!

5. Sung and I (with help from my family and roommates) loaded a little trailer completely packed to the brim with my stuff from Presstman Street.  It all fit… but it felt extremely heavy.

6. So heavy, in fact, that our next stop was the Howard County dump where we unloaded a couple hundred  pounds… basically all the stuff that Sung suggested I *didn’t* need to bring because it was old/falling apart/ easily replaced.

7. We drove for three days and wound up in Bellevue, Nebraska at Offutt Air Force Base!!!!  We found a perfect apartment not far from base, signed a lease, and moved our stuff in.

8. We found out Oliver needed up-to-date shot records before moving in.  When I called the shelter where I got him, I discovered his shots were expired.  Our first day in Bellevue, Oliver got rabies shots.  THEN we found out he also needed to be declawed or outfitted with “cat claws”– clear nail covers that go over his front nails.  We did choose the second option, but attaching those was a pretty traumatic experience for him as well…

9. Sung went back to work and found out he loves this base and his job here– everyone we have met seem very nice as well.

10. We found a great church, called Glad Tidings, to be a part of.  We also joined a small group

11. I got a part-time job working with foreign exchange students.  I am also tutoring ESL students in my free time.

12. We have had a chance to explore Bellevue and Omaha and we love it so far.  Some highlights include the Farmer’s Market in a cute neighborhood called Old Market, several craft breweries, the bike trail near our house (that goes all the way into Omaha), the field house on base where we can work out, some really great restaurants, and the mid-western hospitality.

Oh yeah– and the best part is being together everyday!  We are very happy, and learning so much about each other since we’ve been married.  Hopefully, now that we are settled, I will be able to update more regularly about our lives and all of the pondering I have been doing since I have so much time alone to think now…. isn’t that something to look forward to haha!

We love you all and are happy to sign off as….

The Hwangs