Blessed

Hello All,

Yesterday Ian and I moved about 95% of everything we own out of our apartment and into storage, thanks to the help of our wonderful friends. For this week, we'll be sleeping on our futon mattress on the floor. :o) But we don't mind. (We slept on it last night, and it's honestly not as bad as I expected. We've also had offers from friends to stay with them. So if we feel like we need a decent night's sleep in an actual bed, we'll consider that.) We still have a few minor things left to pack away and put into our storage unit, but Ian and I think it's all going to fit very snuggly. The rest we'll be packing into our cars and taking with us to our various destination.

We'd like to personally say THANK YOU so very much to every one that helped us yesterday! Whether it was helping to pack things, or load boxes, or lift heavy furniture, or helping us get creative in finding ways to fit all of our stuff into our storage unit! Thank you, thank you, thank you!! We were so blessed by every one's help yesterday! God has truly been so good to us by putting such wonderful people into our lives.

Ian and I are planning on taking care of some things and finishing up some unfinished business with what's left of this week. By Thursday the 31st, we'll be doing the final walk-through of our apartment with our landlord. We'll be praying that everything goes well and smoothly and we get our security deposit back without any problems. The night of the 31st, we'll be temporarily staying with Geoff and Becky Waller! Which we're excited about. Then Friday August 1st, Ian and I will have the rehearsal dinner for our friends Dawn & Marcelo's wedding. Then Saturday August 2nd is their wedding. Hopefully Sunday the 3rd and Monday the 4th, Ian and I will be finishing up a few things, and we'll get him off to Germany without a hitch. At the moment, it looks like Ian's departure date will be pushed back by a day or two if he can't get everything he needs to get done in time.

Current Prayer Requests:

-Our walk-through on Thursday goes well and we get our security deposit back easily.
-Ian is STILL waiting on his official orders. At the moment, it looks like he might not get them until a few days before he leaves. (The main reason we would like his orders sooner rather than later, is because there are a lot of financial accounts we can do special things with when Ian is on military orders. So we'll need to make tons of phone calls to switch things around. But we need the time to do it, and we need Ian to be on orders.)
-Ian is still waiting on his promotion from TSgt (E-6) to MSgt (E-7). This is a big deal for us! We would REALLY really like Ian to be promoted before he leaves. It will make the whole process easier if he is.
-Ian could be meeting with a promotion board this Friday at his base in Peoria. This is significant because if he doesn't get the promotion before he leaves, meeting with the promotion board will speed the process up and help it to go smoother after he's gone. So we need his meeting with the promotion board to be good and go smoothly.

That's all for updates for now. Thanks again to every one that helped us yesterday!! We couldn't have done it without you guys.

Love,
Ashley & Ian