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Our Christmas Picture and Letter!!!
This is the first Sabin newsletter
ever! So get ready…
First of all, the Lord has been
kind to bring us to Virginia.
Right after we got married in July of 2004, we settled into our white cottage
style house in Virginia Beach. That
was a great year and a half of finding and quitting jobs, riding our beach
cruisers to oceanfront concerts, learning how to surf, making new friends,
choosing a church, and frankly, just learning to trust the Lord in so many new
ways. Sometimes we missed home so much it hurt, but gradually the Lord has made
this place home to us, too.
In July of 2005, we bought a loft
in downtown Norfolk, and moved into
it in December of last year. We have had a blast walking to restaurants, the
mall, theatre performances, and concerts and festivals. Our apartment is in a
renovated warehouse built in 1900. It’s very much like living in a dorm, but
with people our parents’ ages that go to bed at reasonable hours. They also
love to get together for laughs and a glass of cheer! What an amazing
opportunity to live in a 38 unit building and get to meet people in all stages
of life and relationships!
We have been extremely thankful for
our church. The gospel is preached every Sunday and we have made numerous
friends. We are co-leading a community group in our home every week. It is
really fun for us to have people into our home!
Reid has now been working with
Miller, Stephenson, and Associates for almost 2 years as a Land Planner where
he is using his Landscape Architecture degree. He does famously well and is
continuing to develop his skills. He designs plans for large neighborhood
developments, grocery stores and gas station sites, as well as residential
sites. He has also gotten into kite boarding this year. Basically, he is wake
boarding behind a 13 meter kite (no boat) that is attached to a body harness.
He loves it and has really enjoyed learning how to do it.
I have worked for Northrop Grumman
for 2 years as a Manufacturing Engineer at the Newport
News shipyard. We build nuclear-powered aircraft
carriers and submarines. It’s awesome to see the ships come together. I support
one of the surface preparation and treatment areas. Their job is to get all the
rust and paint off of the units and then paint them before they go into a sub
or carrier. I work on process improvements, cost estimates and justifications, etc.
Outside of work, I am spending time with friends, cooking with Reid, decorating
our house… As far as our jobs go, we are very
thankful for the ones we have, even with the occasional days where we think to
ourselves, “Why exactly do we have to work 40 hours a week?” Knowing the
answer, we keep on trucking, still always looking for something we could enjoy
more or that pays more—one of the struggles of living in a discontented society
on this side of heaven. Speaking of this side of heaven, I was talking to my
dad the other day about the hard, shocking, don’t-make-sense tragedies that seem
to have been so numerous lately. Something he said really struck me. He told me
that sometimes things don’t make sense and it doesn’t seem as if they could
ever be redeemed. And then he asked me if I had ever seen the back of a
tapestry. He went on to tell me that on the back side of a tapestry, the
threads are all a mess and they don’t seem to be a part of any type of sensible
plan. But then you turn the tapestry over and you see this magnificent picture
that now makes complete sense. Friends, we are still on the wreckage side. But
heaven’s coming. So we hope that as you prepare for Christmas you will not
forget that our Lord Jesus came to earth as a little baby so that He could grow
up to die on the cross for us and therefore rescue us from this wreckage.
Merry Christmas!! We love you all so much and wish God’s
richest blessings for your lives!!
Love,
Reid and Ally
reidsabin@gmail.com 757-692-4517
allysabin@gmail.com 757-395-0377
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