Champions!

The Married Men's College won the soccer championship last Tuesday night. This was a very big deal. Needless to say, the wives were all very proud of their husbands and we love them so much we listened to them recount the entire season, detail by detail. There was a high intake of beer, many laughs, and talk about a dynasty next year.

The husbands were the first to say this season wouldn't have been a success without the wives.

And we decided we had powers because of our rings...or something like that.

It's good to end summer training on a high note!

Hello Loras College!

This past weekend Tyler and I took a small road trip, about four hours, to our new town, Dubuque, IA. If you would have asked us if we ever thought we would live in Iowa, we both would have laughed. Iowa gets a really bad rap in general, but especially from Nebraskans. I talked to someone today from Lincoln and told her we were going to Iowa, and she laughingly said, "Good luck crossing the border." Someone else told me that people from Nebraska hate Iowa just because it is next to us, but it is actually a good state. Anyways...

Our first experience of Iowa was Friday night about 9pm crossing the Missouri River from Illinois into Iowa. Something was hitting our windshield and I thought it was rain. But then whatever it was stayed on our windshield. Yes, it was bugs. Hundreds of bugs hitting our windshield. It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.


We apartment-hunted for most of the day Saturday. In my mind I was going to blog about our "House-Hunter" experience and show you the three places we looked at and the perfect one we chose. Well, it doesn't work like that. I always thought people on that show had to have looked at more than three places. We looked at about six different places and are still on the hunt. (Side-note: Dubuque has, especially around the campuses, huge houses that are broken up into four to eight apartments. One place we liked, but there were two doors, one from the bedroom hallway and one from the kitchen, that lead into the rest of the "house" and even though they were locked, we weren't quite okay with that. I guess it's common, but a new phenomenon to us.)

Then our team director, Jason, gave us a tour of Loras campus. It is beautiful, lots of trees, and it is so small that the one road that did go through campus was blocked off so you can only walk or bike through campus.

This is the outside of the Church on campus. There is also an Adoration Chapel a few blocks away, which used to be the old Church.

This is the student union. It is a really cool building inside. There is a Pub, the cafeteria, and a lounge area. It's the place on campus to hang out, or so we've heard.

They call this statue "Lay-up Jesus". Not sure how I feel about it yet...

This is the library. I think he said it was the second largest library in Iowa?

This is a freshman hall, but also where the FOCUS office is.

Here is the field...

and of course, Coach Rosser checkin' it out!

Arboretum

A few days ago I discovered my new favorite thing. An arboretum. Lisa Cotter, another FOCUS wife, invited me to go on a walk with her and her two children to the arboretum. I didn't know what that was, but thought it sounded cool! When we arrived I couldn't believe my eyes. I have never really been into plants or gardening, but this took my breath away. There were three separate gardens. The first garden reminded me of the Sunken Gardens in Lincoln, only about 10 times bigger. The rows of flowers were perfect and there were signs telling the scientific name of the plant.

Can you imagine how much time it takes to weed the garden?

The next garden was my favorite. It was a combination of a fruit, vegetable, and herb garden. I took lots of pictures for "when" we have a garden. (Like I said, I never was interested in gardening but now I am so excited for when we can have one!)

I have never seen broccoli "in the wild" before.

I learned that the orange flowers keep animals away.

Do you see the duck? So cute!

We wanted to pick the fruit but we didn't...

The third garden was a Japanese House which I didn't have time to go in, but will explore that later. The walk to that garden was gorgeous.



And guess what? I was looking at the map of Dubuque, our new town, and I saw that they have an Arboretum too! It's awesome because after I visited this one I was wishing I lived in a town with one...and now we do! Here is the website to the one in Champaign if you want to check it out: http://arboretum.illinois.edu/

A story...

About 10 or so years ago, Tyler's parents heard John Zimmer speak at Holy Spirit Parish in Montgomery, AL. They hadn't heard about FOCUS before this missionary shared the mission of FOCUS. Since then, they have been a mission partner with John and his family.

About three years ago, John Zimmer sent a newsletter to the Rossers and mentioned a FOCUS conference in Grapevine, TX.

The rest is history!

Isn't that crazy? It is beautiful to look back and see how God works. Because John Zimmer answered the call to share his mission with FOUCS through a parish talk, Tyler's parents first learned about FOCUS. And then because of their contact with John, Tyler's mom heard about the FOCUS conference and suggested to Tyler that he should go. And because Tyler answered the call and went to the FOCUS conference, we are married today!

John Zimmer is Vice President of Mission Operations with FOCUS. He came to summer training last week to give talks on Character Formation and Discipleship. Tyler and I have heard a lot about him but this was our first time to meet him. We had dinner with him one evening and really enjoyed getting to know him. He and his wife Barbara just had their sixth child, a baby girl.

Catholic Disney World

We are well into week 2 of summer training. It's going well and we are getting used to the busy schedule. People refer to this summer training as "Catholic Disney World" because where else can you have 300 people so excited to live out the faith, go to daily Mass, Holy Hour, Rosary, dress modestly, etc? It's good to remember that we are here to grow in our relationship with Jesus and to be trained to reach out to college students, but to realize we will be sent out and aren't supposed to live here forever.

Every day we start off with a Holy Hour at 8am and I wanted to share a few pictures of the beautiful chapel in which we get the blessing of adoring our Lord every day!


This is one of my favorite paintings in the chapel. It's good for meditation on the Holy Family!


This is the painting right above the altar. If you look closely you can see Judas off to the left. It strikes me how he has his back turned to Jesus and the disciples.


It is very inspiring and uplifting to see 200 missionaries before Our Lord in Adoration. We just had Chaplain's Day where the Priests from the FOCUS campuses were invited to come for the weekend. There were over 30 of them here and what a blessing to see them all offering Mass together. My favorite part so far has been confession. The priests are so welcoming and inviting that they make me want to come to confession. The two times I have gone the Priests took the time to ask questions about me and my husband, why we chose FOCUS, where we are from, and they are so joyful that we are here. It makes me so appreciative of Priests who devote their lives to serving us in the Church and making the sacraments available.

WE'RE GOING TO...

Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa!

We found out a few nights ago that we will be moving to Iowa! Loras College is a small Catholic college in Dubuque (located on the border near Wisconsin and Illinois) and we've heard from everyone that is a beautiful town and a great college. So we'd like to introduce you to our new teammates!

(From left to right) Jason Eilers is the team director (a graduate of Loras and he is in his sixth year with FOCUS) and is married to Kjersti and they have a little girl, Oliva, who will turn one tomorrow (and another baby who is due Nov. 23!) Kourtney Kuba is a second year missionary who was at Loras College last year with the Eilers. Stacey Winterrowd is a first year missionary who graduated from Ball State this past year.





We're really excited about this new adventure and are enjoying getting to know our teammates. Tyler will be doing Varsity Catholic and working specifically with the athletes, coaches, and athletic director on campus. In a few weekends we might take a weekend trip to Dubuque and check out possible places to live.