I drove down to Atlanta a couple weeks ago to visit my friends Howard and Eileen and also witness their wedding!! It was a really wonderful time. We visited the aquarium and I ate lots of good Atlanta food which made me realize just how lacking our food here in NC is! It was really great to get away from the same routine day in and day out and also see my friends who I had been planning on visiting for a long time until COVID upended those plans [shakes fist]. When I got home, I had a letter waiting for me, written by past-me from a year ago.
Howleen
Finally after almost 8 years of dating, Howard and Eileen are married! I brought my compact manual camera to take some photos, but then I realized as much as I feel like I learned in my photography class I still either don’t really know how to properly operate a camera or I just really didn’t learn anything at all. I feel like a lot of my photos came out a bit blurry and without really going through all of them I kinda picked a few at random to upload so sorry if they’re still potatoes. Honestly my phone probably could have taken better photos… sigh.
I lived with Eileen and her cat Toby before I left Chapel Hill to go to Mercy Ships. We like to talk about how much our friendship and living situation was something that was absolutely orchestrated by God. Both Taiwanese-American Christian gamer girls with cats named Tobi/Toby and have a lot of other shared interests, Eileen and I got along really well and right away. She moved to NC for work and left her long-time home of Atlanta. She didn’t really like the idea of leaving all her friends and family behind, but at her first attendance to one of our fellowship nights, I was wearing my Miyazaki bus stop t-shirt which happened to be her phone background. And then I said I had a cat named Tobi. She later told me, “it was like God was saying, ‘Here is a friend. Here. TAKE IT. BE FRIENDS.'” and the rest is history! I really loved living with Eileen. She is so kind and patient and wonderful and appreciates internet memes. She is also like, the cat lady of the fellowship.
Howard is a loveable tennis and car obsessed goofball that has a hearty laugh that triggers their Furbo to send Eileen a notification “your dog is barking.” We love poking fun at Howard, if only to keep him humble. ;) We know deeeeep down inside his heart is a treasure trove of love for Eileen and it’s really warming to see it come out in their interactions. The rest of the time he’s the pesty brother that likes to harass their cats. They both have grown so much in the time that we’ve known them and it was a huge honor to be at the wedding (they had a super small ceremony because pandemic).
Eileen’s mom tasked me with making the bouquet like an hour before we left the house for the church. The flowers were fresh so they were super fragrant. It was kind of a challenge to get them to not be too wilty after I cut them, but we just stuck the thing in a glass of cold water until we went to the church.
We got there pretty early to test out the sound and streaming system, since the wedding was going to be livestreamed for friends and family. Howard’s friend was late so we ended up awkwardly waiting for him. During that time, Katie found a HUUUUUGE stink bug slowly pacing the back of the chairs. Part way through I moved my iPad to show the bug to entertain our guests, but people only saw it if they were in gallery view, since the main stream camera was the main view.
The ceremony was pretty short, the judge (who happened to be Eileen’s high school classmate’s mom) basically roasted Howard the entire time. It was a simple, yet beautiful, ceremony.
There was also this amazing gem of a slide that they made but I don’t think they used for some reason!!! So naturally I have to show the world.
After the wedding, we went to a fairly empty Chinese restaurant for dinner. It was chosen because “every time we pass by it, it’s empty” lol. I think one of the uncles from their church works there though? The food was pretty good.
The rest of Atlanta
On Friday we did our one “touristy” thing which was … going to downtown Atlanta to visit the probate court!!! Just kidding. Well, we did go to the probate court because they needed to drop off their marriage license and get their marriage certificate. Exciting. But after that we visited the aquarium!!
The Georgia Aquarium I think is the largest aquarium in the western hemisphere and is the third-largest aquarium in the world after one in China and one in Singapore. It houses several “wings” where there are various kinds of exhibits, from fresh water to salt water, sharks, alligators, marine mammals, and even some other ones like a butterfly house (which I think was closed because we didn’t see it). Katie, Eileen’s sister, also came along.
I think my favorite was the whale shark. I’ve caught one in Animal Crossing, but it doesn’t nearly do justice to how enormous these things are. The ones at the Georgia Aquarium are from Taiwan, and until you’re right in front of one swimming by you just cannot grasp just how large they are. When we visited the tank and one circled around to us, all we could say was “whoooooaaaaa!!!!!”
Click to embiggen.
Eileen and Howard are also buying a house! So many a discussion were had regarding those plans. All in all it was really nice and chill and good food. I feel like every meal was “I want to try out this new place” and it was like always better than anything we have in NC. The benefits of living in a big city I guess!
A letter from the past
When I got back from Atlanta, there was a letter waiting for me. It was addressed to me, in my handwriting. On the back, it said, Wow, remember me?
19 December 2019
How long has it been since you wrote this? You wrote this letter during women’s group on a session of study on hope (Qavah, cord tension, and Yakhal, to wait for). This letter is one of Thanksgiving and reflection.
This year you started in a place you had never been, far away from home, taking one of the biggest gambles of your life. You left your stable but stressful job at Duke to volunteer with Mercy Ships. You met soooo many amazing souls from all over the world. Grew in ways you could not imagine. And even after coming home you brought that experience with you unapologetically wherever you went. You probably have a fairly rose-colored lens about your time there, but remember that ship life was not without its set of challenges, especially wrestling with the realization that the ship is a medical service primarily and a ministry secondary. Spiritual watering in a real meaningful context was not really corporately driven, though you got a taste of the passion of those who took initiative to fill the void. It was not the experience you necessarily asked for, but it is not one that wasn’t impactful on the way you lived after coming home. You learned to not fear other people, for what that means; either emotionally, or socially.
Your return was not easy, but not for reasons you originally thought. Many people have trouble missing the life of closeness on the ship; the sense of adventure and being in an unchallenging group of relatively like-minded people is fresh is comfortable. You thought maybe you would have trouble getting people to understand or care about your time in Guinea as many seemed to struggle with, but your challenge was completely unexpected — you missed community. For the first time in your life you lacked a real community to live in. You thought coming back to NC would be like coming back to community life before the ship, but living in Cary when everyeone else lived in Chapel Hill was new. You worked at a place that didn’t really have many your age. You wanted, like many times before, for things to go back to the way they were. But they were not.
Then, you got sick. In September, you mysteriously becamse afflicted with profound fatigue, and battled the American healthcare system, nonspecific symptoms, depression, and isolation for 2 months before getting diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. You became hopeful that with the treatment and diagnosis you would feel better and things would go back to the way they were before. But they didn’t, exactly. And that was when you realized that you had to keep moving forward, like always.
You’ve learned a lot this year. There’s still a lot that probably you’re still discovering between you writing this and you reading… this…? Like you had just learned about the gift of prophecy the week before you wrote this. Have you worked on learning more about that? As you write this, Jasmine says, “Are you eating your vegetables?” Oh yeah, you were really constipated around the time of writing. Have you practiced your crafts? Do you do ceramics? Watercolor? 3D printing? Do you still play Guild Wars 2? Are you still GM of [MIST]? Do you have joy in your life? Do you have enough Jesus in your life? Have you been trying to build your relationship with God?
Times up! See ya when I see ya.
<3 Jasmin
XOXO MICRO
Jasmin