This is Home...

I'll begin with a piece of excellent news: I found my digital camera! It was hiding under the ottoman. So...that means pictures. Good ones.

Okay, so there are still some finishing touches we have in store for our apartment here in Sequoyah Village, but I decided to go ahead and take pictures now while we have it all cleaned up. ha! My roommate Jeff and I are big fans of Sequoyah Village. Not only is the apartment itself very nice and homey feeling, but the community is awesome, and the location is near perfect. God certainly blessed us with such a wonderful place to call home here in Knoxville! Not to mention a great place to host students, and as you've read on here, we've already done that with the Freshmen Guys Cookout last week!

So this will be the big pictorial tour of 3726-Q.

We'll begin upstairs...

This...is the bedroom. It looks an awful lot like my bedroom back in Panama City. This would be because my entire bedroom migrated with me up to Knoxville. Thanks parents!

View back towards the door in the bedroom. Off to the right (and not pictured) is the big walk-in closet a.k.a. "the office."

Favorite part of the closet?

The octa-window. For sure. What a waste for it to be in the closet though...

This is the view out my bedroom door. Jeff's room is to the left, bathroom straight ahead, and stairs to the right. (I know you can see the bathroom and stairs, but for the sake of balance, I felt I had to draw attention to them.) We're not sure what that little door is for, but if we ever have a gnome come live with us, you know what room he's getting.

Bathroom. Self-explanatory.

This is the view of the living room from the stairs. Please note our tasteful decor. It's foreign, thus making it tasteful. Please also note the toucan.

Another view of the living room, looking back toward the stairs and the dining room. Front door is not pictured to the right.

View from the dining room looking back to the front door. (We're looking for more books to put in our bookcase. Not that we're trying to impress people, but...)

And one more view of the living room. Notice that I'm representing Samford (Go Dogs!). Now just imagine the living room with a modern looking rug and some exciting throw pillows on the couch.

This is the dining room with the awesome table/chair set Jeff got for dirt cheap at Goodwill. And yes, we bought a fake plant at Target. I think that's some kind of step in becoming an adult...when you buy fake plants at Target?

And of course...the kitchen. Unfortunately, you can't seem the awesome faux-stone laminate floor. It's high class. You can see our grilling utensils though. Those are quite important.

Other end of the kitchen, and our back door. My fellow Samfordites may notice the classic Samford caf cup there in the sink. I probably could have fixed those blinds for the picture...

This is the view of the courtyard off our back stoop. As you can see, great place for cookouts. Sequoyah is awesome.

The view in the other direction.

This is our back stoop, door leading into the kitchen. That's our grill there covered up on the left. The potted plants were left there by previous tenants. I suppose we'll replace them...sometime. maybe.

This is a view down our side of the courtyard. The nicely landscaped corner down there in the bottom right belongs to our next-door neighbors.

This is Blackbird Coffee, the awesome locally-owned coffee shop that is right across the street from Sequoyah Village. I have spent and will be spending quite a bit of time here.

So yeah, that's our place. It's feeling more and more like home. In a time filled with so many transitions, it's such a blessing to have an awesome living situation. Jeff has been a great encouragement as well, and I'm very thankful that God brought that opportunity for us to room together. I appreciate his friendship, and I'm definitely seeing some iron sharpening iron in the future. Not to mention he makes a killer salsa.

Other updates since the last post:

I have continued to meet with a lot of freshmen guys this week, and those meetings continue to go well and be encouraging. Please continue to pray for me as I continue to get to know these guys, and keep them in your prayers as well.

We had 23 guys show up for our third Freshmen Guys Bible Study on Thursday. It's really an awesome group, and I can't wait to get to know them all better. I can already see some great discussion going down in the Bible Study too. This past Thursday we started the tradition of going to Buffalo Wild Wings after Bible Study for 60-cent boneless wing Thursdays. What a great tradition. I'm already a fan. Pray for these times, that the guys will be able to build relationships with each and form that camaraderie in these fun times of hanging out and eating some pretty darn awesome wings.

I also had an epic intern fail this afternoon. Not only was I going to be about 45 minutes late to Ultimate Frisbee, I couldn't figure out where the parking was at Knoxville's World's Fair Park. After returning a second time to try to figure it out, still nothing. And since everyone was playing ultimate, no use trying to call anyone. So I gave up. This was minorly discouraging. On one hand, pray that I'll be more diligent in the future to make sure I'm present at these events, but on the other hand, pray that in times like today (when I have an epic intern fail), that I will trust in Jesus and not beat myself up. Because that's easy to do. And rest assured, there will be plenty more epic intern fails. ;-)

Looking forward to having some of the upperclassmen over for a cookout tomorrow at lunchtime, and then I'm looking forward to watching my Seminoles take down Oklahoma. The Vols will be playing #7 Oregon tomorrow night here in Knoxville. I'm still deciding whether or not I will try to go. I will certainly be going to some games this season, and you KNOW there will be some pictures posted after that happens. Can't wait to hear that Rocky Top play!

That is all for now. Thank you for taking the tour of 3726-Q.

Resting in His promises,

Stephen