March 2025

March.. a real transitional month! SICM planning is well underway, the apprentices for next year have all been interviewed and accepted. Staffing decisions for next year are underway, fundraising prep is beginning. But the year isn’t over yet! As many of you know, we want to Finish Well. Please be praying as this school year begins it’s final descent, for our students and pastors.

I absolutely love musicals, one that I love in particular is Hadestown. Last March (2024), I reached out to Broadway Dallas to see if they had group tickets available for Hadestown (2025) and they did! (Typically group tickets go on sale before general tickets AND they’re cheaper!) So I reached out to some friends to see if they wanted to come with... and many of them said yes! While I had some gripes about this year’s production (I’ve seen it twice previously), I still love the story and the music.

March was the month of marriage this year. To kick it off, Sandra, one of our pastors at Richland, and Gordon, a FOCUS alum from UTD, got married! Steph and I had the privilege of being in their unofficial wedding party (they only had a best man and maid of honor on stage with them during the ceremony) and have been friends with them for years. We’re so happy for them (and the rest of the married couples you’ll read about)!

The following weekend, my family came into town for my little sister’s wedding! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures from that, but I know Nicole will have some great photos available soon. :-) But I do have a photo from when we celebrated Nora (my niece) and William’s (my nephew) birthday! And now my family is almost all out of weddings… the last one will be my cousin’s next year! (I grew up about a minute away from my cousins and so they feel like siblings.) It’s crazy to think about how it feels like yesterday I was in middle school riding on my bike with my brother and cousin around our neighborhood, not a care in the world. And now most of us are married… half of us have kids... how time flies!

The next week, I took a day trip to Houston with some friends to attend Jared and Jasmine’s wedding (both from UTD). Steph had to work and so couldn’t attend. It was definitely one of the fanciest (and unique) weddings I’ve been to! It had a Nigerian flair to it and was great fun! Here’s a short 360 video me and Mandy had taken at the wedding… can you tell we thought it was only going to go around once? It just kept going around and we were flustered as to what to do!

Speaking of kids… me and Steph are expecting a baby girl in September of this year! :-) And if ya don’t know, now ya know.