And as it ends, it also begins...

I'm not sure the title of this blog really makes any sense, but I thought I'd give it a try! It's the beginning of June and I cannot believe that almost a year has gone by since we started Apartment Life. What an amazing and challenging journey it has been! Over the past few months, we have battled with the decision of re-uping with Apartment Life for another year. We have had so many awesome moments with residents and have grown so much spiritually and relationally that it's almost hard to think about not doing it anymore, but with much prayer and communication with our community group, we have decided not to re-up for another year. We are excited about where the Lord will take us next. We will be moving at the end of June into a more affordable apartment and have prayerfully decided to re-enter in to Student Ministries, specifically Senior High, at Watermark. We both feel like that is where the Lord is leading us next and truly have a desire to be there. We are also excited to have free time again with each other and friends. In fact, we just got back last week from a vacation! We drove the very long drive to Colorado and spent a week in the Rocky Mountains, Vail to be exact. It was amazing and wonderful!! We went horseback riding and Aaron made his way to the Golf Course. We spent time together just hanging out and spent time shopping as well (my most favorite part!). The weather was great and the scenery was absolutely amazing! It was hard to come home, expecially knowing we were coming back to almost 100 degree weather. I'll be sure to post a few pictures from the vacation.
On another note, work is going well for me and Aaron both. I continue to learn new and challenging things everyday at work and really enjoy my job. I can't believe it, but it's already been a year that I've been here at Phytel. Aaron's job is going ok, they have added more work which is good and bad since it's admin work, and he hates admin work, but at least it's keeping him busy. We have progressed with his computer company and are now waiting for the website to get finished. The logo came out absolutely perfect (Thanks to Jon Flaming, www.jonflaming.com, a close friend of ours)! Well, I guess that's it for now! We love hearing from y'all so be sure to post comments if you get a chance! God Bless!

Aaron and Jill Garcia 

Long Time Coming...

Well, as you can see a few months have passed since I last "blogged" and so I thought it was time to send out another hello! Since the beginning of January, Aaron and I have been busy, as usual. Apartment Life is going great! We are beginning to see the fruits of our labor and I have to say, it is the most amazing thing I have ever experienced! I can't remember if I wrote about this before but back in October/November, we met a couple, Lance and Ophelia, who came to our community as victims of Katrina. Aaron and Lance immediately hit it off and after a great conversation, Aaron and I invited Lance and Ophelia to Watermark. They came with us a few weeks before Christmas and since Aaron and I were in Houston a few weekends after that we were unable to follow up with them to see what they thought of it. When we did get a chance to follow up in February, we found out that they had been going ever since!! What a blessing!! We have continued to build that relationship and are so excited to see what the Lord will continue to do with thier hearts! We have also brought one of the managers of the community and a few other residents as well who have enjoyed it and are already inviting others! I have also started building a great friendship with a single gal who lives in the community and have been able to share my story of grace with her and have found that even though traumatic things happened in each of our lives, the Lord can use them for his glory. Please pray for my sweet friend and her heart as she battles through the healing process. Pray that she would truly break down her walls and allow the Lord to just take her in his arms and love her like she has never been loved before.

On another note, I want to say thank you to all of you who have been praying for my family over the past few months. The healing process can be long and painful, but I know the Lord has had His hand in the middle of this the entire time and that nothing but good will continue to come from everything that has happened! Please pray for Aaron and I as we pray through re-signing for another year with Apartment Life. We realize what an incredible ministry it is, but also realize that the time committment might be a little more than we can handle and we would love to get involved in so many other ministries at Watermark. Please pray for the Lord's will to be done and that we would truly seek Him in this process. Thanks for visiting our site and we love you all!!! God bless!!

Happy New Year!

I cannot believe how fast 2005 went! I'm in awe of all the blessings the Lord has given us this past year. As I reflect back over 2005 I see accomplishments, struggles, heartache, excitement, relaxation, rejuevination, new friendships built, old friendhsips regained and so much more. In 2005 we: paid off over $15,000 in debt, we've taken many trips home to visit family, we've watched both my sister and sister-in-law through thier pregnancies, we've continually strived to make our marriage better, we've grown closer to friends and have seen friends move away, some even to another country, we've been barn swinging, and seen probably 5 dozen movies, we've had just as many, if not more, wonderful dates, we've watched each other grow in our faith and be challenged as well, we've become part of a ministry that reaches out to lost people in apartment communities across the states, we've watched loved ones pass away and have watched new life begin. We are truly blessed! Now, I'm completely convinced that 2006 is going to beat out 2005, and we are on our way to making that happen. We've set some pretty high goals for this year, complete paying off debt by September 2006, Get back in shape and tone up, continue to grow our ministry in our apartment community and draw people into the church, press on in the other areas we are serving in at Watermark, Aaron - drama (who would have thunk it!) and me, sheparding the sweet 5th grade girls! We've also said we would get to our two year anniversary and re-evaluate about having kids, so I'm praying that blessing is not too far off in our future, and we have also made our marriage a high priority. We know that the Lord has some great things in store for us and we are so excited! We hope your Christmas and all of 2005 was amazing and we will be praying for you throughout the new year! We would love to hear from you! Thanks for visiting our site and God Bless!!

Too Long, Too long!

Us, November 2005

I must apologize for the gap in communication here! It's amazing how fast life goes by the older you get! Well, let's see, since my last update, my sister has welcomed Miriam Elizabeth into this world, my grandmother found out that she has breast cancer, has been healed of all the cancer in her body, and my grandfather has joined sweet Jesus in heaven! A lot has taken place over the past two months. A lot of hard times and yet so many wonderful and joyous times as well. The Lord has truly blessed our family so much and has brought us all so much closer to each other and more importantly, to Him. I am realizing, over and over again, the importance of having a solid family and a supportive church. I know I have said this so many times, but our church here in Dallas is just so devoted to the Lord and although we are not a perfect people, we choose to serve a perfect God! Apartment Life is going well, we are keeping extremly busy with it. I'd thought we would kind of have the routine down by now, but nope, it's still overwhelming at times! Always exciting though! Work is good, I'm continuing to work my way up in the company and have taken on yet another role of heading up a brand new HR department. Remember it's only a company of 12 so far, so it's not that big of a task, but it's nice to start out small so that mistakes are an easier recovery! I'm also continuing as the Office Manager and Accounting Person as well. We have recently brought on two contract Controllers, one of which I think is moving towards full time with our company so that will be a nice weight lifted off my shoulders, hopefully! Aaron has also found new employment!! Praise the Lord! He is employed by a company and contracted out to a different company working as an internal IT person. He absolutely loves it and is hoping to be hired on directly with the company wihtin the next few months! We are continuing to pursue a small group of three other young married couples that we will be meeting with more often after the 1st of the year and will continue to build that community with them, the girls meeting for bible study and the guys will start meeting for accountability and bible study as well. We are also continuing to work on getting out of debt and are quickly coming to the finish line! We hope to be completely out of debt by our 2nd anniversary, August 2006! Praise the Lord for that as well! Anyway, I guess that's it for now. No baby Garcia's on the way yet, but you never know what the Lord has in store! We love you all and pray for blessings for you and your family during this wonderful Christmas season!! Love and hugs! Aaron and Jill.


Baby Miriam Elizabeth Leacock

Time flies when you're having fun!!

It's been quite a while since I (Jill) have posted anything and thought it would be fun to update in my own words! Apartment Life is wonderful! Being a CAREs Team has been so much more than I ever thought it would be, challenging, humbling, rewarding and exciting! We are so blessed to have such an amazing management team as well as a supportive church behind us all the way! Watermark has just hired a new guy, Troy, who is helping carry out Watermark's goal of placing 20 new Watermark Cares Teams within a 5 mile radius of the church. What an awesome vision and goal. I am so excited to see how the Lord will use each of us already placed to help make this happen!! Work is great. I am working 35 hours a week as an Office and HR Manager at a small Physician Telecommunications company in Addison and absolutely love it! It's nice to be in a position where I have freedom to make it my own and take charge of it. My boss is awesome as well as all of my co-workers. Aaron and I are still getting used to the adjustment of not having as much "free time" as we used to but we are making sure we spend time for just us so that we can focus on our marriage and continue to build it as Christ would have us do. We ask for prayer as we continue into September with a jam packed schedule. We ask that you pray for the Lord to continue to fill us up so that we may continue to pour out to our residents here at JPC. We love knowing that we have so many people we can count on praying for us and we love y'all!! That's it for now. Until next time...God Bless Abundantly!! Jill

And it begins....

So we are now residing in our new humble abode, and we are loving the new place. We moved in July 1 and that was quite an adventure, and we started up the next day with Apartment Life. We threw a poolside barbecue, and we had a great turn out. I don't have the specific number of attendance but I believe it was above 100. We are thankful for the Campus Crusade summer project college students for coming out and helping us serve. They brought a snow cone machine which was a big hit. The next event was actually last night and that was a Game night we entitled Battle of the Sexes. We didn't have the turnout we had for the pool party but we had a great time with three of our residents. It was just a good time to hang.
We are still in the process of moving but we are hoping that by the end of the month we will be completely in. Thank you Lord.
We ask that all of you continue to pray for us as we are trying to figure out our schedules. We want to make sure that as we do this ministry we also make time for us and our marriage, because we know that we won't be nearly as effective if 1) our personal relationship with the Lord isn't where it needs to be and 2) that our relationship with each other isn't where it should be. We ask for continual prayer for the management team of the Apartment complex and for the residents, that God's love will be seen through us and that opportunities will arise where we will be able to share the gospel and the free gift that God has to offer them. We thank you guys for your support and your prayers. We love you all.

Jefferson here we come!

Ok, so what is Jefferson you ask? Actually it is part of the name of the new apartment complex, Jefferson at Park Central where we will be residing and involved with Apartment life. We are really excited about this move and the opportunity this brings for the ministry! We will be partnered up with another couple who attend our church. They are young and we actually met them awhile back. They were apart of our young marrieds group. So right off the bat we will have help and encouragement from a team that has already done this for awhile. We would ask all you to be praying for the hearts of the tenents of the complex that they will be receptive to us. Pray that we will be a light in this place, and that we will be faithful and available for whatever God has in store for us. Pray that we will be able to come together with the other couple and use our strengths to make this ministry great in His name. Pray for our time management and our transition since we will literally be jumping into everything as soon as we move in which is July 2nd. Pray that the move goes well and that all that runs smoothly. We thank all of you who already pray for us daily, we appreciate it greatly.
If you would like to see where we will be living you can click on link above and see the complex or click here for a layout of the actual apartment. They are very nice luxury apartments with plenty of amenities and not very far from either of our jobs. Now that we have an extra bedroom, we would love to have people come and stay with us as soon as we get settled, so don't hesitate!

My little blog...

Hey all!! As Aaron mentioned I began a new job at Phytel, Inc. on June 1st. Although I do not have a set job title, I basically am the office manager. So far it has been great! I was kind of thrown into the fire from day one, but I love a good challenge and so it has been exciting!! Other great news, my sister, Julie, is pregnant again!!! This will be #2 for them. I can't wait for that new sweet little one to come into this world. That baby will be so blessed with such a wonderful, loving family, including the best Aunt in the world (me of course)!! Also, we have been asked to pray through a possible apartment with the ministry we are getting involved with and hope to know pretty quickly whether or not that is where we will be for the next year. I'm excited more and more each day about this ministry opportunity, the chance to touch peoples lives in a different environment then what they might normally be used to. You can all be praying for Aaron as he seeks out another work position. We are constantly praying through where the Lord will lead him next and continue to pray that it is sooner than later. I want him to do something that he loves to do, and that just isn't the case right now. But it's provision by our great God and I am thankful for that!! Well, I guess that's it for now...

New Beginings....

As of today, my lovely wife starts her new job at Phytel. And from my understanding it is a medical communications company. What is that you ask? Well as I understand it, they go into dr.'s offices and set up a phone system that does away with the postcards that many of us receive when we are due for a physical or annual visit. She will be going back to doing the things that she has been doing before working at the bank and putting her admin. skills back to work. This job is really a blessing for us because it will allow us to be out of debt much quicker than at the rate we are at now, and hopefully allow us to save money to buy a house in the next year or so, Lord willing nothing terrible happens. She is also much closer to our current apartment and her benefits are paid for which is another blessing. We ask for prayer as she starts her new job that the trasition will be smooth and she will learn everything as fast as she can.
Also wanted to let you guys know that we had a great time in Ft. Worth this past weekend. We went to the zoo in the rain, went to an art museum, saw the rangers win against the white sox, walked the streets of downtown, and saw the sith take control of the Galactic Empire (Star wars III for those non Star Wars folk.) It was the first time that Jill and I were able to get away and enjoy each other since the honeymoon, and it was great. Well that is all for now, I have to get back to work. Hope all is well with everyone who visits the site!

Updates

Well since our last post we have prayed and talked about upcoming opportunities, and as of now we are going to go ahead and do the apartment life ministry. We have orientation on June 11th and Lord willing we will have an apartment to move into sometime in July since our lease is up on July 30. So you guys can be praying for an apartment opening and for one that is near where we work. Also we have decided that we are going to wait until we are out of debt before Jill can go back to school. We have made such headway into becoming debt free that we want to finish that to completion and also with all the changes being made in our lives school would just be an added stress for Jill and not having that second income would definitely slow us down quite a bit in paying off our debt. We are excited that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and can't wait to be completely out of debt. That is all for now, thanks for your prayers.

The whole Garcia family!! 

Mr. and Mrs. Aaron and Jill Garcia 

My sweet family!! 

Vail, Colorado, my home away from home!! 

What and amazing moment, what an amazing Dad!! 

My sweet Mom and I on the best day of my life!! 

Aaron and the guys! 

Me and the girls! 

FINALLY!!!