Blessings
As I look back on the busy year that was 2008, I see the many, many ways in which I was blessed.
In 2008 I graduated from college, got married, started a new job, started going to a wonderful church and those are only the big things.
I started 2008 as a senior in college at NCSU only four short months away from graduating with my BS in Accounting. It was a fairly uneventful semester though I did learn a lot and was challenged by several class projects. Then May 10 finally arrived and I got to walk across that stage in the RBC Center and receive my diploma!
Then the next weekend, May 17, I married the love of my life in a beautiful outdoor ceremony at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham. The day was bright and sunny and we were surrounded by all of our close friends and family. I was officially Mrs. Schell!! We then had a gorgeous reception and the next day flew to Nigril, Jamaica for our week long honeymoon. I think it took us both several days for it to fully sink in that we were really married :) We had beautiful sunny weather in Jamaica and got to try new things like snorkeling and SCUBA diving. I was terrified of the SCUBA diving but I did it and I am quite proud of myself for that.
In mid-June I started my new, full-time, professional accounting job at IBM here in RTP. This job was truly a work of God. My husband and many of our friends work at IBM but they are all in the software side of things. I had interviewed at many other places during those last weeks of school but nothing had worked out. One of our friends was able to get my resume in front of the hiring manager for accounting and I had an interview set up for May 7. I went into the interview feeling pretty calm, I knew that if God wanted me to have this job it would work out, and if not, He had something better planned. The interview went amazingly well and I got a call the next day, May 8 (yes, that's right, it was two days before graduation. God is good!!) with an offer of a job. This job has been a huge challenge and learning experience over the past 6 months, but it's definitely been something I have enjoyed. I have learned to put the book knowledge from school into real use, to trust my professional judgment, and most of all that it's not bad to ask a question if you don't know everything.
In January of 2008, we made the decision that we were going to start attending church on a regular basis. We had tried a few churches over the year and a half since I had moved to Raleigh, but we hadn't really found one that we liked a lot. We went back to Vintage 21, a church we had attended for a while when Ben first came to Raleigh for school. We had made the decision that if we were going to start attending again, we would also get involved in the church and meet people. So during our first few times back at Vintage, we talked to Courtney, the Director of Connections about getting involved in a Home Group. She invited us to try her Home Group as it had a lot of other young couples and people are age. So we tried that Home Group, which is lead by Jason and Amy Jones. After the first visit and being so warmly welcomed and accepted, we decided that was the Home Group for us. We've been attending that group since February and have formed some awesome relationships with the other group members. We have seen the group grow from 15 people to almost 25. We've seen Jason and Amy get married and Brad and Courtney have their son Caedmon. It has been a wonderful year getting to know those people better!
There are so many other things I could mention about how blessed we have been in 2008, but I don't think there is room enough to list them all!! I'm extremely thankful for all that we got to experience in 2008, both the good and the bad for they all caused growth.
