Subject: News from Afar!

Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 17:31:04 -0400

From: Kraig Warnemuende <ad6075@wayne.edu>

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, all of you deserve a lengthy explanatory letter from the Kraig and Loren Warnemuende front to hear something of where we're at and where we've been. Amazing how easy it is to fall off the edge of the earth!!!

We do have particularly good news right now and wanted to share it with you all (though we know that some of you have already heard.... :) ). Kraig and I are expecting an addition to our twosome somewhere around September 27. The best news about this is that I'm in month five, which is a major answer to prayer. All is going well, and the doctor keeps giving us positive updates, so Lord willing all will continue. We seem to be fairly secure at this point.

This past year (2001 particularly) was a long learning process for us--we were rather thankful when the calendar turned over to 2002. God's taught us a ton, and while I never want to go through another year like that again, I am SO thankful for what we've learned. We're definitely stronger as a couple, and we've seen so much of how God's love is shown. I know many of you know that we had a miscarriage last spring, but very few of you heard about the miscarriage we had last September, too. Both were--obviously--unexpected, and both left us reeling a little. Fortunately, between our friends at church and our family we were upheld and encouraged continually. We dug into the Bible, too, and were comforted over and over by many passages: Psalm 84, Romans 5 and 8, Philippians--each has helped us grow. After our second miscarriage, we did some research and sat down with our doctor to narrow down and possibly pinpoint any reasons. Seeing as more than 99% of miscarriages CANNOT be explained, though, it wasn't surprising that we didn't come up with an answer. This in itself was an answer, as God said once again, "Trust me." We can't say that our "success" this time is a reward, or anything like that--we know it isn't. We still don't have any answers for why any of this happened. But we know more certainly than we ever did before that each step we take is in God's hands and we can depend on him completely, no matter what happens. What an awesome lesson!

So, that's the biggest event in our lives. In other news, Kraig is still plugging away at his PhD in Civil Engineering at Wayne State University. He's hoping to convince his advisor that his study needs to be limited a little (it's too broad in scope at the moment), but until then he continues to push on it. He's also been a grad assistant for the past few years which has enabled him to work in the department as well as go to school there. This has worked out pretty well, but the work load has often been intense. On the other hand, my schedule is busy, but very flexible. I finished my masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) spring of 2000 and for the past two years have been tutoring internationals in businesses around our area. At the moment I only have two small groups I meet with, but that's actually been very nice, particularly in the first three months of pregnancy when all I wanted to do was sleep! I love the opportunities and the people--it's an ideal way to teach! I also work one day a week in our church's school's library. That's been a lot of fun as well, and I've learned quite a bit about how a library is run--I know SOMEDAY I'll use that bit of knowledge! Other activities besides these include my weekly Bible study, church choir, and my watercolor painting class that I've been in for about two years now. If you'd like, you can check out some of our family photos, and some of my paintings on our home website: http://homepage.mac.com/ad6075/Home.html (It's in desperate need of an update, but this way you have the address for the future!).

I think that's about it on our end. Our extended families are well, and we're looking forward to a crazy summer of preparation for Kraig's sister Kathy's July 20th wedding. His folks will be with us for that as well, so we look forward to time with them.

So, hope this letter finds you well. Sorry that some of the news is repetitive for some of you, but I wanted to make sure all of you could get SOME news from us!

Hope to hear from you!

Love,

Loren (and Kraig as well!)