Mausts On Toast

Well, we now find ourselves in the middle of the month of May, and with an imminent update for Maustsontoast. This coming week is going to be full of fun, celebration and excitement. Emily starts her new job at HealthSouth (check out their webpage here). She will be a nurse technician working right beside nurses and doing their dirty work. And did I mention she gets to wear cute little scrubs like they do on E.R.? And while Emily is getting her nurse on at Health South, I will be… …delivering ice all over the state of West Virginia (and sometimes Maryland). This past week, I worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; not a bad week at all. I get to drive this monstrous truck around town and throw ice into these cute little ice boxes at stores like Wal-Mart, Kroger, and gas stations and all kinds of little Mom an’ Pop shops. You can check out Home City Ice’s web page here.

I said that this coming week is going to be exciting and full of hilarity; well, that is because on Saturday Matt (my brother) and Christina (his fiancee) are getting married at 11am in Beckley at Memorial Baptist Church. Emily is a bride’s maid and I a groomsman. We will be sure to take lots of pictures for everyone to see the festivities. After the wedding, we all are going to wish them farewell as they take off for Baltimore where they will be taking a cruise! What fun, eh?!!?! Can we come along?!

That’s May for us: wedding, work, and wonderful weather!

Oh, we do need to take some pictures of our new place and get them on here because: WOW! Emily is going to town with pimping this little abode out. We got candles, and ribbons, and all kinds of creative knicknacks creating a warm, inviting homely atmosphere. And our doors are now open for guests to come and sup and dine and eat and break fast with us!

What books are we reading at the moment?
Drew: St. Augustine’s Confessions
Emily: James Alexander Thom’s Follow the River

What are we watching at the moment?
We: rented Tristan & Isolde last week.
Emily: Whose Wedding Is It Anyways? & How Do I Look? both on the style channel.
Drew: My Fair Lady, The Office, That 70s Show, the catholic channel (because the Pope’s been on and the services at the Vatican are in like 8 different languages, and the Vatican’s the only state still rocking Latin).

Plans for the future?
Eat pizza.

–drew

Whoever thinks that they can move all their stuff/junk in one day is supremely mistaken. Emily and I thought when my parents brought up a U-Haul, we could just chuck everything thing in there and that would be the end of it; but, since the U-Haul, we have made 3 more trips to the old apartment on Donley Street. Today, Tuesday May 2, we consider ourselves moved to our new, wonderful, clean, neutral, spacious, air-conditioned 818 Timberline apartment.

We checked our new mailbox for the first time yesterday and found a letter from HealthSouth addressed to Emily offering her a brand-spanking new, scrub-wearing job! It’s looking like she’ll start on or around May 15th. Other things we’ve received recently in our mailbox include a wedding invitation to celebrate the union of one Matthew Duane Maust to Christina Brie Ann Salyer. The “honor of [our] presence [was requested] on Saturday, the twentieth of May two thousand and six at eleven o’clock at Memorial Baptist Church in Beckley, West Virginia.” That all translates to May 20th @ 11:00am. What fun that day shall entail for both families as we celebrate this magnanimous Caucasian occasion.

Less reader-friendly news includes the momentous occasion of this week being the final week of my penultimate semester at WVU. Four exams tomorrow (yikes) and one on Thursday, and then I am free to toss ice until the kids (baby goats, not children) come home.

Thanks and props go out to everyone that loves us and reads our web page on a cotidial basis. You are the wind beneath our wings.

Sincerely, most tactfully yours in love and much embraces,
drew

Ps. Come over for dinner. We’ll bake you bread in our new (my mom’s old) bread maker!

As we come to the end of yet another God-given month in the lives of A & E Maust, we’ve got some exciting news. This Saturday, April 29, will be signing the lease on our new apartment at Timberline Apartments here in Morgantown. This new place has lots of windows, clean colors, a pool right outside our door, and many other snazzy luxuries! We are very excited. Our new address is:

Drew & Emily Maust
818 Timberline
Morgantown, WV 26505

Also, last week Emily became the proud owner of a full-blown driver’s license. And, taking advantage of that license, she has just left this morning for a job interview at Mon General Hospital here in Morgantown. The position she is interviewing for requires going to peoples’ homes and providing care for them while they are at home. She was very nervous when she left here, and I’m not sure if that’s because this is the first time she is driving on her own without me in the car, or if it’s because of this interview. She will do bloomin’ awesome though at both! We’ll keep you posted on her job situation. Emily has one more interview this week at a different hospital in town. Please, Lord, let them give her a company vehicle!

Well, Emily has just called me to say that she has arrived safely at the hospital this morning. She then said “Ok, I’m going in.” Go, Peanut!

Furthermore, I am in the process of completing training at Home City Ice. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to be an ice delivery driver. I’ll truck around on the open roads of Morgantown, stopping at all the most elegant stops (Dairy Marts, Wal-Marts, Shop N’ Saves, & countless Mom & Pop shops). I will then proceed out of the cab of my truck, climb in the back freezer of the truck which is kept at a cool 25°F (-4°C), load up my dolly full of ice, and head into the depths of given store and stack ice in the most glorious fashion you’ve ever seen. Repeat 1000 times and you’ve got my summer!

Speaking of summer, Emily and I are very excited to welcome the ever-jovial Nigel, Georgina, Sally, & Hannah Hayes in the month of August to Morgantown! The exact date of their arrival is yet to be announced but I will keep you posted so that you might be able to be at the Pittsburgh International Airport the evening they arrive in order to get their autographs before they are whisked away in a limousine and driven to Morgantown.

That’s all for now.

–drew

Happy Birthday, everyone! What? You say it’s not your birthday. Well, I thought you and I shared birthdays.

News, news, news: well, Emily and I were well pleased at the turn out on the 25th of March for our domestic celebration/rehearsal. I think we still have pictures on our digital camera that I need to get up on the website for everyone to see. In other news, Emily flies to England tomorrow (Sunday, April 2) to be a part of our good friends’ wedding, Laura & Dan.

Emily leaves tomorrow from Pittsburgh & will be gone for over a week until she returns, Lord willin’, next Monday. Unfortunately, I’ve got to stick around here in Morgantown and go to class, and try to act studious.

Since it’s my birthday, I would like to leave you with the Word of Today of my choosing: homoousios.

What else…yes, thank you everyone that travelled to be with us on March 25th to celebrate Emily’s being here. We had a wonderful time getting to see everyone. We trust it was a blast for everyone else as well.

Wow, it has been almost a month since our last update. We’ve been a little bit busy. Last week was WVU’s Spring Break and Emily and I went with the Baptist group here on campus, WVUMCM, down to Charleston, WV, for the week. We stayed at West Charleston Baptist Church and ministered alongside them to the homeless, hungry, and helpless. It was an eye-opening experience not in the sense that we saw people in conditions unimaginable but…

…it was eye-opening in seeing the amazing ministry that this church is doing in Charleston. That church is very much the hands and feet of Christ in that city, ministering in every and any way possible that they might win some. We had a wonderful week down there. You can go to the WVUMCM website and browse to the Picture Gallery where you will find pictures and several videos of us during the week.

Many people have been wondering and inquiring about Emily’s journey to a WV driver’s license. Well, as of about two weeks ago, Emily has her learner’s permit (you can find pictures of her with it and the car in the downloads section under pictures). She studied like crazy for the learner’s test, and it has paid off. One problem we are experiencing is that with the Learner’s Permit, Emily must be accompanied by someone 21 years of age and older, and I, unfortunately and until April 1, am only 20! So, for the large part, Emily hasn’t been able to do as much driving as she would like. The good news is that she will be able to go at the beginning of April to get her “proper” driver’s license (a license has to have the permit for 1 month).

What else is going on with us?! I’m glad you asked. My parents and church have planned a “domestic” reception and celebration for this Saturday, March 25, at Calvary Baptist Church starting at noon. A very short service in the sanctuary will be followed by a Powerpoint presentation by Emily, and then food and fellowship in the church hall. Everyone and anyone is invited to come celebrate with my family this Saturday at Calvary; and if you’re family, it’s obligatory!

I (drew) had been meaning to email Dan Byrd (college minister at Marshall University) all week last week, and just never got around to it. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, just before my last class at 2:30, I emailed Dan and told him that I was interested in Southeastern Seminary and that I wondered if he would write one of my required personal recommendations (he said “yes”). Rather than emailing me back, though he gave me an immediate buzz on my cell phone, saying:

“Hey I’m getting ready to leave with a bunch of students from Marshall to go down and tour Southeastern; you and Emily should come along!”

Wow, talk about a last minute trip. It would be about an 7 hour trip from Morgantown to Wake Forest, North Carolina where the Seminary is, and I would have to miss my last class that day (Thursday) and miss both of my classes on Friday, but this would the perfect opportunity to look at the campus and see where we might live. Well, of course we jumped on the opportunity!

I called Dan back and we decided that Emily and I would meet his group in Beckley (where my parents live), and ride together from there to Wake Forest. Emily and I rounded up a change of clothes each and swooped down to Beckley, eating dinner with my family that night and then hopping on the church van with Dan and his crew. We drove all evening and reached Wake Forest at about 11PM, and it was Sleep Forest then, nobody was awake.

The next morning we all got up, and after a bite of a continental breakfast, headed to the Seminary campus where we took tours of the university housing and the campus. We also got to sit in on a class. The one Emily and I sat in on was Personal Evangelism.

Overall, Emily and I had a supertastic time hanging out with Dan and the Marshall crew in a beautiful area of the country, viewing a sweet-mother Southern Baptist Seminary. I’m in the process of filling out an application for Southeastern at the moment, and getting all the necessary forms together. It’s exciting!

Emily’s been online since we got back on Saturday, looking for schools around the Raleigh-Durham area where she might study nursing. Oh, and since leaving on this last minute seminary trip, Emily didn’t get to take her driving test on Friday. We are definitely going to go this coming week sometime. In other news, Emily got her new debit card in the mail!

In closing, I would just like to point out for anyone that missed it that God is amazing in orchestrating people’s lives, and if yours isn’t in his control then you need to yield to the Almighty. Coincidence that I emailed Dan just in time for Emily and I to catch a ride to tour the seminary? It could very well be, but we’re giving God all the credit and praise anyways.

On Wednesday Emily received her new Social Security number/card in the mail. We applied for it less than a week ago, so we were really surprised when it showed up. Emily is slowly starting to feel like a person now, because almost everything requires the social security number: bank account, driver’s license, job, and i needed it in order to do my taxes.

We are doing wonderfully at the moment as we brave the cold temperatures here in Morgantown.

After 11 months of immigration madness, we are pleased to back together again and starting our life together in Morgantown, WV. I am finishing my penultimate semester of university at WVU, and Emily (at the moment) is waking up at 1pm, lounging on the couch, and studying to take her driver’s test.

Welcome to the United States! Praise the Lord the interview was a breeze!

I called Emily on her cell phone this morning (6:30am US/11:30am UK) just as she was leaving the Embassy, AND she got her visa!

She said it went just fine and they told her that she should have her passport Thursday or Friday. After she gets her passport, she’s planning on getting the next flight out! Maybe she’ll be here for the Super Bowl!