Thus begins the obligatory blog!  You may be wondering about the title, "We Live Here!"  Well, ever since Mandi and I arrived on Guam about three weeks ago, it's a term we find ourselves saying over and over again.  Here's how it goes:  we're driving around somewhere on the island and we come across some paradisaical vista or tropical novelty and one of us will say to the other, "We live here.  Can you believe it?  We're not vacationing, or just visiting; we actually live here."  For example:

When Mandi and I came across Big John and his Carabao (water buffalo), and Mandi got to go for a ride, we said, "We live here!"




Another example: when I picked a coconut from the tree in our BACK YARD and chopped at it until we got to the coconut water inside, we said, "We live here!"

After awhile, I started thinking how, "We live here!" has the potential to be more than just a fun exclamation.  It can be our philosophy.  Mandi and I both try our best to be adventurous. And by that, I don't necessarily mean skydiving and cliff jumping, but really that we can find fun, interesting, and even adventurous things just around the corner.

I was reading a talk by one of our church leaders recently, and in his discussion, he shared an anecdote about an elevator boy who was whistling a merry tune on his way up on the elevator one morning. “Why so happy?” a grim-faced, scowling rider asked him.  The boy replied, “I’ve never lived this day before.”(Roy Pearson, Words to Live By.)

That's how Mandi and I want our life to be.  We want to be like the little boy who is happy just to have a new day - every day is brimming with potential.  So, whether we're living on a beautiful tropical island or in some small town in Anywhere, U.S.A., we want to always look at each other say, with smiles on our faces, "We live here!"

Oh, by the way, if you're wondering what the coconut tree in our backyard looks like, here it is: