Les Bleus ont gagné!

Now that I'm marrying a french girl, I have to root for "Les Bleus" in the world cup, right? I've had a great time following all the games so far and was thrilled this afternoon to watch France knock out Spain 3-1. Most people I talked to predicted Spain would have their way in this game and that France's run was over and that Zidaine's career was over. Of course, now that they've won, everyone's saying the same thing about their upcoming game against Brazil on Saturday. Dad and I are going to watch the game from a french restaurant and hope we'll have lots of reason to celebrate. Of course, since he served a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he wouldn't be too dissapointed of they won as well. To watch highlights of this afternoon's exciting game, or any other match of the tournement, check out FIFA's excellent site: http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/v/

The Daily Show

Last week dad and I turned a one time event into an annual tradition by attending the taping of another TV talk show. You might remember that last June we saw Pres Bill Clinton and Beatles legend Ringo Starr on the Letterman show. This year we saw Adam Sandler on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart is hilarious and hosts one of my favorite shows on tv and so of course we had a great time. To watch clips from this or other episodes, click here:

Gladys Knight

While Sarah was visiting NYC a couple weekends ago with some friends, we had the good fortune of attending a free concert by legendary singer Gladys Knight. She is a member of my Church and uses her name recognition and incredible talent to tell the world how her faith has improved her life. It was an inspiring evening of song and testimony and I highly recommend you check her out live. If someone asks where you got this recommendation, tell them you "heard it through the grapevine."

A weekend with Sarah

I love Sarah so much and was so happy to spend last week with her. Here are some pics from a graduation party for me and my cousins Liz and Grace who graduate from Smith College and Horace Mann High School respectively.

Outakes

Sarah was in NY last week and we did a lot fun things, including a photoshoot for our invitations (thanks Annie!) Here are some of my favorite outakes. We started a new blog (www.sarahetdavid.blogspot.com) to post the most updated information on the schedule of our wedding plans. Go to that blog to see which photo we chose.

June 6 = 5 years

June 6th marked the 5th anniversary of the day I started my missionary service in Southeastern Idaho. June 5th was the 3rd anniversary of my return. Can you believe it's already been 5 years since I started?! I guess I've accomplished some pretty important things in that time: graduated from McGill, got engaged, got accepted to 6 great grad schools, and volunteered 2 years as YM Pres. I really like this picture of myself with Elder Mullaney (from Tonga) in June 2003 when I was zone leader over parts of Pocatello, including most of Alameda. Both sets of my grandparents used to live in Pocatello, my mom was born in a near by hospital and as a little girl lived in this house which my Bingham Grandparents built. I'm told it was remodeled a lot since they moved out. I am so glad I was a missionary for many reasons. Working in Idaho gave allowed me to connect more deeply with my personal roots, and it gave me a chance to work tirelessly for other's happiness. It was an amazing experience to be apart of so many people's lives as they were going through life changing experiences. Now that I've been asked to be a ward missionary, I feel more connected to missionaries in the area and hope they're well taken care of and having similar life changing experiences. Have you done something nice for a missionary lately?

Montreal Temple - Aug 26th @ 11am

Our wedding date is set and I hope you can all make it: Saturday Aug 26th at 11am in the Montreal Temple!!! We're going to have a reception in church building in LaSalle that evening and look forward to celebrating with everyone. You might be thinking, "I thought they were gonna get married in January?" That was the original plan, but as you can read in the next post, there were so many immigration and scheduling issues that pushed it to Aug 26th. Truth be told, I'm relieved it's a lot sooner. While it will be a lot of work to get everything done in the next 11 weeks, I am so tired of being apart from Sarah and look forward to being able to see her everyday in our new apt in Ottawa. Ottawa you ask? Read the next post for clarification. The stress of planning the wedding seems manageable to me because at least it's in our control. The immigration requirements have been so overwhelmingly confusing to sort through it makes everything else seem so much easier in comparison.

Perspective on Life Decisions

Sorry for the delay between posts, this has been an incredibly busy time. I've been working two jobs (Accounting and Intern in Congressman Rangel's district office), have a new calling (Ward Missionary) and have been traveling to Montreal and Ottawa. Oh ya, I'm engaged! There have been so many details to sort through as Sarah and I have tried to navigate the legal aspects of a Canadian/French citizen trying to marry an American and live in the US. I'll spare you all the details, but we had no guarantee that we could live together in the States as husband and wife for quite some time, so we've decided to get married sooner than expected, move to Ottawa and immediately apply for a US spouse visa for Sarah, so that it will arrive by the time we want to move to Carolina in Aug 2007. I am deferring entrance to UNC until that time and am currently looking for work and french classes in Ottawa. Je pense que il sera meilleur pour nous si nous pouvons habiter ensemble. While it has been a humbling sacrifice to put aside grad school for a year, especially after the countless hours of working on applications and traveling to interviews on overnight buses, it feels so good to recognize that Sarah is my #1 priority. While I was sitting through my graduation, I made a list in my journal of all the major decisions and actions I've done since moving to Montreal in Aug 1999 and the impact each decision on getting me to this point. The realization I had is that the decision to marry Sarah was by the far the biggest and most important, and all decisions from now on have to be made in reference to that decision. In other words, with every option I will have in front of me, I have to consider how it will affect my marriage with Sarah, and no matter how good it would be otherwise, if it has a negative impact on our marriage, then it's not the best option for me. This might seem like an obvious realization, but to actually live through it by calling UNC to defer and calling "our apt" in NC to get a refund on our deposit is a bit humbling and exhilarating. Je t'aime Sarah!! Merci pour ton amour.

Graduation

I graduated on Thursday June 1, 2006!! I was so glad that Sarah and Amy could come. In many ways it was fitting, since Amy was the woman who took me under her wing when I first moved to Montreal in 99, and Sarah is the woman taking me in her arms as I l've left Montreal in 2006. Many thanks to my parents who made this wonderful day possible. You can watch the webcast of me walking accross the stage. Click here and click on the stream for June 1st, part 2 (pm) and then scroll ahead to about 1 hour 36 minutes and wait. You can right click on it, select zoom, and watch it in full screen mode. Enjoy!

Ottawa

I went to Ottawa a couple weeks ago with Amy's family, and got to spend a couple days there with my lovely fiance. I then spent the week in Montreal. More details to follow.