Top Ten (12) Things we Love about Pasadena (in random order)

1) We love that we have ideal discipleship: wise people above us, peers going through life with us, and younger ones we are mentoring.

2) Working with students. We love still feeling like we are in college, having parties at our house, going to the coffee shop late at night, doing things on the weekend. We love that our life is filled with students in our house, movie nights, meals with them and doing life together.

3) Our work life/bosses. We feel appreciated and needed. We have good relationships with our supervisors who give us the freedom to use our gifts and that they give us responsibilities. We love that we have set but flexible hours.

4) Weather. Its warm most days and barely rains. What’s not to like about So Cal weather?

5) Living in a community with families. We love living in a community where people know you. We know if we ever needed anything help would be close by. We love living with families where kids are running around and playing with each other, often crossing many age/ethnic barriers.

6) Living near, but not in a big city. Pasadena still feels like a neighborhood. It is an escape from commercialization where local businesses thrive. At the same time we are an hour or less away from everything L.A. has to offer.

7) Walking to work. Who wants to drive in traffic for hours? We walk two blocks to work, eat lunch at home and barely use our car.

8) Missional community. Being around like-minded people that see the world the same way we do. We don’t feel crazy or like we harass people all the time talking about God’s love for all the peoples. Our week is filled with fresh insights on developing issues fresh off the field. We get reports straight from missionaries themselves as well as the executives that run the major organizations.

9) Cultures. We live around so many different cultures, we live in a primarily Armenian neighborhood, but ethnic neighborhoods are close: Little Tokyo, Chinatown, ect. At the same time the USCWM community is diverse with people having influence by birth or serving in countries/cultures all over the world.

10) Working together. We love to be a team and use each other’s giftings. We work beside each other, able to collaborate with each other, but don’t overstep each other’s territory.

11) Flowers. All these random flowers are everywhere. They grow instantly and are beautiful. Roses grow like wildflowers as well Melissa’s favorite bird of paradise.

12) Thursday nights: the community gets together for a meal together in the cafeteria. It’s a great time of watching the kids playing together, talking to parents or students and interacting more than just a superficial level.

Interview with Social Worker

Thursday we had our first meeting with our social worker, Linda. Linda is very nice and embraced us both with hugs before and after we met. It was pretty low key interview. She asked a lot about our families, our relationship with each other. She wanted to know about why we started dating, what attracted us to each other, what we were looking for in the adoption and why we were adopting, what type of child we wanted to adopt. She explained to us a little more about the process. Unfortunately we were confused and thought the interviewing would take a few weeks and the main portion of the in-take process was the classes. She informed us we still had 2 – 4 months to go until we would be finished with our home-study and be officially approved to adopt. While we wished we didn’t have as long to wait we are glad not to get our hopes up. We are working on our profile (form of describing us as a family to birthmothers) and will post it when we have finished the text. We are excited to be moving ahead in the process. We’ve recently been around a bunch of young children. I (Adam) am getting really excited that soon we’ll be able to hold our own. Baby Hoffman, we are ready for you.

One Year in Cali

Wow one year! We’ve been reflecting on our first year out here and are just floored. March 23rd 2008 we made our way into Pasadena, a year later we call it home. April 1st 2008 was our first day at our new assignments. I remember last year barely being trained and still having a hard time describing Insight, going to college fairs and sharing with high schoolers what Insight is. As I type this now, we are on our way to a college fair.

One year later we look back and are amazed that God used us to accomplish all the things we have. At the Pasadena Insight campus, we are experiencing one of the best classes in the history of the program. We have learned the ropes well and are finishing this year’s class and preparing for the next class. The Insight National Office is barely recognizable. It’s amazing to see how all the things we dreamed in the beginning of our time have actually come together. The program is successfully packaged and available to be exported to different locations. We have a detailed manual on how to run the program and a training for upcoming Program Directors.

It’s been an amazing year of community building, finding our niche in Pasadena and getting to know people. More to come later on our favorites of Pasadena.

Tarheels 2009 National Champions

What a great year of basketball. It was so much fun watching Lawson, Hansborough, Ellington, Green, Thompson, Davis and the rest of the team have a great season. Congrats to the 2008-2009 team for accomplishing their goal: National Champions. Following basketball has been different out in Cali than in our home ACC country. Everybody here is obsessed with the Lakers or Dodgers, no one really follows NCAAs. We do have a co-worker who graduated from Carolina in the 70’s. He’ll brag with us, but that’s about all the chatter we hear. Most of the games throughout the season we watched by ourselves with the aid of ESPN360. Why didn’t they come out with this when I was in college? We even watched the early round tournament games online.

A couple of guys (Andrew Mitchell and Chad Hines) are out here to watch games with every now and then, we rarely have the big time celebrations we are used to though. The later round tournament match ups we went a sports place to watch the games. Lots of TVs, lots of Carolina peeps and lots of Carolina beating its opponents. Every time after the game we’d all stand up and sing the alma mater with arms wrapped around another. Started to feel like home for just a little bit. After the national championship we were all pumped and ready to rush Franklyn Street. We almost went to Franklyn Street, Hollywood but decided to rush the most available street, Lankershim. Now unlike on Carolina’s campus, we weren’t able to shut down traffic. The 10 or so of us would run up and down the sidewalk yelling and screaming every now and then darting out on the road when there wasn’t traffic. Where at Carolina, everyone joins in, in L.A. we just had a bunch of people starring at us strangely. Again, great season. Rah Rah Carolina-lina.