Nick Bogardus

Three years ago today, Kim and I rode our bicycles away from our wedding reception, down the street and around the corner to our house (which you can see at the end of the video above).  Her dress was taped up to the bike so she could pedal and she rang her bell most of the ride home.

Three weeks later we stepped off of a plane in Mongolia and any liquids in my eyes and nose froze.  We spent the first year and a half of our marriage in a Soviet-bloc apartment, seven hours from the capitol of Mongolia.  Together, we taught English, the Bible, and ministered to and served students, disabled children, the local church, and YWAM-ers passing through.

We flew back from Mongolia on a Monday and were in Seattle on a Thursday for my final interviews at Mars Hill.  We found a house on Saturday and flew back for time with our family on Sunday.  Three weeks later we moved everything in our storage unit - many unopened wedding presents! - up to Seattle.  In the year and a half since, together we’ve led a community group and ministered to and served singles, couples, students, strippers, families, neighbors…and now a daughter.

Here’s the point. When we first went to Mongolia, a wise, older friend corrected my focus on how “God would use me”, to how God would bless us by using us - that it’s not about me or us, but about a sovereign God who loves lavishly.  Looking back over the past three years, that has been unreservedly true.  We left Mongolia, and we live in Seattle, with a feeling of resounding and humbling thankfulness for the people God has put around us.  Further, as we worked together not only were we blessed by those around us but we grew as a team, as ‘one’.  All of that is grace.

More than anything or anyone else, Kim has been God’s greatest display of grace in my life.  It has been amazing to watch her grow into an absolutely stunning wife, mom, and woman.  She has a contagious joy in everything and with everyone.  (I’m lucky because I get to be around her all the time!)  She has also grown as a photographer.  Every time she does a shoot I have a new ‘favorite’ picture.  There is no one I trust more, no one whose opinion I value more.  I’m so proud to call myself her husband and thankful for the years we’ve had together.

Here’s to three years together and the hope of many more.