We are Luke and Emma Holder writing our real life stories to keep people up to date and document our lives. We aren’t important people, but we live exciting lives.

We got married on June 12th of 2015, and there is no looking back. The first year of marriage was an exciting ride, but year two is turning out even more interesting. Luke is starting full-time ministry. Emma owns a couple of businesses and teaches second grade. We are going through the process of fostering to adopt a sweet little girl. Marriage, fostering to adopt, full-time ministry, and owning businesses make our lives quite busy, so we have started this blog to help us remember this season of life.

We want to be real about the successes and struggles that we are having in these different areas to share our experiences and encourage others like us. We also want to document this so that our kids can one day read and learn about the different seasons of life that we have been through.

FOSTERING TO ADOPT: The entire process of fostering was quite sudden and nothing short of unexpected. Thus far, it has been amazing and we pray that more people would step out in faith to have a similar experience.  It is not something that we were planning on doing and therefore gives us more motivation to share our stories. As we continue this process there will undoubtedly be more stories to share. This is one of the main reasons that we wanted to start our blog to inform on the system and encourage others based on our experiences.

ON MISSION: As Christ followers we want to strive to be the hands and feet of Christ…this isn’t always easy, especially because we are wretched sinners. Thankfully our Savior, Jesus Christ, has paid for our sins. We have been bought with a price, as it is described in 1st Corinthians 6, and because of that, Romans 8 helps us learn that there is no condemnation for our sins because Jesus already took that condemnation on. It isn’t just what we believe and say, but the way that we walk in light of this that can make an impact on the world.

REAL MARRIAGE: We believe that there are many misconceptions about what marriage is and isn’t…some of the best advice that we received close to our wedding was to be attentive about the people’s marriages who were giving us marriage advice. We just want to be real about the fun that we have together and the silly arguments that we find ourselves in; such as a 30 minute argument about it not being appropriate to serve tacos and taco salad at the same sitting.  We are two imperfect people trying to love each other best as possible. We believe that marriage is a covenant between a husband, his wife, and God to be upheld ’till death do us part.

HOLD ON HOLDERS: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry.” very few (if any) of our stories are noteworthy because they happened the way we planned, but in life when God laughs at our plans because He has something different in store for us, we can just stick together, trusting Him through the process.