I’m in love, I’m in love… and I don’t care who knows!

On Sunday afternoon overlooking the Sydney skyline at sunset, I asked Vanessa Larkin to marry me.  She graciously said, “YES!”

It was a sacred time, not only because I kissed the love of my life for the very first time, but although we have only been dating for six months, there is an undeniable sense of togetherness and joy, in not only simply being together, but in looking to our future– knowing that our marriage will be a trophy of Jesus’ extravagant love and His mighty power to save.  This is a humbling, epic, and joyful time that we are thrilled to share with our incredible community of friends and family around the world.

You can see many of our photos from Down Under HERE.  Our official wedding website is at robandvanessa.weddingwindow.com (the beta launch!), and you can follow us on Twitter at @robandvanessa for all the essential updates leading up to our wedding!

Conferencing

This past weekend was full of more conferencing than I’ve been involved with in a long time.  The 2009 Pacific Northwest Microfinance Conference was visited by an all star lineup of practitioners from some of the leading microfinance organizations in the world, including Kiva.org, WorldVision, Esperanza International, and Agros.

Just down the street was the Freedom Initiative’s UNBOUND Anti-Human Trafficking Conference, a great breakthrough in unifying Seattle’s many abolitionists in a meaningful weekend spearheaded by the student-led Freedom Initiative.  I was honored to lead a workshop on the topic: Social Entrepreneurship and the Abolitionist Movement, and my presentation is posted online at HERE.

Speaking of which, to present the content for the workshop, I did a last-minute switch from Microsoft PowerPoint to www.Prezi.com, and I must say I have never been more impressed with a free, web-based app than I have with Prezi.  It has completely changed how I will share presentations from now on.  Check it out!