Who Are You?

I think Everyone needs to try and figure this question out at some point, or multiple points, in their life. Well, today I was given the task to write an online profile for myself explaining who I am. The following is who I think I am today (and however long the web profile stays unaltered):

Kevin P. Mahan
Internship Coordinator,
Employer Relations

As the internship coordinator in the LU Career Center I have the privilege of interacting with over a thousand students every year interested in adding experience to their education. Walk-ins, talkers, dreamers, pessimists, procrastinators, and world-changers are all welcome in visit my office. Each person has a valuable role to play and my role is to help students get experience in their future careers before they become regretful and lost graduates in a quick and disappointing career change.

My wife, Rachel, and I are newlyweds for life looking forward to changes and surprises as God blesses us with them. We believe that our current vocation will always remain the same, but our locations may change. Our vocation is being a consistent part of the local and global Kingdom of God. We love to support the global mission and participate in the local mission by leading CampusSERVE through LU in various parts of Lynchburg. We've never had a dull day of marriage, but we invite the common days as a calm blessing.

I earned a B.S. in Speech and an M.A. in Religious Rhetoric from Liberty University in 2006 & 2008, respectively. Rachel completed her B.S. in Graphic Design in 2005 and her M.A. in Student Ministries in 2008. We love this university and are falling in love with this dynamic city because of our love for its people. We officially call ourselves Lynchburgians and gladly pay 11.5% food tax to live in this city, although we do miss our hometowns in Gingellville, Michigan and Statesville, North Carolina.

For fun I strategize intramural basketball and soccer in my mind as I fall asleep after an evening of Tecmo Super Bowl, Dostoevsky, and half-caf coffee. My wife is an avid drinker of all things coffee/espresso and uses her incredible wit to wax candidly on our new blog.

CampusSERVE

We wear a lot of hats. Rachel is a graphic designing, professional painting, property managing, Resident Directing, CampusSERVER. I am a formerly professing, internship guiding, property managing, CampusSERVER. Of the many things we are proud of doing, most are volunteer. We've seen the beautiful things that can happen through our lives as we volunteer beyond our expected abilities.

God has us in a peculiar place right now. We love what we get paid to do, but cherish the moments when we are able to serve people. I'm the director of CampusSERVE at Liberty and Rachel is the Assistant to the Director of CampusSERVE at Liberty. We're an organization supported by Thomas Road Baptist Church and the Office of Spiritual Programs at Liberty. Rachel and I do administrative duties. That means tonight we are going to Wal-mart and buying cookies for 200, cups, chalk, sports equipment, first aids, etc. for this upcoming semester. It also means that we train and lead 23 amazing college students to lead other college students to do more than the 25 of us could do. We've had on average 210 student last semester. We've watched our students grow beyond their expected abilities, and we've seen ourselves become warn out every Saturday afternoon. Worth it.

Here is an article in the Liberty Journal [a big deal outside LU, but not as important at LU] that we had posted recently. You'll notice the name Candace Davey. The ironic thing is that she's the little sister of Ben Davey who was my oft roommate and co-coach at On Goal the first summer I worked with Tom & Rog. Small world. Big God.

Can a girl just be sick for a day?

I was talking to one of my friends who is also young and married with no kids yesterday and I realized that people lack sympathy for 'us' (young married women) who come down with an 'unknown' sickness. Here's an example on a conversation:

Curious Conversationalist: Hey, I heard you wer sick yesterday. Are you feeling better?
Young Married Woman: Yeah, much better today thanks.
Curious Conversationalist: What was wrong?
Young Married Woman: I'm not sure, I was just puking a lot...maybe a slight fever. It was horrible.
Curious Conversationalist: Hmmmm (and they smile, wink, or just nod as if they're happy they you couldn't eat anything for a day for fear of seeing it twice!)

What if I end up having the Bubonic Plague or something? If your curiousity is sparked when you hear of or are in conversation with a nice young married woman near you, please be courteous and have a little sympathy! She's probably not having symptoms of pregnancy 99% of the time. That's all. Thanks!

Kev's Work Posse

Here is my new work peoples. This is our Tacky Christmas Sweater day.

From L to R: Kevin (Internship Coordinator), Melinda (Career Counselor), Carrie (Director & boss), Melanie (Project Assistant), Tracey (Office Manager), Nicole (Career Services Coordinator), Tara (Management), Bryan (Washington Fellowship Recruiter - he's actually a lot happier in person), Brittney (Washington Fellowship Placement Coordinator).

Our titles are a mouthful, but they are certainly a fun bunch to work with at LU. Every day I get up and walk to work I'm (1) thankful for a job right now and (2) incredibly thankful for such a brilliant cast of characters to work along side. It's like everyday is a concoction of creative service tailor made to produce humor.

Honeymoon

We went to Maine for our Honeymoon. It was even better than expected! Located on an island and in Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor had a small town feel with quaint restaurants and shops. We took advantage of the great hiking trails the park had to offer and took a 4-hour kayaking adventure...the best! We opted to stay and B&Bs and we would highly recommend them, when possible over hotels. How can you beat a breakfast like this included with your stay? This one was called Nonesuch Farms B&B in Bangor, ME...about an hour from Bar Harbor.

Bangor had a saltwater marshwalk nearby that was peaceful and cool to see...

Here we are by the Penobscot River after eating at Salty Dogs. The restaurant had a fun feel to it, but they served Kevin a salad with about 3 pieces of lettuce, 2 olives, a couple slabs of cheese, and a drizzle of dressing. The waitress should have looked at him and said, "what you are about to order probably won't be sufficient for your dinner," but she was oblivious to anything besides getting our order and handing us the bill.

This is the front of Nonesuch Farm B&B. Great place AND wonderful hosts.

Oh look, a big black poodle. We asked this lady if we could get a picture with her dog and she was honored. We told her that black poodles were, oddly enough, somewhat significant to our engagement story. I will NEVER live it down so I must embrace it!

And here we have the ever so unique Bass Cottage Inn. Very historic. Lovely afternoon/hostess hostess who was French Canadian who became her best friend...although she probably has thousands across the globe. Breakfast (pause) like we have never seen or tasted before.
(the breakfast dining room)

Our breafast. First course (a breakfast has courses?!), homemade muffins and fruit kabobs (seriously! kabobs for breakfast?!) placed on plates drizzled with yogurt.

After 2 hours he was a pro. Look at those guns!

This is me waiting while our guide helped the family with 10-year-old Ry-Ry back into their kayaks for the 2 hour trip back to the harbor. Oh Ry-Ry (short for Ryan), fond memories...probably never did something as active as kayaking in his entire 10-years. I think his mom, who was in the tandem kayak with him, probably had jelly arms for days following.

Here we are at the start of the Beeshive trail.

We passed a couple on the way up who were on their way back down telling us that it was too windy. The "hiking trail"/wall had places where you had to climb rocks and area where it was so steep that they bolted ladders and handles into the rock hang onto.

This is after our fancy dinner night. We went to Cabana...gourmet. The only "chain" establishment we saw on the whole island was out the picture window across from Cabana, it was an Exxon station. Our wonderful best friend back at the B&B wanted to take our picture. She always asked about our day and we'd tell her about our adventures.

I can't remember the name of this trail, but it was a great hike parlty directing us along/through a creek bed. It end at a cave where, on the other side, we put our hammock over the creek. Picturesque.

Our lobster meal! It was on a pier, steamer at the front door for the lobster - nice greeting, had a utility sink to wash the green insides off after breaking the tail off before embarking on the eating part. By the way, fried clams (maybe they were steamed) do not look like the curly fry looking ones that you may be accustomed to eating at Red Lobster. We had to call our waitress back to the table for a demo on how to tackle eating them. We also asked the people a couple tables over what to do when it came to eating the lobster too. They were kind enough to take our picture.

Last day. You kinda hate to say goodbye to such a beautiful place...

Wedding & Reception

We were married at our church in Lynchburg on July 5! It was great to have friends and family together to celebrate and get to see the place where we met! Thank again to all of our family and friends who could make it into town! The reception followed in historic downtown Lynchburg. Enjoy the pictures!

Psalm 126:3 was a theme throughout our planning and on the actual day of the wedding. We could not be more overjoyed with all that God has done for us!

Year in Review (Jan-July)

Usually you see year in reviews on December 31 or January 1, but we wanted to be different...or maybe we had friends in town, started work, and got sick. Either way, here is my attempt to review our quite wonderful year! This may take awhile and, as a new blogger, I'm not sure what's kosher for the amount of pictures in one post.

To start things off we celebrated with our friends Dom and Bekah as they got married in Lynchburg, VA on January 5, 2008.
Who knew that one day later on our day trip to Washington, DC that we would get engaged? Kevin's plan was to go to Georgetown, VA (near DC), walk around town, grab lunch at Ima Vegetarian Cafe (Indian Cuisine), walk along the river, go to Grace Church for their 6pm service, and propose. He assumed I'd say yes...and I did! I had no idea that he had such a huge day planned.

Kevin started his last semester of grad school a week later which consisted of a ton more writing. He's one of the most diligent students I know! I started the fun (only to be had once in a lifetime) task of wedding planning. I think I ordered my wedding dress on January 12 since I knew February is usually a busy month for work with no weekends to get away.

On Febuary 4 I got a phone call from my dad saying that my grandma had passed away unexpectedly. She never got to hear the full, details loaded version of our engagement story. My grandpa was a rock and said the whole day, "this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." What a lesson, being glad on the bad days too. Wow.

We went to the Ann Wharton Lecture Series on Valentine's Day where Em Griffin (author of COMS textbooks) was the keynote speaker. You can see below that Kevin was filled with glee by the dinner, the speaker, and my accompanying him. :)
In March we went to NY and Michigan over Spring Break. In Jamestown, NY Kevin was in our friends' Justin and Tiffany's wedding on the 15th.From there we traveled to Kevin's hometown for a wedding shower put on by his family where I met his family, friends, gradeschool teachers, sunday school teachers, etc. It was so much fun to see the people that have been a part of his life for so long. We stopped several times and thought, "we are so blessed." Thanks to all who made it such a fun weekend!


At the end of March my friends Liz and Jen threw me a bridal shower.
It was great to have most of my friends in one place for a fun occasion. My friends are incredible! Too bad I don't have a picture of everyone who was there.


April proved to be another busy month. I threw a baby shower for my sister Shara one weekend...Here's a picture of all the girls including Tilly (Jen's dog who was wearing a dress for the occasion).

Later that weekend I met my Grandpa Pick in DC to visit my brother, Nate. We had the best time as Nate showed us around town and hosted us at his apartment.

We also had a wedding shower hosted by my parents and church family in my home town the following weekend. Once again we were amazed at the generousity and the support of our family and friends.


Kevin finished grad school in May! We were so proud of him! His bound thesis was a coffee table book for awhile. What an accomplishment! YOu should have seen the dedication in person.
Kev started working at JMJ Landscaping Supply soon after graduation which proved to be a relief from such an academic way of thinking for a while. I have no pictures of Kev playing in huge dirt and mulch piles with real Tonka trucks. I think he secretly dreamed his whole life that he would play in the dirt as soon as he finished grad school. Every boy should one day fulfill his dreams and Kevin did! Too bad I don't have any pictures. Flash forward a couple months and a bee stings Kevin in the lip during the week before our wedding. The funny part of the story, being the caring fiance that I was, took him Benedryl at work. On the back of the box it reads, "when using this product, be careful if operating heavy machinery." Oh well, the guy needed some medicine to take the swelling down.

My nephew (now our 2nd nephew), Kaleb was born on May 21. He weighed in at 11 lbs 4.5oz. My sister was the talk of the hospital...what a trooper!


At the end of May I was moved by work to a temporary apartment for the summer since the one Kevin and I would move into after our wedding wasn't finished. My apartment for the summer was nice, but it was quite the task to keep my stuff (boxes labeled summer or fall) and wedding stuff organized and easy to get to once I moved.

June...finished with the first move. Time for the last month of wedding planning and two wedding to go to in the Burg. I remember when I first looked at our schedule for June...how? when? wedding? marriage? :) As we said throughout our wedding planning, our goal was to honor God and to get married on July 5 even if ever detail wasn't finished.

My friend/co-worker Meg got married on June 7...

...and our friends Daniel and Brooke got married on June 14. Oh the numorous, glorious weddings!

Our wedding was only 2 weeks away! Here are some pictures from what we lovingly called my apartment during the half-packed, half-moved, wedding planning galore days -- wedding central. And on into the 1st of July and the final week of wedding planning. Hooray! (Nate & Kev's idea to throw leaves in the air while woalking down the aisle...we all almost fell over laughing)
(our attempt to find the LU Monogram and take a break from wedding planning before the final week started)

(Kaleb & Daddy helping--really, my dad wrapped all of my bridesmaids gift and giftcard box with precision. who knew?)



Thanks for all the help guys!

You can see wedding and honeymoon pictures from July in our other posts. Here we are arriving back at our first apartment (for 2 weeks). Also below, a picture of our first meal at our house...thank you for wedding leftovers!

We also went to my friend/co-worker's, Elisha's, wedding on July 12 as Mr. and Mrs. Mahan.

We saw Shara, Kaleb, and Jon off as they were leaving for Galveston. It was Kev's idea that Kaleb's 1st Cup o' Joe come from his Aunt Rachel.

And, to top off July, we moved again into our apartment for the school year.