2022 | A Year in Review
Wow! This year has been a whirlwind of events that grew us closer to God, each other, and YOU! We are grateful to share our lives with you, so we’d like to take a second to walk through a bit of what all happened this year!
At the beginning of 2022, after many months of serving on a volunteer basis, Luke started working for Love Thy Nerd full-time. We took a step of faith as this was a fully financial support-based position. Asia’s family came from Guam to visit us in the States for the first time in several years! Her youngest brother, Jacob, also moved into our home to do life together! Luke organized a LTN trip to Tantrum Con and checked out the scene with Bubba and some of our friends from Moviga!
At the end of the summer, Luke and the Warmbiers started working on the first ever LTN office at our home church, Sojourn Church New Albany. He also started training to lead missions trips, like this year’s missions trip to GenCon, where they served amongst over 50,000 attendees.
We had some milestone celebrations as well! Asia had turned 29th birthday in February and Luke had celebrated his BIG 30th birthday in March. We also celebrated 6 years of marriage in May. We celebrated the birth of our first ever niece (the daughter of Asia’s brother, Rio, and sister-in-law, Ally) in June!!! We also partied for Pocky’s 1st birthday in July! To round out the festivities, we also were grateful for our airbnb, the Offbeat Oasis, celebrating its 1 year anniversary in August.
In the fall, Luke and Matt officially started working out of the LTN office. We also celebrated the completion of the arduous work of building out a patio in our backyard. A HUGE THANK YOU to Jacob for doing so much of the hard work when we were busy working on other projects during the weekdays. Our church leadership encouraged us to start a Young Adult group, which we have been loving hosting! It has been a great opportunity to build relationships with several people that have quickly become dear friends!
In October, Luke and the LTN crew put on LTNCon, which our local church graciously hosted in their facilities. LTCon is an event that trains people to better love and serve nerds in nerd culture in their communities. To accomplish this mission, they brought in some special speakers, including Asia, to educate and equip believers to love and serve nerds well. We were grateful to see over 150 people attend this conference and hear that they left trained, loved, encouraged, reunited with old friends and created new friendships.
A few days after LTNcon, we traveled to Cincinnati to attend a retreat for Christian content creators, community organizers, and digital church leaders. It was a sweet time to build community amongst like minded friends, refine what it looked like for us to pursue our falling, and give us a few days just to rest and recover after a busy year.
As fall was coming to a close, we hosted our 5th annual Over Garden Wall Viewing Party, which was the first time hosting in our new home! It is always a joy to watch our favorite miniseries with others who love the show as well as introduce the experience to new friends!
In the winter, we launched a shared website LukeAndAsia.com that includes our information as well as a new merchandise store! We also combined our discord servers into a new server called the Crash Pad, which has allowed us to better serve and bring together both of the online communities we have been serving and fostering.
As the year comes to a close, we are grateful for God’s provision for our family. From the growing team of Luke’s LTN financial supporters, to the Offbeat Oasis continuing to help supplement income, to Asia keeping her job after a necessary company restructure due to the economic forecasting of the next year, we thank the Lord for continuing to provide for our family as we continue to take a step of faith each day to pursue what he has called us to.
As we look to the coming year, we are looking forward to several things. Luke will be taking on a new role at LTN: IRL (In Real Life) Events Lead, where he will focus his efforts on missions trips and future nerd culture ministry training events. As we continue to serve in digital spaces and around the country, we also continue to be passionate about serving our local community. To help us better serve people by welcoming them to do life with us in our home, we want to work on house projects like turning our unfinished attic space into another bedroom and a media room, so Luke can have a dedicated streaming space which frees up our living room to comfortably host those who frequent our home. We also want to fix the flooring downstairs, so people don’t fall through the floor in the bathroom haha! We also are looking forward to creating a blog on our new website where we can keep you all updated on how we are doing and how we are serving.
Thank you for a great, full year, and we appreciate your continued prayers and support! Cheers to a new year where we can continue to love, serve, and grow together!