Today is the one year anniversary of knowing my bride. On this date just a year ago, I began communicating with Amy and from there (obviously) our love for each other grew and continues to grow. :)

As a way of celebrating the start of our friendship together, Amy drew from her southern roots and prepared a special meal of shrimp gumbo, herb garnished steak, lemon dill salad, and finished off with a wonderful strawberry pie. It was absolutely fantastic — as has become the case with all of my wife’s cooking. (If you can’t tell, I really love my wife.) It was truly a testimony of Christ displayed in the aesthetics of a meal carefully prepared for such an occasion. I felt as if I was stepping back to some Deep South plantation to take part in this meal, even though I was actually in a two bedroom apartment in middle Tennessee.

I am very grateful to the Lord for the blessing and love of my dear wife. She serves me completely in every aspect of her life and I am truly honored to call her my own. I look forward to many years together as the Lord continues to shape our lives in service to Him.

Amy and I returned yesterday from a glorious time in the beautiful state of North Carolina with friends for the purpose of celebrating the union of Kelly Brown (now Bradrick) to Peter Bradrick. It was a time of encouragement, joy, and ultimately a grand example of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amy and I were both very blessed to be at such a glorious event and give honor to the Lord for yet another wedding with the hope of generational impact for the body of Christ. To God be the glory!



This image was courtesy of Doug’s blog. For a wonderful Biblical walk through of the marriage celebration, I highly recommend reading his blog.

Much has changed in the past few months. After close to a year of running my own marketing / graphics consulting firm, the Lord opened the doors to a new entrepreneurial endeavor taking place in Franklin, Tennessee. With a healthy business that was growing, a marriage that was less than a month away, and a newly purchased home in Missouri, I prayerfully agreed to take a new direction in life in regard to my involvement in proclaiming Christ’s Lordship in my work. Following a glorious wedding, and living in Missouri for close to a month, Amy and I packed up and moved to Tennessee. As of four-weeks ago, I began a new position as General Manager for the growing company, Franklin Springs Family Media — a company that is committed to producing high-quality films for Christian families.

Main St. Downtown Franklin. (Franklin Springs Family Media is on the left side of main street.)
Amy and I are both very blessed to have a wonderful community here in Franklin, and are very grateful to the Lord to be a part of the work that is happening at Franklin Springs. Under the vision and leadership of Franklin Springs founder, Ken Carpenter, I believe this company has an exciting future and a unique opportunity to proclaim Christ through the media of film, and possibly beyond as the Lord allows. With so many avenues opening up with inexpensive technologies, and the hearts of Christians seeing the importance for taking every thought captive in obedience in every area of life and culture, I believe we have a rare opportunity to show forth the Lordship of Christ in our nation. I am honored to be a part of such a company, and I am honored to have my bride at my side serving me. Our Lord is very gracious and to Him be all honor and glory.

I am grateful to the Lord for the joy and happiness of being a married man. I realize my lack of blogging has been quite evident as of late, but it is for good reason — spending time with my wife. Amy and I are both very blessed and continually give thanks to the Lord for our union. Now that life has begun to settle, we hope to begin a more normal routine of blogging, posting photos, and generally keeping record of the joyous life that God has given us together. Also, we will most likely be making some changes to my blog to allow for multi-postings from Amy and myself. Oh, and then there are the wedding photos, but we’ll get to that later. Below is “Mark’s top ten former-bachelor things that I have learned from being married for seventy one days, as helpful tips to other would-be grooms.” I hope you enjoy this somewhat facetious list :)

1. The blessings of studying the scriptures is greatly increased when you have someone to both teach / study with.

2. Fast-food meals are a thing of the past. Let the celebration begin!

3. Taking a quiet evening walk is now enjoyable and no longer something you do when you are bored.

4. Having hourly dialogues with your wife about how wonderful it is to be married never gets old.

5. Your busy life no longer lends itself to having dirty clothes scattered about the floor of your bedroom. (Not that this was ever an issue for me, of course.)

6. Introducing her as “This is my wife…” to people is something you eagerly look to do as often as possible.

7. Long road trips are no longer dull and tedious.

8. Getting off work no longer involves the dread of coming home to a big empty house, refrigerator, or perhaps a big/small ugly roommate whom is a guy.

9. You get to see your best friend everyday.

10. To summarize, life is good and marriage is normative.

Okay, not quite world travelers, but interior United States travelers, nonetheless. Amy and I love to travel; we love the excitement of visiting new areas, of meeting new people, and seeing the work of the Lord around the nation. In the past two months we have traveled quite a bit. Since we’ve been married we have visited the following states: Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, California, and Minnesota.

In the next two months we will be traveling to North Carolina, Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, and Texas. As time allows, we hope to post more photos and stories from our travels in the hopes of documenting the already significant itinerary of our early marriage.

Below are a few photos from our various travels, including friends and locations we visited:

A wonderful bed-and-breakfast that we stayed at in Mississippi.


A row of canons at the Vicksburg National Military Park.


Down by the bayou.


Down town Mobile, Alambama.


My wife, walking through the various areas at the Vicksburg battlefields.


The USS Alabama.


My wife, aboard the USS Alabama, manning a deck turret.
(Note, we do not condone women in the military :)


Cole Carpenter with a look of surpise, thanks to an aggresive camera man.


My dear sisters-in-law, about to enjoy a tasty meal at the Dew-Drop Inn, in downtown Mobile. (Famous for the best hotdog in the world.)


My brother-in-law, Josh, about to cook the attacking crab he is battling. We caught this crab out of Mobile Bay about thirty minutes before he was cooked. Rest his soul.


Dear friend and wise man, Geoff Botkin, gives the great-baby-Owen a nice ride in his chariot.

Greetings all,

I want to let everyone know that I have officially joined my husbands blog, and this is now the Stubblefield family blog. I will now be posting on here, so be sure to look for the name at the bottom of the post to see if it is a post from Mark or me. My goal is to assist Mark in this blogging endeavor by keeping track of our adventures as a family and documenting them.