Heat

I am super excited to move. I think that the location will be a big change, and it will be fun to experience a lot of new different things. Here is a list of just a few things I am excited about:

• We will be a hop, skip, and a jump away from the town square.
• There is a town square.
• We both have jobs where God can use our passions and grow us too.
• Our apartment has a fireplace (we can't use it, but it's super cute, and has a mantle!!)
• We can turn the heat up and not have to worry about how much it is going to cost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The bathtub in the bathroom has an older style shower curtain bar that goes all the way around the tub.. hehehe
• The master bedroom is HUGE, and it has a little nook/cove type thingy.
  
• We will be living right next to our landlord, who seems pretty cool.
  
• the college is right across the street
• The have a Gabriel Brothers store there!!!!
• We will be living pretty close to the drummer and his family (drummer for the church, that is...)

I am sure that there are more things, but this is just a small list of the things that I am pumped about. Also, Our families are being awesome and helping us move! Yeah to parents :)

Merry Christmas :)

Christmas and such

So, I am pretty excited about this upcoming season. It will probably be super crazy, and so I thank everyone in advance for dealing with the craziness and helping out :)

Tomorrow, Josh and I are doing our own mini-Christmas together.. I am really excited!! We are using some Christmas gift money that we got from some relatives to buy one or two things for each other. Also, we are going to do dinner and a movie: we have free tickets to any show we want to see as well as a gift card to Red Lobster. Mmmm. It should be a pretty relaxing day gong into a pretty crazy weekend.

This weekend, we are headed down to Ohio to talk with the people of the church, and just hang out with them for a weekend. The pastor and his wife are letting us stay with them and their five kids, and already have the whole weekend pretty planned out for us! We are meeting with someone from the church on Saturday afternoon (this guy is the drummer for the church, so him and Josh will probably talk a lot of music stuff) and then we are going to check out some apartments that Mike(the pastor) has arranged for us to look at. Sunday is filled with church activities, including set up and a little farewell luncheon type thing for their current worship leader and her husband. Then, we go check out some more apartments (just one) that Amy (Mike's wife) has arranged for us to scope out. Later that night there is an evening thing at the church for families and such, and then we go back to the pastor's home for some dinner, some sleep, and we leave the next day. Action Packed Weekend, here we come!

Last night, when Josh got home from Midland, he had a guitar lesson with Moses, and so I went along with him (If I didn't go, that would mean having to wait at the church until later, and I had already been there all day.) I was a little curious as to what I would be doing, but when I got there, I instantly remembered that Moses had three younger siblings :) So I got to play "house" and "babydolls" with the two little girls while I talked to Anna (the mom!) for a while. She was very interested about the details of our upcoming move and stuff, so it was good to get some encouragement from her and to have someone to talk to that was older than 8 :)

I was telling Anna about how Josh put a video up of both of us singing on his blog for the Ohio church members to watch.. And I didn't know he was going to put the part of me singing with him in the video... I said something like "he was being a stinker" and Moses' brother was playing with Legos over in the corner of the room. I had no idea that he was even listening, and all of a sudden, in a very matter-of-fact sort of way, he says this, "Yeah, those husbands can sometimes be stinkers!!" I laughed super hard. It was really cute, especially since he is only eight years old!

So, that's my story for now, and I am going to clean the house than go do some more Christmas shopping. Woot Woot.

PS - Pumpkin begs for food now from us. It is really weird.

Los Angeles, Turkey Meatballs, & Grandpa

My last blog was super long.. mostly me rambling on about weird things. Cool. I am at work right now, and I am super bored, so I will be writing an update and stuff...

My grandpa is doing much better than he was doing. After being in the hospital for about a week and in an in-patient physical therapy place in Midland for a little less than a week, he is finally back home and on the slow but steady path to healing and recovery. He thinks that he is going hunting this weekend even. [He shouldn't be going, he just thinks he is].

Also, I have been finding some sweet recipes online lately, and from my weight watchers meetings that I plan on trying, and if they turn out, making them for Thanksgiving dinners. I hope they are delicious.

Last and not least, because the recipes were the least, Josh and I are going to LA this summer! We decided to apply for a program call the IT Project -- It is a 50 day program that is about missions and missions history, as well as learning about the people groups of the world -- mainly the major groups in the 10/40 window. The first 25 days is spent taking a course at the Bible College where we will be staying, and the 25 days is dedicated to getting out on the town, learning about how the people groups worship, visiting their places of worship, and evangelizing to students! We will also get to go to a different church every Sunday to see what kinds of churches are there in LA.. I am super excited!!!

We are some of the first people accepted for the 2010 Project, because we applied so early. We did that on purpose, because this way, we have more time to raise support and money for the trip :) I am very excited for it!

If you have more questions about the trip or whatever, or the Traveling Team, you can go to their website, www.thetravelingteam.org

Steak is to Mashed Potatoes as Jesus is to Christmas

I feel like a lot of things have happened that have been good lately, bu really, it might just be my state of being. My attitude. My thought-process. Maybe.
First of all, this is probably going to be very random and full of weirdness. I'm going with the free-write style today, folks.

I was studying for my exam today in Small Group Communication. It was fairly interesting stuff, and one of the sections was all about nonverbal behavior. It is amazing how much we actually communicate using this stuff! We aren't able to communicate without it; everything from your body language to you facial expressions, to how you breath, to how you sit is all nonverbal communication. Even your time is nonverbal communication. I guess that's why interviewers think that you don't care much about a job if you show up late for the interview.
Anyway, that just made me think about a lot of different things. Like being in constant 'communication' with God. Prayer is our way of communicating with God, as is worship, and other things. I like to write in my prayer journal. Ever since the retreat, I have worked on my attitude toward God, and that in turn has changed my attitude toward myself, toward my classes, toward life in general, toward Josh, and toward the future. It's so cool to just be able to give everything to God.

I don't much like Christian cliches like the one I just used -- Give everything to God -- but it is a very good one, non the less. I just thought of an analogy. Josh isn't usually a big fan of my analogies, but sometimes they are good... :)

Picture yourself sitting down to eat this yummy, tender, juicy steak for dinner. Now, in my mind, steak is to mashed poatatoes as Jesus is to Christmas. So, you sit down, you cut up a few pieces of steak, you eat them, and then you bring your fork down, expecting it to slide in to this nice side helping of mashed potatoes loaded with tons of butter, salt, and don't forget the sour cream.. mmm. But ---GASP---- where are my mashed potatoes!!!?!?!?!?!? Yep, they aren't there. You get a little panicked, and you start screaming, and you may even throw something. Then Your mom kindly says, "Well, they are right there in front of you, dear. You must've gotten too caught up in the steak and forgotten to scoop yourself some potatoes!"

Okay, so where am I going with this... Well
life is the steak -- Pretty good, for the most part
God is the mashed potatoes -- the steak is good, yeah, but it is ALWAYS better with a Large heaping side of mashed potatoes. Life is way better with a LARGE HEAPING AMOUNT OF GOD
Your mom is... well, your mom. But I guess she could be that one event or catastophe in life that makes you realize that you can in any way eat that darn piece of steak without those mashed potatoes. That you can't go through this life without God.
Also, God was there all along.. just like the mashed potatoes. We just had to take our blinders off so we could focus on something bigger than ourselves.. the table... to find the mashed potatoes... God.

I think that this was one of my best analogies yet. This is how I've felt, anyway, since school has started. I think I was missing my mashed potatoes. I mean, I was getting along just fine in life, but it just wasn't as good as it could have been. And God was there all along. I realized this I think during the Fall Retreat, and then it has just been getting better and better. I am not living for myself, but rather for a bigger purpose, something bigger than I could ever hope to be. And sometimes, I don't think it feels that way, because what I possess as far as talents and such seems worthless, but I know that God has a plan for me. And I need to remember that.

Josh has been talking a lot about the Holy Spirit and how it is awesome that the Holy Spirit can intercede for us in two ways. The Holy Spirit has the words to say to God when we don't know what to say or how to say it. And, the Holy Spirit can tell us what God wants us to know. It is so cool that we have the ability to communicate with God. Communication is such a major part of our lives, and I think that it is how God wanted it to be. If we didn't have to communicate, we would never have to talk to each other, and we would never have to leave our houses. Or something like that. Basically, this world would never function without communication, and thats how God wanted it to be. Yeah, He may have made it a little harder for us to communicate with people by putting all these different languages down here, but that, to me, is just a challenge, a motivator to get out there and serve and break through those barriers to communicate the Word to all of God's people.

Think About It.

Oh, The Days

It's been awhile, so I will give some updates. Because people do read this after all!!! Yay!! :)

Okay, so last night was crazy. I definitely got to see how God works, and it is awesome.
We will start off by saying that the day was very bad for me. Work did not go well, and I just was in a bad mood. When Josh came to visit me, I wasn't the most exciting person to be around, so he talked for a while, and then headed out. I got out at six, and since Josh had the car to go to youth group (He is helping out with MMCC's youth!!), I walked home. It was a beautiful day out, so it was good for my grumpy brain to be able to walk it off.

When I got home, I was feeling a bit better, and I decided to do some physical activity. I am now learning how to salsa dance, and I think that I have recruited Josh to be my partner!!! I am not very good yet, but dancing is good for you, so I want to give it a try. I think we will be able to do it!! Youtube has some pretty good tutorials on how to do salsa dancing!

So anyway, that was kind of a tangent. After that, I took a shower and stuff, and Josh got home, and we got to go hang out with some pretty cool guys, Matt Moore and Josh Thompson (or as many people know him, Josh T.H.O). Matt and Josh played in the Towers residence hall for a program some students had set up, called tunes and treats. It was pretty cool to be able to sit down and talk with Matt and Josh, especially because I hadn't gotten to talk with Matt and just hang out for a long time.

While the four of us were sitting waiting for Matt and Josh's set to start (they were the last act), I got a phonecall from my brother saying that my Grandpa Bay was in the hospital because he got run over by a tractor. I freaked out, and told him we would be right there, and he said to come quickly. That officially freaked me out, and so I was like shaking, and speed walking to the car when my dad called me and told me that he should be fine, but they were transferring him from the Clare hospital to St. Mary's in Saginaw. I knew there wasn't much we could do, so Josh and I prayed for him, and my family ( i was crying a lot) and then headed back to hang out with Matt and Josh so my mind could be preoccupied.

My grandpa, as he was standing by the tractor outside, pushed the clutch in while he was standing NEXT TO the tractor, and it was in gear. It started moving and to escape being run over completely by the tractor, he dove under it. He kind of got all folded up under it, and because the bucket was on the back of the tractor, he got drug a little bit. My dad stopped the tractor just before it slammed in to the house, and then went to my grandpas aid. That's what happened.

We got updates and stuff, and my grandpa and mom and grandma made it to Saginaw, but didn't know anything yet. Josh and I decided to go to Clare for the night to be with my dad and brother, and that was comforting for me to be with family. You can see where the tractor ran up against the garage and also where it hit the door -- it came very close to the house!!

We came home around ten because I had work this morning. As of now, my grandpa only has multiple fractures and a bruised lung. I think he may have ruptured his spleen also. He is in a full body cast, and will be in a back brace and neck brace for the next six weeks. My grandpa is seventy years old, so it is only God's miracle that he came out of this with nothing worse than he got! God is good!!!

So I am quite tired.. I should probably go to bed because I have work in the morning at 8AM..

Does Anybody even read this???

Sometimes I wonder if I just write on here to write on here, because I don't think anyone reads it anyway.... Oh well, its fun to have a blog. It is a good distraction from homework. Josh just left for home and so I am all alone. Alicia is coming to pick me up though, to play Yahtzee with her, Leslie, and maybe Matt, so that will be nice... I won't have to be alone tonight.. But I still have to sleep here alone. It is super creepy. But it will be okay. Work tomorrow, during homecoming, should be a good time to get some homework done, and get some studying done. Also, I have realized that yogurt is my new best friend. It is only 2 points on the Weight Watchers program, so it is definitely a staple food. And, just recently, I have found that it tastes DELICIOUS if I freeze it before I eat it.. and it lasts longer that way!! WOOT. But I really need to lay off the yogurt.. I have eaten like, three of them today, and I will totally get constipated if I keep going at that rate!

A cool thing happened tonight.. I randomly saw a friend that I went to third grade with!! It was very random -- she is a friend of a girl in the drama group, and she came to visit this weekend, so she happened to be at the practice. It was super crazy. It was really great to see her, and I will get to see her more on Sunday, too. So that is cool. God is Good!

Distracted by the Worship Team

I think that I have been learning a lot in the state that I have been in the last few days. I have been pretty pulled away from God; unfortunately to say, it was of my own will. I think that I was trying to ignore what was going on inside of me, and just live how I wanted, or something like that. I am not sure.

Anyway, God has been teaching me a lot about fear. Actually, He has been teaching me that although I know about fear, and what it's definition is, I do not understand it at all. In any way, shape, or form. So, God is teaching me that I cannot do life alone, and that fear will control my life if I try to do it. (the worship team is talking and I can't really concentrate right now...)

But I think that it is cool that ****again, distracted by the worship team...***** Maybe I'll finish this later.. yeah, for sure..