Where we at?

K...I've been super lazy with updating this, but we had a busy summer and somewhere along the way, I kinda forgot that we had a blog to begin with so...yeah, here we are!

I'm going to recap a few big events from the summer and then quickly discuss more recent events.

1) Fourth of July/Missions trip

For the 4th of July, E and I went down to Bend to be with his folks. It was great just relaxing and eating good food and we even tried paddleboarding! I'm proud to say I'm the only one that didn't go flying into the water. ;)

The missions trip followed this right away and was a fantastic experience for the youth and a growing experience for me. ;) Mostly, I really enjoyed spending more time with the girls on the trip and bonding with them.

2) Portfolio shuffling

Eric and I are no longer officially youth pastors. We are still working with the youth group, but we are no longer co-leading or planning, etc. Instead, we are trying to refocus into growing a group of young adults since there was nothing available for young adults and hasn't really ever been something for young adults at our church, so everyone on staff felt that this area needed to be filled and Eric and I are working on that. Prayers would be appreciated!!

3) Summer camp

Eric didn't go to summer camp because of this, and then the pastor who led our group there caught the bug going around camp and was super sick. :S

4) Labor Day weekend

For the long weekend, E and I went down to Mt. St. Helens to go camping with his family and go huckleberry picking. There were nine of us total, and it was tons of fun. The huckleberries weren't easily found, but it was still a fun weekend. My huckleberries are in the freezer, waiting to be made into a pie at some point. I don't know when I'll get around to it, but every time I see the tupperware they are in, my heart smiles.

5) Grad school!

Eric is currently enrolled in grad school. He is taking online courses from Knox Theological Seminary in Florida through Logos, and so far, he has perfect scores. Yeah, baby! So proud of him. :) The program will take three years, so if you read this, please pray that his motivation will last. :)

While on the topic of grad school, I recently applied as well and am waiting to hear back from the school on whether or not they will accept me. My admissions counselor said they have a pretty high acceptance rate, so that's promising. I just hope that financial aid will be good. If everything works out with finances and acceptance, I'll start my own online courses come January.

I think that's everything for now. Enjoy the random Instagram pics at the bottom of this post. ;)

date night!

Last night, Eric and I had a date--woo! It was lovely. :) We went for dinner and a movie--a classic combo--and ayre some Thai food at Southcenter before going to see Brave.

Highlights: the gal dressed as Merida who took our tickets for the movie, the extraordinarily long line of people waiting to go see the movie, and just how fantastic the film was. It was wonderful!

I wanted to be like Queen Elinor as I felt like I've already been like Merida. I was delighted by the mother/daughter story and the family dynamics. It was so lovely! Eric and I both laughed a ton and Eric almost cried while I cried several times.

If you haven't considered seeing this movie, I highly encourage you to change your mind! It is wonderful!

gradumacations

Tonight, Eric and I will attend our fourth graduation in ten days. Fortunately, I think it will be our last one for awhile, but holy cow...so many!

I am very proud of everyone who we know that graduated (& will graduate this evening). To Tony and Gwen (college graduates and siblings): I have much faith that you will both be excellent teachers! To Erica and Gracie: I am so excited for you to start college. You two are already leaders, and I feel better about the future knowing you'll both have a hand in making it great. To Mark and Elisha: I know you'll make great men because you are both trying to learn all that you can now. Always be teachable. :)

Kudos to you all!

babies and cannibalism

Me: Whenever I see cute babies with chubby cheeks, I just want to chew on them...

Eric: Have you been snorting bath salts?

This *may* be a good reason to hold off on having kids for awhile.

upcoming

We have a couple of big youth events coming up this summer, and I'm getting really excited about it! The first one is coming up really soon in early July, and it will be a missions trip. The second big event will be summer camp in late August.

Because Eric and I work at the same place, we can't take off time together, so I'm going on the missions trip and he's heading up the camp. We've asked one of the young adults to help chaperone with him. She'll be great!

For the missions trip, we're going to be traveling all over! We'll be at a conference in Sacramento, then we'll join up with Bridgetown Ministries in Portland for an event, then we'll wrap up the trip in Yakima. It's going to be exhausting, but I'm excited too. I just hope we can get more kids signed up! :)

Summer camp is always a fun event, and the timing for this one makes it right before school starts back up, which we're hoping will get our teens pumped up and ready to start spiritual wildfires at their schools. Also, we hope that we will be able to have non-Christian students attend and hear about God. So many hopes for this summer!

Together, these events will cost about $500. If you are reading this blog and would like to bless the youth of Rainier Valley, consider helping financially. We can always add to the scholarship fund!

If you do want to contribute, please send a check (w/ youth scholarship fun in the memo line) to:

Trinity Life Center
4402 S. Graham Street
Seattle, WA 98118

Thank you!

mw2

On Saturday, I had the fun times of hanging out with a few different gals from the youth group, and one of the things we did was play video games. We started with Left 4 Dead 2 then progressed to death matches on Modern Warfare 2.

It ended up being one girl against three because we kept trading off one of the controllers and she beat us all. This was my first time playing MW2, and I thought out was such fun that I asked Eric to play with me, thinking that I could hold my own while conveniently forgetting that he probably has days of practice on me.

After the first couple of rounds, I was getting really frustrated, so we went to the smallest map, turned the radar on, and Eric resorted to simply knifing instead of using any of his firearms. I still lost, but only by about six kills. ;) Yeah...he's got gaming skills!

intro to Rainier Valley

Last night, Eric and I went out to dinner with a friends of mine from high school. His sister, who lives in the area, is going to China soon, so he came back from Michigan to spend time with her before she takes off this summer.

This could only mean two things: 1) hanging out, 2) Ethiopian food. My friend and his sister are friends with some Ethiopians who run a restaurant, so we decided to meet there. Lo and behold, said restaurant is only a mile or so south of us on Rainier Avenue.

So we met up and got to meet the owners of the restaurant and some other friends of my friend's who met us for dinner, and it was all well and good. Delicious food!!

At the end of dinner, cop cars and aid cars began screaming down Rainier Avenue. None of us knew what was going on, but later, we found out that there had been a shooting down the street--the second time in a week at that location--and that the SPD gang unit was called in. Welcome to the neighborhood?

In all honesty, this news broke my heart. We live in such a mission field with needs all around us, and there is so much brokenness just down the street. Trying to figure out where to start or what to do to meet these needs is overwhelming. Please pray with us to know how best to approach our community.

the dude date

Eric and I hadn't been on a date in awhile, so we decided at the end of work on Friday to reschedule my chiropractic appointment and have a night to ourselves instead. We ended up going to Southcenter for dinner and a movie, and halfway through eating, I realized that we were on a "dude" date.

See, we grabbed food at Johnny Rocket in the mall, then we went to see The Avengers, which, I have to say, is an amazing movie. LOVE Joss Whedon. :) Anyway, burgers and an action flick definitely make for a good time for guys, and although I highly enjoyed our evening, I told Eric that the next time we go on a date, we're totally getting pedicures.

HA! Just kidding, the idea of a stranger touching my feet squicks me out. Even though I probably could use a professional pedicure, I ain't gettin' one if I can help it!


Anyway, if you haven't see this movie yet, I highly recommend it as it is absolutely delightful. The action sequences were stellar, there were great one liners, and most of the acting was pretty dang spectacular.

On a side note, this film doesn't pass the Bechdel test because even though there are multiple women in the film--with names!--who talk about things other than men, none of them--as far as I can remember--talked to each other, and that is a shame. They are strong characters, except for the form fitting jumpsuits and wedge heels they all seem to wear, and I would have liked to see them in the same conversations. Still, I appreciate that they aren't always needing rescuing.

On another side note, after we got to the mall, I realized that I hadn't brought chapstick, so we spent 20 minutes roaming the mall to try to find a place for me to buy some--I'm kind of ocd about chapstick--and all we found were tubes of lip balm for $8. Srsly? Lip balm?

On an even different side note, I also noticed once I sat down for dinner that the jeans I was wearing had a tear under the right butt pocket that I had forgotten about prior to dressing for the date. I was VERY glad that I had brought along an extra large sweatshirt so I was able to wear that and hide the hole easily. Phew!

If you've seen The Avengers, what do you think about it? Like me, did you fall in love with the Hulk? He easily became my favorite character, and I didn't know it was possible to love a villain as much as I enjoyed watching Loki be, well, Loki.

Commencement for Mom (Shaw)!

Shtuff

Life has been crazy busy for us and those around us lately. Last week, Eric and I both shared our testimonies at TYM, and the youth attending were very receptive to what we had to say as well as being grateful that we showed them our trust in sharing some painful experiences from our pasts. God is good, and I praise him for using what the devil meant for evil to bring glory back to God. He is awesome.

Friday night, we hosted a board game night at the church for the youth, and the first wrench in our plans was the wedding that was going to happen the next day which they were already setting up for that night. We had to make some adjustments to our plans and hosted downstairs, and it was incredible how many kids showed up. I think we had around 20-25 teens show up, which is a lot for our little church, and it was a great night! We also had a couple of younger neighbor kids come in, and even though they were a lot younger than the target audience, we were hard pissed to kick them out.

Several of the teens that came don't attend church and/or believe I'm other faiths, so it was great to see them join our community even for a little while.

There have been two recent births, one from church, one from work, and both deliveries went well and babies and mothers are healthy.

My folks are sharing at TYM tomorrow about missions, and one of our girls who recently returned from a trip to Guatemala will also share about her experience. Our co-youth pastors are currently in Africa on a missions trip, so we continue to keep them in our prayers. They started in Uganda and are now in the second half of their trip in Ethiopia.

This Saturday, my mom is graduating with her MA in Missional Leadership, so that entire day is going to be pretty crazy busy, but my grandma is coming up, so that is very exciting! She had brain surgery last fall, and her recovery was slow and discouraging, so this is great news that she can still travel and is well enough now to be able to do so!

As you can see, lots going on!

they are evil

Rosie did this to my foot last night. She was play fighting with Pippin in the living room and decided that the best springboard would be my bare foot. Stupid cat. >:(

rainy days

Katniss?

One of our yutes saw this pic and said, "Katniss??" Hey, I'll take it! ;)

for the love of God

Today, one of our "yutes" performed at Fine Arts Festival. Eric and I brought a host of other yutes up to cheer him on during his performance, and we continued on through the "celebration service" where winners were announced and the "meritorial award" winners performed their gigs on site.

It was pretty cool--I'd never been involved growing up since I lived in Africa--and even though our guy didn't place this year, I really hope we can push this to our group for next year. Best part of today, besides hearing our guy rock his performance (he SHOULD have placed!!!) was watching how he took not placing and going on to nationals. He at least didn't show his disappointment, and he took it like a champ. Good news: he's a sophomore this year, so he has two more years, and a whole lot of time to polish his work and style. Also, he's only been writing since about November of 2011--and he's amazing already!

A lot of the students that come to our youth group are wicked talented. We have dancers and singers and musicians and artists and one of the gals placed second last year in vocal talent, was invited to nationals, and didn't enter this year. (WHAT?!) That said, my creative juices started flowing, and I really want to push these guys and gals to be confident in their talents, to show their talents to the world, and to use them to glorify God.

the man in black with a kitty cat

I currently have this picture as my phone background, and it makes me smile a little every time I see it.

spring sprang upon us (finally)

Seattle catches a lot of flak for being such a rainy city, and I've been teased about growing gills and having webbed fingers and toes all because this is where I call "home" for now. However, I would posit that there are few places more lovely than Seattle in the spring.

We have gorgeous mornings full of chilly air and bright sunshine and haunted by the smells of damp grass and soil and cherry blossoms. Add a cup of coffee to that vignette or a morning walk, and that is a picture of contentment, good sirs and madames!

During our morning commute, I look forward to seeing the bald eagle perched on a light post in the middle of the 520 bridge. S/he is huge, and the seagulls are dwarfed in comparison. I also look forward to walking around campus at work, showing my pace between buildings so I can soak up more sunshine and refill my depleted vitamin D reserves.

The days are exponentially longer--or so they seem--and I feel generally more productive now that winter has released us from its hungry clutches. Now is the time to tackle big projects, to change up habits. I've been nesting at our new place (getting close to finishing, I think!), and I'm starting to transition from chemical/toxic cleaners to natural ones. (I made natural dishwasher detergent last night!)

Spring also promises new hope. In spring, we celebrate Easter, or when Jesus died and then rose from the dead, thereby redeeming mankind and atoning for our sin. This is a big deal for me! Because of this, I can no longer be defined by my past mistakes, I find a new identity in Christ. Woo!

What is your favorite part about spring?

the sounds of music

We now have a record player (YAY!), and Eric just set up the sound system so now we can listen to it without using headphones. ;) Currently listening to the honeyed sounds of Nat King Cole and MAN, that guy could sing. Gorgeous voice!

There is something so wonderful about listening to music on vinyl instead of digitally. I don't know what it is, but it seems like it's a better sound. It probably isn't, but it sounds much richer to me.

Easter