Our summer has been surprisingly eventful, particularly toward the end. In July, we went on a vacation to the Washington coast with Stephen's parents and alllllll his siblings, including Mary and Tim and their two little ones, and also Cari's boyfriend, Eric. We just spent a week at a resort town in the process of development, walking on the beach, hanging out and playing games at the house, swimming in the pool and relaxing in the hot tub. We each took turns cooking dinner. We had some very tasty steak-and-veggie kabobs by Cari and Eric, a yummy Mexican meal by Tim and Mary, and Stephen and I made spaghetti. It was a very relaxing, laid-back vacation all together.
Shortly after the family vacation, Stephen shot his first paid wedding gig. There is a lot invested in wedding days, so he was under a lot of stress leading up to the wedding day, and also some in the photo editing phase as well. But he finished it, and the couple was very, very pleased with the photos, for which we are very thankful.
In August, one of my college friends got married, so I flew down to Idaho and stayed with my aunt, uncle, and cousin and attended Mindy's wedding, which was butterfly garden themed--very pretty! They put a lot of humorous personal touches to their ceremony and the reception was one big, fun party, complete with a photo booth and props. :) I got to catch up with some old friends and meet some new ones and had a really good weekend all together. I am really glad I got to go.
My car's A/C stopped working sometime earlier this year, and we finally took it to get checked out in August, and found out we had to get a new part and the whole thing had to be reassembled. God graciously provided the money for us, and we fixed it toward the end of August. In the same month, I had to get a new car key, because the buttons on my remote-entry car key didn't work anymore! And today I got into a rear-end car accident (I was rear-ended by a car who was rear-ended by a car), but I'm not hurt at all and the damage to my car is very minimal. The accident was not my fault at all, so insurance will be taking care of everything.
We've had an Indian summer this September, with temperatures in the high 80s and 90s. I think the weather is trying to make up for the very cold and dark beginning of summer we had! For now I am totally okay with sunshiny weather....I know those cold dark days are coming again!
Our church got a new music pastor, an answer to prayer after 3 years of searching for the right person. Our church is now able to do so much more music-wise than we were before, because our temporary worship leader was doing so much other work in his position as Communications Director. Now at our women's Bible study, Mark (the new worship pastor) comes and leads us in worship with a guitar, and we don't have to sing off a CD! I am especially thankful for that.
Another answer to prayer is that Stephen got a nice raise this year, and we are so grateful for God's provision there! Now it is actually a possibility for us to move into a bigger apartment, although we won't be taking advantage of that just yet. For now it does ease up our budget some, and we'll hopefully be able to start putting more money toward debt repayment.
Overall, I think this year has been an incredible year of growth for us and our marriage. I've grown in my faith in leaps and bounds, and as I've spiritually matured, I'm maturing in other ways. Praise God for His faithfulness! I sense good changes coming up for us. I'm hoping to find my niche in the church we attend, although I'm not sure what that is yet. And Stephen will be leading our regular small group Bible study again. This year we will probably be going through 1 Corinthians to go along with our pastor's sermon series. You can pray for us through that. We want to help our fellow brothers and sisters deepen their faith, as many of them are new Christians or just aren't sure how to grow deeper. So you can be praying especially for Stephen as he bears the responsibility of teacher, and for me as I try to figure out where I fit into the mix.
Those are the biggest pieces of news. Thank you for your prayers and your support! You don't know how much it helps. :)
Showing posts with label ministry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ministry. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Mystery Dessert Theater
A month or so ago Stephen and I saw on our church's website (www.countrysidechurch.com) for a Mystery Dinner Theater event happening May 30th. We'd both heard about them before and wanted to go to one, but neither of us had been to one. We signed up right away.
The week after we signed up we were given pamphlets for our characters - Stephen was "Mark" and I was "Maria." The pamphlets had directions for how to play the game, descriptions of the other character couples, and our own personal character backgrounds. We were strictly ordered to not look at each other's pamphlets because there might be secret information in there. :D
My story was fairly simple. "Mark" and I started dating after his twin sister Marilyn was killed by a "fall down some stairs" at our graduation party. (Hmm, suspicious.....) Before, I had been part of a very popular group of people, dating a very popular boy, "Michael." But Michael had never felt right for me; I just dated him because he was an acceptable boy to the group I was a part of. Mark was NOT an acceptable boy, and the leader of my group, "Jenny" (not my friend Jenny!! :D ), had kicked me out of the group when I started dating Mark.
"Mark" was a CIA agent. He won't tell me anymore than that.
Our two characters were happily married with two kids and a dog; "Mark's" cover was that he was a very successful mystery novel writer and traveled a lot to write his books. That's what everybody else knew about us.
Other information everybody had was that one of our classmates, "David," had been killed two nights earlier, and the murderer was suspected to be at the party. So we all had to figure out who the murderer was. We were given confidential information at the start of the party, plus a few goals to accomplish in the course of the evening.
The rest we had to make up! What an adventure! I was glad I only knew a few people in real life at the event--that made it much easier to excuse my acting horrendously toward the people my character was supposed to hate (i.e. "Jenny"). But it was still so awkward at first, with trying to keep everybody's stories straight, checking my notes, having to think really hard to ask the right questions of the right characters.
It got worse as the night wore on--learning so much information! Toward the end of the party, our pastor, Paul, was pelting Steve and I with questions (he was the best question-asker!) and he asked me, "Were you ever in a relationship with 'Michael'?" I had completely forgotten about that part of my character's story, and I said straightforwardly, "Yes. I was." And Paul's reaction was SO dramatic. He gasped at me with big eyes and said, "You never told me that!" and ran off to tell other people!
Somehow Stephen kept all the information straight and wound together a very nice little theory that tied together all the deaths that had happened in our class's history. His theory was off, but he did get the killer right!
The theme was '57 class reunion, so we were supposed to dress in 50s style. I was dressed in a black-and-white shirtdress, white heels and a black chunky necklace. Stephen wore, like 99% of the other guys, a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Guys have it easy, LOL. The music was great! We swing danced to it at the beginning--what fun!
There are a lot of other stories I could tell, but I don't have room for them all here. I really enjoyed it, though. I want to do more so I can get good at it. :)
------------------------------------------------------
In other news...
Stephen's toes haven't healed as quickly as we hoped. He went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago because they had suddenly turned bright pink and swelled up. The doctor said it was because he wasn't cleaning them out well enough and did a pretty brutal cleaning-out on him that day. He also gave us a prescription for cortisporin.
Stephen was in horrible pain all week--worse than it had hurt before the surgery, which really concerned him. So we went back again. The doctor said they were looking better, despite our protests, and cleaned them out again, slightly less brutally this time. He asked us if we'd been using the cortisporin. We hadn't--after an hour and a half wait at Walgreen's, we were told that they didn't have any and couldn't make any, but we could just use cortizone and neosporin and get the same effect. The doctor was annoyed at us or them and emphasized the cortisporin again. So we finally got the cortisporin and Stephen's toes finally started showing signs of healing.
He's still soaking and bandaging them every night. But the good news is, they're finally down to itching instead of hurting. And they are definitely looking better. He has yet another follow-up appointment tomorrow, but I have a feeling the doctor will just say, "They're doing fine. Don't come back." :P
Other updates: I still don't have a job, but worked for Stephen's grandma for a couple weeks and my mom a couple times to earn some spending money. I volunteer at Medical Teams International now, with the REAL. LIFE. Exhibit, a couple hours a week. I'll save that story for another blog, I think.
Stephen and I are still teaching our Iraqi refugee family. School will be ending soon and the kids will no longer have homework for us to help them with, so we aren't sure what God wants us to do with them next. I've gotten to know their personalities and love them to pieces. If my experience with them ends, I will look for other opportunities to teach refugees English, because I honestly do love it.
I love it so much that I've been thinking of going to graduate school to get a master's for teaching English as a second language. I have so much information left to gather about that, though, before I do it. I still don't think I have the constitution for a career in public schools, so I need to find out where else I would go with it.
That's all for now!
The week after we signed up we were given pamphlets for our characters - Stephen was "Mark" and I was "Maria." The pamphlets had directions for how to play the game, descriptions of the other character couples, and our own personal character backgrounds. We were strictly ordered to not look at each other's pamphlets because there might be secret information in there. :D
My story was fairly simple. "Mark" and I started dating after his twin sister Marilyn was killed by a "fall down some stairs" at our graduation party. (Hmm, suspicious.....) Before, I had been part of a very popular group of people, dating a very popular boy, "Michael." But Michael had never felt right for me; I just dated him because he was an acceptable boy to the group I was a part of. Mark was NOT an acceptable boy, and the leader of my group, "Jenny" (not my friend Jenny!! :D ), had kicked me out of the group when I started dating Mark.
"Mark" was a CIA agent. He won't tell me anymore than that.
Our two characters were happily married with two kids and a dog; "Mark's" cover was that he was a very successful mystery novel writer and traveled a lot to write his books. That's what everybody else knew about us.
Other information everybody had was that one of our classmates, "David," had been killed two nights earlier, and the murderer was suspected to be at the party. So we all had to figure out who the murderer was. We were given confidential information at the start of the party, plus a few goals to accomplish in the course of the evening.
The rest we had to make up! What an adventure! I was glad I only knew a few people in real life at the event--that made it much easier to excuse my acting horrendously toward the people my character was supposed to hate (i.e. "Jenny"). But it was still so awkward at first, with trying to keep everybody's stories straight, checking my notes, having to think really hard to ask the right questions of the right characters.
It got worse as the night wore on--learning so much information! Toward the end of the party, our pastor, Paul, was pelting Steve and I with questions (he was the best question-asker!) and he asked me, "Were you ever in a relationship with 'Michael'?" I had completely forgotten about that part of my character's story, and I said straightforwardly, "Yes. I was." And Paul's reaction was SO dramatic. He gasped at me with big eyes and said, "You never told me that!" and ran off to tell other people!
Somehow Stephen kept all the information straight and wound together a very nice little theory that tied together all the deaths that had happened in our class's history. His theory was off, but he did get the killer right!
The theme was '57 class reunion, so we were supposed to dress in 50s style. I was dressed in a black-and-white shirtdress, white heels and a black chunky necklace. Stephen wore, like 99% of the other guys, a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Guys have it easy, LOL. The music was great! We swing danced to it at the beginning--what fun!
There are a lot of other stories I could tell, but I don't have room for them all here. I really enjoyed it, though. I want to do more so I can get good at it. :)
------------------------------------------------------
In other news...
Stephen's toes haven't healed as quickly as we hoped. He went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago because they had suddenly turned bright pink and swelled up. The doctor said it was because he wasn't cleaning them out well enough and did a pretty brutal cleaning-out on him that day. He also gave us a prescription for cortisporin.
Stephen was in horrible pain all week--worse than it had hurt before the surgery, which really concerned him. So we went back again. The doctor said they were looking better, despite our protests, and cleaned them out again, slightly less brutally this time. He asked us if we'd been using the cortisporin. We hadn't--after an hour and a half wait at Walgreen's, we were told that they didn't have any and couldn't make any, but we could just use cortizone and neosporin and get the same effect. The doctor was annoyed at us or them and emphasized the cortisporin again. So we finally got the cortisporin and Stephen's toes finally started showing signs of healing.
He's still soaking and bandaging them every night. But the good news is, they're finally down to itching instead of hurting. And they are definitely looking better. He has yet another follow-up appointment tomorrow, but I have a feeling the doctor will just say, "They're doing fine. Don't come back." :P
Other updates: I still don't have a job, but worked for Stephen's grandma for a couple weeks and my mom a couple times to earn some spending money. I volunteer at Medical Teams International now, with the REAL. LIFE. Exhibit, a couple hours a week. I'll save that story for another blog, I think.
Stephen and I are still teaching our Iraqi refugee family. School will be ending soon and the kids will no longer have homework for us to help them with, so we aren't sure what God wants us to do with them next. I've gotten to know their personalities and love them to pieces. If my experience with them ends, I will look for other opportunities to teach refugees English, because I honestly do love it.
I love it so much that I've been thinking of going to graduate school to get a master's for teaching English as a second language. I have so much information left to gather about that, though, before I do it. I still don't think I have the constitution for a career in public schools, so I need to find out where else I would go with it.
That's all for now!
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