Flower

OK, I need to get to work and have no time for blogging at the moment, but I did want to show off this one nice photo I got last night while hiking around the Center trails.

Is Everyone In a Bad Mood?

It seems like many people with whom I have normal interaction are going through sizable amounts of stress at the moment, and as a result are being, well, grouchy. At times like this I struggle with my responses to them. Or more to the point, not my responses really, but more my attitude. Sometimes I'm tempted to act nice even though I think my efforts could indeed be acting. It would be better if I were just strong and mature enough to honestly bless those who curse, and really not be hurt. Instead, maybe the best I can do is "dishonestly" bless and pretend not to be hurt. Is there any wisdom in the "fake it 'til you make it" idea?

The whole concept of doing good when I feel like doing evil is one I struggle with.

Sarah and Stephen's Wedding

We had a busy and fun weekend celebrating the marriage of the little girl next door (Sarah) to a Wycliffe MK (Stephen). We've known Sarah since she was a toddler. The guy she has chosen is the kind of man any Christian mother would want for her daughter--a mature believer, kind, funny and with good communication skills. Sarah, you done good! We pray God's blessings on you both for a strong and happy marriage.

Click below to see photos in a web album. Many of the photos are of not that great quality, but you'll get the idea. (My little camera doesn't do so well in low light.)

Sarah and Stephen Forster's wedding

Honoring Sarah

We had a fun day today. We drove south about 30 minutes to scenic Waxahachie, TX.

The bridal luncheon to honor Sarah was hosted by her future mother-in-law at a lovely antique shop and restaurant called The Dove's Nest.

Mrs. Forster and her daughters made some very nice table decorations

which we took home as souvenirs.

It was nice to meet the older sister for whom we have prayed much. She is living proof that with God's grace one can overcome brain cancer and live to take care of one's toddler girls.

Sarah with her mother-in-law and her mother.

Sarah with Rachel.

It's Time for School

This morning I drove through the parent drop-off lane and left my child at Acton Elementary. It brought back memories of years past, but this time I was dropping off a teacher, not a student. (Well, not a regular teacher, a sub.) The school looks pretty much like it did 20 years ago, at least on the outside.

Speaking of teacher, Rachel started her new part time job last night at Sylvan Learning Center. It went pretty well, and they've told her she can get paid for the times she came and observed in the last two weeks, so that is nice. They don't actually do the official training (which she also gets paid for) until you've worked a week. I see some wisdom in that because it will make you pay attention better if you already know what parts are hard. One immediate need is to learn a bucketful of acronyms--each book has a different name and the teacher worksheets are loaded with what looks like cryptic code.

And hopefully she can get back to driving herself to work tomorrow because a few minutes ago we picked up her car from the body shop. Once it gets a new headlight, it will be back in business. The parents of the 4-year old who caused the accident will be happy to learn how little the nice guy charged to do the repairs.

Update

It has been a week since I've updated. I guess not too much exciting going on with me at the moment. The week did pass by quite quickly, so I guess I was busy doing something.

One thing I spent time on this past week was stuff for David and Sarah's upcoming wedding. Sarah's mom and I talked for a couple hours last Sunday evening, talking mostly about the family dinner that Gary and I will host, flowers, and travel and housing arrangements.

I decided to try the Google Calendar and Google Documents which are set up such that you can share ownership of the online documents. I made a calendar that includes all the travel information for all the out of town guests and invited David, Sarah, and Sarah's parents to collaborate with me on it. They have permission to edit the calendar so we can all be on the same (virtual) page. The calendar thing worked so well I also made a Google document spreadsheet with all the arrival and departure time for those traveling to Seattle so that Sarah's parents can us it to help arrange housing.

I got so enamored with the technology I decided to try Evite for the dinner we are hosting Friday evening, the day before the wedding. This dinner is in place of the traditional post-rehearsal dinner. (The rehearsal will actually be on Thursday night due to the fact that the wedding venue is not available on Friday.) I've made a draft of an Evite and but am still working on it:



In other news, it looks like Rachel has a new part time job at Sylvan Learning Center, a commercial tutoring service. She is supposed to start on Monday. It will only be a few hours a week for now, but she hopes it will grow into something more during the summer. She continues to do what she can to string a variety of part time jobs together, but none of them offer health insurance. She spent almost a full month's earnings on getting her eyes examined and buying new glasses recently. She has a difficult and expensive prescription, but she loves her new glasses and keeps going around noting how clear and bright everything is now! And if you want to know how her car had an accident a couple days ago while she was taking a nap, you can read about that here.

Spring Is Here, and That Means Wildflowers

Add Insult to Injury

A few weeks ago someone decided I could no longer be their friend, and they removed me from their Facebook friends. Then yesterday Facebook splatted said person's profile photo on my Facebook saying, "You may know this person. Add them as a Friend!"

German Bread and Picnicking

Rachel has really been getting her dose of Germany this month. (BTW, she has posted her photos on her blog and Facebook, if anyone is interested in seeing them.) Just a few days after returning from Germany, a German friend came to visit. Laila and Rachel decided to make German Bread, and it turned out really well.

Laila is the younger sister of Rachel's friend Daniela whom she knew during high school days.

We've taken Laila shopping and she is filling up her suitcase with vanilla root beer, beef jerky, and fruit rollups.

Laila joined us tonight we took our soup group to Cedar Hill State Park and didn't have soup! Instead it was burgers and brats and smores, of course.

We didn't manage to get our group-lounging-on-the-blanket photo before the sun fell into the lake. And by the looks, the cement pad where the picnic table used to be is also falling into the lake. Erosion happens.

Kiss

I'm internet friends with a young woman who is serving the Lord as a teacher in Iraq. She wrote a thoughtful blog for today as our thoughts are about our dead and risen savior.

Her blog about kissing reminded me of a line in a Michael Card (my favorite contemporary Christian singer) song: "that's not what a kiss is for."

Faith and Flowers

One spring a few years ago our back yard was suddenly full of wild violets, and they've returned each spring since. Nice for someone like me who is into wildflowers.

I keep thinking about faith and how to define it--how to know what it is and what it isn't. Since a friend of mine has recently abandoned the faith, I'm paying much closer attention to what the scriptures actually say about faith.

One thing I've recently noted is from the book of James--that somehow, poor people are more likely to have faith than rich people.

James 2:5 Listen, my dear friends! God chose the poor people of this world to be rich in faith

The context of this verse, is James scolding his readers who are giving preferential treatment to the wealthy folks in the congregation. He is urging them to treat everyone the same, and furthermore, he says, the poor are more likely to have faith in Christ than the rich.

Wow, that doesn't make much sense, does it? But when I was pondering this, I started to analyze who the rich and the poor are. My conclusion: the poor are typically less educated than the rich. Is that a coincidence? Maybe not. Maybe the more we learn, the harder it is to believe?

That thought took me on to another: What about Christian apologists? You know, people who collect all the evidence that God is, that Christ lived and died and rose again, and, and, and. WE LOVE TO READ THOSE BOOKS! We love to have our faith confirmed by hard facts.*

But wait--if we have hard facts, then what about faith? This is one thing I'm puzzled about. If a Christian apologist can make such a great case for Christianity, then what is the role of faith? After all, it doesn't take faith to accept something that's been proven--it just takes common sense.

The best I can sort this out at the moment is that God provides a few "facts," (things about Christianity that are historically provable), but not enough of them such that every human being would have to accept them. That is where faith comes in and that is why faith is part of the picture. A very big part of the picture, in fact.

I'm going to keep thinking about faith.

------------
*Please note, I'm not intending to say anything negative against Josh McDowell. Nor am I saying it is bad to be educated. But it does seem to be that faith for an educated person is somewhat of a different animal than for a non-educated one.

Bad Weather

I'm feeling a bit of anxiety (though why I mention that here, I don't know, since blogs don't seem to be that great of a place to express negative emotions) at the moment due to the heavy rain and the fact that I'm supposed to drive to the airport to pick up my husband and daughter coming in this afternoon. Their flight took off two hours late from Frankfurt, I suppose in order to not hit the worst of it here.

Many outbound flights are being canceled; I don't know what they are doing with inbound flights.

And not only the worry about flights, I now have to drive to the airport during rush hour. :-(

Sarah's Bridal Shower

Sarah Cover's bridal shower (with details about the cake)

Click on the above photo to go to the web album that shows some of the steps for making the cake I posted yesterday.

Also included are photos from the shower this morning. It was a lovely shower, and Sarah got lots of great gifts.

Labor of Love

It took me two full days to make this. Now I hope I can transport it to the bridal shower tomorrow without wrecking it!

Jury Duty

Today I drove downtown to answer my jury summons, which had been postponed from earlier when Laura was here last month. I was in the first panel, sent upstairs to the 6th floor of the George Allen court building. These are two photos I took from the 6th floor while waiting for the attorneys to get their acts together. (There was a list of forbidden items, but cameras were not on the list!)

If you know your Dallas history, you may recognize a bit of Dealey Plaza and the famous triple underpass on the far right of the photo. But it is mostly covered up with trees. The famous "grassy knoll" lies along Elm street and cannot be seen in this photo; the grassy knoll you see here is opposite that on the Commerce street side of the triple underpass.


Directly in line with our court holding tank was the Kennedy Memorial.



The 36 of us on the jury panel went through the voir dire process, and it seemed like it got a bit out of hand. It was a civil case involving a car accident and the woman pressing the law suit was represented by a personal injury lawyer who actually asked us, "Do you dislike me? Because if you do, I'll excuse you from serving and I won't hold it against you." I couldn't quite say I disliked him, but he did look a lot like Mr. Bean.

Mr. Bean got us all a bit on edge when he went into minute detail about that famous McDonald's hot coffee case from several years ago, like we were all supposed to know the specific details about that. Then a bunch of potential jurors asked to be excused when they learned that in a personal injury auto accident case it is against Texas law to say anything about car insurance. While I said I could try the case without regard to insurance, that rule seems a bit stupid. Because of course, whether a person is insured or not can be part of the reason a law suit is brought against them.

Anyway, as our stomachs were growling for lunch, we were sent out into the hall to wait some more. A few minutes later we were brought in and told the parties had settled. They weren't allowed to say who "won," but we could figure out a few things by the looks on the faces.

Wishing You A Great Trip

Who on earth did they hire as an art consultant when they built the new Terminal D at DFW??

I've been left alone for a week. 8 days, actually. And my desire for some peace and quiet is already being thwarted by jury duty tomorrow.

Life Goes On

The baby shower was oozing in hormones--three pregnant women were there. Janet and Sarah made some great sandwiches and Italian cream cake was for dessert. Gwennie got lots of nice baby boy things. There was a game to guess the mother-to-be's girth. Another old lady and I tied with a guess of 40 inches. So she and I had a playoff by guessing the measurement across the belly, top to bottom. I won with 14 inches, and got a Starbucks card for my reward. Too bad I don't like coffee.

The wedding was nice too. Lovely hammered dulcimer and guitar music by Paul and Cathy McAndrews. There was a minor hitch during the ceremony when the unity candle refused to stay lit. They kept trying and trying. The accompanying song finished and they still kept trying. Finally a groomsman produced a jackknife from his pocket and the groom did some excavation on the candle, and then it stayed lit. Pastor Ken used it as a humorous teachable moment: "You know, becoming one isn't all that easy." True enough.

Cards

I wonder how many greeting cards I will have to make before I break even on the money I've spent to buy the stamps, ink, paper, etc?

I don't just sit around and make cards for fun. It is more like "cards on demand" whenever a baby shower or wedding come up.


Speaking of which, tomorrow we've got a baby shower at 11 and a wedding at 2 and the cards have been stamped and signed, ready for delivery.

Today I Voted

...for Ron Paul.

I hate politics. I have no clue about global economy. I just deal with life on a personal level. Ron Paul at least takes my personal stance on the abortion issue. (Now how that translates into legislation for him, I don't really know.)

If I were voting for someone to be my personal friend, I would have voted for Huckabee. He seems like an all-around nice guy.

However, neither Ron Paul nor Mike Huckabee have a chance, so, perhaps it was futile to even vote.

Another observation: at my precinct, the Democrat-Republican line was drawn very obviously along racial lines.

Rejoicing With Friends

This isn't the best quality video in the world, but the content is great. It shows the dedication of the Mofu New Testament which took place a couple weeks ago in Cameroon. Carrying a translation project all the way through to completion is really hard, there are so many things that can go wrong. So we praise God for the persistence our coworkers have had in order to be able to finish well.

And now we hear news of unrest in Cameroon. Our other colleagues who went there to escape unrest in Chad are really wondering what's up.