At long last...

Last year, on September 26th, to be exact, Whitney, Erin, and I got to hear Paul Rusesabagina speak on Darfur and his experience in Rwanda. Our friend Kelsey Schmitt took this picture and we've wanted it for the last year so you can imagine my surprise when I opened my email this morning to find it, so now, finally, here we are.



Erin was totally star struck, she got all giggly and kept saying, "I touched Paul Rusesabagina!"

Random Me

I wasn't going to do this, but I enjoyed reading everyones else's random facts,so I decided to join in. Even though it it creepily similar to a chain letter.

Random Fact 1: I have had a crush on my husband since I was 14 years old.

Random Fact 2: From third grade through about seventh grade I had an imaginary horse/friend I played with named Apple Juice (creative I know).

Random Fact 3: I put Cavenders Seasoning on my popcorn and I love it!

Random Fact 4: I have had Giardia three times in my life and I've had the runs on and off since 2005 (sorry, I know that's TMI).

Random Fact 5: I make up weird songs about meaningless things and sing them while dancing around the living room. I do this fairly often, and Stephen still loves me.

Random Fact 6: I have broken 6-ish bones in my body, my knee, left wrist, left shoulder, pinky toe/foot, left thumb & hand, and a finger or two that went undiagnosed.

Random Fact 7: I learned to say "no" at age 3 and wouldn't doing anything my parents asked me to do until they spanked me; and I never really changed.

Random Fact 8: I climbed Long's Peak, a 14,257 ft. mountain, my junior year of high school and it was the hardest thing I've ever done.

two faced compston

So, I decided to join the fun outdoor community of Boulder and I went rock climbing with some new friends, when I was climbing a giant rock fell from above me and I had to swing out of the way at the last minute, but it grazed my face and now I have this weird scab in the middle of my face making me similar to a batman villain.

OK, that's a total lie, but it sounds cool right. I'll explain what really happened. I had this spot on my face that looked like I was about to break out so I did what I've done to my skin since I was in high school. I've found that the best way to get rid of zits is to treat them like any other scrape or cut, I clean it, this time I used hydrogen peroxide and then I put triple antibiotic on it, I know this weirds some people out, but I'm telling you it works. Anyway, last night I peroxided the place that was bumpy on my face and it exploded a two square inch section in bubbles, I thought "man, that's weird" and went to bed. This morning I woke up and I have this big scab-rash looking think on my face, this should make it even easier to make friends. Any ideas what this could be?

Other than my new two faced identity things have been good, I still really miss good ol' Fayetteville, but I love my internship here, I'll write more about it when I have more time. Still looking for a job. The weather is great, it's in the high 60's today, and this afternoon Stephen is playing in law student softball game with free beer, so it should be a good time. I miss you all!

The first long week

As of tomorrow morning we will have been gone for 1 week, but it feels so much longer. We don't have internet and all of our neighbors secured their connections so we have to drive to a coffee shop or to Erin's apartment and steal her neighbor's wireless. Anyway, here are a few highs and lows of the week.

LOWS
* Driving across Kansas in our Penske truck.
* Carrying all of our stuff to the third floor in higher altitude.
* Already missing friends and being lonely.
* Sunday's without the Grove.
* My first of many tearful breakdowns.
* Not having internet at home.
* Job hunting.
* Scary men trying to get Stephen to give him money in downtown Denver

HIGHS
* Seeing our nephew Malakai
* The view from our deck.
* Being 10 minutes from Boulder and 20 minutes form Denver.
* Being close to Erin.
* Having LOTS of help from our family.
* Thinking of Stu and Lafe burning down their dunpster, ahh (sad sigh).
* Having much cooler apartment that our old one.
* Waking Steve up by letting Malakai grab his beard.

Fun with Dick and Dane

I was looking at movies online and saw a misprint of the movie "Fun with Dick and Jane" it was both funny and disturbing, but I thought better of clicking on it for fear of gay porn.




Anyway, this week has been full of sweet and sad goodbyes, stress of summer school finals and procrastinated papers, Arsaga's, last minute details that take much longer than expected and packing lots and lots of boxes. I've never really had a big move before. I lived in the same house growing up and I moved to college in the back of my '92 Jeep Cherokee. After Stephen and I got married we had to fill our cars and make two trips to our apartment to move so you can see why this week I've been amazed at the amount of crap we're accumulated in the past year. Stephen quit his job last week so that he could pack us this week while I finished summer school, and I thought "we have a small apartment, Steve can pack for a few hours each day and we'll be packed in no time", but it's taken quite a bit longer than I expected. I've had my stressed out moments and been sure we'd never be packed by Saturday, but we packed out truck yesterday (with lots of help from good friends).


Our first apartment is totally empty and we're leaving in the morning. Our last Grove is tonight and I think I'll probably cry as it will really sink in that we're moving many many miles away.


There is no way to say thanks and I'll miss you on a blog, but here goes, to all our wonderful friends, community group, fellow Grovers, I really appreciate all that you've taught me and your unique friendships, I will miss you, I already do.

Goodbye, We love you!

-And for all you English majors our there, you may have noticed I started using capitalization and punctuation. You're welcome. Think of it as my going away gift to you (hint: James).

Where is God?

I just finished reading "Terrify No More" by Gary Haugen, the founder of the International Justice Mission. In this book Gary tells the story of what brought him to start IJM and about their investigation and intervention in a Cambodian village know for trafficking minors. In the final chapters Gary talked about the need for believers to be the hands and feet of God, acting out his justice in a suffering and corrupt world. He also looked back several decades to the atrocities that happened in the last century and talked about the atrocities that are happening now (slavery, sex trafficking, imprisonment, war) and charged his readers to be able to look the next generation in the eyes and tell them confidently, that we did not sit idly by, we gave up convenience and comfort to follow our loving God of justice into a world where suffering and oppression abounds, and did something.

There are still painful things of life I find myself arguing with God about, but these quarrels are less and less about injustice, and perhaps more about caner or mental illness or rain that come too late or too hard. No, for me, the great tragedies of abuse and oppression in our world are so clearly man-made disasters that I find it difficult to keep blaming God. Not only because it is men and women, not God, who perpetrate the abuses, but also because God has so clearly given men and women that power to stop the abuses. The little girls of Svay Pak were not suffering because of vague and inexplicable forces of nature. They were suffering because men and women with names and faces chose to beat them, rape them, and terrorize them. They suffered because men and women with names and faces chose to provide shelter and protection for the abusers. And at the end of the day, they suffered because the rest of us let it happen.
Given all the power and resources that God has placed in the hands of humankind, I have yet to see any injustice of humankind that could not also be stopped by humankind. I find myself sympathizing with a God who said "You have wearied the Lord with your words...by saying...Where is the God of justice?" (Malachi 2:17). Increasingly, I feel quite sure of the where abouts of God. My tradition tells of a Father in heaven who refuses to love an unjust world from a safe distance, but took his dwelling among us to endure the humility of false arrests, vicious torture, and execution. This is the God who could be found as "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3). The more I have come to know him, the harder is has become for me to ask such a God to explain where he has been. In fact, surprisingly, I don't generally hear the victims of abuse doubting the presence of God either, Much more often I hear them asking me, "Where have you been?"

-Gary Haugen, Terrify No More

school days...

I just finished my last real class of my undergraduate career. I still have an internship in Boulder and I'm finishing up a correspondence course, but never again will I have to go to class (until I get my masters). I'm feeling quite proud of myself right now, I have my internship all lined up in Boulder and even though it still counts as school I really feel like I've finished, my internship is just me being a social worker will no money and extra guidance.

So here is my tribute to college and the University of Arkansas, Old Main in all her glory.





Hit that line! Hit that line! Keep on going,
Move that ball right down the field!
Give a cheer. Rah! Rah! Never fear. Rah! Rah!
Arkansas will never yield!
On your toes, Razorbacks, to the finish,
Carry on with all your might!
For it's A-R-K-A-N- S-A-S for Arkansas!
Fight! Fight! Fi-i-i-ght!

come one, come all!

As one of our final acts as Fayetteville residents Stephen and I are asking for all the help we can get Saturday morning to help load our truck. There will be doughnuts and juice, I can't promise coffee since we already packed our coffee maker. We pick up our truck at 9am this Saturday and we'd like to be able to load it in a few hours so that we have the rest of the day to spend time with people and get the work done before it gets really hot out. So, if you'd like to get a workout and help us we'll see you at 9:30 Saturday morning. Thanks!

Hocus Pocus?

Yesterday I went to the Farmer's Market with my parents, as we were walking along my mom told me that she and her friend, Sallye, had made reservations in the Prophecy rooms at IHOP (prayer, not pancakes) in Kansas City for that afternoon. My mom is a great fan of IHOP, and other things I find questionable, like Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen. But I have heard good things about IHOP and I wanted to spend time with my parents before we move so I decided to go, I though at least I can check this place out for myself.
I understand the motive to have a place of 24-7 prayer and worship, because we serve a God who deserves constant praise, but I found that idea of making reservations to be prophesied over kind of sketchy. Our appointments were at 4pm so we left at 12:30 and arrived just in time. We went and signed in and were given stickers with our names on them and ushered into a waiting room. As I sat, waiting to be called into the "Prophecy Room", I tried to quiet my heart and remove all the preemptive judgment that I'm prone to form and hold onto as if my life depended on it. As I was sitting there I thought of the often used Biblical phrase of "a company of prophets" throughout the Old Testament, especially in II Kings there are companies of prophets, I don't know exactly what this meant, but I did think that this company of prophets were probably the "real thing" and they traveled around in a group and people came to them and received prophetic words. So really this group I'd just driven 3 1/2 hours to see weren't the first group of people gathered together saying they could prophecy.
After a few minutes we were taken to the Prophecy Room. All the chairs were set up in pairs with one empty chair and one with a little tape recorder in it. Each person sat in an empty chair and a man that couldn't have been much older than me told us that people who felt like they should pray or talk to us would come and sit in the other chair and talk into the tape recorder so we could take our prophecy home (yeah, seemed a little weird to me), he went on to say that their view of prophecy went along with I Corinthians 13, that they only spoke words of life and encouragement, no one was going to be judged or called out for some sin they'd committed. I sat for a minute, trying not to strain to listen to what was being said to other people, and then a guy came and sat next to me and started talking into my tape recorder. He was very nice and said some things that were helpful about faith, but nothing monumental. Moving along, a woman came and prayed for me, again, very encouraging. Then another young woman came and sat next to me. She said she'd been sitting somewhere praying and she felt like God told her to tell me "the journey's long end", at which point I completely broke down and start to cry. She went on to tell me that I've been on a journey of searching for love and truth, and that it has been a hard journey, but that the Lord has been with me the whole time and that I've been faithful to journey with Him. She told me that it's coming to an end and a new phase is on the horizon. Explanation- for the last 2 years or so, since I went to India the first time, I've struggled and searched through doubts about God's goodness, justice, and truth. This has been a hard journey, and this spring at the Grove's women's retreat God showed me the answerers to some of these questions I've struggled with and told me that he is going to heal the hurts and doubts that I've had, and that I'm coming to the end of this search for truth about all the shit I saw and experienced in India and America. - Immediately after another woman sat down next to me and told me that I wanted to serve God and do exceptional things for him, something really outside the box. And she said that God wanted me to know that even though I'm not there and doing yet He is pleased with me for wanting to do this and having answered yes to his call. She told me that even though I'm in a time of waiting and preparation right now God is pleased and loves me just as much now as he will when I'm fully in that calling. She finished my telling me that as she prayed for me the verse "blessed are the feet of those who bring good news" (Romans 10.15) came to her and that my feet are blessed, because they will bring good news, and I will go. Explanation- do I even need to give one? Let's see, India, women in the sex trade, my desire to go right now but it's not God's time yet. I can't describe how encouraging it was to hear these things. Oh, and that I have loved this verse and prayed that my feet would bring God's peace and justice, I've even considered getting it tattooed on my feet.

So, are making appointments to be prophesied over hocus pocus? You decide, but I've been convinced.