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I don’t know if your home is like ours, but we get at least 3 tele-marketer calls each and everyday. Some of you right now are probably saying “You need to register on the Do Not Call List.” The problem is that we are already registered. Maybe there is some glitch that you have to re register ever two weeks, but that the service doesn’t start until the third week.

Today I must have recieved the oddest call from a tele- marketer. I was working at home when the phone range and I check the caller ID and it was a local cemetary, curious I answered the phone and was told that I was the lucky winner of funeral plot. Being only 23 and reasonably healthy I wondered to myself what kind of poor person has to call some random stranger to try and sell funeral plots. I can’t imagine that anyone is excited to win a funeral plot, especially when they are only 23 years old. I guess there was one bright spot in my recent call, the voice on the other end was a real person. Imagine how twisted it would be to receive a phone call from a machine that is telling you you won a plot.

I was cleaning the library today at RPTS and I started to think about the Wilkinsburg church. My mind started to wander and I ended up in the RP history section, scanning the reports of synod ranging from 1843 to 2004. It was a sad thing to read. To see our denomination cut in half in a matter of 80 or 90 years, is a thing that should cause many to pause for a moment of reflection. From almost ten thousand members in 1904 to a little over four thousand in 1954 and not many more than that in 2004 deeply concerns me. There is a question that I hear over and over in my head, and it is getting louder and louder. What can I do now? How can I a first year seminary student act as a disciple of Christ, where he has put me. I have for too long put off notions of serving and extending the Gospel as things assigned to the future. What can I do now? Should outreach be at the front of my list, or is my time now assigned for study. Of course different people will have different answers. But my answer seems to be, what good will all my studying do if I cannot communicate what I learned. Communication happens much easier when it is done between people that have pre-existing relationships. So I must now be cultivating new relationships. Now all I need to do is prayer for the resolution to reach out to those around me and prayer that I have enough faith to know that it will happen if I am willing to let God be the one in charge.

So I finally finished my first quarter at seminary. Ill be honest, righht now I feel torn. I enjoyed the classes and I did not find the work load that tough, but right now I am wrestling with the question of is this where God would have me. I am feeling some major doubt about whether or not I should enter the Ministry. I just don’t know if I have what it takes to actually help guide people. And Im just re-evaluating how much of an impact I have on anyone around me. Am I the kind of person that people will listen to? I used to think so, but know I am not so sure. I guess I will have to wait on God to show me the answers.

Prayer Life

Maybe all of this is steming from my lack of a diligent prayer time. I just cannot seem to settle myself enough to pray. I guess the ecitment in praying has been replaced by this guilt that I am not praying long enough and embracing enough of the needs I know are out there. I feel like now that I have been told how I should pray that I was doing it wrong my whole life.

23 on the 23rd

Im turning 23 in a few days and I am excited that Ill be 23 on the 23rd .

Heyyyy everybody, here we are and it’s already October! Time flies when you’re busy I suppose :) So this week was ncie. I had a full week with Juile cleaning and so far still good. We are planning on meeting this week sometime to hear about all the details for me to take it over possibly, and eventually (ha). Sam and I went out to dinner on Monday night for being married for nine months! Yippity skippity, it definitely doesn’t feel that long! Then on Tues I ended up skipping Kidzone because I just wanted a night off from something! I’m not quite used to having something going on every night i guess! Wednesday was fun because I stayed late at MHY and then met Dena, Steph, their husbands, and Sam for dinner since Dena and Scott are moving to North Carolina. It was fun hanging out outside of work, and funny to see how our husbands all act! Sam and I also went to get some frames for our aparment before we went to the restaurant. We are finally at the decorating stage, so it’s fun getting all of our pictures up on shelves :) Sam and I watched the movie Crash thiis week too, and it was very powerful. I wouldn’t say it was great just because it was so violent and sexual, but that was also the point they wanted to get across. My weekend at work was okay, apart from the usual huge amounts of stress from various things; but I know God is in control of everyone’s life – even if it seems impossible. That keeps me going! We slept past Sunday school yesterday, but church and Bible study were great. The sermon and Bible study were on parts of John 2 and 3. It reminded me of when I was soul searching in college with a pentacostal church, and asked my dad how to know I was baptised in the holy spirit. His answer had been, “if you believe in God and have faith in him, [and have repented for your sins] you are part of his elect, and therefore have the spirit in you.” Part of the sermon was about not knowing the moment you “get saved” because the moment you realized you are a Christian isn’t necessarily the moment God calls you. It takes us a while to realize it first, and I definitely agree. I knew who God was my entire life, but I didn’t ‘make it my own’ until junior high. I guess I don’t really know when God called me, but I do remember the moment it dawned on me that I was a Christian. Basically, the whole message was awesome.
We watched Cold Mountain yesterday too, and neither me or Sam thought itwas that great. He thought Jude should have stayed with the chic from Star Wars, and I was bummed that Nicole didn’t find someone else years later, haha. I guess Sam is more logical, and I’m a romantic! More next weeeeek :)

Today I finally received my Greek New Testament in the mail, Amazon normally ships in less than 24 hours, especially when they say “Ships in 24 hours”, but with this order it took 5 days for them to finally ship my NT. I am happy that it was delivered a week ahead of schedule.

I guess the reason that I am excited is because, I have the opportunity to learn greek and having the bible in greek gives me more motivation for why I should learn this funny dead language. Not to be elitist but to me the idea of reading the bible in greek is an amazing gift. This is probably as close as I will ever get to the original written words of God himself.

When I sat down to try and translate I found out that without the slight grammatical cheats that my text book gives, I am at the mercy of the greek dictionary in the back of my bible. So after an hour trying to translate Matthew 6:25 I realized that I had to finish up some homework for Pentateuch.

Monday, Monday, Monday. Today I got to sleep in and I don’t know when that will happen again, but I’m sure I will slack off somewhere and get around to it ;) Last week was great, everyone! Let’s see, where to start. Well, Monday I worked at MHY in the evening so I could have Saturday night off. It was fine; we played basketball for an entire hour, and I lack skills HUGELY :) It was fun though, and some of the girls really played well. My team got creamed because there is a certain staff who is SO athletic, and she was playing against us! She is cool tho, ha.

Tuesday I had off, but Sam and I were up wth the sun to send him off to class in the morning. That evening I met with a girl who is looking for help with her cleaning business a few mornings a week. So… hence the present predicament of zero sleep in days. The girl seems really nice, and we talked for about an hour. I’m going over there tomorrow morning to get taught… how to clean, lol. THEN, Will and Sam came home after night class; Will was waiting to pick up Denise from work at 11:30, and I was eating some fig newtons. I apparently had a seed stuck in my mouth, and when I inhaled forcefully, it went down my air pipe! I was choking and didn’t know it! Fortunately with Sam hitting my back and me struggling to breathe, the seed was forced free and I had oxygen. Man oh man was that scary!

Wednesday I was at MHY in the morning, and school went pretty well. Then, that night, Sam and I watched Flight of the Phoenix, AND the PREMIERE OF LOST!!! It was very exciting, and I’ve been tv free for so long I forgot what it was like to be so engrossed in a show :)

Thursday I had off again and after sleeping in WAY TOO LATE I got up and cleaned a little (something I actually have to do again and it’s only Monday). That evening, we had Wil and Denise over again, and when the guys were in class we went to her house. She showed me a job position available for me and her in Homewood, and we got really excited about it!

Friday I worked a double at MHY. It was a crazy night because of unit problems, and I got very behind on stuff I had to get done because of it. I called the Homewood job in the morning, while hiding from anyone that could here me talking about a new job (lol), and they told me the position was still available and to send my resume.

Saturday I worked in the morning again, and it was a crazy crazy crazy shift because I was playing make up from Friday’s shinanigans. I left late and tired, but headed to Beaver Falls to see Mere and Megan and instantly was full of energy because I was so excited to see them! And I got to see Amy and Stacey for a sec too!!!! It was really fun and too short to visit too. We ate at the Wooden Indian after getting lost (and Megan time traveled us from New Brighton to Beaver really creepily!!), and caught up on each other’s lives. Then I left for Pittsburgh, and Sam and I went to see The excercism of Emily Rose. It wasn’t as horrific as I thought it would be, and it made you think about whether or not demons existed, but it was also hard to believe it happened sence they claimed that Emily was a God-loving woman – why would she become possessed in the first place if she had the holy spirit in her heart? Anyway, it could have been a lot worse, and for that I was slightly greatful.

Sunday Sam and I went to Sunday school and the topic was communication. I liked it a lot; everyone says things they shouldn’t when they are mad or frustrated; even newliweds! :) Church was good too, our pastor is preaching a series on John (just like pastor salvaggio did last fall, ha). We watched Monster-In-Law in the afternoon, and a new tenant moved in upstairs so we helped her get all of her boxes upstairs too. Then it was off to night church where we studied Isaiah 40. I really enjoyed it, and I am starting to love going there in general, even if I am the youngest person in there by far (okay, a boy sits w/ his parents too, but that just doesn’t count). Shortly after that was over, Sam and I kinda rushed home to barbeque with our TWO neighbors, snce Phoebe just moved in. It was fun talking and having fellowship, and we closed off the late night with a gave of careers, haaha. Of course I lost again!!!

Well, this was a long entry! It’s very late to still be getting ready for the day, but I need to go shower, ha. More next week!

Well here it is Sunday, and I think Sam and I are maybe getting used to school life again. Sam has been reading a lot, and studying probably more than he ever has in the first month of school! His favorite class is definitely Greek. I already had to drop it because at this point I think I’m picking up a part-time job in the mornings. And Mars has been going well, weekend doubles aren’t that fun, but it’s worth it to not be there everyday, and right now I have two primaries that I’m really excited about. I just hope I am there as long as they are, so that they don’t have to find a new one when I leave. On the other hand, I do want to start teaching as soon as possible so that I have a normal schedule again! But God will figure it out, and in the meantime, I am content and happy. As far as life outside of school and work – things are great! We’ve been playing games with our neighbors on Sunday evenings, and this week we had our friends William and Denise over for dinner. It was great hanging out with a girl for a bit when the guys went to class! Hopefully there will be much more of that in the coming months :) Okay, I’m off to get lunch on the table – we are eating a lot of fish lately to be healthy, and today I used a new recipe (and aparently messed it up), so I hope it is edible! More later…

I finished up my fifth day of classes, about half an hour ago. The class was Hermeneutics, Dr. Prutow spoke of the singularity of meaning in the scripture. What he said was that each verse means one specific thing, and that if it didn’t the bible would cause us to as Milton Terry puts it “drft upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.”
When Dr. Prutow first suggested this idea, I hesitated to agree. What I first thought was that what he was saying was that each verse or idea in scripture was to be examined alone. After asking Dr. Prutow about the notion of NT scriptures in the light of the OT, which he informed me was a totally acceptable option, I warmd up to the notion of a single meaning. I guess the problem I had was that I was worried that you could not bring your own background intoa verse, and I believe that there are certain passages which you can more easily understand if you have had certain life experiences, ie. Abraham and Issac on the mount, of course will create a stronger tie with fathers, than with a 19 year old. Dr. Prutow enlightened me that this idea just means that there is not some magically hidden meaning behind the word of God, which is a mystery to us.