God's grace at work

The last week or so has been an incredible expression of God's grace in my life. After selling my car a couple months ago, I realized I would need to find a car to borrow for the time I was to be here after training. The Lord has provided through our community at my home church. A guy in the church who recently picked up a second car to "play with" and fix up has recently finished it decided he would let me borrow it after reading about my need in a Men's ministry newsletter and hearing my story. I never realized how dependent on transportation I am until the past two weeks when I have ridden the bus probably half a dozen times from here to Boulder. It's really not bad, but it's not efficient and for subbing, it definitely doesn't work very well, so this is great.

I've also become somewhat of a celebrity at church. At the end of August just before leaving for training, I did an interview for the Stewardship Committee about how the University Ministry has impacted my life and leading me to missions. They played a couple of clips from this interview along with some other people as part of a 2-3 min video encouraging giving to the church. I never really thought I would mind getting so much attention, but now that I have it, it is a little humbling, I definitely want to be careful of what I say.

Home sweet home

After five weeks in the midwest, I'm back in Colorado and it feels good to be back! As I am writing this post it is snowing outside, a welcoming sign that winter is on the way. Sunday, I went to my home church and it felt so good to be back and see everyone. The weather in Boulder was beautiful that day and it was great to see the Flatirons again.

My substitute application is complete and now I am ready to begin substitute teaching after an orientation that I am attending tomorrow. I'm planning to sub for math and Spanish classes and maybe a bit of history too. I will be subbing at the high school level. It should be fun and great practice for me before I start teaching for real in Bolivia.

I feel optimistic about support raising and although I still have a ways to go, I know the Lord will provide. . .

Have a great week!

The Homestretch

My time in Elgin is drawing to a close, I'll be departing next Friday evening to head back to Colorado. As I look back on the training I have received, I have learned some invaluable knowledge about missions, different world views and the International Teams organization as a whole. I look forward to hopefully departing in mid-January for the field and will work hard on my support.

I went and saw a movie last night that really was eye opening as to how revolting the Hollywood culture is. It was the movie "Departed" with Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Sheen. I can't remember a scene that didn't have vulgarity, violence, or sex. It was terrible and I can't believe I spent $8.25 to go watch such garbage. The only reason for staying was that I kept thinking it would improve. But, it got me thinking, "is this really the America I live in now?" Have we gotten so entranced with sex, violence and bad language that a movie has to contain all of that to be "good"? I realize this was written to be a dark movie, but even the other night as I watched the movie Munich there was a sex scene which in my opinion ruined an otherwise well done movie. It's disgusting to see how out of hand Hollywood has become.