Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax

For those of you who don't know already, yesterday was my last day as a full-time nanny. The family I work for has both girls at school all day, so I'm only going to be working there from 2:30-5ish. It stinks because it was a really great job that I liked more than any job I've had before, so I'm pretty bummed. It also unfortunately means that I'm job hunting again, which I reeeally don't like. I can either get a part-time job in the mornings and keep nannying part-time, or drop the nanny gig and find a different full-time job. I've applied a couple places, but no nibbles yet. I'm trying to avoid the ever-present-fall-back-job, waitresing, because it really doesn't suit me and I don't want to work a job I'd likely hate. But we'll see what happens... I just have to trust God and not stress out.

I just got a text that Grace (6 yr old I nanny for) has strep throat :( I hope none of the family or I get it!!

Anyway, I have today and Monday off, so I'm just bumming around. Our only plans this weekend are to go to the local Renaissance Festival- it looks like it will be a lot of fun, and this is buy one get one free weekend! Whoohoo! I think we're going to go with our friends Andrew and Cliff.

The rest of Nathan's family is off at Indiana Wesleyan University moving Allie and Rachel into college! This is Rachel's freshman year so she's living in the dorms, and Allie is a sophomore and will be in a house. I hope all goes well for them! Allie is borrowing our rug and an air conditioner that we had at our apartment :)

We're supposed to be getting a free desk sometime this weekend! A lady who goes to our church and who Nathan also cleans for is moving, and is giving the Lambeses her desk! Robin has been wanting a new computer desk for a long time (the old one was looking pretty sad), so this is great! Nathan already ripped the old one apart and threw it in the dumpster, so I hope the new one can come soon!

Another thing of note is that last night for dinner we had spaghetti with homemade sauce... made from tomatoes (and basil and oregano) from our garden! I was worried I wouldn't like it, but it was SO good!! We made another batch last night using a slightly different (and easier) method, so I'm really hoping it's just as good so it'll be easy to make a lot more. I'm hoping to freeze or can some so you can all try it when you come to visit me!

Last night Nathan and I made a college-esque late night ice cream run to Wal Mart, and also ended up getting two movies! We got The Prince of Egypt and Clue on DVD for great prices. We had a great time watching Clue and eating our delicious ice cream :)

Oh yeah, and my younger brother Andy is in Japan!! He's there for a semester studying at Kwansei Gakuin University in Osaka, Japan. He had some trouble with his flight and had to spend a day and a night at the Detroit Airport, which was a rough start for someone who has never flown on a passenger jet or traveled alone. He's staying with a host family that is very nice but doesn't speak much English. I believe he has already started a preliminary 3-week course in Japanese (language). Pray that everything goes well and he settles in soon!

I guess I'll get back to doing nothing now ;) TTFN!

Turtle Paradise

Ta-daaa! We found this humongo aquarium on Craigslist this weekend, and went to Farmersville (a little town very close to here) to check it out. We knew we'd have to buy a great big one for the turtles eventually, and instead of buying several progressively larger tanks we thought it would make more sense to just go straight for the biggest one we'd need. We weren't really planning on buying one this soon, but this aquarium (with stand!) was such a great deal that it would have been silly to pass it up! It's a 75 gallon tank that's probably around 1 1/2 feet wide and 4 feet long...ish. It came with the wooden stand which I was extra happy about (so many stands these tanks come with don't look sturdy- this one is).


Of course we had to buy a bunch of equiptment (and decor... wouldn't want the turtles to get depressed due to lack of scenery) for the monstrosity. Even with all the stuff we ended up buying, the total money we spent was still less than just the aquarium and stand would have been new... which was comforting when handing over our debit card at the pet store ;)

We ended up buying a huge filter, another heat lamp, a floating "dock" for the turtles to bask on, a big (and very pretty) fake log/root thing, a big ol fake plant/vine, 3 bags of polished stones (Dollar Tree!), and, my favorite, the little "shrine" pictured below. I just had to have it. Oh, and 5 more 12-cent goldfish, bringing our total to 8.


There just happened to be a world map hanging behind the aquarium, so we moved it down to make an awesome background! Look, Persimmon is going to eat Ho Chi Minn City!


We're really pleased with our turtles' new home, and I really think they're enjoying it too. I was worried they'd hide in a corner for a week, but they're already swimming all over. And it's really pretty- I've enjoyed just sitting and watching our little underwater world these last couple days. Below is a picture of the aquarium at night with the room lights off (only heat lamps on)- I like the glow it has :) You should come see our turtles (...and us) soon!

Bountious Bounty

Check out some of the great produce we've gotten from our garden! I realized we hadn't posted garden pictures in a really long time, so you need a major update! We got a couple dozen ears of corn (what the squirrels left us after they had their dinner... grrr...), a ton of potatoes (YAY!), a big bag of carrots, a couple grocery bags of green beans, a lot of snap peas, a bunch of peppers we're not sure what to do with, we're starting to get cucumbers, and we're accumulating a whole lot of tomatoes. We're thinking of trying to make some kind of tomato sauce this weekend- I hope we don't screw it up and waste all those tomatoes ;)

We ended up giving our garden a major "haircut" this weekend (and before), pulling out the severely overgrown nastertums and weed-whacking the 5 foot tall lettuce, harvesting the potatoes, chopping down the spent corn stalks, and pulling out the yellowing snap pea plants. Our garden is looking a bit bare (below), but still producing. Still left are more tomatoes, herbs, flowers, peppers, and melons!


Here's one of our canteloupes. We have 4 plants and at least a dozen melons, and the biggest ones are softball sized and still growing. I hope they're actually good!!


And a tiny watermelon! This has doubled in size since I took the picture a couple days ago. I've never seen a home grown watermelon that's actually oblong like the ones at the grocery store, so I take that an an encouragement :)


Well, I hope you're having a great week! Don't forget to help name our blog!

What's in a name?

I've been trying and trying to think of a more clever name for this blog, and have been having trouble. I mean, I know "Nathan and Rachel's Blog" is bordering on brilliance already, but I figure I should give you a chance at brilliance too. So what do you say?

Name this blog!

Treasure the Wonder -- Beth Moore 1

Let's talk about the first of Beth Moore's seven guidelines for maximum impact in Bible study... Truthfully, I am having a terrible time trying to wrap my mind around what she was trying to teach us, so laying out these seven points post by post is as much for me as it is for you!

1. Treasure the Wonder

God has a marvelous plan of revelation. This is the perfect beginning to this series, because it teaches us that the fact that we don't understand everything about God is all part of his plan. God reveals truth to us piece by piece, bit by bit, and in a specific order. He reveals this truth to us in many ways (life experiences, prayer, fellowship, trials), one of which is the study of scripture.

Think about it... the Bible is God's word in book form. It's right there, ready to help us, instruct us, lead us, challenge us. But most of us (including and especially me) don't use it much, if at all. I'm a person who's always wanting to know God's will so I know what to do in/with my life, I want to know what my calling is, and am left clueless... but it's my own fault! God reveals truth through this word, which is always available to me. All I have to do is pick it up and read it (well, study it really. A surfacy reading may not do me as much good).

But I cannot do God's calling for me outside the study of His word. And when I study He won't just make me able to do His will, but "thoroughly equipped," competently competent! So a benefit of studying scripture isn't just having a clear direction/goal, but having the tools to accomplish that goal in a spectacular way!

...all that is to say, WOW, God has given us this marvelous gift, this incredible tool called the Bible, and we need to use it. We should never forget the remarkableness (if that is a word) of what God has already done for us, even specifically through scripture. We have a whole road map in handy leather bound format. Let's try using it.

So our first lesson: Realize this... "Holy cow. We have God's word."

Living Proof of Love

This weekend I had the opportunity to go to a conference given by Christian writer and speaker, Beth Moore. Robin was going to go but was unable to, so I got to attend in her place, meaning I didn't even have to pay to go! I didn't really know much about Beth Moore going into it, except that all the women at church were crazy about her and her bible studies. I have to say that they had good reason! Not only was she a fantastic speaker, but so accessible, knowledgeable, passionate, humble, and even goofy! I enjoyed myself so much. I even got to know a couple women from church that I roomed with and were such a blast to hang out with. We had a great time.

The conference was held at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky (sort of the outskirts... much farther away from downtown Louisville than where we lived)... it was the biggest church I have EVER seen... in fact, the sanctuary/auditorium may have been the biggest room I've ever been in. There were two balconies with escalators up to them. The room seated 9,000 and it was full. I believe there were 8,900 people there, almost all women. In addition, the conference was being simulcast to 715 locations, bringing the total number of people watching to 70,000. WOW.

This is a picture I found online of the auditorium... that black part in the upper left-hand corner is the upper balcony. I took a picture on my phone and got it onto the computer, but for some reason it doesn't want to upload at the moment.


Beth used the parable of the sower (in Luke 8) for the conference. I don't know about you, but I've heard this scripture preached on a lot. But she really brought new light and a different angle on this familiar story. The point of the conference was: To increase our confidence and competence in the word of God, to be a woman of spiritual means, and to learn how to let scripture have maximum impact, producing a "100-fold harvest" in our spiritual lives.

Here are her guidelines on how to read scripture for a 100-fold harvest (based on the parable):
1. Treasure the wonder
2. Protect your heart
3. Expect the test
4. Dig the roots
5. Stop the choke
6. Retain the word
7. Press forth to your 100-fold

Through study of God's word, He won't just make me able to fulfill His purpose for me, but He will make me "competently competent!" This comes from the phrase "thoroughly equipped" used in scripture. Thoroughly and equipped apparently have the same Greek root word, so it's just like emphasizing the point... God is going to make us READY to do His will when we read His word... competently competent! Not only will we grow spiritually by studying scripture... that spiritual seed could grow and produce 100 times as much as it started with... we could grow spiritually 100 times over if only we persevere.

I know this probably isn't making a lot of sense. I'm trying hard to wrap my mind around the concept I'm talking about and all that I learned at the conference. It's hard! I'm thinking about writing a separate journal about each of the seven points listed above. That might help both you and me understand what Beth was trying to teach us! It's good stuff. **To view my posts on each of the seven guidelines, please click the links on the list above**

Nostolgia

As of the moment, I am sitting in the bed of Andrew's younger brother in the town that I spent the majority of my life. The little town with little dreams - Norwalk, Ohio. I'm here because Andrew asked me to come with him, and as my wife, Rachel, is currently in another place I used to call home (Louisville, Kentucky) I didn't see the harm in visiting the old stomping grounds.

Last night, at around 11 o'clock, Andrew, Steve, Levi, Jake and I went to a pier in Huron to watch a storm roll in. On the way here Andrew and watched as lightning jumped from cloud to cloud, flashing silhoettes of a shifting mother-of-pearl sky. It was beautiful beyond description and it was at the point that we decided that we would visit the pier and watch God's fireworks from an unimpeded vantage point.

The pier itself is probably a half of a mile hike from one end to the other and once your're out there, standing on the rocks in front of a suspiciously dark lighthouse the only things you can see are blackness and the lights the dot the horizon, Cedar Point the left and some smoking factories to the right. We sat down and watches as electricity cracked it fingers above our heads, trailing across the sky like spider silk. We only started walking back once the rain begain to drop lightly. By the time we made it back to the other end of the pier it was a torrential downpour and most of us were soaked to the skin.

Except Levi.

Levi wanted nothing to do with sitting right beside a huge lightning rod in the middle of an elecrical storm and had gone back to the car, here he played electronic Yatzee.

It was the kind of experience that makes you realize the awesomeness of the world we live in. Lightning is something that I've always loved to watch with a kind of inspired disbelief, because it's something I wouldn't believe in if I didn't see it for myself. Watching it, I feel as though I'm in some kind of fantasitic fantasy novel where anything can happen, anything. Electricity dancing in the sky! Imagine! It makes me feel like a kid again, full of wonder and imagination.

I can't help but look up and see God.