Contentment

It is amazing to see God actively cultivating contentment in my heart recently. There are so many things I would love to do and places I hope to get to in life. But right now God has me exactly where I am. He has been teaching me that that is just fine...and not just fine, but good. I haven't been gypped out of something good from him because I am not on the mission field, married, or living in my own place. Contentment isn't something that I have achieved, but it is something that He is slowing changing in my heart. He has used different things to help me see that He has given me Himself and things where He has me now to enjoy and learn from. I have had so much peace about where He has me in life now, including where I live, the job I have, the ministries He has given me, and how being single gives me extra freedom to pour my life into the people He has put in my life. It seems like a few times a week a new opportunity comes up to minister to someone new. Often my singleness is a big plus as to the why different people come to me or make a suggestion of someon for me to minister too. I am loving it. God is even changing my heart so that I am considering living at home a little longer to save money and not me so anxious get my own place. I don't know what He has ahead for me with that.The fall colors here in the south have been an extra reminder of the truth that God enjoys and finds pleasure in giving us things that we will delight in. I love the fall and miss it from being in WI for the last 6 years. But it has been colder this year, so the colors have been brighter than normal. This is only the second fall I have been in the south since 1999, but the color seems so much more brilliant. I have had a chance to go up to the mountains in NC for the last two weekends and the color has been great there. I absolutely love this time of year. The cold air makes you want to bundle up and take a walk in the woods or drink hot chocolate and read a book. God is so good to us. That is true every day of our life, but often we don't see it. He delights in opening our eyes to His goodness and beauty.

For those of you who knew me when I didn't own a good camera, I love photography. If you were on my team in China this summer, that is probably something that comes to mind when you think of me (since I bought my digital camera just before I left for China this summer.) Well, my hobbies have broadened a lot this year too. Photography has been something I have thrived on lately. Landscaping in my parent's yard, cooking, interior decorating, and many other things have been interest that have been brought out in me lately.


This is the contrast in color from the beginning of the month to last weekend in the same dogwood tree in our front yard.





Of all the trees in our neighborhood, God put in our yard the trees that changed the most and the brightest. His mercies are new every morning. He gives and takes away. My heart will choose to say, "Lord, blessed be your name."

Gas Prices

For those of you in the north, yes this is the price that I I filled up our van with on Saturday. 12.75 gallons for $25. Praise the Lord. But that is the lowest price around. Most runs in the $1.90s.

Wilds Retreat 06

Me, Joanna, Mandy, and Erin

This last weekend, my church went to The Wilds in North Carolina for our bi-annual adult retreat. The highlight of my weekend was just being able spend time with some girls who I have been wanting to build a deeper friendship and bond with. The picture above is the four of us on the swing by the lake. We hung out all weekend and had the grandest time. We didn't hang out together to be a click or to the exclusion of anyone else. We did spend time with other people. But God worked to fulfill what I was hoping would happen. We were all able to bond with each other and some other people in the church more than we would have been able to only seeing each other a couple times a week and chatting after church. In their own way, each one has needed to have an opportunity to bond with some other girls in the church. Each of them is fairly new to the church. This was their first time of being able to spend an extended period of time with other girls their age.


Mandy and Erin had never been to The Wilds so this was their first time on "The Giant Swing." Erin was so confused and even more anxious about riding the swing with me when she realize it wasn't really just a big swing. She seemed to think it was a kind of rope swing or something. I think she still enjoyed it even though she scream like crazy the whole time.



Here are the "newlyweds." I kept calling them that because they had their newborn son, Ian, with them. But alas, their other 5 children were at home with Libby's parents. Including this retreat, this is the third time in a row that they have had a newborn with them during our church retreat.




We had an awesome time around God's Word as Dr. Mazak preached on the theme of "Humility" all weekend. I always need that. It was so nice to relax and spend time with other believers while being free to enjoy extra time together having fun and around God's Word.
At night, we would sit around and play games. We girls even made up games to amuse ourselves. That was all kinds of fun. On Saturday night, the other two retreats ended that were going on at the same time ours was on Friday and Saturday. Ours continued on into Sunday morning. That meant that we had the camp site to ourselves. One of the games that we girls decided to play that night was "Sardines." We used the upstairs and downstairs of the Lodge. It was so much fun. The weather was beautiful all weekend. God just blessed us with an amazing time. I am praying that God will use this weekend as a springboard to deepen relationships in our church in the near future. May He use iron to sharpen iron as we grow together in our walk with God for His glory.

Results of the Lockdown

For those of you who have not heard from me what actually happened with our lockdown a couple weeks ago, it ended up being a 13 year old boy from our middle school. He had an early dismissal and had gone home and changed into his camouflage. He took an air rifle up to the school grounds to meet a friend and show him his gun. When the police showed up, he got scared and ran home. He finally turned himself in. He was arrested and suspended from school. Here is an article from our local newspaper that wrote about the story last Wednesday.

http://www.tribunetimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061011/TRIBUNETIMES01/610110330/1144/TRIBUNETIMES

School Lockdown

The school where I teach, Mauldin Middle School, was locked down at 3pm yesterday, October 5th, after a few teachers at the elementary school next door reported seeing a man in camouflage and something over his shoulder that looked like a gun at the edge of the woods behind the school. We all had to stay in our 6th period class until the police said it was okay to let us go home. They finally started to dismiss students at 4pm. But to orderly dismiss over 1,200 students in our school alone is craziness. Of course by that time, all the parents and buses for both schools were waiting in line to pick up their students. But just after 4:30 almost all of the students had been picked up.The crazy thing about it was that a teacher across the hall from my classroom had caught one of the PE teachers who is on duty at the end of the day and had a wakie talkie just like the administrators as she was waking through the hall. We were in our classrooms and, she had given her the scoop on what was going on. That was about 3:20 before we had a clue of anything. Then the substitute aid in our class got on the internet onto our local News channel 4. Seconds after he got on the site a brief report came on about our schools and then there was a live video coverage from the helicopters that were flying over our school right then. Then we could see the long line of cars and buses lined up down the road past both of our schools. They zoomed in on different areas in the parking lot and even cop cars in the subdivisions next door. I even was picking out my vehicle in the parking lot when it would be on that area of the property. They never did find any one after searching till late yesterday. Here are some links to our local newspaper and news station for reports, pictures and video footage.

For this first link, there is a photo gallery on the right side. The ninth pictures has Mr. Finch, the head teacher in my classroom, in it. He is the teacher on the left.
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061006/NEWS01/610060341/1004/NEWS01

On this site, there is a video on the right from the lockdown.
http://www.wyff4.com/video/10015377/index.html