The Nutty Professor

I've earned a new nickname with my ESL students. I got a shorter haircut on Monday and it now falls in my face. Well, my teaching aide of choice is a white board and in my frantic writing, I usually just erase things with my hands and they get covered in marker dust. Well, I drove home on Tuesday and watched some TV and relaxed. When I went up to brush my teeth, I noticed that my entire forehead was black. Apparently, in my rush to get my hair out of my face, I transferred black dust to my face. Really cool. The funny thing is that when I told my students about it the next class, they laughed and told me that they had noticed. Then, I did it again and a student told me on the way out. I'm going to have to start wearing a visor or something so that I can stop touching my STUPID FACE!

In later news, my translating job is going along swimmingly. I have decided that I really love working with autistic children. I love the feeling that you get when you really connect with a kid. I love seeing progress in their ability to communicate. Perhaps God will want me to work with autistic children in the future. Who knows? I'm learning alot about speech therapy and I really enjoy being able to help out the therapists. Fun!

Alex is doing good. I'll make him write in this sucker soon. Love you guys!

PSPS-

The website that Alex is editing is only available to PepsiCo employees, so you're just gonna have to trust me that it's cool. AND I went to lunch with some coworkers today. Sigh, I have friends!

My new job, among other things.

I thought after we graduated that we would be able to blog daily about the mundane events in our lives, but it appears that real life has usurped our ability to express ourselves after a long days work, and instead we end up passing out on the couch. Oh well, I'm doing it now, and isn't that what matters?

We have been very busy these past couple of weeks. K Sweat came and stayed with us last weekend and we had lots of fun. We went to a place called Sprinkles Cupcakes, which has about 20 flavors of $3 cupcakes with icing that will coat your arteries in .5 milliseconds but they were really good. She also helped me coral an out of control batch of bread that I was making. Apparently when the recipe says, let it rise for 2 hours, they mean only two hours in order to prevent your oven from exploding with batter. Yikes.

When Alex started working with Frito Lay, he joined one of these diversity inclusion groups called the RISE network (it's really for Native Americans but they focus on the environment as well). This has been a great decision. The founder of the network works at the plant in Irving and she asked Alex if he wanted to be in charge of the environmental fact of the month for the entire RISE network (it's like a club). He accepted. Now, he's meeting people from headquarters who are members of the network and he's writing a short environmental fact every month that gets sent out to every PepsiCo employee over the listserv. I'll get the website for you and put it here so you can see his workmanship. He has a meeting next week with a head Finance honcho at Plano headquarters, so please be praying for that.

Guess what? Remember how I used to have zero jobs? Now I have TWO! That's right! I'm still teaching my adult ESL night class. It has been a blast. I love coming up with new ways to make learning English fun. To practice listening, I've been find songs and printing off their lyrics (and making them miss some of the words) so the students have to listen to the song and fill in the blanks. To practice pronunciation, we did tongue twisters and at the end we had a competition to see who could say it the fastest. It's just a great job. It does take some time, but I really don't mind. I could definitely do this in the Middle East. In fact, Alex and I have talked about just moving over there and teaching if the whole transferring with Pepsi doesn't work out. God has His plan, so we just have to rest in that.

My NEW job happened pretty quickly. Two weeks ago, I applied for a few more jobs online to possibly fill my time. I wasn't expecting anything, of course, because I hadn't gotten any bites yet (except my night job). The next day, they called to set up an interview for a Bilingual Speech Therapist assistant position. So the next day I went to the interview. The funny thing was that one of the ladies interviewing me was a friend of Alex's mom and she had been to our wedding and everything! During the interview, they pulled in a Spanish speaking secretary and she talked to me in Spanish. I almost passed out from nerves. I was afraid she would ask me about marine biology or advanced calculus but she didn't and I passed their little test. They called me that day to offer me the job. I went and filled out paperwork and I started this past Wednesday. Essentially, my job is to translate for the Pre-K and early elementary kids during their speech therapy sessions. It's going to be challenging because I have never really been in a true translating position and these kids have speech disabilities to begin with. Add Spanish speaking on top of that, and they are very hard to understand. Great! I travel from school to school, so it breaks up the day, which is great. My first few days were wonderful. The kids are so dang cute and every therapist has been really nice.

I have an office (fanfare please) that I share with three other people. While I do have an office, I lack a desk right now. I have two skinny tables in the corner of the room. They gave me a laptop (I'm pretty sure that it's serial number is 000000000000003 making it the third laptop to ever be in existence) so I can email people with my new official email address. So, it's pretty cool.

I'm excited about this opportunity to love on some kiddos and get out of the house for a bit, so Alex can sleep in peace! I'll keep you posted on how it's going. Thanks for your prayers. They worked double time!

This whole job searching experience has helped me to realize how God's plan really is that much better than ours. I went to lunch with Alex's mom, Debbie, yesterday and we were talking about our plans and His plans. She said that in order for God to show us His plans, we must first stop looking at how to put our plans into action. Her example was looking for love. We think we know what we are looking for, so we only focus in this one direction. But really, God is waving his hands and doing a dance and saying "Hey! Look over here! This is better! This is what you really want!" Until we make the decision to let go of what we want, then we cannot see His plans for us. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but I had to turn away from my desires to see what I truly desired. It's pretty crazy how this concept applies in every apsect of my life, yet this seems to be one of the hardest things to learn. If I could just learn to stop looking and trust Him, then I would be much better off.

Psalm 37:4- Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.

This is why God is in charge....

Lord-
I know "You know me better than I know myself" sounds cliche, but it is so true. You knew exactly what You were doing when you threw me into a stressful interview situation that eventually got me the job that I love. I pray that you would continue to help me love these people and pray for them. You are the best. I'm serious.
Love, Beth

So, this week was my first week at my new job. I'm teaching Adult English as a Second Language for a suburb in Dallas. Let me tell you about the interview: I went in to meet with the director of the program and I was so nervous that I completely bombed the interview. I was a nervous wreck and I didn't know what to say. I left feeling completely deflated and not confident in my abilities. HOWEVER, before I could even be considered for the job, I had to do six hours (two of the classes) of volunteering. So, I decided to stay and observe a class after my interview. I was sitting upstairs filling out some paper work and the director, Dr. Cisneros, walks up. We had this conversation:

Dr. C: So, we have a problem. The teacher that you were going to observe is sick. Tell me if this makes you uncomfortable. Would you substitute for her?

(Now, keep in mind these three things: 1) I have never been in an ESL classroom before, child or adult, 2) I have never been in any classroom with Adults before, 3) I have never taught in a classroom before. Needless to say, I was freaking out.)

Beth: (completely calm and collected...on the outside) Sure! I think I could handle that.

So, I walked into teaching a three hour class to 25 adults who wanted to learn about household items....and I loved it!!!! The director was in and out so she got to see me work.

I went back to observe a beginning, beginning class. After that, Dr. Cisneros informed me that she would like to offer me a teaching position for the night classes, which I took!

I was really very nervous about teaching because I have never done it before but I do speak English, so that's a start. The people that work there are wonderful and have given me great ideas on how to make learning fun (the classes are three hours long!).

I have been substituting in the morning classes, but tonight I got to teach my students. They're great. The class is huge but I already know their names. One woman's daughter is going to Iraq in a month and she was very upset. I know that God will give me ample opportunities to help these people. Yay God!

Alex is doing very well. He's extremely tired but he is going to do a great job when he finally learns everything he needs to know. For instance, last week they cut him loose. On the schedule, they were supposed to make $57 profit. That's all the product minus the cost of labor/ingredients/oil. Alex ended up making $2700 dollars. That's right. It's like a billion times what they expected. Needless to say, he should be the CEO of the company by March. :)

Thank you all for your prayers. I love you guys.

A Church Update

Hey kiddos-
Life is good here. My cousin's wedding was this weekend and it kept us very busy. I wanted to update you on our church search. It has been...interesting to say the least. We've been to three in the past couple of weeks, so I'll describe them for you.

1) The Rote Memorization Church

Alex and I went to this one because my grandmother said that they were a socially active church. We showed up and sat on a pew. The pastors were wearing big robes and they had acolytes. The service was one of those where the pastor reads something from the bulliten and the congregation responds. So, we did that for about ten minutes, sung some Psalms, and then read some verses outloud in the typical church drone tone. The sermon was okay but we think that "socially active" really means that they are "open minded" which means that sin isn't confronted, but accepted. After the service, the pastor came up to us and asked if we were new. We then had a mildly awkward conversation about their ministries (which seemed mostly financial giving, which is fine, but Alex and I are more hands on ministry kinds of people) and then he told us to wait to talk to the Associate pastor. We just wanted to get out so we snuck out of the church building (teehee). Overall, the service felt completely dead.
Decision: NOT THERE

2) The Recovery Church

After our first efforts, I decided we should try a different route. I found the Dallas International Street Church located near Downtown Dallas online. We showed up for the service at 11 to find ourselves in a bunch of old couches and walls covered in wrapping paper. The building looked like a big room with Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. There were homeless people milling about. The minute we walked into the door people were asking our names and where we're from. I was introduced to a woman named Mia and she introduced me to everyone we saw. We sat down and the associate pastor sat down and told us about the church. Essentially, it began as a rehab for drug and alcohol addicts who were seeking help. Their program is faith based and is about focusing on replacing their need for addiction with Christ. They emphasize mercy and grace, which is wonderful. The people around us were asking fellow churchgoesrs how life was. There was definitely a family feeling. The service got started late. There were no powerpoints or pianos or even enough Bibles to go around. The service was SO fun. We sung for about 30 minutes- acapella. My personal favorite was "Ain't no party like a Holy Ghost party cause a Holy Ghost party don't stop". We sung "If you're happy and you know it, say Amen!" "Amen." The pastor (a woman!) asked people for their testimonies and we heard about how people had been clean for a week and two days and they were thanking the Lord for that and talking about how they felt whole again. That was very encouraging because we could tell that God was moving in the shelter. The sermon was about being intentional (one of my favorites!) and there was the opportunity for the laying on of hands. The offering was great because people were putting in pennies and nickels, which is great because even that small offering is faith based giving. The only thing Alex and I were unsure about is that the pastor would break into uninterpreted tongues for brief periods in her prayers but that was to be expected because the church had a pentecostal feel to it. The goal of the church is to do outreach in the Dallas streets. When Alex and I left, we felt refreshed, like we had had an experience with God.

Decision: MAYBE. We would love to give our money there and do ministry there, but we wanted to keep looking.

3) The Circus Church!
Alex wanted to go to this church that was closer to us and he had heard good things about from a coworker. We got there a little late and huge parking lot was jam packed with people. We got a spot and walked in. The music was so loud and we were only in the crowded foyer. We walked into this huge sanctuary and we had ushers tell us where to sit. We were directed to a pew near the front. We were sitting down and the ushers kept asking us to move towards the middle. That was the only time that we were spoken to by a member of the church. It was Mission Sunday. The front of the church was covered in huge posters with countries of the world($), a full on orchestra ($$), two giant screens that had videos from the pastor ($$$), and a screen that rose from the middle of the stage ($$$$). I already wasn't impressed. Then they had this large theatrical dance and costume show that showcased the countries that the congregational support was going to. It was entertaining but I was cringing when I thought about the cost. They had missionaries visiting but they didn't get to speak; instead they waved. In short, I never really figured out what the money was going to (the glossy magazine I was handed was very brief) but I heard alot about how necessary it was to give to missions (above and beyond the tithe because the tithe "needs to stay in the local church!!" Where the heck is that in the Bible?). The pastor talked about himself and it seemed that he placed alot of importance on human work, rather than God working through people (i.e. the missionaries were "top citizens" because they were good people, not because God had decided to use them). They asked for first time visitors to follow a lady with a sign to the "reception room" but Alex and I didn't reveal ourselves. It took us so long to get out of the parking lot because people were so rude. Overall, it was a megachurch and not what we were looking for.
Decision: DEF NO.

We'll keep looking. So, no worries. I wish our house church could have just moved with us. Oh well, I'm sure God has a reason for this. :)

The new place!

Hey guys!

We're finally fixed and ready to go. Alex is working away at Frito Lay taking over the company and such. I am being a bum for now because I'm waiting on a job. Here are some pics of our new place. Enjoy and come visit!
The kitchen bar
Diningroom/ staircase
Dining room
Living room with the NEW couches

Bedroom (take 1)
Guest room/office
Beautiful kitchen!
Fireplace art (by yours truly)
Fireplace corner

Bedroom (take 2)

New to Dallas....

Hey all. We're moved. We hung pictures up last night and I bought some curtain rods today, so I'm almost done "nesting". Alex started work this morning and he already called me to tell me it is going well.

We get internet on Friday, so then I'll be able to tell you a little more. Love you!