The busiest week of our life......

IMPORTANT! We have had an address change (same place, different address!) so, if you need our new one, please email us and we'll let you know!

Let's begin:

FUN STUFF

-Last Friday, Alex took me to Medieval Times for my birthday. Basically, it's a Renaissance Festival/ jousting tournament/dinner thing. It was really really fun. We ate our dinner, which was served to us by our "wench", without silverware. We sat in the yellow section and cheered for our knight, who looked like a brunette Heath Ledger (and he knew it). We also sat next to a couple who made out everytime the lights went out. Awesome. Alex and I had a great time. I'll have to scan the picture we bought that we took with the princess. :)

- We have been hanging out with our neighbors hardcore. I think it is safe to say that they make up the bulk of our Dallas friends. Last Saturday, Alex and I went to Screams, which is a Halloween theme park at the Scarborough Faire Grounds, where our neighbors, Richard and Susan, are working. It was SO fun! We loved getting to see them in action.

- This week we had a note on our door informing us that our address had changed. This was the first time that we've had an address change without moving. So, Alex and I decided to host a neighborhood "House Warming Party" to celebrate our "new" houses. We had a taco bar and a game night. We probably had 20 people in and out. It was so fun and I think we will have more of them!

-Tomorrow we meet our Iraqi family! It's a family of 4 and they have two baby girls. We are super pumped. We'll let you know how it goes.

WORK

- We are enjoying Alex's new schedule. Last weekend was uber-busy and the next few weekends will be busy too (but it's better than being bored!) The first week in November might be a little stressful for him because he has so much going on.

-I didn't have to go out to my schools this week, so I got to spend the week getting to know my coworkers. Fun girls! We all went out to lunch on Wednesday and spent an hour and a half chatting. This next lesson that we're doing is trying to emphasize how healthy choices can be easy and we're showing them how dancing can be exercise. So....we will teach them (or rather, learn from them) the cha-cha slide, cupid shuffle, the Macarena (!), Souljaboi, and then freestyle to Lil' Mama. Oh. my. gosh. This should be interesting....

SPIRITUAL THINGS

-So, now that Alex has weekends off and our Bible Study had kind of fizzled out, we started to think about what kind of church we wanted to go to. Institutional? House church? Established small groups? When we moved to Dallas last year, Dave from our Bryan house church gave me some Dallas HC contacts, so I emailed them to see what's up. The only reply I got back was from a woman named Liz. She told me that she and her husband, Eric, were not involved in a housechurch but they wanted to get dinner with us. So we set it for last Saturday night. Alex and I were kind of uncertain about how the meeting would go. They were the nicest people we have met since we've been here. We had a 2 hour spirit filled conversation.

Eric and Liz were hippies who became believers through the Discipleship movement, so they've been in HC's their whole spiritual lives. When they moved to Dallas though, they never really got plugged in. They shared with us that their form of fellowship is with individuals and really small, spontaneous groups. Basically, they do not have a set group or time that they spend with believers. This was very encouraging to Alex and I. Furthermore, they encouaraged us that God has given us this awesome opportunity to minister to our new friends at the apartment complex and we should continue to invest time in them. So, Alex and I have been praying about what to do about the whole church situation. We studied what fellowship really is and we've decided that God wants us to try the "fellowship on the fly" thing so that we can learn to depend on Him before we go to the Middle East.

This might be a hard idea for some of you to wrap your head around. Think about it like this: The Bible admonishes us to not give up meeting one another. If you think about fellowship as rechargable batteries, you need to get your batteries recharged. Some people have a structured way of charging their fellowship batteries (set time, place, group of people). What Alex and I will do is depend on the Lord for our next charge. He is already being faithful because our friends Amy and Keith are coming up for the weekend, and I'm sure we'll get to have some church time. This might sound like the easy way out (We don't have to go to church!) BUT I would rather have a set time and place because then I know exactly where we're getting spiritually fed. This will definitely challenge Alex and I to seek out the different places where God is. We're excited about this new chapter in our spritual lives and we would appreciate your prayers.

Along with that, God is teaching me how to live minstry, instead of it being a separate affair. If you look at Jesus's life, he had a tight knit group of friends, but he spent most of his time with people who didn't know who He was. It is so easy to have a group of friends that is mostly Christian because it is comfortable. But then, it is easy to fall into the trap of having a "ministry" once a week and letting it become something to check off your list. I defintely thought this way for most of my life but now that God is placing us in the midst of people who don't believe as we do, I am realizing how fulfilling and fun a life of ministry can be! In loving these people, we are discovering more about God's love and compassion, and we couldn't ask for more than that. Come visit us and meet our neighbors!

We love you guys. Please email us if you want our new address.