Gracie's Bad Day

Despite my desperate attempts to NOT become a creepy dog person, I recently took the plunge and began searching for a dog dress. Project Runway Season 5 starts on Wednesday and Gracie needs to be dressed properly. I found myself traipsing about all over town looking for the perfect dress (mostly the right size). Yesterday, I took her to PetCo and while I was trying clothes on, I realized that I had been talking to myself and giggling about how cute she was while mere feet away were two stockers (not stalkers) who probably felt sorry for the poor dog lady. At this point, I stopped, put down the clothes and walked away. I was in desperate need of dog clothes rehab. Well, I found a dress today at Target that I am satisfied with. I raced home to try it on the dog, only to find that the carpet on our stairs has been ripped off by the world's cutest dog.

You'll have to excuse her body language in the picture, as she's just gotten in trouble for making a very costly mistake. She also pooped on the floor this morning, so really it's just been a rotten day for her. What better way to end it than to wear a dress lovingly picked out by your obsessive owner?

Hopefully, this will satisfy my need to clothe my canine. Alex and I want to buy a house and we're saving for that all-important down payment, so dog clothing isn't really in the budget. I'm going to start pawning my stuff on ebay this afternoon.

We got our 35mm pictures back from Tennessee, so you can be expecting an exciting photo diary coming soon.

Our 2000 mile roadtrip

Are gas prices high? Oh, we didn't notice. We just got back from a road trip across the South and it was really fun. Once our pictures are developed, I will post them. We went through Memphis, Nashville, up to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, down to the Smoky Mountains, through Alabama, Mississippi, to New Orleans, to Houston, and over the forest and through the woods. If it sounds exhausting, it kind of was. Pictures later. I know you're holding your breath.

ALSO, I have applied for a job at IRC (International Refugee Committee) in Dallas. Basically, I would be a case manager for new refugees during their resettlement process. It would be an amazing opportunity to show God's love to people who really need it. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything about it. Please be praying that His will would be done. Let us know how you are doing! alex.and.beth@gmail.com

Doers of the word

Hey everyone. Sorry I have not contributed more to our blog. I truly do miss writing as often as I used to. Please know that I am praying for many of you. Please feel free to let Beth and I know if there is anything else we can be praying about. I wanted to share what I have been convicted of recently.

"Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." James 1:21-27

I was thinking about the all of the different religious activities that Christians participate in. Conventions, retreats, book clubs, Bible studies, small groups, etc; these things are not bad in themselves but what is our purpose behind them? Why do I study the Bible? Is it so I can quote scripture and have the answer, or so that I may know the will of the Father and walk in His ways? Some of you may know that Beth and I have a Bible study at our place each Monday. It would be truly sad if all we did was read God's word and leave it at that. If I simply know the word, but do not live out what the word says in my life, then what have I accomplished? If I read God's word and know that I and the rest of the world are sinful, and there is only one way to the Father then why does my heart not break for my fellow man? Why would I keep such important news to myself? If I know that God's word says for me to love my neighbor but I am no better than the tax collector, only loving those that I choose, then have I really learned anything? I am deceiving myself, becoming comfortable with knowing what is right, but not necessarily doing what is right. My prayer is that we would put into practice what we already know to be true. God help me to truly desire righteousness. Help me to lay aside the wisdom of this world. Help me to put your truth into action that I might bring glory to Your name.

12 men decided to stop what they were doing and follow Christ. Through their faith God used them to change the world. Today there are more than 2 billion who claim to be followers of Christ. What are we doing?

Oh, dogs and turtles....

Well, I know it's been about 9 years since we last updated. Let me tell you, we have been SOOOOO busy (that and April was the longest month of my life). Alex is still slaving away at the chip facotry, making fatty snacks for you and me. He had an employee who got his finger cut off (almost). They sewed it back on and it's growing quite nicely now. How pleasant. He recently won a company wide award- the EcoHero award. One of his coworkers nominated him for his (our) efforts to help the environment. Ironically, shortly before he recieved this honor, all of the worms in the worm bin suffocated and met an untimely death. We still haven't recovered. Our recycling is coming along quite nicely, though.

My jobssss are good. I'm tired alot but summer is in three weeks! Can we say "Yes"??? My ESL class is goin pretty good. Most of the other teachers have lost alot of their classes (attendance drops off at the end of the year) but I'm sitting at about 50% attendance, which I take as a compliment. We've had some very fun times. I've started teaching them English phrases that they may use and be very confused by, such as: "He kicked the bucket" meaning "He died" (they thought that was a scream). Bahahaha.

The day job is really fun. It's slowing down since it's the end of the year. I've really enjoyed getting to know the kids and the people I work with are just lovely. Last Friday I went and got snowcones with two coworkers (whoo-hoo! Friends!). Just this week, I translated some official documents and when I sent them to get them checked, the official document translator for the district commended me for my translations. It felt good to get that kind of encouragment. Sometimes, I still lack confidence in my Spanish abilities so its nice to hear some good things. I've learned alot about poop and worms in this job, so that's always useful knowledge. Last week, I watched a kid poop in his pants while he was standing right in front of me and then at my next school another kid did it twice in an hour. Fun day!

We've been super super busy. People have been coming here to visit and we've been visiting family and friends and such. It's been really fun to have so many guests. Summer's not looking much calmer. Leah and I are going to Cozumel for her graduation trip and Alex and I are going to take a road trip to Tennessee to camp in the Smoky Mountains. I'm going to go visit College Station a few times and go to Abilene for a couple of days to teach my mom some fun recipes.

Our newest and most exciting news is that we have pets now. My parents brought us a box turtle named Ed who wanders around in our backyard. We're trying to train him to come to the porch when we ring a bell to tell him that it's time to eat. It's slow going. Go figure. We also got a puppy! We were going to wait until June but she was just too cute at Canton. Her name is Gracie. She's 3 months old today and she's a schnauzer/sheltie mix. According to a recent study taken while walking at the park, she's a really cute dog. Here are some pictures:

She's fun most of the time. She's learned to go to the door when she needs out (almost all the time) and it's only been two weeks. She likes to go to sleep in your lap and eat dirt. Alex and I have been exhausted because she has to go outside every 3 hours (even at night!) but she's been doing alot better. Last night she slept from 11 to 5am. Halleluia!

While her name (Gracie) is pretty cute, it's also functional. God has been using this God to teach me about HIS Grace. For instance, although the dog knows that she shouldn't pee inside, sometimes she still does it. Modern dog training states that if you didn't catch it, you don't punish. You simply clean it up and move on with your life. The trick is to catch her in the act and redirect. It's weird for me to not want to punish her for something that she clearly knows is wrong but when I think about it, God gives us the same gift. There are times when we are distracted or too busy to remember what God really wants us to do and we mess up. Sometimes there are natural consequences to our sin but He promises

11For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Psalms 103

How crazy is it that as long as we recognize we messed up, God forgives us and separates our sin from us that far! It has been such a blessing to experience in a small way how the concept of giving grace works. There are times when I have to be compassionate and remember that she is only a puppy. How wonderful to have a Creator who knows us that much better than I know my dog. If I can learn this from a puppy, who knows how much I'll learn from children??

:)

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.