Harvest Crusade 2008!

I went to my first Harvest Crusade today! It was wonderful! It's late right now and I'm tired, so instead of trying to write a full report, I'll just make a few random observations.

1. Greg Laurie is awesome.
2. Leeland's "Tears of the Saints" is beautiful and never fails to make me teary.
3. I really need to get a Marty Goetz CD.

On to the pictures!

Waiting in line.

In the stadium with David's mom.

Pastor Greg speaking.

The best part: 3,704 people came forward to accept Jesus tonight! (The total for all three nights is 11,084!)

Grafted In

I used to see Jesus and what (relatively) little I knew of the Bible through the filter of my own experience and culture without even knowing it. It would never have occurred to me that it might be good to learn about Jewish history and culture. After all, what's the use of that in the here and now, right?

However, at that point my knowledge of God's word was somewhat less than intimate. I had heard sermons all my life and had memorized some verses for Sunday school, but that was basically it. Now I'm only about a month away from finishing my first full reading of the New Testament. (And then I can't wait to get started on the Old Testament!) I like topical messages in church as much as the next person, but it just doesn't replace actually reading the Bible all the way through in order. For me, reading it through makes it less about what I want to get out of a particular passage and more about what the author is really saying. When you're looking at it from this perspective, it becomes obvious that the more you know about the history and culture that the Bible deals with, the deeper your understanding of God's word will be.

In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey says,
"Alone of all people in history, [Jesus] had the privilege of choosing where and when to be born, and he chose a pious Jewish family living in a backwater protectorate of a pagan empire. I can no more understand Jesus apart from his Jewishness than I can understand Gandhi apart from his Indianness. I need to go back, way back, and picture Jesus as a first-century Jew with a phylactery on his wrist and Palestinian dust on his sandals."

In addition to the fact that understanding the Jewishness of Jesus will lead me to a better understanding of Jesus himself, my interest in this subject is also inspired by what the Bible says about Gentiles being "grafted in" with the people of Israel to receive God's promise to Abraham and his children.

Romans 11:17 (NLT)
"some of these branches from Abraham’s tree—-some of the people of Israel—-have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree."

I like how this site puts it:
"The words ‘Grafted In’ memorialize the affirmation of our true identity as a people, Jew and Gentile, securely rooted in the finished work of Yeshua HaMashiach. If you believe in Yeshua, you are Grafted In!"

I even got a new necklace because I'm looking forward to learning more about these things.

Messy :(

It's pretty sad how messy everything gets when I work all week. I leave the house at 6:30 and don't get home until anywhere from 7:30 to 11:00, depending on if there's overtime. Today's project is to clean up. The first thing I tackled is my desk. Check out the before and after pictures.

Picture Time!

Twitter is so addicting. I wish I knew more people who used it. Add me if you have a Twitter! (If I know you, that is.)

Here are some random shots from the last few days. David's mom colored my hair today, as you'll see from the last two pictures.

Goodbye Living Room Study?

I've been a Christian all my life. I've never walked away from God or had any serious doubts. Growing up, almost everyone I knew was a Christian. There's never been a period in my life where I didn't go to church every week. When I moved out, I married a Christian and got involved in a great college age group at a great church.

So why, if I've been surrounded by such good examples my whole life, did I not grow very much deeper in my faith? I never studied the Bible on my own or looked into the reasons why Christianity is right and other belief systems are wrong. I'm still not sure why I didn't do those things, but I do know that ever since I started coming to The Living Room Study, something clicked. I found myself getting excited about reading the Bible on my own and about learning how we can know Christianity is true and how to defend it. Thanks to my dad, I've begun building a collection of books on apologetics.

If I can pass training, I'll have a job as a quality assurance tester for Vivendi games in El Segundo, which is also where David works. It's about an hour and a half away, which means that I won't get home in time to go to The Living Room any more. QA testing is just a temporary job because you get hired for a certain project and when the project is over they'll either keep you on for the next one or let you go. If I'm let go, then I'll be back at The Living Room in a few months, but if not, David and I want to try to move to El Segundo by the end of the year.

Knowing that this might possibly be my last time coming, I took my camera to the study tonight. I've moved so many times that I've become a bit obsessive about taking pictures of places before I leave them. I was too shy to take many pictures with so many people around because I thought it might look a little strange, but I found a picture online of the room where we meet. Here's that one, plus the two that I took tonight.

The Coffee Depot Baggage Room
In the bathroom
Steve Wiggins, Bible study leader

Edit, some weeks later: I haven't had much overtime at all, so I've been able to come late. This may change when my project has more overtime, though.

Leora Pictures

Here are a couple pictures of Leora sitting in the sun. For the rest of them, click here.

Can't Stop the Serenity

Last Saturday, David and I went to Can't Stop the Serenity (OC), which is a charity event where we watch the movie Serenity, have prize drawings, and sometimes have costume contests, depending on the location. Serenity is a sequel to the TV show Firefly, created by Joss Whedon. CSTS raises money for Joss's favorite charity, Equality Now. Dave and I got there early to help out.

I stupidly forgot to bring my camera, but other people took pictures and I managed to find a couple online that have David in them. Here he is working at the merchandise table.

New couch and chair

We picked up the chair and couch last night. They're both really comfortable, especially the chair. We have now gotten four free pieces of nice furniture! (Also the entertainment center and my desk, which is nice except for the keyboard tray.) Now when we finally move into our own place, we'll have a pretty nice setup!

Sobe Wiggins

The Wiggins family let me look after their alligator lizard named Sobe while they were away for the last two weeks. He's pretty darn adorable, even if he is a tiny bit boring. He was very good and sat perfectly still for me while I did a little photoshoot for him (first picture), but of course that didn't allow for much variety in the pictures. Luckily when I took his box outside he became a little more interesting (second picture).

I know it's a little bit silly of me to write out "Sobe Wiggins" in the subject line like he's a person and that's his full name, but my family was always big on treating pets like family members. I once had a dog who even had a middle name!

Be sure to view the pictures full-size! :)

Roses!

David gave me a dozen red roses yesterday! ♥ Here are some pictures.

Singing Kitty / Dave's haircut

Here's a video of Leora singing, also known as Cat Yodeling. Also David being silly with me. Don't you love his new haircut?? And he finally shaved! :)


Here's a picture of my incredibly handsome husband! ♥

Digital Scrapbooking

This is my very first attempt at digital scrapbooking. All the elements are separate and I put them together in Photoshop. The pictures are from March 11, 2006 when Calvary Community Church's college group took a trip to California to visit Six Flags, the beach, and Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Tell me what you think! More to come.


Credits:
"Boardwalk Collection" by Sara Carling
Downloaded from Scrapbook Bytes

My Kaylee Parasol

This is a parasol I won at a Shindig when I lived in Arizona. It's made to look like Kaylee's from the show Firefly. The colors are a bit off because of the lighting (the pink is actually red), but you get the idea.

Disneyland

I found out at the last minute that my cousin who works at Disneyland was able to get us some free tickets, so Dave and I were able to go with his family yesterday. It was fun. I haven't been in a very long time. I didn't take as many touristy kinds of pictures as I would have liked, but maybe some day Dave and I will go by ourselves, and that will allow us to go more slowly and take lots of pictures. Here are a few of the ones I took yesterday.

Hiking Pictures

David and I went hiking on Mt. Rubidoux. Here are just a few of the many pictures I took. More can be found at my MySpace gallery. David looks sooo incredibly gorgeous in these pictures! He's so handsome! :D