This weekend we drove to Indianapolis to visit Mike’s family. We ate dinner at Applebee’s on Friday night and also helped Mike’s grandparents move some furniture at their new house in Noblesville. On Saturday we had biscuits and gravy for breakfast and watched the movie “The Score.” It was a good time of fellowship. The coolest part of the whole trip was seeing Peyton interact with his “uncle” Riley. Riley used to be very small, but now he’s about Peyton’s size. They wrestled around all weekend:

Saturday night we drove to Terre Haute to have dinner with Lindsay’s parents and to pick up part of Lindsay’s Halloween costume. They had just returned from a 10 day vacation, and it was nice to see them.

This morning went well at church. The music seemed a little “off” from usual, but everyone still seemed able to bring their worship before God with good attitudes and minimal distractions. We’re also getting closer to having high quality recordings of our services. I’ll post links once we get it going well.

We’re about to leave to head back to Indianapolis. Mike’s family is having some extreme computer troubles. Hopefully we didn’t cause them and it will be easily fixed.

Our church had a “retreat” at Camp Tecumseh this weekend. On Saturday night we got together for prayer and singing and eating (as all churches should). Then we all came back Sunday afternoon and evening for football, campfires, hotdogs, and fellowship. It was a great time.

I just took Peyton to the vet. One visit cost freaking $96. It was $35 for the visit to begin with, plus swabs ob his ears, a shot, and medicine. Between the $50 Frontline for fleas and this visit for his ears, Peyton’s costing us a pretty penny lately!

He better go get a part-time job to help out soon ( :

I passed my first “cume” exam of grad school. Basically, I get to take twenty tests over the next two years, and I have to pass five of them. They’re pretty difficult, and we have no idea what they’re going to be about each time. I missed the first one because of mono, but I’m now 1/1 on my attempts ( :

Lindsay’s bank’s conversion process is winding down. Her branch had a big night last night…everyone passed the big final test! That is an extreme blessing. We were worried that some of them might struggle to pass.

Church and small groups are going well. And the Colts are still undefeated. Life is good!

Pastor Randy says this a lot at church, and it’s so very true. This weekend, we were just overwhelmed with blessing from God. Friday night we were able to enjoy each other and watch a movie together. Then, Saturday morning we had Worship Team practice.

It is completely amazing to be a part of a church where the pastor has made it a mission to teach his people how to worship with their whole lives. Our church family opens up each Sunday morning and allows the Holy Spirit to do a work in their hearts and it is SO visible. To know that He has appointed us to a position where we can contribute to that process is really just a blessing. After practice, some of the adults were having a meeting, and Halley, our pastor’s daughter, was in charge of watching Peyton, our small group leaders’ son. They were bored, so we brought them home with us, watched a movie, and made brownies! (We also took lots of fun pictures!)

On Saturday night, we went to visit with some friends of ours, Steve and Emily. We played our first “cooperative” board game, and we had some great spaghetti! It was so good to fellowship with them, and Peyton had his first doggie play date! Steve and Emily have a 70 lbs. mutt who’s a mix of a black labrador retriever and a bassett hound…hee hee hee! He’s really cute, and his name is Riley. Riley chased Peyton for close to an hour and a half, and it was interesting to see Peyton in a submissive role. He was really thankful when we brought him home, and he slept in very long this morning.

Today, we started the day at church, and I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. God just orchestrated the entire morning without any help from any of us. It was amazing how Sunday School tied in with the musical worship tied in with the sermon. We had a visiting pastor, and we all (the visiting pastor and family, Pastor Randy and family, some friends, and us) ate at Pizza King after church, and it was a blast.

Then, this evening, more friends of ours, Zach and Sarah, came over to play some cards and watch football. We made a great “Southern Feast” of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and southern biscuits. We had Schwab’s Fudge (from Brown County) for dessert! It was such an amazing time of fellowship and fun.

I have prayed for a few years that God would provide us with friends. He is now answering that prayer in ways far greater than I ever even imagined.

I love my husband. I love my church. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my God. So, family and friends…even though times are great right now and it’s easy to say this:

God is good, all the time…All the time,God is good.

I pray that when harder times come my way, God will remind me of his amazing blessings in times like these, and I will continue to say:

God is good, all the time…All the time, God is good

For our Friday movie night we decided to rent “Kingdom of Heaven.” The story begins with a man whose life is ruined after the death of his child and suicide of his wife. However, through a series of events he becomes a great leader of the city of Jerusalem.

Besides being a great “guy” movie, it really made me think a lot. I know it’s not a truly accurate portrayal of the Crusades time period, but it made me realize how much people in the past saw God’s hand in the events of their nation and their personal lives (even if they didn’t act Christ-like). They would rely on God’s will determining what happened. I wish that our society could get back to that somewhat.

In our “enlightened” age, we seem to think that we can predict and explain virtually everything that happens in our world, and we push aside any role that the supernatural might play. As a scientist, I see this attitude a lot…which is extremely frustrating. Of all people, scientists should realize that we have a limited understanding of why things happen. Sure, we can explain in great detail how certain things happen, but we have no comprehension as to why they happen. Also, any attempts to say that we “know” what happened over millions and billions of years (and therefore know something about the presence/absence of a god) are ridiculous and are overstepping the bounds of science.

Basically, I’m tried of people trying to prove or disprove the presence of God through science. Science simply seeks to explain how our universe behaves, not what created the universe or motivates it to behave in such a way.

Okay, I’m done. I don’t like to use this blog as a “diary” of my thoughts, but this movie really got my wheels spinning. Maybe one day we will turn back to reliance on God’s will and the role that it plays in our world rather than following only our own knowledge and will.

We had some guests over today after worship team practice. They left you all a message:

My name is Halley. The little boys name is Peyton.
I am 10 and he is 10 months.I am the pastors daughter.My favorite sport is soccer and softball.

I’m always looking for cool pictures and graphics to use in powerpoint backgrounds, fliers, etc. Most sites offer limited pictures or try to make you pay royalties. However, I recently found a great site called stock.xchng.

You have to set up a username and password, but it’s completely free and easy. Users have contributed thousands of high resolution pictures. I’ve already downloaded many of them with hopes of utilizing them as backgrounds during worship services at church. Just thought I’d share ( : I’m sure most of you don’t care, but I figured a few of our readers might appreciate it.

For Mike’s October Break and Lindsay’s vacation from work, we went to Nashville, Indiana in Brown County. We had the opportunity to stay at a very nice bed & breakfast called Oak Haven:

We stayed in the master suite, which was really nice…jaccuzzi and all! We went into Nashville several times to do some shopping. Lindsay found a few things that she really liked; she says when we’re decorating our first big house, she’ll have to go back to get decorations ( : We also stopped by Schwab’s Fudge Shop, and watched them make pumpkin fudge. It was pretty cool. The two guys working there were very personable, and we had a long conversation with them:

The young guy with the IU hat on is a student at IU; he plans on going to seminary after graduation, which we thought was really cool. All in all, we had a great time and wished we could have stayed a little longer. But, now it’s time to go back to work and school.

On a side note, we left Peyton outside with his cage, blankets, and plenty of food and water when we left on Monday afternoon. Apparently, he annoyed our neighbors with his barking…There was a note on our door from animal control saying that a neighbor had complained about NEGLECT and nuisance barking. Thankfully, Peyton was not barking when the animal control guy came, and nothing happened. It’s still kind of frustrating. We don’t have many options when we have to leave him, other than taking him to Indianapolis or something like that. So, we’ll have to think of something better next time ( : Peyton’s also a little tired; hopefully he’ll be re-energized over the next few days.

We had the opportunity to meet Kyle’s girlfriend, Kim, this weekend. Kyle went and picked her up from Ball State on Friday, and we watched the movie “Robots” on Friday night. The movie wasn’t too good, but Lindsay made some good pizza for us! On Saturday, Lindsay cooked pancakes and eggs for all of us, and then Lindsay and I went to Target and bought some new jeans…a long overdue purchase. We then went to the Regions tent over on the football practice field before the Purdue-Iowa game. O’Charley’s catered the food so it was good eats! On the way to the stadium, a guy from State Farm took our picture for some promotional gig:

The game itself was pretty stupid, so we left at halftime. Dinner at the dining hall was actually pretty good.

When we got back home, we watched the movie “Crash.” I liked it even better the second time. Today was pretty cool too. Kim got to experience an Elston Heights service ( : The worship music went really well. I enjoy being able to lead so that pastor Randy is free to speak, and move around without feeling constrained to the keyboard. After church, Lindsay made some good chicken and noodles, and Kyle and Kim took off for Greenfield (her hometown). We of course watched the Colts game, which was yet another win ( : 5-0! That’s all for now. We leave for Brown County tomorrow. We’ll be there until Wednesday afternoon. Should be fun!