Melission

A conversation with a friend yesterday reminded me of my college days when I would note how many of my friends had decided to enter the mission field, whether temporarily for a trip or to plan to make it a lifestyle one day. I used to feel like doing a "mission trip" was something I had to do or should do some day, but I never really felt called to it.

Then I learned about finding my "gifts" .. those God-given traits you possess for the purpose of carrying out His plan through your life. I wondered what my gifts could be. I knew I had to find out one day because otherwise I'd feel like I'd be wasting my life without knowing what to do with it. The obvious one was something creative, but I never really found a way to use that to directly and personally connect with people in a spiritual way.

However in the past couple years as Jon and I have been leading the Financial Peace course, I believe I have found my "mission from God" *Blues Brothers voice*. Helping people learn about finances and how to change their life by it - I never thought I'd be into that. I'm not a numbers person! I'm still not incredibly a numbers person. But my faults don't matter. What matters to me (and I think what matters to God, through me) is communicating the truth (about the subject, and essentially about life itself) to people, and helping them realize that changing certain habits is what God wants for them. This is HARD sometimes to reveal to folks, and the hardest to reveal to folks who need it the most! But this is good for my mission. It keeps me having something to work on and be challenged by. Right now in the form of learning how to talk to people about it.

I'm not very comfortable being in front of a huge group of people by myself in a classroom setting, but I've realized that I can help people one on one quite well and quite naturally. I'm pretty excited about this.

It might seem weird helping people come to God through money. That's what it sounds like. But if you open the Book you'll find it's quite an important thing to achieve in life, in God's eyes. If you don't know God or don't want to, you at least have to recognize that being good with money is something desired in life. It's also about living right, communication and doing good for others too.

I've never been one for "Christianese" speak (ie using language that makes you sound like a Bible beater) because I was once (and still am!) quite annoyed by it. I hope that my choice to discuss things not in that manner is a means for me to connect to and help anyone and everyone willing to open their mind to the best things God has for them in life.

Onward, I say.

Snow Me Impressed

I am very, very sad to say that my hand was not involved in making any of these amazing creations.. however some folks over at Southern Adventist University (whose campus we live on the backside of) are incredibly creative and know how to make a stranger smile as they drive by.

I had to go over to the campus today to take some photos.

 Check out this HUGE snow man!! The base has to be 6 or 7 feet wide. It has melted down some since my first contact with it, as did the mini snow man to it's side. The juxtaposition of the 2 snowman sizes next to each other was pretty comical though.

I'm not sure exactly what the creative direction is on this one, but it looks like a cool curving road going up the side of a cliff where a small snowman resides on top, ha! The blocky shapes make it look like an odd modern sculpture of some sort.


And this next one is the coolest most awesome ever !! ...

Someone made an igloo!! A real-life, adult-can-fit-inside igloo!

Here's the doorway looking in and the floor of the inside.. perfectly carved out.. I can only imagine how long and how many folks this took to accomplish...

Here's the view of the inside from the doorway.. you can see the block structure they used, I couldn't quite tell if they used actual blocks or if they mounded the whole thing and carved out he inside and then reinforced the exterior with more snow. AMAZEING. It really is incredibly impressive. And it's big! It could probably sit 5-6 adults inside.

These works make me jealous that I didn't create them, but it makes me happy how it attracts strangers to come discover it, and leaves them driving away with a huge smile on their face like it did to me.
Truly inspiring.