Well a lot has happened since my last informative post about what's been going on in my life...so here's the abbreviated version...

• I got a new job! I left Amthor and started at the Women's Care Center back in September. I love my "new" job! I work as a clerical assistant at the Education Division. But like with many nonprofits, my job title only covers a segment of what I am doing.  I help the Director and Office manager with correspondence, organizing seminars and conferences, scheduling presentations, reorganizing the work room/storage area, managing consumables that are distributed to classrooms, students, parents, teachers, etc, shopping for said consumables  Updating brochures and fliers, and helping to get various networking tools off the ground. Thats right, I get paid to work with facebook and myspace.  I may also be going to Puerto Rico in June for the annual abstinence clearinghouse conference, which should be pretty fun!
• I bought a new car! Thats right, the old junker (ie the "red car" or "grand am") is no longer my responsibility. I bought a brand new 2008 Hyundai Elantra back in February. I like it very much. You really can't beat the price and warranty that Hyundai has to offer on their new cars. It drives great, and has seriously been putting on the miles. Two trips to Virginia (and another one coming over Memorial weekend) and various in town driving over nearly three months will do that. Sigh...time for an oil change already...
• Katherine Evangeline Kuhns was born March 13, 2009. She's a real cutie, looks just like Tyler, who simply adores his baby sister Kate. While I was down for my too-short visit I got to spend some good bonding time with the two kiddos...and Mike and Ann of course. I'm going back down again for Memorial day weekend, so there will probably be more pictures at a later date.

• We finally seem to have reached a conclusion to the house sale/dad drama. He got a new lawyer in the last month or two and sent out a lovely letter saying that we haven't been cooperating with the realtor and that we need to sell the house soon, because he needs his money. However, when we got a contract on the house a couple weeks ago, he decided he wasn't going to sign and that he wanted to take the offer from over a year ago for about 20k less... Needless to say, he hasn't gotten any more reasonable or easy to work with in the past few months. His lawyer, however was determined that he would get his signature, and had him come to his office yesterday to sign...and he apparently won the battle of wills. Things will be moving extremely fast in the next month and a half. The people buying the house are getting an fha loan and so they have to have the house finished in order for their funding to go through. They have it built into the contract to have us allow them to come in, during the course of the closing process and finish the garage roof and siding of the house. They have apparently already called today to try to set this up and get their people in her to begin work! They have their rate set to expire by May 24th so they want to close by that date. From what I was told they are willing to work with us on move-out dates as we are just getting back into the swing of looking for a house for us.
• All that to say...Mom and I are once again househunting. After two plus years of this off and on, this is not my favorite activity, but at least we are searching with a purpose now. Its already becoming time consuming, mom and I spent about three hours tonight online looking at various listings. Saturday we are doing our usual round of open houses as listed in the paper that are of interest, and are then meeting with our realtor to look at more homes that she has lined up for us. This marathon event, as I'm now referring to it as, will most likely be tiring, but mom has determined that she wants to find our new house that day! So we shall see.... More to come!

Umm...yeah... so thats all I can think of at the moment... I'll post more later if I think of it.

I'm currently reading a book called "Story" by Steven James. He basically goes through the Bible and highlights key parts and characters, and puts it down on the page, with thought provoking insights to what he feels those people are thinking or feeling. He puts a dramatic flair on the different "stories" in the Bible. And brings in other forms of media and just his personal thoughts of what he feels being a Christian is about. One chapter called "Vagabonds" was especially challenging. It really made me think. And I'd like to share it with you. He starts out quoting an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard's Provocations:

"In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is "to a certain degree".

There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.

The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admirers, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires."

James continues with...

As I read and reread those blunt words, I had to ask myself, "Am I really a follower of Jesus, or am I just an admirer?"

I don't think there are too many followers of Jesus around anymore. There are plenty of churchgoing admirers, but most of us would rather not leave our nets behind and follow him. Instead we prefer dragging the nets onshore with us so we can have the best of both worlds. But of course that never works--you can't follow Jesus while you're dragging your old life along behind you. If you try to, you'll end up losing out on both. Every once in a while I get caught doing it--trying to pursue both what Jesus has to offer and what the world has to offer. But it's useless because they lie in opposite directions.

When Jesus called People to be his disciples, it always meant leaving something or someone behind.

"Follow me," he whispers to us today. "Follow me."

Where? Toward what?

Toward the cross. The road Jesus walks leads all the way to the cross. It's there that old lives, old priorities, old selves have to be put to death. "Follow me," he says. It's both an invitation and a command. And he waits for only a moment to see what we will do.

Then he moves on to invite others. .....

Jesus leaves the choice up to us: Who will we follow with our lives? What road will we walk? He invites; he doesn't coerce. He welcomes; he doesn't manipulate.

There's no fine print in Jesus's call to discipleship. "This is what its gonna cost you," he says. "Everything. Family relationships, possessions, dreams, comfort, time--you can't be my follower unless you give up everything. You have to leave your nets behind. So what do you say? Will you follow me, or just keep admiring me?

It really left me evaluating which characterization I fit in...and I challenge you to do the same.

"Drive it till it dies." Thats right. Its now only a matter of time people. As a lot of you may know. I've been the sole driver of my mom's 1996 Pontiac Grand Am for the last few years. Its really been a win-win situation for both of us. I didn't have to make car payments (it was paid off) and she didn't have to pay to maintain it. Sadly however, the last year has been kinda rough on my little car. I had a fender bender over a year ago, got that fixed up and looking good again, just to have the car nearly overheat a few months later. After trusting the advise of a few people at work, who apparently weren't thinking straight, I had my heating core replaced by a guy who works for the company. What they didn't tell me was that he was a body work guy, not a mechanic, and the mechanic that had been working for him recently quit. After replacing the heating core twice, the second time by a trusted mechanic, however with a "warranty" replacement part from the last guy.(he says he got it from auto zone). Well things seemed to be going ok, for a while. And then some lady isn't paying attention in a parking lot, and backs her enormous Mercury Mariner into my little car. Sadly, my horn was broken, and there was someone behind me so all I could do was sit there and think, "surely she sees me, she's gonna stop, why isn't she stopping? wow! Stop!...Crap!" Those of you who know me well are thinking: yeah thats totally what she'd be saying, I can just picture it. And let me tell you...it wasn't pretty. My lovely body work on the front hood and bumper from only about 6 months previously...totally no longer looked good. So after driving around a rental for two weeks I finally get my car back, looking a little worse for wear, but a whole lot better, a day later however...it overheated again. Yup, leaking antifreeze again. They had replaced the radiator, because the accident had left a massive whole in it, so that wasn't the problem, and so it was determined that it was, yet again, the heating core, and the insurance  company wouldn't pay for it. Lovely, but my mechanic is awesome and had fixed everything else with money to spare, and the remaining was enough to cover it, which was an answer to prayer. However recently there has been some trouble when starting out and while shifting (and its an automatic), so instead of getting the oil changed at my usual monroe muffler stop, I had the guys at my garage do it and check the transmission. You gotta love how a bunch of guys (who don't speak english amazingly) just stare at you like you don't know what your talking about, but after explaining the problem decide, well maybe she has something, and say ok, we'll check it out. But I totally know he's still thinking it. So I get a call from his son a couple hours later. And yeah...its the transmission, and yeah, its not worth fixing. And hence his advice : Drive it till it dies. Which wouldn't be totally tragic, except there is still a leak in there somewhere and no one can figure out how or where it is leaking, but when I checked the oil last time: the antifreeze was pretty much empty as well. So I figure, the transmission may or may not last longer than the winter, however I'm gonna be in real trouble when things get cold, cause I'm going through antifreeze like I have stock in the company. My new mission: find a car, that I will love driving for the next ten years or so, before winter. It is proving to be a rather daunting task. And I am discovering I dislike dealing with most car sales people. I can't just say salesmen here either, cause one of them was a woman and she got pretty snitty with me...I was not impressed. So mom and I took a hike out to Jamestown, NY today to look at cars...in the rain....It was a super time.  Anyway, the garage filled my transmission--it had needed three quarts of transmission fluid!-- and sent me on my way, telling me it was still hesitating between first and second gear, but the rest seemed fine. However that has been deteriorating lately. Pray that my lil car will make it till I find a nice "new" one. This is hard enough without a forced time crunch! Thanks all!

Just a side note: I have this out there, and anyone can access it, which is totally fine, thats the point, but I have been insanely curious lately, about one individual who has been checking this a lot! As you can notice, I haven't written in a while, but someone in california has been connecting from a google feedback rss or something or other. Over 55 times this week alone, and its kinda killing me...who are you? I don't mean to scare you off or anything, by all means, keep reading, but its had me wondering...

Ok, so I finally figured out how to make the weblog section bigger so that each entry didn't look enormous. Much better...

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I had the most amazingly wonderful weekend. When God answers prayer, he really answers prayer! If you read my previous entry you know I was asking some pretty big questions, and the very next day, He provided the answers. How awesome! I got to church yesterday morning to find we had missionaries speaking in Sunday School and the evening services. Their names are John and Michelle Morgan and are missionaries with ABWE. They formerly served in Togo, West Africa and are now serving the agency as directors of field training and medical assessment. During Sunday School John talked of how globalization was affecting missions today. It was really interesting to see how some of the issues I'm studying in my business classes are being applied to the mission field.

During the evening service Michelle shared the different aspects of her new position as the assistant director of the international health board assessment team. She shared how part of her job was to monitor and make sure that the different medical mission fields are progressing and to assess their effectiveness. Another area she covers is the medical needs of the missionaries serving with ABWE. I thought--I need to talk to her. I was feeling pretty discouraged because I was looking at different missions boards online and was trying to figure out if my medical condition would be a problem with working in another country. I wasn't able to find anything on the mission board sites, however RA is listed as one of the conditions that will disqualify you from being eligible for serving with the Peace Corps. So I was figuring that if a government program wouldn't work with it, a non-profit would possibly hold to the same standards. So I waited around to speak to her, and it was very encouraging. I'm so glad that God placed them in our church this weekend! He truly does work in amazing ways.

I explained to her that I had RA (rheumatoid arthritis) and that I was wondering if there was any problems with me serving with that condition. She asked me if I was on many medications, and I told her that I was on Enbrel. (for those of you who don't know, RA is an auto-immune disease.  For the most part, what that means is that my immune system got confused and is basically attacking my joints. The enbrel works by controlling and inhibiting my immune system to slow down and control the progression. Because of this my immune system is not the greatest and I'm more open to catching any type of infection that may be going around. Which can be a real problem, because I want to go to Africa, which kinda scares my mom) She nodded, and asked if I had a special place in my heart where I wanted to go. I'm not even kidding, those were her words exactly! I told her Africa, and she just kinda smiled. She said that somewhere like South Africa where they are more developed and have better healthcare systems would still work for me. ( Answer #1) By this time I was getting pretty excited, but didn't want to get my hopes up. I asked about how things would work with my health problems and the different medications I'm on. I explained that I'd found where I wouldn't qualify with a program like the Peace Corps, and she said that they would never disqualify someone because of medical problems. she said they have missionaries all over the world who are dealing with different medical conditions, and as long as they were controlled they had no problems. She said she knew of one who had lupus (which is very similar to RA) and sometimes they would have to be brought back to the states if they were unable to control a flare up or infection, but that they were able to go back when they were better. She told me not to let that discourage me. She said if I needed medications, they'd  make sure I got them. (Answers #2 and #3) And then she asked me what I was going to school for, when I said Business Management, her eyes got kinda big and she said, "Oh, and Business management! You can do a lot with that! Most all of our ministries are using business people to work with the ministry's accounting, visas, paperwork, etc. You can go almost anywhere with that!" (Answer #4) How cool was that!!! I was super psyched! But I also got really emotional, she told me again not to let everything discourage me. She said if God has really placed this on my heart, then He will make it happen. I thanked her again, and as I was leaving all I could think was, "God, I am so sorry. I've wasted so much time."  Satan is a powerful distracter from God's plan, and I let the doubts carry me away from what I'd known was what God wanted me to do. But in the course of three days, God turned everything around, putting all of these amazing people in my life that were talking about Africa.  

So, yeah. That was my weekend. Totally amazing.