(no subject)
I've been putting off writing for awhile, but I just finished teaching dance classes this evening and am feeling expressive while I wait for my beer battered Tilapia and hush puppies to finish cooking.
Yesterday in church our (assistant but none the less) pastor Phil was talking about prayer. (We're going through Acts). He was describing some common misconceptions of prayer
1. My prayers aren't good enough ("I don't know what to say", "I don't say it right", and going deeper maybe "I'm not good enough")
2. If I just have unwavering faith, God will grant my wishes
3. Praying isn't really important
Strangely (since I grew up a really "spiritual" kid) I've been struggling with the last one a lot. I think it started around the time that I decided I believed in predestination, and against my own doctrine, decided that I wasn't really going to change much by praying. I think I'm changing my "truth" about that. It says in Exodus that God's heart was changed by Moses' praying. Also, something that just occurred to me, is that when I pray, I am changed. When I pray, I'm drawing closer to God and what he wants to say to me. Wow.
In other news, we've started our school. Jeff and I have been working really hard and getting to know and love a lot of students and their families. We've worked to keep the costs low and docked our own salaries to much less than we made last year. I knew that God had opened this door to us starting this school and getting everything in order, but I had NO idea how much he wanted to pour out His blessings on us! We've been flooded with students! We're almost at capacity in enrollment! Imaginese! We'll have enough to pay off our starting debts almost entirely this year! We have enough to give our entire staff raises! And then we'll still have some left over at the end of the year to run the business over the summer and prepare for the following year! If we continue to be this prosperous, we could even buy our own school building in the near future (without having to go deep into debt)! Praise God! I am overwhelmed with thankfulness.
The work is long and I'm still teaching dance classes on the side, so it's very tiring. I barely can take a break to gulp a cup of water down during class! But it's wonderful and beautiful.
Also, we probably won't have to wait til I hit the big 3-0 before we can afford to have a baby.
*(though I'm slightly afraid, and we really don't want to have one much sooner) =}
EverQuest is still one of the best MMO's, Settlers of Catan is on 360, and Ticket to Ride is the best board game I've played in awhile! (And I'm still winning regularly at poker)
We visited Alisha and Tim in Boston before school started and that was a blast! She made us swordfish steaks which is the best seafood I've ever had, and foccacia bread, homemade pizza with steak, and all kinds of good stuff. We also visited Andy the weekend before that, which was good. I'm slightly worried he's still bar-tending, but he's still interested in going to Asia and doesn't want to bar-tend his whole life, so that's good.
Also, we watched the Zodiak last night and though it was good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I could've, knowing it was based on a true story and the people that were killed ACTUALLY died much in the way depicted. Ew.
Yesterday in church our (assistant but none the less) pastor Phil was talking about prayer. (We're going through Acts). He was describing some common misconceptions of prayer
1. My prayers aren't good enough ("I don't know what to say", "I don't say it right", and going deeper maybe "I'm not good enough")
2. If I just have unwavering faith, God will grant my wishes
3. Praying isn't really important
Strangely (since I grew up a really "spiritual" kid) I've been struggling with the last one a lot. I think it started around the time that I decided I believed in predestination, and against my own doctrine, decided that I wasn't really going to change much by praying. I think I'm changing my "truth" about that. It says in Exodus that God's heart was changed by Moses' praying. Also, something that just occurred to me, is that when I pray, I am changed. When I pray, I'm drawing closer to God and what he wants to say to me. Wow.
In other news, we've started our school. Jeff and I have been working really hard and getting to know and love a lot of students and their families. We've worked to keep the costs low and docked our own salaries to much less than we made last year. I knew that God had opened this door to us starting this school and getting everything in order, but I had NO idea how much he wanted to pour out His blessings on us! We've been flooded with students! We're almost at capacity in enrollment! Imaginese! We'll have enough to pay off our starting debts almost entirely this year! We have enough to give our entire staff raises! And then we'll still have some left over at the end of the year to run the business over the summer and prepare for the following year! If we continue to be this prosperous, we could even buy our own school building in the near future (without having to go deep into debt)! Praise God! I am overwhelmed with thankfulness.
The work is long and I'm still teaching dance classes on the side, so it's very tiring. I barely can take a break to gulp a cup of water down during class! But it's wonderful and beautiful.
Also, we probably won't have to wait til I hit the big 3-0 before we can afford to have a baby.
*(though I'm slightly afraid, and we really don't want to have one much sooner) =}
EverQuest is still one of the best MMO's, Settlers of Catan is on 360, and Ticket to Ride is the best board game I've played in awhile! (And I'm still winning regularly at poker)
We visited Alisha and Tim in Boston before school started and that was a blast! She made us swordfish steaks which is the best seafood I've ever had, and foccacia bread, homemade pizza with steak, and all kinds of good stuff. We also visited Andy the weekend before that, which was good. I'm slightly worried he's still bar-tending, but he's still interested in going to Asia and doesn't want to bar-tend his whole life, so that's good.
Also, we watched the Zodiak last night and though it was good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I could've, knowing it was based on a true story and the people that were killed ACTUALLY died much in the way depicted. Ew.