Going Away Party :(

Last night we had a going away party at our house.  It was a good time as most of our amigos were able to come.  Here are a few pics from the get together.

Indi's Southwest Cat Castle

Matt designed and constructed this cat castle a few years ago for our cats. This is the third time it has been re-carpeted. He could not have bestowed it on a more appreciative cat than Indi as she plays on it constantly. This time the re-carpeting brought with it some vigas sticking out of the house. This is to remind the purrs where they come from- Tucson, Arizona!

Madison = Misdirection!

Ok, I am up in Minnesota visiting my family and the cat is finally out of the bag!  What a hard secret it was to keep!  In case there are any of you out there who do not yet know- Matt, though he was invited for an interview by University of Wisconsin at Madison, he did not actually take a job there.  We just told my family that to throw them off the trail.  The truth of the matter is that Matt was offered a job in Minneapolis which he has accepted.  I have had a lot of fun the last few days surprising my family with the good news.  They are very excited as are we!  ... Go Vikes!

Ryanhood Christmas Gig

Last night Matt and I got to go see our favorite Tucson band, Ryanhood.  I stumbled across this band on Noisetrade.com last spring and downloaded their album because I saw that they were from Tucson.  I immediately loved them.  When Matt and I moved back to Tucson late this summer we found out Ryanhood was playing Sunday nights at a local winebar just down the road from us so we went to see them a number of times.  The bummer thing was they weren't playing together but were alternating Sundays and playing with other local artists.  They told us they were taking a break for the rest of the year because of being on tour for so long.  We thought we wouldn't get to see them before we moved away but then they announced a Christmas gig here in Tucson.  We saw them last night at the Rialto Theater.  We almost didn't make it but were so glad we did once they started playing.  They are an extremely talented guitar duo and we were very blessed by their awesome and fun performance last night.  Here is a video so you can check out their style.

Go Badgers!

Ok, this may be a little bit premature but I am so excited I can't contain it!  As you my readers are aware Matt was off interviewing this week in Reno, NV and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Yesterday afternoon he was officially offered a job by both places.  Both jobs are good but due to the fact that Madison is just a hop, skip and a jump away from my family he has decided to accept the job in Madison.  The official paperwork is due to be sent to him Monday so you can bet we will be celebrating that night!  My sister is already calling us cheese heads and I have already called her a swampie.  These are the respective  terms of endearment between the rival states of Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Let the rivalry begin- go Packers! Go Brewers!  And most of all go Badgers!!!

The Consequences of Non-Expository Preaching

Recently I listened to a great two part series by John MacArthur on the consequences of non-expository preaching.  In this series he unfolds these fifteen consequences

Failure to preach expositionally...

1.Usurps the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer.
2. Usurps the Lordship of Christ over His church.
3. Hinders the work of the Holy Spirit.
4. Manifests a lack of submission to Scripture.
5. Severs the preacher personally from the sanctifying grace of Scripture.
6. Removes spiritual depth and transcendence from the souls of the people, crippling worship.
7. Prevents the preacher for truly speaking fro Christ whom he serves.
8. Depreciates by example the spiritual duty and benefit of studying the Scripture.
9. Breeds a congregation that is weak and indifferent to the glory of God.
10. Robs people of their only true source of help.
11. Creates a destructive disconnect between sound doctrine and life.
12. Dishonors God by omitting these truths that trouble, offend, and terrify sinners.
13. Disconnects people from the legacy of the great theologians of the past.
14. Removes protection from error that is deadly to the church.
15. Deceives people that they have heard from God when they haven't.

I highly recommend this series.  You can read the text or download the audio here:  Part 1  Part 2

Greetings from Lake Tahoe

Matt just sent me this picture from his time interviewing in Reno.  As you can see they are trying to butter him up by taking him to the beautiful Lake Tahoe.  Looks cold, but would be considered a heatwave compared to the weather in the Midwest right now!

Advent Preaching Series- Take a Listen!

The Pastors at my church are currently preaching an Advent series for Advent season.  Last week our Associate Pastor, Luke, preached an awesome sermon on Isaiah 49 called Prophecy of a Savior.  Any pastor who can clearly explain Isaiah so that you can understand it is easily  worth his weight in gold!  The week before that our Senior Pastor, Phil, also preached a very good sermon to kick off the Advent series called Covenant Promises of a Savior.  These are both free for download.  I encourage you to take a listen!

On top of these great sermons there is also a fantastic Sunday school class that has just started this weekend called The Dirty Dozen.  This class will be 12 weeks of 12 different theologians from church history.  The first class yesterday was on Athanasius and the Arian controversy of his time.  I will post the link as soon as it comes up online.

Interview Time!

Here is what it has looked like around my house lately with Matt having a few phone interviews for jobs.  This week he is out on in person interviews in Reno, Nevada and Madison, Wisconsin.  I am especially excited about Madison as it is only  about 4-5 hours away from my family in Minnesota.  I only get to see them about once or twice a year so if we lived this close I would get to see them much more often.  We don't know how many candidates are being interviewed but hopefully we will know something by the end of this week!

Thanksgiving for Forgiveness

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Matt and I had our coffee around the fire bowl this crisp and wintery Tucson morning and spent a little time talking about what we are most thankful for this year.  The top of the list this year and every year has to be forgiveness from God in Christ.  I recently listened to an awesome study on forgiveness from my favorite Bible teacher John MacArthur.  He taught this four part study out of the book of Philemon.  It was amazing.  As he says in the beginning of the study "we are never more like God than when we forgive."  I highly recommend this study to you.  It can be found here free for download on the Grace To You website.

Thanks be to God who demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Feline Fun in the Desert

We take our cats outside every so often for supervised visits with nature.  They absolutely love it but they cannot go out without us or they would quickly become coyote food or road kill.  Here are some pics from today's field trip into the east patio where they learned all about cactus...

Kitchen Gone Mexican

Matt and I have been making the most of our time here in Tucson while he looks for a job. Each day we get up early, have our coffee and then get to work on the house. We have made many improvements in these last couple of months with kitchen remodeling, painting, yard work, and a host of other odds and ends around the house. Here are a few pics of the kitchen so you can see how it turned out. We did this all ourselves with Matt's mom helping us on the tile work.

                                                                 BEFORE...

                                                                      AFTER...

We were inspired by a Mexican kitchen we saw at a store here in Tucson called Rustica which had copper cabinet inserts and was very colorful. Due to the cost-prohibitive nature of these special kind of cabinets we thought we'd try making inserts ourselves. We searched high and low for tin but in the end had to use aluminum. We chose a different southwest design for each cabinet pair and Matt hammered them out using an awl. We also used a bit of paint to give them an aged look and mounted them to our existing outdated cabinets giving them a whole new look. We then removed the orange laminate counter tops and constructed the countertops and backsplash using Mexican talavera tile. Craigslist made it possible for us to upgrade our appliances and then we replaced the sink and lights and painted. It all turned out muy bien! The only thing missing now is the dishwasher and saltillo tile on the floor. Someday...

The Serpent at the Tucson Zoo?

A few weekends ago we went to the Tucson Zoo where I saw the snake from Genesis chapter 3. YIKES!!!

  









¹Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

 ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

 ⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. -Genesis 3:1-7

An Amercian Family Photo

Matt and his brother thought it would be fun to dress like rednecks and take pictures with their guns one day.  Once we started taking pics we were laughing and having so much fun we had to take one with not just the brothers but with  the whole family.  I thought my friends in Europe would especially appreciate  the pics given their feelings regarding firearms.  What can I say but viva la second amendment!

Costume Party Winners

Beth & Jeff the smore

Ryan & Yunuen the Southside cholos

Nick & Betsy the rubix cubes

Matt & I the  Bedouins

Matt with Ben the hot dog

Liam & Natali as Peter Pan and Wendy

We were the winners

Matt and I went to a costume party over the weekend at our friend Liam's house. Here are a few pics of some of our friends who joined in the costume fun. Matt and I dressed up as Bedouins which are Arab nomads who live in Egypt, Jordan and Israel. We also took our hookah along which fit our costumes perfectly. At the end of the night Matt and I won a six pack of pumpkin beer for best costumes.

Book Shelf Gone Mexican

Matt and I have been having tons of fun working on our house these past several weeks.  We have been trying our hand at a number of different things.  This is what you have to do when you can't or don't want to pay retail prices for things!  This past week Matt repainted and distressed an old bookshelf we bought off of craigslist to give it a Mexican look.  It turned out great.  I am sure this will be the first of many things we will distress!

Before

After

Close up- see the blue underneath?

Wine Tasting in Sonoita, Arizona

Matt, Sandi and I recently took a drive about an hour south of Tucson to a town called Sonoita where Arizona has its vinyards and makes its wines. For a fee we were able to taste 8 local wines and have lunch. There was also a blues band and some craft tables selling goods. The vinyard also had an old church which was pretty cool. Here are some pics from our day together. My favorite wine there was the Tombstone Red.

House Projects

Sorry about all the lag time between posts.  Matt and I have been busy working on our house which needs lots of love!  Thankfully we love doing house projects.  Currently we have been working on our kitchen- updating the cabinets, appliances, sink, counter tops, paint, and lights.  My mother-in-law Sandi was over last week helping us for a few days with the tile work.  It is almost done and I cannot wait to post pictures as it has turned out beautifully.  In the meantime here is a picture I took last week when the tile work was just beginning.

Sugar, Salt and Repatriation

While living in Ireland I heard the term repatriation a few times.  Repatriation is the process of returning a person back to one's place of origin or citizenship.  I heard it said that when a person returns to their home country that person may have difficulty with various things.  In fact if you read about repatriation on wikipedia there is a section entitled overcoming repatriation which says:

"Repatriation is often the ‘forgotten’ phase of the expatriation cycle; the emphasis for support is mostly on the actual period abroad. However, many repatriates report experiencing difficulties on return: one is no longer special, practical problems arise, new knowledge gained is no longer useful, etc. These difficulties are highly influenced by a number of factors including self-management, spouse's adjustment, time spent abroad and skill utilisation. What is crucial is that every individual perceives these factors in a different way."

When I heard about repatriation in Ireland I even heard about people reading books on how to enter back into their culture.  I couldn't believe it!   Returning to the U.S. was not going to be a problem for me at all. In fact over this last year I longed for nothing more.  Maybe repatriation difficulties only affect people who do not wish to return to their country of origin or to people who have been away for much longer than I have been away for.

I have now been back here for about six weeks and there are a few things I can tell you.  America is the land of plenty.  We have so much here.  I once heard on a radio show that the middle class level of Europe is equivalent to the poverty level in the U.S. in terms of standard of living.  I cannot speak for all of Europe but my experience of living in Dublin confirms this.  To repeat myself: we have so much here in America.  Whatever you want.  And it is affordable.   

There are just a few small things I have had to adjust to being back in the U.S.  The amount of sugar and salt used in food here is outrageous!  I was prepared for things to be too sweet but I was very surprised by all the salt.   Beyond these trivial matters I cannot complain one bit.  America is the land that I love and I am so thankful to be home.

Birthday

Today marks two things- my birthday and my first blog entry since returning to my motherland. Matt and I have been busy these last few weeks catching up with friends, family, and Tucson and also trying our hand at a number of house projects. This past week we have been working on our kitchen but today we took the day off to celebrate my birthday. I had a very nice and chilled out day spending a long morning at Brueggers and then taking a nice drive out to San Xavier Mission in the afternoon. After that we had dinner with Matt's family. Then we returned home to find a house full of friends and family and a big birthday cake. That sneaky husband of mine stealthily set up a surprise party behind my back! He also got me exactly what I wanted for my birthday- a hookah! We wasted no time in setting it up and puffed on it all night long.  What a great birthday- thanks honey!

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