Celebrations and Traditions

We left on Dec 20th for Oregon and a wonderful visit to both of our families. But first Stacy had her directorial debut the night before. She was in charge of adapting and directing the Christmas program at the preschool. It took months of a lot of work, practicing lines and songs with the kids, making props and decorations, coordinating help from parents, and overall chaos control of the 2, 3, and 4 year-olds. It all paid off with great success. The kids did great, aside from the to-be-expected few cryers from stagefright. Stacy shined all night. And most of all the good news of our Savior's birth was proclaimed loud and clear to a full audience, many of whom were not believers.

After taking down the decorations we went home and wound down, slept hard for a few hours, and woke up excited to leave early the next morning. We made it over the pass without having to put on chains (the requirement was lifted 5 minutes before we reached the place they were stopping people), and spent a couple hours and had some soup in Medford with Stacy's family. We got to Josh's parents' house that evening and spent five wonderfully relaxing days there. It even snowed a little on Christmas eve and Christmas day. We continued the all important little smokies tradition. For those of you who don't know about that we cut a hole in the top of a cabbage big enough for one of those little sterno liquid fuel cans to fit in. Then we put toothpicks with little smokies all around the outside. The kids (and some big kids) crowd around and roast the little smokies and dip them in ketchup, mustard, and sesame seeds. We don't really know where it started but it has been going in the Mathews family every year as long as any of us can remember. Maybe it's an old Norwegian tradition that Grandma carried on. (Rachel, Nathan, and Boaz are doing the "Smokey Dance" in the pictures.)

Then we went back down to Medford and spent five days there. We celebrated with Stacy's sister Cynthia, who got engaged to a great guy named Kenny. It was so good just to be with family. There was some snow there too. Stacy's parents are doing well in spite of some ongoing health difficulties. They keep busy and stay involved with church and with their grandkids. The four of us, Mom, Dad, and the two of us, carried on another tradition. We played Chinese checkers, which is Mom's favorite. Because he's still the new one in the family, they all let Josh win... barely.

Then we came home on New Year's Eve day, which we highly recommend because of the lack of traffic, and now were two days into our somewhat normal routines here. Overall it was a great time of traditions, celebrations, relaxing, and being with loved ones.

Advent

Winners!
On Sunday night we had our Abiding Way church Christmas party at the Melicks' (our pastor) house. It was a great time of socializing and food. It's fun to be a part of a church that can pretty much fit in our pastor's living room and dining room. The food was great and so are the people. And to top it off we won two movie tickets in the door prize drawing!

In-N-Out Celebration
Yesterday was the last official day of the semester. Both Josh and Stacy got all their papers turned in and celebrated at In-N-Out with some fellow OT PhD students, Kevin and Seth, and Seth's family, Ling (his wife), Yael (daughter--7), and Nadav (son--3). Praise the Lord for a good semester.

Tamalpais
We finally made it up to Mt. Tam, after being turned away by the weather and car problems before. Some amazing views. Below are some photos from the east peak.

Helped... again
Yet again we experienced the Lord's impeccably timed provision. On the very day we had to fork out a big, unexpected sum of cash, we got an even more surprising and unexpected check in the mail that pretty much covered the cost.

Upcoming Program
The big Christmas program is coming on Wednesday night. It will be a great opportunity for the families of the kids to be impacted by the gospel. Please pray for Stacy as she directs it and especially that the Lord will be glorified and that hearts will be drawn towards what Christmas is really all about.

Shelves, Stacks, Shifting, Sorting, and Studying
Today I (Josh) started working part-time at the library. I've been planning to work a few hours and I figured since I spend much of my days in the library anyway, I might as well get paid for it. Plus I get my study room paid for, a free cup of coffee everyday, keys to the library, and other perks that only a geeky academic guy like me would appreciate.

Christmas Party!

Since we are only in Cali for about two weeks of December we thought that we should have a Christmas get together before the time gets away. So we did... and we would like to tell you about it. Our new friends Josh and Elizabeth Howeth and Drew and Shannon Cunningham came over for some spaghetti, Christmas cookie decorating, and a game of Settlers. Drew and Shannon are the Settler pros as they are serious settlers that play via the internet against each other. And Shannon remains Queen of Catan until the next game...
We are blessed to be around other couples who are seeking the Lord and His Word at this point on the Journey.

Drew and Shannon

Josh and Elizabeth

San Diego and Qumran

This year the meetings for the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) gave us an excuse to take a mini vacation. They were held in San Diego and we thought, for just the price of one more plane ticket we could both go down the coast into the warmer weather for a couple days. I went down on Wednesday, the week before thanksgiving, and Stacy joined me the next day after she worked half a day. I took in a lot of papers and we took in a lot of San Diego sights together. It was good to meet up with friends and profs from both Wheaton and Multnomah. We went to the beach, the beautiful Hotel Del Coronado, Tijuana (briefly), Balboa Park, and to the Natural History Museum where they have the Dead Sea Scrolls on exibit.

It was fascinating to see little fragments of writing pieced together to make up so many parts of the Bible. It was fun to walk through the exhibit with little children and grandparents and all different nationalities looking at the Word of God. It was a wonderful reminder of how God preserved His Word through so many years so that we could read and obey it.

In all the whole time in San Diego together was a wonderful break from the somewhat ordinary. Here are a few pictures (none of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They don't allow that)

BubbleShare: Share photos - Delicious Christmas Recipes.

Thankful

I would like to let the title of this blog speak loudly in it's most simple form. So I must only tell you why we are thankful. Two weekends ago Josh and I were blessed with the presence of Steve and Loie Mathews, Josh's parents. We had beautiful scenery (point Reyes and 300 steps to the lighthouse), scrumptious food (Cheesecake Factory and chocolate truffles, thanks dad and mom), thought provoking conversations (anything from theology to favorite movies), fierce competition (rule-bending Zilch), and even Mill Valley snobbery (we actually took in an art gallery and all liked it). But the best part of the weekend was just being loved. There is truly something wonderfully God-initiated about family enjoying one another. Laughing, hugging, and being encouraged! Thanks dad and mom for the visit down South! We love you!

...and are excited to see all our families at Christmas!!!!!

Already Almost November

WOW time is flying. It has already been two weeks since My friend Bri came down to see us. We had a wonderful time with her and I enjoyed catching up face to face. Thanks for coming Bri!!! Not to mention, it was fun to have someone else be so excited about the beautiful place that we are living in.

Josh just had his second seminar weekend of the semester. He presented the paper he was working on for the past four weeks. The paper was on a Christian biblical interpreter in the Middle Ages named Nicholas of Lyra. He is known for, among other things, having written a massive commentary on the whole Bible. Josh looked into how he interpreted the Old Testament in particular and tried to understand better the way he affected the way we read the OT today. The research and the interaction in the seminar were both good learning experiences.

A page from Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla litteralis on the Psalms, with the biblical text surrounded by Nicholas's commentary.

I (Josh--we're tag-teaming this blog) have my last game of flag football at San Quentin this coming Saturday. I and about 8-10 other seminary guys go and play against the prison team. They have at least three times as many guys and it seems they are all about three times as big as any of us. They also practice often, play every week against other teams, and are undefeated. (They have a baseball team too, which was featured in Sports Illustrated--the San Quentin Giants.) Needless to say it can be quite intimidating for 10 average-sized, white seminarians who spend most of their days sitting and reading and who haven't practiced and don't have any plays, to walk onto the yard of this massive, historic prison (known as "the Q") where 30-40 big guys who seem to spend most of their days working out, are either running their plays or watching us with big grins as we walk onto the field.

We get beat but it is very fun and good to get out there and run around. And it is the most physical flag football I've ever played, which I love. Some of the other guys I think are a little less used to or excited about the contact part of it. Each time I've been pretty bruised and sore for a few days afterward. It's fun but also a really good experience. One of our guys shares at half-time and they always listen very attentively and respectfully. Some of these guys are the nicest guys you'd ever meet. It's eye-opening, sad, thought-provoking, and challenging all at the same time. I think this Saturday might be the day the San Quentin Blues Brothers suffer their first loss ever:)

Stacy is starting to work more and more on the Christmas program for the preschool. She has to assign speaking roles for the four-year-olds (the tigers), teach the songs and motions to all the kids, make sets, and much more, all while still helping most days in the threes class (cheetahs) and taking her classes at the seminary too. And that is also not to mention her keeping the laundry done, the house clean, and her husband well-fed and well-loved. The busyness of the semester has definitely not let up for either of us.

Abiding Way

Well, we think we've decided to quit church hopping now. On Sunday we went back to the church we attended our first Sunday here and we plan to stay there. It has been a good process in a number of ways. It's been good to get an idea of the area and the churches' impact here in general. It's been good to have lots of conversations about what is important in church, what our involvement should be, what our attitudes about the whole thing should be, and things like that. We're ready now, though, to settle down and get involved.

The church is called Abiding Way and, yes, it is a Baptist Church--technically Southern Baptist, but it doesn't feel like what either of us thought a Southern Baptist church would feel like. That's probably partly because our assumptions were not totally accurate, and partly because this is not only California, but Marin County, California. One of my profs, Dr. Melick, is the pastor. It is a pretty small church compared to what we are used to, but then again, all the churches around here are.



There are about 100-150 people on Sundays. But it is a very alive and growing church. We love Good Shepherd and think of it as home, but there are some fun aspects of knowing that everyone pretty much knows everyone. The music and singing are good, kind of contemporary in style and very God-focused. It seems like there will be ample opportunity to get involved. Dr. Melick has talked with me a little about teaching some Bible Studies and Stacy has some great ideas for organizing and decorating. They do a lot of activities together as a church too, which is fun and makes for a healthy family feel. (All that said, we probably aren't in a position quite yet to take on too many more things to be doing. We both feel, and are, very busy.) So thanks for praying for that process. It's been good.

A couple other brief highlights in our life:

We got to see Mom Mathews briefly yesterday. She's down here for a few days and we picked her up at the airport then went to Uncle Bob and Aunt Joanie's for dinner. Great to see all of them and especially Mom.

Last weekend was my first seminar weekend, really just two (very) full days. They went well. I'm learning a ton and, as I'm finding is usually the case with learning, I'm learning how much more there is I want and need to learn. And the Bible is still becoming more and more alive and amazing to me, because of who its Author is.

Stacy is doing wonderfully at her job. Yesterday when we were walking to the school, one of the little "cheetahs" (3 year-olds) came running out and grabbed her by the leg saying, "hi miss Stacy." She is also so consistently loving and supportive of me.

I'm playing flag football at San Quentin prison every few Saturdays. I think I'll do a post on that sometime. It's quite the experience.

It was 80 degrees today without a cloud in the sky. We love Oregon but we love the sun too.

Baseball playoffs start tomorrow. Cubs won the NL Central and are going to the post season for just the fifth time in like 60 years. Maybe they'll win it all this year and avoid the claim to infamy of going 100 years between championships.