It ALMOST snowed! This calls for a celebration! ;)

Sooo...about to go into work on Thursday afternoon as my Mom is telling me to watch the weather tonight and to be safe. I check my phone and text my co-worker to make sure that we're still having classes tonight (Thursday night, that is). I was pretty sure that I would have to cancel my outdoor agility class, but I didn't know about the indoor classes. Yep, cancelled. So, I go into work, finish up as fast as possible and get back home earlier than I've been home on a Thursday in a LONG time. As I sat at home catching up on homework, paperwork and movies, I sat there waiting for the storm to hit, waiting for the justification that, yes, we cancelled classes for a reason. 9pm rolls around, I'm roasting marsh mellows over the fire with Andrew and Jenn as we enjoy eating s'mores over the kitchen sink. Still no storm, sleet or snow. By 11pm, I've given up on the sleet, we could have had classes...BUT, I definitely enjoyed my night off. ;)

The next morning (today - Friday), I enjoyed waking up later than usual and doing homework and enjoying my time at home before going into work in the afternoon after the ice on the roads thawed. Since the entrance to Beltway 8 from 59 was still closed at 1pm, I had to take a more scenic route to work. All in all, it has been a successful and enjoyable day. I also had a chance of taking pictures of the thick layer of ice on my car...you don't see THAT every day in Houston. :D - side note - Andrew is wearing short sleeves because he, being the awesomely sweet brother that he is, gave me his jacket to wear as he ran outside to show me the ice on my car's windows.

Yup, cold front is here.

Ok, so, obviously I pretty much never blog. But, something “blogworthy” happened today. Thus, my yearly blog post. :)

Monday…10:38pm… set alarm #1 for 5:45am (so I know that I have 15 more minutes to sleep), set alarm #2 for 6:00am (so that I know that I should get up) and set alarm #3 for 6:05am (just in case I don’t get up). Tuesday…5:45am – alarm #1 goes off…6:00am – alarm #2 goes off. I force myself to get out of bed. As I’m at my sink brushing my teeth and putting my contacts in, I hear an annoying “bzzzz! Ring! Bzzzz!” *sigh*…go into my room to turn alarm #3 off before it wakes up the whole house. After I turn off my phone alarm, I remember to check the temperature because I knew that a cold front was supposed to come in sometime. 68 degrees. Not bad. 6:15am – sitting outside of my room, with my door shut, putting on my running shoes as Angel starts pacing in my room and occasionally barking out of the excitement of knowing that a walk/run was coming. I go downstairs, turn off the alarm and check outside. Slightly warm, humid and drizzling rain. I can run in this. 6:20am – dogs are leashed and ready to go. We head out the door and begin to run at a brisk pace. 5 min. goes by… the sprinkling rain feels good as we’re running… 5 more min. goes by… we are running around a curve, 10 to 15 min. into our run. Suddenly, huge gusts of wind blow through and during the second gust of wind, I feel the cold bite of the air against my face. Along with the wind, came a downpour of rain. At the beginning of the downpour, I see a man out running and as we begin to struggle through the rain and cold, he runs up a driveway, looks at the thermometer, and then goes inside. Lucky guy.

-Side story-

My Mom woke up at 6:20am when she heard the door shut from me leaving. She checked her phone to see what the temperature was: 68 degrees. Back to sleep. 10 min. later, checked her phone again and watched as the temperature dropped on her phone screen…68…59…56…48…

-Back to the story –

We struggle forward and try to run into the storm while the cold air is gushing past us and shocking the air out of me. As I’m gasping for breath, I turn myself and the dogs around and head back the way that we came so that the wind was blowing on our backs. My dogs, who hate water, were running fast with me, with Flash pulling a little bit to the side as though to say, “if this leash wasn’t holding me here, I’d ditch you guys and go find shelter”. We continued running down the street with the cold rain slapping against our legs and back. We ran full speed ahead and about 5 min. later got ahead of the cold front and continued to walk and run home. The cold front was right at our heels as we ran back and we got caught in a little bit more of it when we were halfway home. The rain was coming down harder. Water and sweat were running into my eyes, making my vision fuzzy. Finally… Our street! As we stumbled to the front door, I start thinking through my strategy of the best way to get all of us dried off without waking up the whole house. As I’m about to throw open the door, the door opens and we are ushered into the house as a towel is put into my hands. I wipe my face off, phew! I can see! My Mom stands there watching me and telling me that she had heard me leave and had been watching for me since it started pouring. I love my Mom.  I quickly dry off all of the dripping water on me and stand in my soggy shoes as we dry off the dogs. We must have been a pathetic sight, standing in the front entry way, soaking wet, Flash’s tail tucked under, Angel’s hair flat and soaked from all of the water. The dogs are finally dried off and Flash does his “butt-tuck-and-run” across the piano and dining room cause he’s so excited to be warm and dry. I take off my soggy shoes and peel off my drenched socks. Put the dogs in my room and head to the bathroom for a warm shower.

I am now sitting on my bed, warm and dry, writing this post, with my dogs curled up on their beds, probably trying to forget this whole ordeal. I don’t know if Angel will be quite so excited the next time I get out my running shoes…

A Good Speaker, but a Speaker of the Truth?

My speech teacher goes to a large church that preaches the prosperity gospel. Every Monday she tells us that she heard a really inspiring sermon on Sunday and each Monday I wonder how I can share the TRUE gospel with her. Therefore, needless to say, I've had the prosperity gospel on my mind lately. Here's what two of my favorite pastors have to say about the prosperity gospel.

As Matt Chandlier said in his sermon,Games People Play (Part 2),

"…It’s easy to draw a crowd. Hire musicians so you have great music, or do a series on sex every three to six weeks. When you’re not talking about that, encourage people that they’re good enough, they’re strong enough and God likes them. And if you’ll do that, it’s not hard to draw a crowd. But here’s the problem with man’s power to draw a crowd. Man’s power can conform people to a pattern of religion, but they cannot transform their hearts. In order for hearts to be transformed, you need the Holy Spirit and you need God in His mercy to extend grace. …Biblically and historically there’s something very spiritually powerful that occurs when God’s people humble themselves before Him and confess out loud with their mouth that it has not been our skill, our plan and it has not been our philosophy that has brought about the transformed lives of men and women at the Village, but it’s been His power, His grace and His mercy and we praise Him for it.”


God is glorified the most when we are suffering for HIS NAME'S SAKE.

Watch this youtube video with John Piper speaking about the prosperity gospel.

Set-Apart for His Glory

"If any pastime, activity, habit, relationship, or friendship in your life tends to pull you away from Christ, that's a sign that it doesn't belong in your life." (Set-Apart Femininity by Leslie Ludy)

Quiet my restless heart in You

Shall I take from Your hand Your blessings / Yet not welcome any pain
Shall I thank You for days of shunshine / Yet grumble in days of rain
Shall I love You in times of plenty / Then leave You in days of drought
Shall I trust when I reap a harvest / But when winter winds blow, then doubt

Oh let Your will be done in me / In Your love I will abide
Oh I long for nothing else as long / As You are glorified

Are You good only when I prosper / And true only when I'm filled
Are You King only when I'm carefree / And God only when I'm well
You are good when I'm poor and needy / You are true when I'm parched and dry
You still reign in the deepest valley / You're still God in the darkest night

So quiet my restless heart / Quiet my restless heart
Quiet my restless heart in You

2008 Sovereign Grace Praise

Agility! Dogs in Action!

Through Gates of Splendor

I just finished reading "Gates of Splendor" by Elisabeth Elliot. If you haven't read this book, then I would definately encourage you to read it. While reading through the book, you realize all of the manual labor that goes into being a missionary and how some missionaries really struggle with not seeing God's work through them. Elisabeth Elliot was recounting Roger's personal struggle (one of the men who was killed by the Auca indians) when he was deciding wether or not to join them in their plans.

"A missionary plods through the first year or two, thinking that things will be different when he speaks the language. He is baffled to find, frequently, that they are not. He is stripped of all that may be called "romance." Life has fallen more or less into a pattern. Day follows day in unbroken sucessions; there are no crises, no mass conversions, sometimes not even one or two to whom he can point and say, 'there is a transformed life. If I had not come, he would never have known Christ.' There will be those among the Indians who say that they accept Christ, but what of the forsaking of heathen customs and turning from sin to a life of holiness? The missionary watches, and longs, and his heart sickens.

The forces of evil, unchallenged for so long, are now set in array against hte missionary."

Roger struggled with not hearing from God and thinking himself a failure as a missionary and more of a hindrance than a help. From many nights of prayer and searching for the will of God, Roger finally found peace in God and on December 19 wrote in his diary, "I will die to self. I will begin to ask God to put me in a service of constant circumstances where I live Christ I must die to self. I will be alive unto God. That I may learn to love Him with my heart, mind, soul and body."

It is so easy to dwell on the "romance" of missionary work, when in reality, it is one of the hardest jobs out there. The faith and confidence that these men had in the Lord is so encouraging. The other extremely encouraging thing was the wives response when they found out about their husbands murders.

"In the kitchen we sat quietly as reports were finished, fingering the watches and wedding rings that had been brough back, trying for the hundreth time to picture the scene. Which of the men watched the others fall? Which of them had time to think of his wife and children? Had one been covering the others in the tree house, and come down in an attempt to save them? Had they suffered long? The answers to these questions remained a mystery. This much we knew: 'Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's, the same shall save it.' There was no question as to the present state of our loved ones. They were 'with Christ.'"

Can you imagine what death must be like for the unsaved? How hopeless. We are able to find joy in death because we know that we will be with Christ, but for those who don't know the good news...they are left to despair. Have you ever wondered about the Indian's insane mourning wails when someone would die. Without Christ, death is worth those mourning cries of anguish and sadness. But with Christ, we need not mourn but rejoice! Hallelujah!