Lately Bobby and I've had a couple of conversations about getting more active at church. He and I have developed a tendency to look on with minimal involvement, talk about how we would have done things differently, then go on about our business. To be fair, we've wanted to get involved but have sort of waited for opportunities to come to us rather than seeking them out, but even sometimes when we've had the chance to serve, we've turned it down.
I really think we both have some decent, good and sometimes great ideas, but often it doesn't seem to go further than that. We definitely could do more volunteering than we have been, but it's so much easier to lounge around the house, play on the computer, play with the animals, etc.
At the same time, I think we both see things about our church that we think could be done more effectively and in a way that would serve people better. And we're not trying to be critical of the way anyone else is serving because we both know that God gifts people in different ways and puts them into different roles for a reason. But I really think that God has put certain things on our heart for a reason, and the reason is that he intends for us to fill those roles.
We've both had a fair amount on our plate with each of us moving to Tuscaloosa in the past year, starting new jobs, looking for another job in his case, making wedding plans, dealing with deaths in both our families and hunting for a house. But once we get past the wedding, I think we both really want to find specific ways to help further the work Vineyard is doing for Jesus. And, like we talked about tonight, that's going to mean both of us will have to really learn what it means to work behind the scenes.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." --Mahatma Gandhi (not Mother Teresa, as I thought ... thanks, Kathryn)
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Ever since I traveled to India in 2005, I've really held that place and its people close to my heart. There's a family in the Nashville area who want to adopt a little girl named Dorothy from an orphanage in India, but they need help raising the funds. Please check out
their site and donate if you can, or if not, at least help spread the word.
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It snowed yesterday!
First off, I
love snow. And we very, VERY rarely get it here in Alabama. In fact, the last time it snowed a measurable amount in Birmingham was 2000.
But yesterday. Oh, yesterday. It was beautiful. The forecast called for snow, but most folks around here -- including me -- are skeptical of that. We get predictions of snow all the time, just never the real thing.
So when I woke up around 2 a.m. and took out the whining dog, I was overjoyed (and a bit chagrined since I had to be outside for a few minutes) to see that snow was falling pretty heavily. I stood under the streetlamps of my apartment complex with my arms wide, my head tilted back and my mouth opened and basked in it.
Well, it was snowing at that point, but it wasn't sticking yet, so I figured I would wake up in the morning to nothing more than an overly cold but otherwise normal day. Instead I woke up to this:
And the snow just kept coming! It snowed until almost noon! The Weather Channel reported that Bham had about 5.5" of the stuff, which means we were probably close to that!
Bobby and I took the dogs out in it for a while early in the morning:
The dogs were hilarious! They both tried to eat the snow and had a blast chasing each other around in it. Bobby's mom said their dogs, Eli and Pearl, didn't like it at all! Pearl refused to go out in it. Rosie actually tried to eat the snow! And Bobby hit me with a snowball...
Then Ashley and I went out to Capitol Park and the Quad on the UA campus:
We made snow angels!
And yes, in the following picture, that is falling snow you see. It was snowing really hard when we were in Capitol Park!
And the Quad was beautiful:
We also went to the UA Arboretum, but I didn't get any pictures there because I took my camera battery out to charge and forgot it at my apartment! But you can check out Ashley's arboretum pics on her
Flickr page.
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