Birthday Celebration Continues Despite Peace Talks

Yesterday's news that NBC, MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times and many other American news outlets are now officially referring to the situation in Iraq as a "civil war" did not seem to phase Iraqi president and PUK founder Jalal Talabani. What the American press names the state of life in his country is of little consequence to him as he deals daily with the sectarian violence that has torn apart his country. The world watches as it struggles to rebuild and waits to see what will come of this volatile area.

Talabani did take a few minutes out of his busy schedule today to surprise one of our very own Oz readers with a celebratory birthday dinner along with several heads of state at his Kurdish home in Erbil. Jen H. was welcomed with the hospitality that is typical of the Kurds, and sat with Talabani and his family for a meal of rice and shila. After dinner, Talabani and Jen met with the press for questions. One member of the Kurdish press asked her how this compared to American celebrations, and she answered, "Well, in America, we are given cars at every birthday, and you did not give me a car. That is different. Your cake is very good though, and I am glad that we could dance. I have missed Kurdish dancing."

Jen flew home on Thursday and was met at the airport by her friends Robert and Angie at the airport in Columbus, Ohio. They will be enjoying another birthday celebration together on Friday evening, though one can only imagine it will not be as eventful as meeting the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEN!!!

Discover the Point

No really, DiscoverThePoint.org. This is the website I've been making for a church in Toledo. It's not finished yet, but it's due to launch in just a few days, and tonight, I talked with the director at the church and found out a ton of changes to be made to the site. I'll be working on it all day tommorrow for sure. Oh, but I still have that Family Fun Night flyer to finish up for the church in Texas having REAL SNOW, a petting zoo, a carousel, and who is watching a Charlie Brown Christmas and The Polar Express outside on the big screen for their block party in a few weeks! Who wouldn't want to come to that?! And I seriously need to dig back into their database...For someone who doesn't have a real job, I sure have been working a lot this week and have a lot more to do.

Oh and in MUCH more exciting news! Robert and I have begun our support raising for our return trip to Iraq. Yup! It officially began this afternoon when we sent our November Newsletter. If you would like a copy of it and didn't get one, shoot me an email and I'll make sure you get one. The highlight of the newsletter (in my opinion)was our "Creative Ways to Give!" Over the next few weeks, we'll be sending out HUNDREDS of letter to people and churches across the country asking for their support, and while walking out the door the other talking about how we ONLY need 100 of those HUNDREDS to pledge $50 a month in order to meet our goal, it dawned on us that HUNDREDS of stamps are VERY expensive! At least, they are when neither of us are working steady full time! We know that we will have to send to hundreds of people in order to gain the needed support, and we know that God will supply just what need in order to GO. BUT, we need stamps in order to do that! HA!

Well, stamps are no match for GOD, right!? So, stamps became a creative way to give to our ministry! I mean, we can totally believe for God to show a few people how THEY are TRULY supporting the work of our ministry by simply mailing us STAMPS, right? I'm not being sarcastic either! As we walked out the door and talked about it in the car, I think we had this moment (at least I did) where I remembered that it may be someone's joy to pick up an extra book of stamps at the Post Office, knowing that every 20 stamps mails out 20 letters which may yield another person's support for our ministry. It's strange how God works like that, right?

*sigh* Enough of that...Wanna hear something strange? What I want right now - is an Apple Fritter donut from Jolly Pirate and some more iced Apple Juice. Yum. That's brain food when you're working on important stuff like websites, flyers, databases, and that most important stuff - stamps and praying for stamps!

The Dream of A Library Goes Down.

Last week and this week, I took what was essentially my youth ministry library (easily over $800 in books) to Half Price Books to sell them. I was given a total of $82. Now I know what you're thinking. "Angie! Did you REALLY need the money THAT badly!? These are your BOOKS! YOUR BOOKS!" I mean, anyone who knows me knows about my books, right? Heck, Jason used to SMELL my books when he'd walk into my office, for goodness sake! So to answer the question, "Yes, I wanted some extra money but NO! I didn't need it THAT badly. NO! No. If I really needed the money that badly, I would have found it other ways than selling my books, I can promise you that. These were my books!"

But they were my books. And they were just sitting around all day every day staring at me (along with other things), reminding me of all the things I'm not doing. Of what I USED to do. Of what I USED to need them for, of what I used to reference them for. And I told myself that I was keeping those books because I'd need them again someday, but one day last week, suddenly I saw: I am never going to use them again. Even if were to need them again, they'll be so hopelessly out of date, I shouldn't be using them. That is beside the point though; I won't use them again anyway.

I'll never be that person again. I'll have new ministry, for sure, someday and I'm getting entirely anxious for it...but not that ministry. Not anything like that, for lots of reasons. I just can't. So the books had to go. And in the process of doing that, I freed up a cabinet, almost an entire bookshelf, AND made $82. Not bad.

It took 10 years to fill that up and only an half hour to empty it. Wonder what I'll fill it with next?

WTF!?

Tribesman, clansmen, and cavesmen in other countries who are just setting up their satellites, televisions, and internets for the first time ever see this and think THIS is what the rest of the world is like?

Thank YOU very much, Mr. David Hasselhoff. What would we do without you to represent the rest of the human race?

We Never Went To Church (The Streets)

Lyrics here.
The Streets website here.

Getting lost at the circus

When I was little, I never got to ride in the front seat. Joe was the oldest, so he always called shotgun and got it. It sucked. I could never hear what was being talked about, I couldn't control what was on the radio, and I couldn't see over the seats to even know what sort of fun was being had "up there." So, I would be left to entertain myself in the back seat, usually just looking out the windows at whatever happened to be whirring past.

For some reason, rainy days stick out in my mind like this. Probably because the street lights and headlights glisten so much more brightly when its raining. The rain captures everything, you know? It was one of the worst feeling when I was a kid-being stuck in the back seat on a rainy day just staring out the window while "stuff" happened in the front seat.

Turns out, years later, I'm right back in the back seat (in a number of ways) and hating them all just the same.

Everytime I get in a car, I am that little kid sitting in the back seat, straining to see over the seats, wondering what's on the radio or what's going to come on next or what the other people are up to or going to do next. From the moment that I recognize a need to leave my apartment, I just give up my own independence. No more lingering in the store just because I want to, or stopping at an extra store along the way; no more "oops I forgot this, let's go back," or "I'm sitting at home bored, I think I'll go here." And once I'm in the car, it's not my decision what station to listen to (or NOT to listen to), or windows to roll down, or route to take, and so on. I have to plan my entire day when I want to go out, and then plan it around someone else and be able to communicate every detail of it to whoeever is going to be taking me somewhere. Not to mention that my CAR is where I used to THINK best, and it's where I used to listen to music. I have yet to find a place that works as well as my car for those two things. It's been this way for an entire YEAR now, and it's not going to change. I can't honestly tell my doctor next month that I've been seizure free since our last visit, so another six months of not driving is on its way. THIS is why teenagers looked so forward to getting their licence!

NOT DRIVING, is the same as being in the back seat, and in fact, it IS being in the back seat. It's awful, plain and simple.

PS. Resist the urge to comment with platitudes and niceities. I will delete your comments if you do. I really don't need that. I'm just writing to write. But thank you for your thoughts if you WERE going to. :-)

What's your phone number again?

Tonight Brandi, Bob and I went to tutor a Somali family in English. It was the first in what I'm sure will be many visits. I have no idea how three people who speak no Somali tutor a family in English who speak little to no English, considering none of us have any training in this? But, I guess if we talk AT each other long enough, we, or they are bound to pick up some of each other's language sooner or later. That sounds terrible, but honestly, that sounds like the PLAN of the agency that sent us! AH... more details of our visit later if someone else doesn't beat me to it. Good times.

What if this is as good as it gets?

Ramblings ahead.

Now, I'm still an outsider. I'm a "has-been" that walked away. People in the church don't / can't / won't get that. So what does that mean for me? I don't know. Do you have any clues? I've actually toyed with the idea of putting together a "clearness committee", a group of close friends and counselors who will help me hear and discern the will of God. Can you hear the frustration in my voice? I don't know what to do, where to go, or how to get there. These are difficult days. I wish I could sound a little more victorious, but when it comes to investing my life and utilizing my gifts, well, I'm at a loss.

A friend of mine wrote this to me the other day. He used to be a senior pastor but isn't anymore. Just recently he started trying to get back into it (apparently, things aren't going so well). He's an amazing senior pastor, too. It will be a sadness for the church, if he doesn't end up somewhere.

I haven't written him back yet because I honestly don't know what to say. I feel a lot of the same frustration he does and so, what do I say besides, "Yeah, I understand." (That much goes understood between us). I don't know why yet, but for some reason his entire email reminds me of this song by derek webb, called Nothing is Ever Enough. Maybe it's because you'd have to know the whole story about why he left the pastorate in the first place, but the "she" in this song makes me think of the church and how she can be so beautiful at her best, and because SHE is only made up of WE, really ugly at the same time. And because of that, sometimes she can't see past the changes a person has made and the enormous contribution a person still has to contribute to the community.

she’s not real,
she’s the spokes on a wheel
but the way she moves will take you where you wanna go
and you’re the one that she steals from
but if not you she’s gonna find somebody else
‘cause nothing is ever enough
and you love her but you know you’ve got to leave her
‘cause she’s leaving you with no way out
she’s a jewel in the nose of a fool
she’s beautiful but she don’t know who she is
and you’re a wreck because you suspect
that she’ll never be who she was years ago
‘cause nothing is ever enough
maybe you don’t see it
but she’s waiting everywhere
you’re gonna go
in the faces of the people who look at you
like someone that they know

Truth is, I've always been thirsty. (Senior Ed Bloom)

My friend Devan called tonight to tell me that she and her husband Scott have decided to launch out of their harbor and move to Charlotte, without having a job first.

It's perfect. (BTW, the XM Cafe radio station I've been listening to lately is providing the perfect soundtrack to my life right now. If you have access to it, take a listen). Anyway, it's just the right insert to my life's story line right now. Yes, if you know me, you know that I believe that this world revolves around me, and so while Devan and Scott think that their move to Charlotte is about THEM, it's actually a subplot in MY story, AND as such, it's just what needed to be happening right now. Everything else was getting a little stale. Someone had to do something to break up the monotony. Good play, Dev.

No seriously. Good play, Dev. ;-) I'm proud of you guys. Go kill Charlotte.

And speaking of breaking up the monotony, today was Robert's Kurdish Supporters Meeting. Despite what that might sound like, it was not a marketing brainstorming party for the newest Iraqi jockstrap. :-) (it's been a long day. I think I'm funny). I can't speak for Robert, because this was his deal, his gathering to share about his experience with his supporters from his trip...so maybe he'll talk about it on his blog, but here's my take:

I've never been more excited to go than I am this evening. I can't stop thinking about it. The vision God gave me 10 years ago about going to a "country without a country..." hasn't been as vivid in 10 years as it is tonight. I feel as confident tonight that God will bring to us 100 people to support us with $40 a month than I ever have (that's just an avg. of what we'll need - something I use to help me get my head around the huge $ we're raising). The gathering today wasn't MY gathering - but the people are. They've been my people for 10 years; I just didn't know it. Every time Robert tells a story or shows some pictures about these people, my heart grows bigger for them. I am crazy caught up in this madness.

Tonight I was thinking about this man in Colorado at my internship (Gene, I think was his name) who told me what he thought about "visions" and "dreams" and so on. His advice was so plain, and it wasn't anything I hadn't heard a dozen times before., but it was good. "When you feel like God has shows you something, you tell your wise counsel about it, so they can test it against your character, against the Word and against the Spirit. Then you put it on a shelf and see if anything comes of it." There was a little explanation given to each of those, but basically, that was it. I've done that repeatedly in my life, and repeatedly, it's been the wise and right thing to do. AND, repeatedly, the vision given to me from God has been TRUE.

This crazy vision God gave me TEN years ago is TRUE. Isn't that nuts!! Days like today - are PROOF that God loves us and wants us to be close to him... (at least, to me it is), because he went out of his way to tell me of this so I would know and not miss it. So I wouldn't miss Robert (because he's a part of this). So I wouldn't miss the goodness of this whole thing. So I wouldn't miss the opportunity to serve Him in this way, whatever this is going to look like.

*Sigh* On that note...Amen.

3:37

I'm tired. Good night.

A new look!

How does the new look look? I'm working on getting all the fonts changed to the same thing, and getting the post titles changed to a different color than the date so that it sticks out, but all that takes time to figure out, you know?

For some wedding pictures (as many as I could fit in the album before reaching my limit), click here.

To jump right to seeing them as a timed SLIDESHOW, rather than clicking through them individually, click HERE.

On the way out of the parking garage at the library this afternoon, the parking attendant caught me off guard. Rather than allowing Brandy and I to slip through with the customary, "Hi." "Hi. How are you today?" "Fine. And you?" "Good. Have a nice day," he interuppted the natural flow of things and instead asked "Well, since you asked, I mean, you asked me how I am, do you really want to know? Because if you do, I'll tell you."

Awkward pause as he breaks the proscenium wall while waiting for our response. "Well, yes, of course. How has your day been?"

ABC News: Haggard Admits Some 'Indiscretion,' Says Fellow Pastor

Industry talk ahead. I don't know why this is, because I should be just this sad when any well know pastor admits publicly to some sort of sin (or is "found out), but Ted Haggard? And not an affair, but a gay affair and undercover meth use?

And not just a gay affair, but how ironic that TED HAGGARD was in a gay affair? Co-Leader of the Colorado Springs movement to ban gay marriage has been having a gay affair (he and James Dobson take the charge on that one)? How sad and double-minded his life must have been for these three years to have been living this way. Dear Jesus. Could you come back now and save us from ourselves.

It's still a work in progress, but this is one of two logos I'm working on for a church in Toledo. This is for their Kid's Ministries' Nursery. I'm also doing their website (and by tomorrow, I'm supposed to have the second round of their basic sight design ready to look at). Oh, and for another project I'm working on for another church, I have 300 pages of technical manuals to read to learn how to use a new database I've never used. They're all PDF's though, and that's obviously too much to print out here at home. Reading technical stuff on the screen is like poking my eyes out - especially when I need to be comparing what I'm reading with what's on another screen. The funny thing is, it's just a church management database, so typically, that's the sort of thing I can just look at and KNOW what to do. But, this one is actually GOOD! and when I opened it up, and started poking around, I thought to myself, "DANG! FINALLY! a company made a database for churches that DOES what we've been looking for!" and SO, it' sort of um? Well. Let's just say that you can't just be a monkey and operate it so I'm having to read some instructions about how the different modules interact with one another. Mad props to Fellowship Church for that one. Oh, and I think that I'm going to end up integrating this database with their website too, so I better REALLY pay attention. YIKES!

For someone who doesn't have a job, I sure do have enought to do (and a lot that I'm putting off doing strangely enough)...a lot to do that I would TRADE doing in a heartbeat to just have a NORMAL job again. *sigh* (and by normal, I mean something with meaning).

But since I don't, I should probably get back to work. See ya!