Great weekend

We had a great weekend in the mountains of Washington. After leaving Seattle we drove over the mountains to a lodge near Leavenworth, Washington. We stayed at a beautiful rustic lodge with all of the people who were attending the wedding.

The highlights for me were the drive through the mountains, spending time in beautiful scenery, seeing Ben and Brynn Arendt and other friends, and the hospitality of Ken and Andrea and their families. I've been to a number of weddings and this was definitely one of my favorites. It was also so much fun to spend time with just Molly. She doesn't get a lot of alone time with just Mom and Dad so she really liked that. As you can see from the picture below she was definitely the prettiest girl at the wedding (next to her mom.) You can see all our pictures here.

Seattle

Last night we arrived in Seattle, Washington. We are here for my friend Ken Peer's wedding on Saturday. We flew a day early to hang out in Seattle. I have never been here before and it has been a long time for Amanda. When we told Dave that we were coming out here he said, "I have got the perfect place for you to stay." Boy, was he right. We are at the Inn at the Market, in the midst of Pike Place Market. The image above is the view out our window. (The famous fish market is in the lower left corner.) When we got in last night the guy at the front desk broke the news to us that they "had to upgrade us to a town home room." So last night Molly slept downstairs in the living room and we slept in our huge Tempurpedic bed. (Tricia, by the way, has a great story about her experience with Tempurpedic beds.)

For dinner last night we were going to go to a little French cafe right below the hotel. Amanda wasn't thrilled with this selection. When we all sat down and looked at the menu she was even less thrilled. So I said, "Let' go." We grabbed our stuff and high-tailed it out of there. Instead we went to Etta's for seafood. I had done a little research and this was one that I remembered. I read that the crab cakes were the best item on the menu, so that is what I went with. Amanda had the king salmon. Both of our meals were great. We had to leave right after we were done with our meals because, as I told the waiter, "one of us has just had an accident in our pants." He said, "To be polite, I won't ask who." He got a kick out of that.

This morning's itinerary is breakfast and then around the corner to the original Starbuck's. We'll hang out in the market and then we're off to Ken's rehearsal dinner. It has been a great 24 hours so far. I love hanging out with my two favorite girls.

See the rest of our pictures here.

Hymn of the Week--Like a River Glorious

This week's hymn was a difficult one to track down. We called Shube and asked her what hymn "Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed" was. She couldn't come up with it so we called my mom. She didn't come through either. But while we were on the phone with her, Shube called back with the answer.

Every time that we have sung this, I have thought of Jim and Shelley Colbert and tried to pray this for them.

Hymn of the Week
Like a River Glorious

Words by Frances R. Havergal
Music by Wye Valley, James Mountain

Like a river glorious, is God’s perfect peace,
Over all victorious, in its bright increase;
Perfect, yet it floweth, fuller every day,
Perfect, yet it groweth, deeper all the way.

Refrain

Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest
Finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.

Ben and Caleb's Sarah Palin imitations

Amanda has been joking around with the boys about Sarah Palin. Then one night we walked past the boys' room and they were all doing their best Sarah Palin imitations to each other. We had to get it on video. Enjoy!

Colbert update

I am helping the Colbert family out by posting their blog posts over at their blog. You can keep up with their life and Abbey's progress here. Please continue to pray for Jim, Shelley, Jacob, Micah and especially Abbey.

Oh God!

This morning when I got to work I read an e-mail from Amanda's best friend from high school, Shelley (Vardas) Colbert. They found out yesterday that her daughter Abigail (Abbey) has leukemia. She is a little younger than Caleb. She is in the children's hospital in Cleveland. It is so difficult to understand God's ways and His steps. I trust that He knows much more than we do and loves the Colbert family and especially little Abbey more than we do. Shelley asked for prayer for the following things.

Pray please for Abbey, that she will not have a lot of pain. Pray that she would sleep good at night and not get too homesick (she kept asking us to take her home today). Pray that they would find no cancer in her bone marrow (they already said that they have never seen it not spread there with what her numbers are looking like), but we know God can make there be no cancer there. Pray that it would not be in her spine. Pray that we could be creative in keeping her happy, comfortable and occupied. Pray for lots of good talks with her about God and His care for us. Pray that she would be able to really experience God's love for her. Pray that her little body would handle all of these medications o.k. and that she would be able to bounce back quickly. Pray for strenght for Jim and I ... that Satan would not be attacking our thoughts. Pray for our relationship, that it would be strengthened. Pray for sleep for us at night. Please pray for Jacob and Micah as they will be away from Jim, myself and Abbey a lot. Pray that Micah would switch to formula easily. Pray that we would be a light on this hospital floor. That people would see Jesus through our family. Pray for my mom and step-dad as they are traveling through the night to get home from their vacation. Pray for Jim's parents as they come into town tomorrow. Pray for strengh for our parents as they care for our boys. Please pray for her to completely beat this.

I am praying that God will work Paul's words from Phillipians 4 for Jim, Shelley, Jacob (Ben's age), Abbey and Micah (Molly's age).

Phillipians 4:6-7
6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Why'd you quit your church?

I sometimes read Abraham Piper's (Pastor John's son) blog. It is often a really good question followed by people's responses in the comments. This week he asked the question, "Why'd you quit your church?" I wrote about why we left the church that we had been going to for over a year in this post. As I read through the comments on Abraham's blog they seemed to separate into two categories: the church (teaching, worship, theology) and how I felt in the church (not cared for, lonely, not heard, not included). A couple examples of each follows.

"theology issues and feeling like I was getting a pep talk every Sunday instead of being taught about Jesus."--Morgan

"Our thumbs down came when ‘Deal Or No Deal’ video clips were played for two months prior to the sermon. Also, the messages were 100% topical instead of going through books of the Bible."--WL

"I realized no one noticed when I was gone."--ann

"My wife and I left our old church because it didn’t want us anymore, and they cut out the things that mattered the most for morketing reasons."--Fr. Spike

I know that some of my readers have left churches or are thinking about it. What made you leave? Are there reasons for leaving that are better than others?