The Long and the Short of it...

Whew. It's been a long past week. Many a moment I've thought of posting something, but so much else needed to be done. With that said, how about an update on my exciting superheroesque life.

Today I began the process of registering for classes for 05-06 at Bethel Seminary. I discovered that if I really wanted to punish myself, that I could in theory graduate next spring. At this point I don't think that is reasonable though. I would have to take 4 courses each semester, an extra course in September, plus work my job to pay bills, and then get married in December, and learn how to live the married life while all this goes on. I don't think that is the type of foundation I want to lay for my marriage. It's important that I get done with school, so if nothing else I can start paying back my student loans, but I won't do that at the expense of my marriage. My fiancee is chomping at the bit for me to be done with school, but I think when we discuss what I discovered this afternoon she'll agree with my assessment of things.

I'm really feeling the need to move into a paid ministry position. I'm going to have to be a bit more focused on my search. I intend to put a few calls into some of my contacts and see what they might know of or have in their churches. I've been pretty selective in what I would consider, but I might have to lower the bar a bit to get my foot in the door. We'll see what God brings. I am at a place in life where I think I am ready, and the timing couldn't be much better. My obligations at my current church are minimal with our Jr. High ministry having just ended last week. I do have to preach Memorial Day weekend, and have a few other odds and ends duties at church, but nothing really after June 10th. Memorial Day weekend I'm preaching on Genesis 1:1. Good stuff. I'm excited for it.

I had an interesting weekend. Friday Banana (my finacee) planned a date for me, which started with me getting a hair cut at a sports barber. They have TV's everywhere with sports on, foosball tables, video games, and tons of sports memorabilia everywhere. I'm quite pleased with the hair cut, though it cost 30% more than my normal guys at the local barber shop. We then grabbed burritos at Chipotle. The final component of our evening was taking in opening night for the St. Paul Saints of the Northern League. The Saints lost to the Schaumburg Flyers, but it was fun anyhow. The Saints won the Northern League championship last year defeating Schaumburg 3 games to 2, on a walk off home run in the 9th inning with 2 outs and 2 on base. Great drama. The Saints experience is more than just baseball though, they know how to spice things up and have a good time. I caught a tee-shirt (which we gave to one of Banana's students who were at the game), almost caught a foul ball, ate some yummy cheese curds, and got to enjoy a beautiful evening with Banana and her dad. It's a beautiful outdoor stadium, halfway between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis. We concluded the evening watching the first third of the movie "The Sound of Music" which is Banana's favorite.

Then yesterday Banana and I went to church together, and hung out relaxing until mid-afternoon. We then went over to her house and did some work, after a nice hour long trip to HOME DEPOT!!!! I removed all the wall paper from the upstairs bathroom (it's a pretty good sized bathroom), which took the better part of 4 hours. It was one of the ugliest wall papers I have seen, so it's nice to see it go. Taking wall paper off is a huge mess though. Especially when it covers the top half of the wall, so the glue remove gets to run down your arm all night long, into your arm pit, onto your shirt, across your face etc.

I will try to keep posting more regularly, but until this semester is over I can't make any promises. Praise God in all that you do, for He is worthy.