On Encountering Deadly African Animals...

I've had people ask me if I see lions and tigers and elephants in Africa (definitely not tigers, as they don't live in Africa, I often have to explain).  The answer is that I do see animals, but it's probably not any more exciting than the animals that you see.  Then again...maybe my evening last night accounts for an exciting African animal encounter.  

After a busy evening out at the mall and movies with our friends, Matt and I made our way over to the place where we were house sitting.  The mall had been packed that evening, and we walked around quite a bit, so we were both ready to settle into bed.  I stayed awake a little longer than Matt, thoroughly engrossed in my book.  Finally, as sleep overtook my eyes, I settled in and turned off the light, snuggling in close to Matt.  

As soon as the room turned dark, I heard a small crunching noise.  I froze...was someone in the back yard?  The dogs didn't seem to rustle, but I was sure that I had heard something.  Then, I heard it again, its duration lengthening this time.  Surely this was something that my valiant husband, not me, should deal with.  I shook him lightly, but he continued sleeping.  Finally, overtaken by fear, as I realized the sound was much closer than I initially thought, I poked him repeatedly in the collar bone as hard as I could.  

"Matt...are you awake?"

"Yeah...that hurt," he mumbled.

"Do you hear that?"

"No...."

"Listen..."

There was the crunching noise again.  It sounded almost as if a small creature was gnawing on a piece of wood.  

"Rachel, it's just a mouse and it's probably in the roof somewhere," he said as he turned over to go back to bed.  I was not about to settle for that explanation.  

"No, Matt.  It's not in the roof.  It's in this room!"  Matt turned on the light and got up for what I thought was a diligent search of the room.  Instead he stumbled to the bathroom in a semi-conscious state to use the toilet, leaving me alone with the mysterious crunching sound. Images of a rogue rat climbing up the covers and biting me filled my mind.  What if it was infected with the Black Plague or rabies or something?!  I didn't move.  I heard the sound again and said in desperation, "Matt, the sound is in this room, and I think it's behind the chest of drawers beside my bed."  

The chest of drawers is probably less than two feet from where my precious head sleeps.  I was not about to doze off into slumber, knowing that there was some sort of animal inches from my bed.  It was like those childhood fears of monsters under your bed, but real this time.  Matt returned from the bathroom and decided to move the chest of drawers out.  On his second attempt to move it forward, the culprit showed his face.  Faster than my drowsy mind could comprehend, I saw the little brown body of a mouse zoom out from behind the drawers and under our bed. I shrieked and jumped from the floor to the bed, distancing myself as much as I could from the foreigner. 

The good news was that I wasn't crazy, but now this mouse was seeking refuge under the bed.  This was  not a good enough solution.  Matt started pressing the mattress down with his elbow to try and oust the mouse.  Suddenly, it zoomed out from under the bed and scurried under the crack between the bedroom door and the floor.  We were safe, for now.  

Matt began to crawl back into bed.  

"Are you serious Matt?!  If the little guy can get under the crack between the door and the floor, he can surely get back into the room."  I looked for anything small that I could stuff between the crack.  Finally, I found a pile of magazines and began stuffing them in the crack.  

"You're crazy.  It's not going to hurt you."

"Well, I don't want to find out if the thing is a nice mouse or a mean mouse.  I just want him to leave me be."

A couple of seconds of silence follow...

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Rachel, they (the owners of the house) told me that they thought there was still a mouse in their house."  We knew that they'd previously had a mouse, but we thought he had left the premises for good.

"And how did you manage to remember to tell me only now?"

"I don't know, I guess it just slipped my mind."  He sort of smiled and then rolled over and turned out the lights.  

So, my husband did defend me from the African beast, albeit quite reluctantly, and it seems that no matter what country you call home, mice can still be pesky little creatures.  

Cooking with Rachel

As the minutes tick by, we draw closer to the InsideOut Christmas, and Matt has been working nonstop this morning on his message for tonight.  

Being the domestic queen that I am, I decided it would be profitable to whip up some sort of baked creation for him this morning.  I seem to go through various stages in the kitchen.  

There was a time where I measured everything, down to the pinch of salt.  That didn't last long.  Too many dirty dishes afterwards.  

In rebellion to my previous cooking habits, I then went in the kitchen with a boldness that thought I didn't need to measure anything.  This worked about fifty percent of the time.  The other fifty percent of the time it was just never ending unmet expectations.  

My most recent kick was cooking without refined sugar.  I'd substitute honey or molasses for the sugar, but it seemed that my final product just wasn't that satisfying.  "There's no refined sugar in these muffins, honey.  Can you believe it?" I'd ask Matt.  "Oh, yes, I can believe it" he'd reply. He'd stomach them down, but there were often leftovers, something that doesn't happen unless the food is REALLY bad.  

But, there's one thing that hasn't changed in all of my cooking phases.  Every time I cook, I always make some sort of haphazard mistake.  Fast forward to today.  I decided on coffee cake; easy enough, right?  Yes, it would have been if I'd read what size pan that I was supposed to use. Midway through pouring my mass of batter into a very large rectangular pan, I glance at the recipe only to see it calls for a much, much smaller square pan.  Great.  

So, I scoop everything out of the bigger pan only to find that I don't have a square pan.  In fact, I just have this oval corning ware dish (which now I'm thinking is much too small because it was only supposed to take 25 minutes to cook, and it's getting close to 40.) 

So...will my blueberry apple (it became blueberry apple because I ran out of blueberries) coffee cake be edible?  Only time will tell...

(Pause as I go check for the 4th time)

Well, I have a feeling the consistency will be anything but uniform, as the edges of the oval seem quite crisp and the middle is as soggy as a wet sponge at this point.  

:Sigh: Rachael Ray makes it look so easy!

InsideOut Upside Down Christmas

Well, well, well...it's been a while since my last post, but I've been on quite a few adventures this past month, which I'll get to next time.  

For now though, I am super busy planning for our InsideOut  UpsideDown Christmas.  This is our Christmas event that we're creating for our teens and their families and friends.  It's happening tomorrow (Saturday) at 7pm.  We're having a variety of vendors coming in who will be selling food as early as 6:30pm.  

I don't want to give too much away, but it will be similar to our other events, with games, prizes, and a few words from my lovely husband :)

At InsideOut, we've been talking about kingdoms, focusing on the fact that everyone lives their lives for a kingdom.  Matt left us all in suspense and tension at the last InsideOut, as he informed us that oftentimes, our kingdom and God's kingdom will collide.  At IO Christmas, Matt plans on resolving a bit of that tension.  

Although I'd love to write more, I need to put some last minute touches on our games for tomorrow night.  

Expect more updates soon with...

      -stories from my trip to America

      -an update on InsideOut

      -adventures in Cape Town

      -and pictures of our home!!!!! (we bought a digital camera in America!)

The Blessing of Obedience

I wanted to share with you all a very interesting experience I had this afternoon.  I had noticed a friend of mine was working on a paper, and she had asked me if I could answer a questionnaire. I saw it was a mass email, so I decided to wait and respond until after InsideOut.  

Much to my surprise today, I saw that the questionnaire was concerning our views on abstinence before marriage.  In the world we live in today, I realize that I am one of very few who believes in waiting until marriage.  Out of the few that believe in it, I was one of the even fewer who (by the grace of God), was able to wait.  

It was such an enlightening experience to be able to explain on my questionnaire the benefits of waiting until being in a committed marriage relationship to explore those levels of intimacy.  Working through her questionnaire, I really was able to see and explore some of the many benefits Matt and I have experienced due to waiting until marriage.  Even today, almost six months later, I'm so thankful we made that decision...and I'm even more thankful for the accountability of a few friends who stuck with us through our dating and engagement seasons.  Furthermore, I'm just thankful to God for giving us the grace and means (even if that meant living across continents) to live out what we believed was the right thing in our hearts.  

I can't even begin to explain to people the firm foundation that abstinence prior to marriage sets for couples.  Maybe this is something that people are familiar with, but for me, it didn't truly make sense until I was on the other side of the fence.  I wish that I could have understood prior to marriage the positives...I'm sure I would have been even more careful in guarding my purity...but I must say, God's Word is spot on in why it begs for people not to engage in what it labels as sexual immorality.  I can truly say with confidence that God wants this act to stay in marriage because it is such a blessing on us if we wait.  

I have a hunch that my experience with abstinence and purity will be similar with other commands that God gives.  They may not make so much sense now, but once I get to the other side of the fence, I will experience blessing beyond measure.  

It's moments like these that define my paradigm and relationship with God.  It makes sense that God credits our faith to us as righteousness...because, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  If you love someone, you trust them, even when what they ask of you doesn't quite make sense.  What better way to manifest our love towards someone than trusting them over all others?  

To keep it organized (which I fail to do when I blog), I am going to number the big points of interest over the last month.  Then you can pick and choose what is important for you!

1) InsideOut:  It went really well!  We had it on the 16 of October and launched our small groups that week.  I am working with my friend Tamara with the grade 10-12 girls.  It was really awesome to get to know them a little better, and I look forward to working more with those girls in the coming years.  The crazy thing was that we had 23 grade 10-12 boys!  Typically, youth events have more females than males, but that hasn't been the case with us.  It's really awesome to see a significant portion of those young men excited about deepening their relationship with Jesus.  I can't even begin to imagine the positive influence these men will have on their future families if they continue on this road.  It's such a blessing to be the means that God is using to guide these teenagers.  

We also did a hip hop dance at InsideOut that my friend Brendon and I choreographed.  There were five of us.  We began working on this dance in August, so it was nice to see the fruit of our labor.  Lots of positive feedback came from that.  

The last thing was our fashion show that we did.  It was absolutely hilarious!  We had all the teens bring in their old clothing and we dressed our small group leaders up and paraded them through the building.  We're donating their clothes to an organization called The Warehouse.  It was a great way to help those who have little but also have fun in the process.  

We have our next InsideOut the 13 of November!

2) Books:  Matt and I have found something more engrossing than the internet or the television...Ted Dekker's Circle Trilogy.  They're just impossible to put down.  I just finished the third book in the trilogy only to find out that there is actually a fourth book (a prequel).  The books, although their fiction, really focus on the idea that just because one cannot see something does not mean that it is not there or that that unseen thing cannot have effects.  I love the line at the end when the protagonist says, "The battle over flesh and blood cannot compare to the battle for the heart."  For me, it helped me especially in considering the afterlife, since the concept of death scares me so much!  Anyway, they're not the most profound books in the world, but certainly entertaining!

3) Musings:  I've been thinking about pride a lot lately...where and how it manifests in my life, how to subdue it, how it affects my relationships with others.  Frankly, it's just mind-blowing how sneaky pride can be.  Pride can look like fear or insecurity, or it can look like something really good, too!  I was reading about Saul and his decision to disobey God and not kill all the animals in Amelek in 1 Sam. 15.  God had told him to "Go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all they have.  Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."  But Saul decides to leave the best animals alive and sacrifice them to God.  Samuel comes in and sees what is happening and is just like "Saul, what are you doing?!  This is not what God told you to do."  After a little banter, Samuel says the line we've all heard, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of the rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry."  I'd never really taken that in context before to try and understand it, but what I really gleaned from my reading is that on the outside, Saul's decision didn't look like a bad one.  In fact, it looked like a logical, wise decision.  It looked like he had the best intentions in mind (the people will be happy with my decision, God gets sacrifices, everybody wins).  But in fact, it was the opposite of what God had asked him to do.  And that all goes back to pride, because pride is thinking that we know better than what God says for us to do.  I couldn't help but think of all the times that I knew what I was supposed to do (be patient, rejoice, don't grumble, consider others better than myself, pray), and yet I try to reason with God and say, "But God, your commands are really illogical; I think my plan of how to deal with this situation is better.  In fact, it's probably wiser."  When I really got to the root of it, I realized that all of that inside of me was just pride.  So, I've been thinking a lot about this lately and praying that God reveals to me areas of pride in my life.  It's just not healthy to have that pride, and it really seems to hinder what God wants to do with us.  

Anyway, that's about it on this side of the ocean.  InsideOut, Ted Dekker, and pride.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, has filled my life for the past few weeks!  Hope everyone has a splendid day.  And all of my friends in America, go look at the trees as they change colors for me and enjoy them!

Update from Whale Hunting

After looking on the horizon for a few minutes, we saw an amazing show from a whale.  He was far away, but he was jumping out of the water and making huge splashes!  It was AMAZING!  We went to this awesome Deli called the Olympia Cafe and went window shopping.  I saw these really cute dresses for like R500, and I kept reminding Matt that I would like a new dress for Karis' wedding.  Haha, we'll see...I'm not sure how keen I am about spending R500.  The dresses had this sweet, vintage look; maybe I can make one for a whole lot less ;)

Anyway, today has been a day of cleaning.  Sometimes I feel like I'm Susy Homemaker meets Nancy Drew.  Like, I really have a desire to have a nice, cute, home, but I totally was cut out for something more mind-boggling, like solving mysteries.  But actually, I really like my style of my house.  It's very simple...no frills...just the basics.  It's easier to clean that way.  The less things you have, the less you have to dust.  Plus, I imagine there was a day where Nancy decided it was time to hang up the magnifying glass and go ahead and tie the knot with Ned.  It's just, as I so poignantly read in Ecclesiastes, that there's a time for everything...and it's my time to CLEAN and not solve mysteries.  

So...I'll keep you posted.  We're going on a retreat tomorrow, so I'll let everyone know how that goes!  

Have a delightful day!

I thought I'd share with you all a quite humorous story that happened yesterday.  

Sunday morning is the day that we have to wake up at 5:15am to set up for church.  Since our entire church is portable (meaning we don't own the venue; we rent it), we have to set it up every Sunday.  It's not like America where there's acres of unused land where you can just purchase, chop down some trees, and up goes a church building.  When one outgrows their previous venue, there's really few options available as far as expansion goes.  So...we rent, meaning we take about 2 hours to set up everything, run sound check, do a run through of the service, have breakfast, and then do the service.  Then, after service is done, we take it all down again and pack it away until the next week.  

That being said, it is quite important that we start on time, specifically in Matt's case, reason being that Matt has the only key to the store room where all of our decor and equipment is.  Well, as usual, Saturday night, we set our alarm, go to bed at the late hour of 9:45, and snooze away.  The next thing I remember was Matt's cellphone alarm going off, only it wasn't the alarm, it was someone calling him.  As I opened my eyes, I saw that the sun was up.  You know that horrible feeling you have when you put 2 and 2 together and realize, "Wait a second!  The sun isn't supposed to be up when I wake up!"  It's like the pleasantries of waking up to the sun only to realize two seconds later that you were supposed to be up a LONG time ago.  That all went through my head in about a half of a second, followed by Matt saying, "Rachel!  It's 6:15, we overslept!"  The guys from church were calling us wondering where we were, waiting for the key to the store room!  Oops!  Needless to say, we got ready at hyper speed, probably quicker than ever before on a Sunday morning.  

All was fine, but it was just one of those mornings where you have no idea how you overslept, but you did.  

Anyway, Matt and I are going to go on an adventure today to search for whales!  We saw some yesterday but they were very far away; hopefully today we get a better view.  

Also this week we're going on a retreat to learn about how to be better Small Group Leaders!  We're very excited about that!  And then next week, we start training our InsideOut Small Group Leaders!  Lots of exciting plans on the books for Matt and myself.  We will continue to update!

More pots later...I have some good ideas for posts brooding in my brain, and I'm sure I'll have some exciting stories after today's adventures!