And, we're 1/2 way there!

It's been a long summer. I think that's pretty much the only way to put it. I knew that Hebrew would be tough, would require a lot of studying, but I honestly had no idea how intense an intensive language class could be. I am still enjoying it (most days...) and today translated Genesis 1:1-5 from Hebrew into English (so it took about 2 hours to do the 5 verses...which I know sounds ridiculous to most of you, but trust me, that's not too bad!) which was quite exciting--at least it shows that I've learned something in the past 5 weeks! There are 5 weeks to go...hopefully I won't go too crazy before they are up.

I had the chance to preach again at Burbank on Sunday, which was stressful in the midst of Hebrew but I actually had a lot of fun working with the text for the day (the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10), and had several people comment that they appreciated the way I presented the passage--usually the message we get is that we should be more like Mary, that she is the good sister and Martha is the bad sister, but I made the argument that based on the context of the rest of chapter 10 (with the story of the 70 being sent out to serve Jesus and the story of the Good Samaritan preceeding my story for the day) that we actually need to be both Mary and Martha--we need to be active in our world, we need to be servants, Jesus sends people out to ACT in his name, he doesn't want us christians to simply sit all the time, but that when we do act, our action needs to be grounded in our time with Him--the title for the sermon was "Contemplative Action" -- so you can draw more conclusions from there. :) My great friend from high school, Jenn, came down for the weekend, and it was wonderful to have her here and for her to have the chance to hang out with my Fuller girls:

Jenn, Jenn, me, Sophie and Becca after church
I have also been enjoying the final installment of Harry Potter and will be quite sad when I finish and no longer get to enjoy the wonderful world of him and his friends. I'm only on page 160, so I'm refusing to go to any websites that could potentially ruin the mystery for me--it's been quite a challenge knowing what to avoid!

Other than that, I'm not sure what else is new and exciting here--not a whole lot! Most of my days are spent in the library, alternating between studying Hebrew and researching various things for the sermon or the bible class I was teaching, and my evenings have been spent having meals with friends, more Hebrew, running, and enjoying a few novels--like I said, right now it's Harry, but I just finished a wonderfully-mindless book "Sammy's House" by Kristin Gore (Al Gore's daughter who has written a few books of a fictional character who works on capital hill--and who gets herself into all kinds of ridiculous predicaments.) Next up will be a book I've been waiting for--"Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a Myspace World" by Chap and Dee Clark (Chap is the professor of Youth, Family and Culture here at Fuller and is the prof I will be working for starting in the fall--his research and ministry to youth and families really is pretty incredible). And there you have it, probably one of the most boring posts I've written, but I felt like taking a break from the vocab flashcards, so there you have it....happy last week of July everyone!