Whew! I think I am grateful this week is over! It's been a bit of a whirlwind, and I am super tired! Lots of big events this week, so here's the latest...I think I mostly had 1 per day of the past week with a few exceptions, so here you go, beginning with last Saturday evening:
1: Saturday
1: SaturdayWe spent the evening with friends from church celebrating a bunch of May birthdays. Ashley (one of our fellow youth leaders) was throwing a birthday party for George, and we kind of incorporated the other May birthdays as well. Here are a few photos from the night:
The refrigerator turned Jeopardy board for team trivia
The cake Ashley made for George--Ice Man from Top Gun
The May birthday peeps
2: Sunday
BIG day at church! We elected a new pastor (after being without a head of staff for about 4 years now) who is going to be so wonderful for that congregation! He's coming to us from Arizona, and this will be his first ordained call, even though he has 16 years of non-ordained ministry experience. He's young (39) and my favorite thing about him (other than his incredible preaching skills of course!) is that he wears 3 earrings :) This congregation needs someone to blow their prescribed expectations of what a pastor is/how he looks etc out of the water. I'm pretty sure Chris will do just that! He starts August 1, and we're excited to get to be here for a bit to see him in action.
3: Monday
Another travel day for me. I flew back to Seattle for a 48 hour trip to be able to meet with the Seattle Presbytery Tuesday evening. Monday evening when I landed, my friend Missy and I cooked dinner for our other friends and hosted "Family Dinner" as we often call these meals. It was great to see people and enjoy conversation over delicious food and wine.
4: Tuesday
My dear husband turned another year older on Tuesday, and I couldn't be here to celebrate with him :( We are really celebrating June 6 when we go see The Lion King, but I was still bummed to not be here. He had others celebrate with him, which was great, definitely a gift of living in community! Happy birthday honey, I love you and am so thankful for you being born!
5: Tuesday
Tuesday was a big day! I met Tuesday evening with the Seattle Presbytery so they could vote as to whether or not I was ready to move to the next round of the ordination process, called Candidacy. For those non-Presbyterian folks out there, a Presbytery is made up of all the churches in a given geographical area, and is a body of people who make the decisions for the local presbytery. So all the ordained clergy from all the churches in the area come together, along with a certain number of elders from each church (determined based on size of church--so Bethany, my home church has 4 spots for elders at Presbytery). This body of people (totaling about 300 in Seattle--although not all come to every meeting) makes a lot of decisions for the churches in the area. They also help determine the readiness of potential pastors for ministry. So I flew up to be interviewed by them for about 10 minutes (I had spent about an hour with a committee of people from the Presbytery 2 weeks ago, and they made the recommendation to all of Presbytery that I be passed to the next round, so Presbytery doesn't have to spend a huge amount of time on each potential candidate). When they're done asking you questions, they escort you out of the room, vote on you, and call you back in. If they've approved you, you walk in to applause--it's always an encouraging sign when you are still in the hall and you can hear the applause start! I'm not eligible to be ordained yet, it's still a longer process than this, and one day I'll write a post explaining it more because I get a lot of questions--most often "so why don't you have a job yet as a pastor?" that I'm kind of sick of answering! But as of Tuesday evening, I am officially a "Candidate" in the PC(USA) which is very exciting :)
6: Tuesday
As I'm walking out of Presbytery, my pastor from my home church, Dan, approaches me and asks for a ride to the ferry boat since his ride left half way through the meeting. I adore Dan, and haven't ever had a chance to have a lot of 1 on 1 conversation with him, so I was thrilled to get so much uninterrupted time with him. Between the drive to the ferry terminal, waiting in the ferry line, and the ferry ride back to Seattle I had over an hour of conversation with him which was one of the highlights of my week. I basically just said, "Okay, so what advice do you have for me starting ministry?" and we covered all kinds of topics of conversation--from whether pastors should still wear robes or not, to how to raise "Pastors Kids" who don't hate the church, to adjusting and growing into the title "Minister," to more political issues in the church of homosexuality and trends of using feminine language for God. We covered a LOT and it was wonderful! He was so encouraging, and I left the conversation more convinced than ever that I want to be an ordained pastor, and I'm going to be patient and wait for an ordained call, I don't want to take a non-ordained director position, I want to be a pastor and I'm willing to wait for that to happen.
7: Thursday
I started a new part time job yesterday working at Fuller 16 hours a week. A good friend of mine hired me to work in her office as an assistant, doing all kinds of projects, which I'm excited about! It felt great to get up in the morning yesterday and actually go to work for the first time in awhile! I have my own desk, my own computer, and she had gone on facebook before I got there and printed some of my favorite photos for me to put on my bulletin board already, so when i walked in, the first thing I saw was my smiling baby niece bouncing in her jump a roo!
The refrigerator turned Jeopardy board for team trivia
The cake Ashley made for George--Ice Man from Top Gun
The May birthday peeps
2: SundayBIG day at church! We elected a new pastor (after being without a head of staff for about 4 years now) who is going to be so wonderful for that congregation! He's coming to us from Arizona, and this will be his first ordained call, even though he has 16 years of non-ordained ministry experience. He's young (39) and my favorite thing about him (other than his incredible preaching skills of course!) is that he wears 3 earrings :) This congregation needs someone to blow their prescribed expectations of what a pastor is/how he looks etc out of the water. I'm pretty sure Chris will do just that! He starts August 1, and we're excited to get to be here for a bit to see him in action.
3: MondayAnother travel day for me. I flew back to Seattle for a 48 hour trip to be able to meet with the Seattle Presbytery Tuesday evening. Monday evening when I landed, my friend Missy and I cooked dinner for our other friends and hosted "Family Dinner" as we often call these meals. It was great to see people and enjoy conversation over delicious food and wine.
4: Tuesday
My dear husband turned another year older on Tuesday, and I couldn't be here to celebrate with him :( We are really celebrating June 6 when we go see The Lion King, but I was still bummed to not be here. He had others celebrate with him, which was great, definitely a gift of living in community! Happy birthday honey, I love you and am so thankful for you being born!
5: Tuesday
Tuesday was a big day! I met Tuesday evening with the Seattle Presbytery so they could vote as to whether or not I was ready to move to the next round of the ordination process, called Candidacy. For those non-Presbyterian folks out there, a Presbytery is made up of all the churches in a given geographical area, and is a body of people who make the decisions for the local presbytery. So all the ordained clergy from all the churches in the area come together, along with a certain number of elders from each church (determined based on size of church--so Bethany, my home church has 4 spots for elders at Presbytery). This body of people (totaling about 300 in Seattle--although not all come to every meeting) makes a lot of decisions for the churches in the area. They also help determine the readiness of potential pastors for ministry. So I flew up to be interviewed by them for about 10 minutes (I had spent about an hour with a committee of people from the Presbytery 2 weeks ago, and they made the recommendation to all of Presbytery that I be passed to the next round, so Presbytery doesn't have to spend a huge amount of time on each potential candidate). When they're done asking you questions, they escort you out of the room, vote on you, and call you back in. If they've approved you, you walk in to applause--it's always an encouraging sign when you are still in the hall and you can hear the applause start! I'm not eligible to be ordained yet, it's still a longer process than this, and one day I'll write a post explaining it more because I get a lot of questions--most often "so why don't you have a job yet as a pastor?" that I'm kind of sick of answering! But as of Tuesday evening, I am officially a "Candidate" in the PC(USA) which is very exciting :)
6: Tuesday
As I'm walking out of Presbytery, my pastor from my home church, Dan, approaches me and asks for a ride to the ferry boat since his ride left half way through the meeting. I adore Dan, and haven't ever had a chance to have a lot of 1 on 1 conversation with him, so I was thrilled to get so much uninterrupted time with him. Between the drive to the ferry terminal, waiting in the ferry line, and the ferry ride back to Seattle I had over an hour of conversation with him which was one of the highlights of my week. I basically just said, "Okay, so what advice do you have for me starting ministry?" and we covered all kinds of topics of conversation--from whether pastors should still wear robes or not, to how to raise "Pastors Kids" who don't hate the church, to adjusting and growing into the title "Minister," to more political issues in the church of homosexuality and trends of using feminine language for God. We covered a LOT and it was wonderful! He was so encouraging, and I left the conversation more convinced than ever that I want to be an ordained pastor, and I'm going to be patient and wait for an ordained call, I don't want to take a non-ordained director position, I want to be a pastor and I'm willing to wait for that to happen.
7: Thursday
I started a new part time job yesterday working at Fuller 16 hours a week. A good friend of mine hired me to work in her office as an assistant, doing all kinds of projects, which I'm excited about! It felt great to get up in the morning yesterday and actually go to work for the first time in awhile! I have my own desk, my own computer, and she had gone on facebook before I got there and printed some of my favorite photos for me to put on my bulletin board already, so when i walked in, the first thing I saw was my smiling baby niece bouncing in her jump a roo!
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