Put Some South in Your Mouth

I apologize for the VERY LONG delay in blogging; the quickest explanation is that architecture finally hit a running pace. We'll hit a sprint by the end of the semester, but right things are just moving fast, not break-neck. I'm going to try to give a sufficient summation of the highlights of the last month--yikes!

I found a church.

I've been going to Fellowship Denver for about a month now. A girl at Denver Seminary that I know through a mutual friend told me there was a Fellowship Bible church here in Denver, so I got on their website to check them out. While on the website I saw a picture of Wes Gentry! The only people who read my blog that would know who Wes is would be John, Gennie, and Brian. We lived with Wes in 2003 in Boulder at Kaleo. Wow, that was a long time ago. Anyway, I couldn't believe it because I haven't seen or talked to this guy, save the occasional facebook message, in four years. So, I hopped on facebook and sent him a message. He was the first person I saw when I walked in, and we talked and caught up a little. It was great to see him, but the church was even better. And this was just the first of a few weird coincidences--or God-ordained events, rather.

For the first time since moving to Denver, I found solid, biblical teaching. This shouldn't be surprising since it is a Fellowship Bible church and the Grove is a Fellowship church plant, but I was really excited. The worship leaves something to be desired, especially since the most recent worship song played was written in 2001, but my list of "wants" in a church shrank incredibly once moving here and realizing how difficult it is to find a good Bible-based church. Basically my only non-negotiable became "They must read the Bible and sermons should consist of digging into a passage in the Word". That's it. But along with awesome teaching I found awesome people. My first day, I met a group of young students/professionals and I ate lunch with them. Awesome! I also met this girl named Jen that I love.

God-ordained event #2: The pastor went to UA and is a HUGE Razorback fan, not that either of those things really matter, but cool nonetheless.
God-ordained event #3: We've been going through Ecclesiastes, and the first week there we studied the first part of chapter 3 and discussed the same hard topics we talked about in CG when we studied Habakuk. Hunter took it a little farther or at least had some other things to say about it. I highly suggest going to the website and listening to that sermon. It was really good.
God-ordained event #4: Fellowship Denver is a church plant of FBC in Little Rock. The pastor, Hunter, was trained there.
God-ordained event #5: The church that Adam goes to in Austin is also a church plant out of FBC Little Rock, and Hunter knows the pastor at Adam's church because they were trained together. Adam and I essentially go to sister churches--weird, huh?
God-ordained event #6: I learned this information about the two churches because a girl sat next to me the first day that was moving to Austin the next day to help out Austin Bible Fellowship. She ended up meeting Adam that next week at church. Crazy!

I saw the first snow-capping in the Rockies.
It hasn't been very cold consistently yet. There was a 47 degree day at the beginning of September, but it quickly warmed back up. The weather here is amazingly perfect; I may not be saying that in another month. You can see the Rockies from my window in the studio and each day more snow appears on the tips in the distance. It's so fun!

My boyfriend is great!
Adam sent me this amazing package that blew my mind. It was a huge box full of all kinds of fun surprises like framed pictures, notes, etc. It was the best package I've ever received. It was really apparent he had put a lot of time and effort into it. I'm convinced that if there were a "Who's Who Among American Boyfriends" Adam would be listed and win the first prize in being a great boyfriend.

Adam comes to see me this week!
In two days, he flies in to hang out for the weekend. I can't wait!! It's been two months almost to the day since I've seen him. We have a whole weekend full of fun activities planned. Dinner and The Office Thursday; zoo Friday and Oktoberfest; mountains Saturday; Sunday down-time. Monday he leaves. Then he will fly back here in three weeks, and I fly down to Austin the weekend before Thanksgiving. From here on, we'll be able to see each other pretty consistently I think.

I had my first big architecture review yesterday.
We had some outside critics come in and review our studio projects. We had five minutes to present and ten minutes to hear criticism and defend ourselves. Mine didn't go very well. This project was a series of events--let's call it an evolution of an idea through several stages. It's all heavily theory-based. They raved about my first model, even saying I should sell it on ebay, but they felt in the evolution to my final model a great deal was lost. I completely understand and agree with everything they said. At first, when I was standing up under the heat and weight of feeling like I had failed, I was upset about it, but Jesus gave me a new perspective. I want to do well and do everything in architecture school to the best of my abilities, but I'm not in architecture school to become famous or have amazing projects. Ultimately, I'm here because I want to eventually use my talents and abilities in the service of others overseas. If Jesus has to remind me of my purposes and keep me humble in this way--that's perfectly fine with me. So, I am disappointed in the outcome, but certainly not discouraged. It makes me want to work harder next time but keep in mind my ultimate goal.

I miss you all so much and can't wait to see you again, whenever that may be. I hope all is well with you. I would love to hear from you and about you soon. I love you!

erin

oh and the title of this post is a slogan I found on the "Jim's West of Memphis BBQ" sign. yikes! that could be taken in so many different ways, and i don't think any of them are good.