July 9, 2008
Every day Kai Ryssdal tells me that the economy is going straight into the toilet. Every day, for the past month, at that moment I give thanks to Jesus that we sold our house in Utah.
It took 7 months and put us out several thousand bucks, but we’re out of the property game for now and we’re working on paying down the debt accrued with the house.
The timing, as always, was perfectly down to the wire. There was no way that we could have made the next mortgage payment, but the sale went through and we were out. We get to spend the next couple of years trying to straighten out our finances, but it will teach us some good financial disciplines.
For all the crap of selling it, we are just so glad that it has sold and that we are serving God in Seattle.
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July 8, 2008
One of the “problems” with living in Seattle is that the sheer beauty of it can get distracting. It is constantly green, with changing skies and light that hits at that perfect angle - making the evenings and early mornings just buttery wonderfulness. Being this far north does mean that the sun is up at a ridiculously early hour, filtering through our blinds and waking me up. What a small price to pay to live in such a wonderful place.
Hello, world.
It’s been several months since I last blogged. Part of it was a lifestyle that went from busy to crazy-busy as I juggled ministry, work and family. Part of it was that things have changed a lot over those past few months. When I last blogged, I was working 20-60 hours a week as an IT consultant, getting a stealth-mode startup up and running. That was actually a lot of fun - I enjoyed the people and most of the work I did. That contract came to a close last month, and I transitioned into full-time employment at Crosspoint. What a blessing.
Full-timer
I had hoped that within a year or two my position at the church would expand into a full-time gig, but late in the winter our Assistant Pastor gave notice that he would be going off to Gordon-Conwell this fall to marry the woman of his dreams (Hi Sarah K!) and pursue a further research degree. With his upcoming departure and the general needs that existed anyway, the leadership here decided to just take me on full-time in May so that we could transition his responsibilities to me.
So what do you do?
My previous role was to “Site Pastor” the Greenlake congregation. This means that I had primary pastoral responsibility for the ~200 people who call Crosspoint-Greenlake their church home. Leading worship on Sundays, holding meals, visiting people, counseling, etc…a lot of good hands-on stuff. I also took on some Small Groups responsibilities and Christian Ed stuff. It was a nice, full job…but now it has had Youth Ministry, oversight of the Mercy Teams, all of Christian Ed, all of the Small Group ministry and many other roles (for both the Lynnwood and Greenlake sites) tossed onto it. It’s a lot, but we have amazing lay leadership who make a lot of those ministries “easy” to oversee.
I’m excited
Things have gone much better than I could have hoped. Sarah and I are both very excited about our first 7 and a half months here. There is a real feeling of “contentment”, that we can just focus on the ministry at hand and be faithful in doing it. We’re also happy to be free to “dream” about future ministry that we believe God is calling us into. We expect several years of service right here in what I am doing, it’s such a great place to be…learning, working, serving.
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March 5, 2008
This year’s official SXSW sampler torrent has been a bit difficult to find, given the fact that (unlike in years past) it doesn’t exist! However, someone very kindly went and downloaded all the free mp3s off the site and created a torrent for you and me and everybody to share. Much easier than downloading by hand! For those of you who have been thinking to yourself “I really need 3 and a half gigs of new music…”, this torrent is for you.
Another example of good legal use of torrents to make life easier for everyone!
Linky
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March 1, 2008
Obviously, yes. I can’t believe this month has blown by so quickly (I know that it was only 29 days, but still). As I said in my post-before-last, I got a job. I’ve been incredibly blessed with tons of work - but that means that I have literally not had a day off since that post. Unless you count driving a truck for 15 hours in one day a “day off”. Although work, between church & computers, has been very tiring and quite stressful at times I am so happy to see that we are being provided for and that I can still minister effectively alongside my “secular” job.
One of the great benefits to having this great second job, as I believe I mentioned earlier, is that even though our house in Salt Lake has not yet sold, we are able to rent a place to live here in Seattle. Although we had initially thought we’d be in Queen Anne, we ended up in the Maple Leaf neighborhood after that initial rental fell through. Pictures to follow…
But before that, let me introduce my new laptop - yesterday Sarah’s laptop just finally gave up the ghost (it has been dying for the past year - she’s pretty rough on ‘em). Because both of us need computers for our jobs, we needed to replace it fairly quickly. I had just sold the tankless water heater we brought with us from Utah the day before, so we had enough for a cheap computer. Initially we thought we’d get a desktop…but after a lot of conversation we decided that I’d upgrade into a new laptop and Sarah would take my fairly not-too-old laptop for herself.
Now…photos!
Our Neighborhood
The neighborhood coffee shop
The house
Beautiful, happy girl
RETURN OF THE DRAGON!
The girls welcome you to the house!
Stella has a chat…
Stella and her phone
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February 3, 2008
Go to Sarah’s blog to see her new (and excellent) pictures of Stella:
http://www.sarahandstella.blogspot.com
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January 28, 2008
After several weeks off, I have decided to take up the blog again…and hopefully the faithful have this blog in their RSS readers. Anyway, here is the update!
I have a job!
I’m back in the saddle again…IT consultin’, my friends.
In an amazing display of Divine Providence I have been provided with an IT gig that will hopefully pay all of our bills and allow us to move into a rental house (more on that later). The job has some high-stress elements to it, but it is also providing me with some real opportunities to update and use my IT skillset. Which is no bad thing, eh?
So far, my job has all been done from home, but I begin setting up this company (they are a brand spankin’ new startup) on Friday which means the next couple of weeks will probably be quite intense.
For all of you who have been praying for our job situation, thank you - God provided much more than we expected with this one.
New Home or Homeless in 2 1/2 Weeks!
Very exciting, it looks like we are going to be able to get our own place in just over 2 weeks here. The timing of the job and a lot of other things seem to be coming together at just the right time as we need to be out of our current space at that time. Unfortunately, we’re still paying a mortgage on our yet-unsold house in Utah (keep prayin’ for that one!) and we’re now going to be signing up for our (hopefully long-term) rental here in Seattle.
We’ve found our perfect house, at a great price in a neighborhood are jived about living in. If all goes well and our application is accepted, we’ll be driving a Rental Truck from Salt Lake to Seattle on the weekend following Valentine’s (oooh, how romantic!). Sarah’s mom is flying up from CA to watch Stella and I am going to fly down after Sarah has overseen the loading of the truck to do the drive on Saturday.
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!!! 
But seriously, we’ve been amazingly well provided with our temporary housing and it looks like we may get an amazing rental. We’ve got nothing to complain about, although we are really really hoping that our house sells soon!
*shakes fist of fury at slow real estate market*
Stella continues her awesomeness…
No pictures (Sorry Mom!), but I can update you on some of Stella’s amazing awesomeness.
Although she continues to be a huge Lily Allen fan (pronounced: Lily Anna), Stella has started to branch out a bit - here is her top 5 list (seriously, she’s all about the top 5 list):
Lily Allen - LDN
Stella has been devoted to Lily Allen for almost a year now. Although Stella was dancing to the Gorillaz in the womb, Lily Allen was the first singer she asked for by name. Stella believes that Lily is better than Kate Nash.
Bloc Party - The Prayer
Stella has actually been a fan of Bloc Party for months, she began calling it “Daddy Music” (as I’d turn it on when I was sick of Lily Allen). It is now called “BOCK PARTY!” (always yelled loudly). She hums along with the beginning and dances up a storm.
M.I.A. - Paper Airplanes
The opening to this song sets my baby to dancing. She gets her whole body into the act as she wiggles and bops to the intelligent sounds of M.I.A.
Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger
Although Stella is really into Justice and gets her groove on to “D.A.N.C.E.”, she’s a devotee of the original French electronic sound - Daft Punk.
I’m From Barcelona - We’re From Barcelona
Is it just Sarah who loves WFB? I dunno, but on more than one occasion I’ve walked in on the girls dancing up a storm to this track. I’ve put it in the top 5, although she may have put Justice here. But she’s sleeping, so I can’t ask her.
Added Bonus - Stella’s Favorite Radio Show: Car Talk
Stella thinks Click and Clack are funny and asks for this show by name on Saturday mornings. Not as interested in “Wait, Wait…” though.
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January 2, 2008
I just wanted to wish each and every one of you (that would be, I believe, one person) a very happy and blessed New Year.
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December 27, 2007
In a survey conducted by Central Connecticut State University (I’ve never heard of it either), Seattle was ranked #2 in the USA as “most literate city”. The survey included 6 key indicators to rank US cities with populations over 250,000. The indicators included newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.
Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:
1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.
Congratulations Seattle!
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