Water and Light

Rain and light--what a beautiful combination designed by the perfect Artist.

This little leaf was on our deck, and it caught my eye.  I used Photoshop to make the background black and white.

The rest of these photos were taken around sunset last Saturday, which some of you may remember was really stormy. 

In addition to this lovely rainbow on the east side of the house, there was this incredible golden glow towards the west.  It didn't look quite like the pictures do, but it was pretty amazing! 

Reformation Celebration

Our church Reformation Celebration was last Friday. It was a great evening, we really enjoyed the music, lectures, and play that made up the program for the evening. The play was on John Calvin, who was born 500 years ago this year. Christina had the opportunity to direct the play this year, and she asked me to take pictures at the dress rehearsal. So here are some of my favorites.

This was probably my favorite scene. Calvin and Farel are having a heated argument about whether Calvin will stay in Geneva to help Farel in his ministry.

Farel makes a point for why Calvin should stay. But Calvin says he's not staying...

"CALVIN!!"

"NO!!"

The curse upon Calvin's rest and labors, since he has refused to help Farel. But Calvin changes his mind a few moments later.

The "mob scene"--angry Genevans threaten Calvin and Farel

Farel and Calvin

Calvin sees the new edition of his Institutes

Another day of pictures

My camera has been sitting idle far too long, so I finally pulled it out today. Today's weather was an interesting mix of rain and sunshine, so I took advantage of that to get some different shots. Here's what caught my eye.

We also took a quick little drive down the Gorge. The autumn scenery from Cape Horn was beautiful!

Back to the blog

This happened last year--school begins and I fall out of the blogosphere for long periods of time. I have no excuse. Here's a little update for the last month or so.

This past Monday marked a special anniversary for us. Five years ago on that day we moved to Washington. Five years?? To a girl who's never before lived somewhere more than about three and a half years that is a long time! God has been very good to our family. I love my adopted home.

I started working on a couple classes. One is an online class with Clark College--"HTML fundamentals." It's been interesting, and I'm surviving so far. My other class is with Whitefield College; it's an Old Testament Survey class that I started last spring but didn't finish. I just completed the reading and lectures, so now on to the research paper, then it will be over.

Last month we attended Ligonier's West Coast Conference in Bellevue. It was really enjoyable. The topic was, "Is There Life After Death?" The speakers were R. C. Sproul, Alistair Begg, and Michael Horton. Considering that the resurrection is such an important truth, and that we tend not to focus on it as much as we should, a conference dedicated to the topic was very beneficial. I wouldn't be able to do justice to what they said, but if you can, listen to the CDs when Ligonier starts selling them!

Purple hands, wet tents, and good friends

We and several other families met up for a two-night camping trip at Peterson Prairie, over on the east side of the mountains last weekend to pick huckleberries and enjoy one more camping trip this past weekend.  It was really fun and I think we had pretty good success with our picking.  Our family took back something under two gallons, which is a lot as huckleberries go.  They're really small and there's not that many on a bush so the picking is pretty slow work.  We also enjoyed great times around the campfire and good food (sorry, no pictures of that stuff).  The weather was great for most of the time, but the last morning it rained as we ate breakfast and packed up.  Oh well, it just added a little excitement!

       

Cape Lookout

Thursday we got back from an amazing four days at the Oregon Coast with our church. As you know by now if you read my blog frequently, I'm not always very good about getting the "people pictures" in, so take everything you see and remember that we were there with a lot of church friends.

This is the view from the beach just steps from our campsite. It really doesn't get much better than this. In the distance is Cape Lookout for which the park is named.

This is the trail leading from the beach up onto the cape.

And the view from that trail back down toward the beach. You can barely see it, but there's another cape in the background, Cape Meares, which we also visited.

Cape Mears boasts two main attractions--a light house and the amazing "Octopus Tree," which looks something like...an octopus.

Us and Caitlin at Cape Meares

And how could you go to Tillamook County without visiting the Tillamook Cheese Factory?

At low tide on the beach, you can get to these rock cliffs that are covered in barnacles and other little sea life.

We also hiked to the end of Cape Lookout. This is the view from Cape Lookout towards the south.

Of course, the whole group spent a lot of time just hanging out on the beach, walking, wading, boogie boarding, and playing volleyball, but I didn't have my camera down there for any of it but one volleyball game. :(

Having bonfires on the beach was another definite highlight.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip--maybe the best WPC camp-out I've been on.

More Violin Photos

Just an Ordinary Day

Is it weird to blog about plants? Anyway, this is my 7-Up plant which has been blooming lately. It's got these delicate little peach colored flowers, as you can see. It has other nice qualities, though, like smelling just like 7-Up soda, and being fuzzy all over. What more could you ask for in a plant--looks good, smells good, and feels good to the touch. They're apparently not very common, so I'm indebted to one of our friends who works for a nursery and is a plant expert for finding one for me.

And here's my other photography subject for today--my violin. For being such an important part of my life, it's sadly absent from my pictures. I'll probably take more of these, so violin pics will probably show up on here again!

Colville 2009

We returned Saturday night from another week-long missions trip to the Colville Indian Reservation. This was my fifth time going. I felt really privileged to serve with such a fine group of people, and I think we were all excited by the things God is doing up there. Our team from Westminster was pretty heavily involved in the construction part of the ministry, but different ones were also able to serve through VBS and the senior music ministry. It was a real whirlwind of a week. It's nice to be home, but part of me is sad to have it over and already missing everyone I spent the week with. I didn't take as many pictures as I have other years, and a lot of these are more artsy than documentary, but here they are.

Nice pose

The moon over the hills near the Longhouse, where we stay.

The beautiful entrance to the Longhouse

Evening sky

One evening we took our traditional hike up behind the Longhouse and the school grounds. This is looking roughly northwest, over the school grounds to a storm in the distance. We saw more thunderstorms than ever before.

One of the houses we worked on early in the process.

Getting closer to finished

Another house we worked on.

Friday evening barbecue at the Stampede Grounds is an important time. We invite people we have met throughout the week to join us for the evening. A good number of tribal elders attended this year, as well as kids from VBS.

Playing the stick game after dinner. The stick game is a special traditional game for the Colville people.