Extending Grace: The Ministry of Bearing

I can't remember when this idea first crept into my mind. We've been going through an excellent sermon series at church this fall about the facets of the Kingdom of God, things like fellowship, witness, simplicity, covenant, and persecution. It could have been in one of these sermons. Or the idea could have poked up its head in one of my conversations with a mentor or friend. I've also been leading a book study at church on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's pithy volume Life Together. I'm sure the idea partly came about through this book. Simply put, the big idea that's been on my mind and in my heart is the call that we have to extend grace to our fellow human beings.

Bonhoeffer gave me the words to express what this ministry is called in Scripture: the ministry of bearing. Paul writes: "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindess, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another..." (Col. 3:12-13a). As I've thought more about it, my experiences in life recently have given body and shape to this idea of bearing with or extending grace to others. Or, more accurately, life has tested my limited ability to extend grace.

In church a couple weeks ago, my pastor introduced new members to the congregation. He said something like: "We have a divine call to welcome these new members into our congregation and to love them, to delight in their gifts, passions, idiosyncracies and oddities." The congregation laughed, but the truth is plain as day. We're all a bunch of idiosyncratic weirdos. Need any evidence? Spend 10 minutes with another person. Or, better yet, spend two minutes with yourself!

In my book study yesterday, we discussed the ministry of bearing with others as Bonhoeffer describes it. I was still trying to understand what this ministry was, so I asked three questions: 1) What is the ministry of bearing? 2) Have you ever thought of this as a ministry? 3) How do we practice the ministry of bearing? One person very thoughtfully said, "Well, it kinda sounds like putting up with others." We all laughed and agreed. I didn't expect to have my questions answered in one fell swoop, but there it was, clear as day. Bonhoeffer further describes the ministry of bearing:

"The freedom of the other person includes all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it."    

Notice he says that we "break through" to the point of joy. We don't usually get there right away. It takes struggle to bear this ministry faithfully. Perhaps this concept has been so striking to me recently because life has been so ordinary and this is a ministry of ordinariness. What could be more day-to-day than colliding with the created reality of our brothers and sisters? I could count out the examples from today alone in a few short minutes, but I do have two stories I want to share particularly.

The first story is from this summer when I took a day trip with my family to the Oregon Coast. For my family, family vacations are full of laughter and fun, but also memories of personalities colliding and expectations being thwarted. At the very beginning of the day, my dad insisted that he needed to deposit his check in the bank before we did anything else. Somehow, this started us off on a brilliant way of handling each other's "weaknesses and oddities." Whenever someone's oddities poked through and caused friction, we would gleefully shout: "Quirk! Quirk!" Instead of causing more tension, this simple statement released the tension, like the cap being opened on a soda. The tension fizzled away, and we would inevitably burst into laughter. But beyond just releasing the tension, acknowledging each other's quirks gave us insight into each other's needs and wants and gave us an avenue for communication. It opened up the possibility of extending grace to each other, and I learned a valuable lesson.

Bearing with each other isn't always so easy. It doesn't always have a good outcome. But this doesn't change our calling to bear with each other. In fact, I believe that God will, as he always does, extend grace to us as we extend grace to others.

Several weeks ago, my friend and I were cooking pancakes for breakfast. I had made a delightfully fluffy sour cream pancake batter, and my friend was in charge of flipping. As she poured on batter, flipped the pancakes, and slid the cooked hotcakes onto a platter, she told me about the tough time at work she'd had the day before. As she talked, I noticed that she was pressing all the air out of the pancakes with her spatula, thus ruining the airy fluffiness that had so excited me. The words were almost out of my mouth when a thought popped into my mind. She is upset, and she's taking her frustration out on these pancakes. It was a totally mindless act because she was focused on telling me her story. And what was I doing? Worrying about culinary perfection. Then came the three redemptive words: "Extend her grace." And I did. I shut my mouth and listened and ate flat pancakes with a new appreciation.

Making Ricotta Cheese

I got it into my head that I wanted to make ricotta cheese this weekend. I think it was partly because my favorite cooking blog posted a tutorial about it recently and partly because I would be up on the South Hill where I could get milk from a local Spokane dairy:

 

 

I met the woman who owns this farm with her husband last March when I took a cheese-making class. The milk is pasturized only to 145 degrees, not homogenized, and has the cream on the top like in the good old days. I used a recipe from a blog called Annie's Eats. The ingredients are simple: white vinegar, milk, salt, and lemon juice. 

 

 

After mixing salt and milk, I heated the milk to 185 degrees, took the milk off the heat, and stirred in the lemon juice and vinegar. After leaving the mixture to curdle for about 10 minutes, I poured it into a curtain-lined colander over a bowl to catch the whey. I used the curtain in place of cheesecloth and it worked perfectly.

 

 

Here is the colander over the bowl of whey:

 

Here's me squeezing more whey out of the cheese. I have to admit that it was ridiculously fun to squeeze out the warm whey. My housemate was laughing at me.

 

 

It's amazing how much whey is left over after making the cheese! Good thing my co-worker sent me a link to a blog with 16 uses for whey. I'm thinking of freezing some of my whey in ice cube trays, using it to water my house plants, and cooking potatoes and oatmeal in it. I tasted it, and I can hardly describe the taste: fresh, slightly sour, rich.  

 

And here's the finished product!

 

It's amazing that eight cups of milk makes only two cups of ricotta. It made me realize how precious cheese is and why it's expensive. I have several ideas for how to use my cheese. I'm thinking of spreading it on sliced ciabatta bread with salami (from Trader Joe's!) and garden tomatoes. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

Have you made something from scratch before? How did it turn out? Was it worth the effort?

You Never Know What a Day Will Bring

My mom has a saying. "You never know what a day will bring." I came home today and unloaded all my stuff as usual...lunchbox, Costco purchases, purse, keys. I was buzzing around the kitchen mentally preparing to start canning a small batch of peaches when I decided to check my phone. I had two texts and one phone call, all from my housemate. One text read: "The kitchen faucet is broken. Like out of commission broken." I gasped and looked up. Sure enough, the top of the faucet had broken off. I desperately tried to latch it back on to see if I could get some water out of the tap, but no luck. Well, there goes canning peaches, was my first thought. Momentary panic ensued considering I'm supposed to can many quarts of peaches and applesauce this weekend. I hurriedly sent a text to the landlord and called my parents. Of course this would have to happen in the middle of preserving season!

Fortunately, we have a deep sink in the downstairs laundry room right next to the washing machine. After dinner, the top of the washing machine looked like this:

Not ideal, but actually it wasn't too bad an arrangement for the short term. I was also consoled by a delicious dinner I made. I've been so busy with cooking projects and other things that I haven't had much energy to cook meals for myself. Tonight, though, I used zucchini and garden tomatoes and green onions to make a fresh garden quesadilla with pepper jack cheese. As I sat down to dinner, I reflected on my housemate's second text which admitted several points of conflict between the two of us that we needed to talk through. When I thought of her text, my heart's pace picked up and my appetite drained away. Conflict is hard for me to deal with, especially receiving criticism.

After dinner, I set off on a walk feeling distressed. A paraphrased quote came to mind that seemed to apply to the situation: "If God took things away one by one that we had failed to be thankful for, what would be left? Would we have hands or ears? Eyes or lungs?" As I crunched along on the gravel path, I thanked God for basement sinks, hands, eyes, and ears, but I was still distressed. I started up the big hill that leads to Whitworth and each step seemed to pound out my frustrations. I was mostly angry at myself. Angry that my plans had changed because of the sink and that my own selfishness and short sightedness had caused conflict with my roommate that is yet unresolved.

When I got to the top of the hill, I was gasping for breath and tears stung hard in the corners of my eyes. I didn't feel at peace, per se, but I had come to grips with the situation, conflict and broken faucet both. I knew, despite my bumblings and the circumstances that cause me to cry out my mom's saying, that God was still present and at work, even when I'm too short sighted to realize my own mistakes. Thankfully, walking gave me the thinking space to recognize my guilt and made me eager to talk with my housemate. And thankfully, it's not too late to reconcile with her.

There's still one problem though. How does one can peaches without a kitchen sink?

An Agenda Conflict

How often is it that a day doesn't turn out quite like we expect it to? I awoke yesterday morning at 5:30 AM and listened hard. Thunder and rain on a day that was supposed to be 90 degrees. Thunder and rain on a day that had me at Green Bluff at 7 AM picking strawberries to avoid the heat. Heck, it's a Saturday! If I don't have to get out of bed at 6:30 AM, I won't. I woke up again at 7 AM to make sure it was still raining. It was, so I stayed in bed reading blogs at Her.meneutics on my Kindle for another hour. I was up at Knapp's Farm a little after 9 AM. From the bluff, I had a magnificent view of the surrounding hills as I picked strawberries. Sun occasionally beamed down on us hard-core strawberry pickers, braving the weather's caprice, but on the horizon lightning lit the sky and thunder roared.

Strawberries are hard to pick, so the $20 I had saved of my grocery budget--precious money--was still at $14.50 after I paid for my strawberries. I had a respectable number of strawberries, too, for picking them by myself and often being distracted by the lightning and funny little kids around me. I made a stop at another Green Bluff farm and while I was in the building, it started to rain steadily. I was so thankful I had caught the hour and a half of sun in the day and felt sorry for those who had just arrived at Green Bluff. My flat of strawberries became even more precious.

I drove back into town and took advantage of the cooler weather by fertilizing my garden. It rained lightly while I was out in my garden, and I loved it. The rain was my friend as I got down at eye level with my plants and got to see the emerging green globes of tomatoes, unfurling broad leaves of beans and feathery foliage of seashell cosmos. When I had finished working in my garden, Dottie, ever gracious, unwittingly fed me a lunch of tea, buttermilk muffins with strawberry jam, and shortbread. We sat inside with all the windows open and listened to the merry hum of rain.

How pleasant it is to sit together with no deadline and no agenda but to enjoy conversation and the funny turn of the weather. The conversation--hardly anything more than talking over the week behind us and looking forward to the weeks ahead--was as refreshing to me as the rain is to a thirsty ground. I realized, too, that I had no agenda for my strawberries. My only two goals for them were 1) to crush up two cups for jam, and 2) enjoy them.

Agendas and plans and schedules can only go so far, unlike the control-freak nature of my personality would like me to believe. The weekends are refreshing to me because my time isn't dictated by routine and schedules like it is during the week. I love routine, but the un-ending wake-up, go to work, work, come home from work, unpack lunch, pack lunch, do stuff after work, what-it's-bedtime-already? routine was wearing on me this week in particular. The antidote is a Saturday of flexibility and unconcern for the amount of time it takes me to do a task. I planned to finish picking strawberries by 11 AM. I filled my box by 10:30 AM. Great! I used the extra time to drive the long way through Green Bluff. It's not hot like I thought it would be? Great! I spent time in my garden. It's lunchtime, and I'm eating chocolate covered shortbread? Great! Who needs a well-planned and neatly Tupperwared lunch anyway? I have money left in my grocery budget? Great! I bought expensive New York steaks at Egger's for a meal with my parents in July. I like to take the weekend days as they come, to form the agenda moment by moment.

I think we learn in Scripture that the Kingdom of God is about a different agenda than we humans expect. And because of this, I need to learn something from the mistakes of the stubborn, agenda-pursuing Pharisees and their frequent misunderstanding of Jesus' heavenly agenda. Jesus isn't conquering the Romans. But he is freeing captives from bondage to sin. Jesus isn't exalting the Jewish people. But he is humbly pointing us to the only one who deserves to be exalted. Jesus isn't restoring the temple to its former grandeur. But he is restoring broken humanity to the quiet grandeur of intimacy with God.

So maybe it's not so much that I need to be free from having an agenda. Rather, whether it's a week-day agenda or a weekend lack thereof, I need to be aware of when God's agenda and mine conflict. And when that happens, Lord, give me the grace to abandon my agenda for yours.

The Week in Review

Last week, I bought something really cool at Costco:

We had a June birthday celebration at work this week, so I made this (Peanut Butter Ice Cream with Peanut Butter Cups):

 

With these:

The verdict? Delicious! I can't wait to make more batches of ice cream throughout the summer. It will be my go-to dessert. It was fun to share my first-ever batch with my co-workers, as they all have a hearty appreciation of food. This was the first fun thing of the week that I'm going to share with you.

The second fun thing was "cooking" a meal for 25 people on Friday night. My co-worker Emily has been involved in the start of a new college ministry in town that's being spearheaded by several current Whitworth students. Every Friday night, Thrive (the name of the ministry) meets in a church building downtown for dinner, worship, a message, and small group discussion. Because Thrive is just getting off the ground, they don't have the funds to provide dinner every week, so they've been soliciting help from friends and members of local churches. I had extra tithe money from housesitting in May, so I volunteered to make dinner for this week's Thrive gathering.

The catch is that the church building, which used to be an art gallery, has no sink, stove, or oven, so the meals prepared for Thrive need to be creative. Fortunately, God has provided me with many opportunities to coordinate food for bigger groups, so it didn't take me long to come up with a menu: cold, sliced ham from Egger's Meats, bread from Costco (multigrain and rosemary olive oil), and carrots and sliced cucumbers with Sabra hummus. No dinner would be complete without dessert, so I made vegan/gluten free cookies (made with bananas, peanut butter, and oats for substance) and a chocolate sheet cake with peanut butter frosting. Every day this week, I've been preparing some part of the meal, so packing up and transporting the meal downtown on Friday was a breeze. Here it is all packed up and ready to go:

 

I was nervous about the evening and how it would all come together, so I asked my parents and several friends to pray about it. The biggest thing was that the two people I knew weren't going to be there. Providentially, Emily connected me with her friend Anneliese, who was going to be leading Thrive that evening. When I was driving downtown looking for parking, I passed the building the first time and when I came back around, a car was leaving the spot right in front of the building. Praise the Lord! The other miraculous thing was that I didn't get a parking ticket, as I only had enough change for an hour of my time. :)

 

It was a piece of cake (hehe) to set up the meal. Anneliese, her friend Amanda, and I had time to pray for the evening before it started. People trickled in steadily until 6:15, and I enjoyed talking with handful of people. The meal came off splendidly. There was enough for all and a manageable amount of leftovers. Actually, I had almost the whole cake left which was disappointing until I tried it when I was back home. I'm telling you, it is delicious!

 



You might be surprised to know that the vegan/gluten free cookies were also good. The leftovers are in my freezer, ready to emerge at some fortuitous occasion.

Speaking of fortuitous occasions, the third thing I want to share with you about the week is that I finally saw a LIVE MOOSE!

 

My family has been to all the prime moose spots in the United States--Yellowstone, Vermont, Maine, Yosemite--and we never saw a live moose. My church hosted a bike ride on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes today through the beautiful lakes of northern Idaho. As my housemate Pam and I were riding along, we saw the moose chowing down across the lake. It was awesome! The ride itself was also lovely. Here are some pictures from the trail that entirely fail to capture the beauty we witnessed:

 



And that's a wrap! Have a blessed Father's Day tomorrow!

Culinary Discoveries

Last Saturday I expanded my culinary skills by taking a cheese-making class in downtown Spokane at a store called Sun People Dry Goods. The teacher, Trish Vieira, owns Spokane Family Farm with her husband Mike, which produces local and minimally processed milk. She was a kick! She talked a mile a minute and knew more about milk in all its complexities than I ever knew existed. The class had 19 people (17 women), and we got to watch Trish make yogurt and mozzarella. I took notes and listened until my head was buzzing with thoughts about milk, cream, rennet, organic, Darigold, and more.

The highlight of the class for me was watching Trish make homemade mozzarella. It seriously looked like the easiest process ever and in just 40 minutes, she was cutting off pieces of warm, stretchy, salty mozzarella for us. It was so fun to eat because it stretched like gum. Trish asked us if we planned to make cheese, and I enthusiastically raised my hand. I do plan to carry out the mozzarella making (and document it here), but I realized I would need to pick up a couple things before making it.

In the olden days, people used cheesecloth to squeeze all the excess liquid out of their cheese (the whey). But Trish and those in the class who had made cheese before said cheesecloth is no longer any good for making cheese because the holes in the fabric are too big! I thought that an interesting statement about something straying beyond its original purpose. In place of cheesecloth, Trish used a piece of a polyester curtain that she found at Goodwill. I figured I would just go to Joann's to buy a similar piece of fabric to add to my mozzarella-making arsenal.

On Thursday, I had tea at the home of an older friend. She asked me if I wanted some old curtains from her mother-in-law. I said sure, and she showed me the heavy floral-patterned curtains. I didn't think anything of it until she showed me the sheer material that hangs behind the floral curtains...the exact material I needed for making cheese! I was too chicken to ask my friend if I could use the curtains to squeeze whey out of my homemade cheese. This is obviously not the purpose for which these curtains were intended! But as soon as I decide to make cheese, I will investigate.

On Sunday, I went to Trader Joe's with a friend from church and only got four things (shocking, I know!): baby bok choy, fontina cheese, Brie, and blueberry freezer waffles. On Thursday, I made this fried rice, and it turned out wonderfully! Instead of cooking brown rice, I used Trader Joe's frozen brown rice/barley mix, which made it super easy. I microwaved three bags and added sauteed baby bok choy, green cabbage, onion, and carrots with bacon and scrambled eggs, mixed it all together with soy sauce, and voila! Anyone want to come for dinner tonight?

 

My final culinary discovery is totally wonderful. Berry compote. My friend and I meet for breakfast every Friday morning to talk, pray, and read Scripture. I found a recipe in a cookbook for berry compote, which seemed a great way to use frozen blueberries and to make a delicious topping for French toast. As I was eating the berry compote this morning, I had a wonderful revelation. This compote could work well with so many things: a mix-in for yogurt and warm steel cut oats, a topping for ice cream and toast, and so many uses that I haven't even discovered. And it's the easiest thing ever! You never have to buy flavored yogurt again!

 

Anyone want to come for breakfast tomorrow?

 

P.S. Here's the recipe for berry compote from this awesome cookbook: Mix 1 cup berries (straight from the freezer is fine) with 3 tbsp sugar (a little more or less is fine) and a dash of water. Bring to a boil on the stove in a small saucepan and boil for five minutes. In the meantime, mix 2 tsp of cornstarch with 2 tbsp of cold water until all the corn starch is dissolved. After five minutes, add in the cornstarch and keep boiling and stirring for two minutes. Add in another 1/2 cup berries and stir for another minute. Remove from heat and serve right away or refrigerate and reheat later.   

A Foodie Pilgrimage to Trader Joe's

It may be wrong to equate Trader Joe's with a pilgrimage, but I mean it in a foodie, not a religious, sense. There are number of places in Spokane where a person can go on such a trek, so I chose a Saturday morning jaunt to Trader Joe's and the Great Harvest Bread Company. Unfortunately, most of the foodie sites I like to visit are on the South Hill, which is a half hour from my house, but that could actually be a blessing in disguise. :)

I was at Trader Joe's for a full hour, just looking. I didn't put anything in my basket for half an hour. Weird, I know, but, I was finally able to narrow the vast selection down to a few choice items.

Here's what I bought today:

Let me explain my choices.

1. I bought the hand-tossed whole wheat flour tortillas because I've been wanting to make breakfast burritos and wraps for lunch. The Mediterranean hummus goes with the tortillas for the wraps. The Oregonian taste-tested store-bought hummuses (hummi?) and chose this Trader Joe's hummus as the winner, so it was hard to pass up. I also bought a bag of spinach for the wraps, which you can't see in this picture.

2. I was intrigued by these bacon ends and pieces. It looked like good, thick bacon, so I decided to buy this package to throw in the freezer until I come up with a good use for it.

3. My housemate Katie got me a gift card to the Great Harvest Bread Company for my birthday. I used the last of it on this loaf of Honey Whole Wheat bread. I like the size of the slices because they're small enough to be a complement to a meal rather than the whole meal itself.

4. I love looking at the Trader Joe's cheese selection. They have wonderful foreign cheese that are (bonus!) reasonably priced. Two families I visited this summer--the Miedemas in Colorado and the Leonardis in Coeur d'Alene--had Gouda cheese that I loved, so this was the obvious choice.

5. I love almond butter on apple slices, English muffins, toast, etc. I bought a big thing of almond butter from Costco because it was twice the size of Trader Joe's almond butter and the same price, but I didn't like it at all. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little more.

6. I use coconut milk in curries, but I'm also thinking of making a Cream of Mushroom soup from scratch with coconut milk in the coming weeks. Plus, it's always nice to have a can of coconut milk on hand.

7. Last but not least, the lemon curd! My favorite cooking show, River Cottage, has a recipe for muffins with a big dollop of lemon curd in the center of each muffin. Can't wait to make them!

So there's what I bought on my Trader Joe's/Great Harvest pilgrimage. It was very satisfying. I was proud of myself for choosing carefully; it's easy to overbuy there. But I felt I chose only what I was going to use within the next week or so. And I can always go back. :)

What's your favorite place to shop for groceries?

Year of Plenty Part 4: The Material v. the Spiritual and My Struggle With It

I've been working on another blog post for the better part of a week and still haven't posted it. It's about a great topic, but I was having trouble narrowing it down. So I'm going to keep working on it and will post this instead.

I always start off the weekend days with a grand plan for how I'll spend them and what I'll accomplish. In Sunday School today, we talked about how Year of Plenty author Craig Goodwin struggles with the dualistic divide in the Christian faith between the spiritual and material in which the spiritual choice is seen as the better option, i.e. joining a monastery instead of apprenticing with the local blacksmith (a random medieval example, but it works.) The physical/spiritual dualism isn't as much a struggle for me as it is for Craig, but I do struggle with another kind of dualism: what I should accomplish and what I actually accomplish.

For instance, I got a free compost bin at the Spokane Solid Waste Fair yesterday. I had planned to set it up in my backyard yesterday afternoon, but when I went out to set it up, I ran into one problem after another. The bin is basically a sheet of rolled-up, stiff black plastic that you're supposed to be able to arrange in a neat 3x3 square, but it had been rolled up so tightly that it didn't want to unroll. I had to jump on top of it to make it stay flat and put spider-webby bricks on all corners. I also realized that to actually put it together, it needed stakes, which I didn't have.

Basically, I realized in dismay that I do not have the brain for mechanics or tactile creativity. Putting this compost bin together was far beyond my ken. Instead, I planted 12 daffodil bulbs, swept a ton of pine needles off the back porch and thought about how I had spent way longer on the compost bin than I intended and still accomplished very little. And my Sunday sped by with little care for my carefully crafted weekend to-do list of which I crossed off exactly two things.

The problem that the compost bin revealed is that I have trouble concentrating on reading or writing when material things are left undone. The contemplative tasks get pushed aside for the tyranny of the urgent. Reading my newest creative nonfiction book can wait, but if that pan sits there another minute with a film of potato soup, it will be a nightmare to clean.

In A Year of Plenty,Craig's year of eating and buying locally required intentionality and contemplation. The Christian life should require intentional choices for every aspect of life. The end goal is that these God-honoring choices become second nature. But for Craig at this point in the book, he still has to think hard about nearly every decision he makes. In an attempt to honor God with my time, I think hard about how to spend my time after work. However, unlike Craig, whose thinking inspires him to action, I often respond to the choices of how to spend my time with paralyzed non-action, hence the dualism between what I want to accomplish and what I actually do accomplish.

And ironically, this dualism gives way to the very dualism that Craig struggles with. (And here I thought I had escaped it.) What is a better way to spend one's time? It depends, of course. There's a place for both the material tasks and spiritual tasks, and God can be glorified in both. But when it comes to the nitty gritty details of how I spend my time, I get mired in the material at the expense of the spiritual. Though both are good, is it possible that one is still better? (I'm thinking of Mary v. Martha.)

I continue to wrestle with this issue and really don't have a good answer to give. How do you see the material v. spiritual playing out in your life? Is there tension between the two? How do you deal with the tension? I'd love to hear from you in the comments. (Maybe you can help me sort this all out!)

To Azusa and Back

 

Here's my long-awaited post about my family's trip to Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, to drop my sister Julie off at her first year of college. You've already seen a couple photos in this post, but here's the full story. I'm going to do this by posting pictures and putting the photo's description under the photo.

 

This is ALL of Julie's stuff in the car. We couldn't believe it. I was like, "What in the world did I take to college?" Because I assure you, the car was much more full five years ago. The best answer we could come up with was that it snows in Spokane and not in L.A., therefore I had to pack more clothes.

 

 

Outside the house in Portland, ready to pick up Dad and hit the road!

 

 

The first day (Wednesday) we drove to Redding and stayed overnight. On Thursday, we powered through CA to Azusa. We had a lunch at a rest stop somewhere (can't remember where!) and had these lettuce wraps with chicken salad in them. This was Julie's last-minute idea when we were packing the cooler on Wednesday and it was delicious! 

 

 

Finally!! A sign for Azusa!!

 

 

That's right, we had In-N-Out Burger for dinner on Thursday night! We ended up getting it again at an Azusa Family/Student Carnival on Saturday night. I had In-N-Out burger for the first time when I was 16, but I honestly don't remember anything about the food. I only remember wanting a t-shirt. (No surprise if you knew me at that time.) So I was eager actually to taste the food, and it was delicious!! The burger was flavorful and not greasy, the fries were salty and crispy, and the vanilla milkshake was sweet and cold. A treat!

 

 

After dinner, we toured the campus with Julie as our guide. The signs appeared in the lawn outside Julie's dorm on Friday morning to welcome new students. Fun, huh? Here's Julie and Mom peeking in the window of Julie's dorm room.

 

 

After a less-than-satisfactory hotel experience on Thursday night, we were eager to spend the whole day at Azusa. As we drove in, we were greeted by this welcoming committee. It was so fun! As RAs rushed over to help us unload the car, several people assumed that I was the college student. I couldn't tell if this was a compliment or not. :) It didn't take us long to unload the car and bring it all into Julie's room. Julie is in an all-girls dorm with two other roommates. We had a chance to meet and spend a little time with both roommates and their families. It was fun!

 

We ate breakfast on Friday morning at a little Mexican bakery by our hotel. Here's my breakfast with the beginnings of a Target list. As usual, we had to make a pilgrimage to Target for odds and ends and to Costco for a mini fridge. This is a vitally important part of a parent's job. (My parents still take me to Costco when they're here in Spokane.)

 

The rest of Friday was spent organizing Julie's room, attending an outside fair in the campus center, meeting roommates and RAs, enjoying a dinner picnic with a band, and listening to several speakers in the big event center. On Saturday, the students and families split up and went to separate workshops. My parents and I enjoyed the workshop we attended, which talked mostly about the Azusa's strengths-based approach to learning. In the afternoon, Mom and Julie organized Julie's room, so Dad and I went to Trader Joe's!! We were 10 or so miles from Monrovia at this Trader Joe's, which is the headquarters for Trader Joe's. How cool is that?!

 

 

We bought Julie this beautiful bouquet of flowers at Trader Joe's and got her some snacks (chips and guacamole). We had a lot of down time on Friday and Saturday in which we got to spend time together as a family. It was wonderful to meet fellow students, get to know the campus a little, and enjoy the unique excitement of the freshman experience.

 

 

The top photo was taken at the Carnival on Saturday night. We ate with several of Julie's friends that she met on her Mexico mission trip with Azusa this summer. The picture with Mom and me is the main plaza of Azusa's West Campus (Julie lives on the East Campus...about a 10 minute walk away). It's a beautiful campus with lots of palm trees and big flowers. On the walk to and from the east and west campuses, we noticed grapefruit trees! How crazy is that?! We ended up going to an Azusa men's soccer game after the carnival; that was fun!

 

 

After a lovely worship service on Sunday morning, the president and campus pastor gave every family a piece of chalk and told us to find a place on either campus where we could leave a little drawing to signify the start of our daughter/sister's college career. Julie chose a spot near the academic building where many of her social work classes will be held. I drew this picture and then we prayed for Julie. I tried to get a picture with all four of us, but I obviously had some trouble. :)

 

Throughout the weekend, I was encouraged by how Christ-centered Azusa is. Dad and I spent an hour on Sunday morning praying with other parents and the Chapel staff for this new freshman class. For peace. For calling. For love of God and neighbor.

 

It was hard to leave Julie at the end, but we all felt encouraged that we are entrusting her to a good institution and a great God. I pray for Julie every day and trust that college will be as wonderful for her as it was for me.

 

Mom, Dad, and I left Azusa at 1:15 PM on Sunday afternoon and made it home at 4:45 AM on Monday morning. The whole drive was fine for me except for the last two-ish hours. I was so tired I literally could hardly keep my eyes open. My mom was the real hero--she drove most of the night. We did listen to All Creatures Great and Small on the way back, which was a delight, but boy were we glad to fall into bed on Monday morning. My poor dad had to go to work at 7 AM while my mom and I were sound asleep. We were all dragging Monday evening, but I am happy to report that we are fully recovered and the time spent with Julie was worth every long minute of driving. :)

 

 

P.S. This (below) might have been a little bit of what we looked like on the drive back. Get us out of here! Hehe.