Moving With God

Baby steps of faith, hope and love

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Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 23 May 2011

Me, graduated!

My proud supporters: Grandparents, Mom, Matt and Marie! - Dad's taking the picture

And after graduation...

We got down to business attacking every cockroach hideout we could discover in our kitchen!

So bugs died in every direction... disgusting, but gratifying. We are still seeing them every once in a while, but the cupboards are clean and we have hope that with a few final seals and caulking (and maybe, worst-case scenario, a new fridge?), we can enjoy our second year of this apartment without the bugs!!!

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 19 May 2011

Soon to come (as soon as I have them, I guess :P) are pictures from grad, and pictures from bug-ageddon, which Matt and I participated in with my parents. For now, I wanted to share from a great post that I read on Seraphic Singles. This is a blog that I enjoy very much even though I am not single, and I am not Catholic! There are usually great nuggets of truth and pearls of wisdom in the advice she posts for readers who write in (mostly single Nice Catholic Girls), and there are also many posts of just good thinking. I am hoping to buy her book soon, especially if Crux will take my gift certificate from three Christmases ago that was lost but is now found. But I digress.

Read more: Graduation Reflection

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 09 May 2011

Matt and I decided to give our grain mill a spin last night, and some amazing bread is in the process of being made!
Matt is showing off his speed here - although it is pretty easy to spin. The mechanism definitely does all the work of turning wheat grains into powdery flour, but it gets a little tiring turning the crank.
Here's a view from the top: wheat on the left, and the bowl collecting the flour as it comes out of the mill.
And here's the end result! A bowl of FRESH whole wheat flour :)

The bread turned out kind of crazy, but I think it might be because Matt braided it instead of just cramming it in a bread pan, and he says next time he will try blending in some other kind of flour. Now I kind of want to try grinding flour the next time I make muffins!

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 09 May 2011

Okay, so this hike was just Matt and I with our dog after my parents had headed out to visit family and friends this week, so it was a Mother's Day hike only because of the date, not the people! It was a much more adventurous hike than either of us expected, but it was very fun and a refreshing time together.We drove down to Scarborough Bluffs and walked a gravel trail that ended at the beach. Or so we thought. But then we decided to make our own trail through the woods following a tiny stream of water. We ended up climbing through a whole bunch of muck and dried up stream beds up almost the entire cliff and enjoyed the view from up top. Nimoy as usual, just loved life and was scrabbling around like a scruffy mountain goat.Once we got up as high as we could, it was so funny because we could hear people talking on the path way down below! Also, we freaked out some people hiking up at the top of the ridge, because I think they thought we climbed down (which is impossible lol, look at how steep the cliff is! We climbed up to the bottom part of that steep cliff).

My pants are muddy, and our shoes are all muddy, and we both almost fell pretty epicly, me down the side of the cliff (I basically skied down it on my shoes), and Matt in a marshy river bed. What a great adventure :)

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 06 May 2011

I have been thinking a lot lately about obedience and grace.

The first piece in this train of thought was the sermon at our grad chapel, and the speaker said that praying for forgiveness should be part of our daily discipline as Christians, to remind us of our need for grace.

When Matt preached on Sunday, he talked about Jesus being accused of breaking Sabbath, and one of the verses in that story really struck me:
Matthew 12:5
"Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?"

Read more: Trust and Obey

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 02 May 2011

Our voting station is an elementary school very close to our apartment building. When I was walking through the hall after voting, I heard two little girls talking, and their conversation went like this:

Six-or-seven-year-old #1: Do you have play-doh?
Ditto #2: I have play-doh! I have so much play-doh!
#1: I have red and orange.
#2: I have rainbow!
#1: Gasp.

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 01 May 2011

I have the best husband ever.

Saturday was a team-building, mission-trip-prep day for Matt and the youth going to New Brunswick this summer, and I was happy to be able to join them! It was a really great day, with a delicious breakfast (one of the girls made crepes!!), a really helpful talk/discussion on engaging culture in our city and living "on purpose," plus fun activities and good volunteer experience helping to promote a community event later this month.

Then, when we were just about to head home, I realized that my keys were not in my coat pocket or my purse. Somehow over the course of the day I had misplaced/dropped/lost our only keys to the car (and kill-switch), and we were stranded. We managed to break into the car to check that the keys hadn't fallen somewhere inside (which was hilarious, but also a little concerning, since nobody really questioned us, even with a giant screwdriver and coat hanger in the door).

It could have been much worse, but it all worked out in the end (more or less). Even without BLAT, we had enough seatbelts in the other vehicles to get everyone home; one of the other leaders for the trip, a dad in the youth group, had CAA, and we were able to get the car towed to Scarborough under his card; Youth Sunday went great even though we weren't able to practice the music as planned, and Matt had less time than he hoped to polish his sermon; I am going to get a new key from the Honda dealership for $10.

Most amazingly of all, everybody stayed kind to everybody else through the whole process of looking for the keys EVERYWHERE, trying to figure out what to do when we couldn't find them, and generally having nothing to do for three hours. We have such an amazing group of youth, and everybody worked very hard to not get cranky and to make the best of a really sucky situation!

Most amazing for me was how great Matt was - really proactive in trying to solve our problems, but he never made me feel bad (I felt terrible, but I was so grateful that nobody felt the need to tell me how dumb I was for losing the keys or what a loser I was for messing up everybody's plans for their Saturday night).

For this reason and many, many more, Matt is the best, and I hope I can be as lovely a wife to him as he is a husband to me!

In other news, the oil cleansing method is going well, as is making kefir! No miracles to report, although kefir may have contributed to curing Nimoy's diarrhea last week. That. Was so gross.

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 29 April 2011

I read my Bible on the train to work this morning and was really struck by this story.

Thought for the day: It is better to be in danger where we belong and cry out to God for help than to hide and rely on chance.

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