Random Collection of Thoughts

I have a couple different thoughts that are entirely unrelated to each other, but when all put here together may turn out to be a post of some substance. So here goes:

Last Sunday for church, we visited Justin's sister's church: Fellowship Church in Knoxville, TN. It was a great experience - good music, great sermon, friendly people. The sermon was about Colossians 3:17, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." The preacher made a point about how the Church today has kind of made a division between "church life" and "real life." We think that the majority of our daily lives are aspiritual and have nothing to do with God, and then our worship comes on Sundays in church or serving in church activities throughout the week. But he used the Old Testament law to make a point that when God gave the law to Israel, it wasn't just laws about church and morality. It was laws about every tiny detail of life, including relationships, food, work, real estate, sex, society, etc. God wanted to be a factor in every part of their lives then, and looking at Colossians 3:17, it's clear that He still feels the same way today. So the thought that many of us have that we can't have a life of service to God unless we're employed by a church is bogus. God wants us to be godly businesspeople, godly teacher, godly garbagemen, godly waitresses, etc. AS WELL AS godly churchpeople. Just something to think about in my own attitude toward serving God and how I approach my daily life. If you're interested, you can listen to the sermon at the church link I posted above.

I've never really shopped at Old Navy. I've been there a time or 2 with other people, but never shopped there for myself. They didn't used to carry sizes big enough for me. But now I've lost some weight, and several friends emphatically recommended that I should stop in and check out their clearance racks because you can find some good deals on cute clothes. So yesterday I went to Old Navy with my friend Charity, and I bought a really cute sweater for $4.34 including tax! Yay for Old Navy and shopping at new places!

We are now less than one week away from leaving for Moldova! People keep asking me if I'm nervous about it, and remarkably the answer is no. I'm calm and confident, I just really have great expectations for this season. Justin is losing some sleep over details, but God has shown Himself so faithful in answering our prayers. We'd still appreciate your prayers for our safety and for all our details to be worked out upon arrival - especially getting our 6-month work permits and finding housing. We've heard about one housing situation that sounds ideal, so we're hoping that will work out for us - Check the Moldova blog for more details about that once we arrive.

So I think that's all I have for the moment. I'll try to post on here at least one more time before we leave!

Edit: I remembered a couple other random thoughts I meant to put in this! So I'll add them here at the end.

We visited the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, TN, and I learned a lot about WWII history and the development of the nuclear bomb. I had no idea that was all done in Tennessee, just a few hours south of where I grew up! Very enlightening for me, although I hope not in a radioactive way... In the lobby of that museum, though, there are some little puzzles and brainteasers - take these 6 shapes and fit them together to make a square. I've always been good at this kind of thing, and so I solved them without a whole lot of trouble. My father-in-law, who is an engineer, was very impressed by this and said I should've been an architect because of my apititude for abstract thinking. Wow. Thanks!

One of Justin's and my favorite things to do is visit used bookstores. You never know the treasures you can find in used bookstores! We just got back from visiting Mr. K's Used Books & CDs in Oak Ridge, and I found 2 books that I've been looking for a long time (The South Beach Diet in paperback and Captivating by John & Staci Eldredge) for $10 total! But I digress. For the past several weeks, we've been scouring every bookstore we came across for a Romanian-English dictionary to help me learn the language. We eventually gave up and bought them online. But I digress again. Earlier this week we were in Barnes & Noble in Knoxville, and I was looking in the foreign language section trying to find anything to help me learn Romanian. I struck out, but I noticed a book on the shelf that looked like it was written by "Harrius Potter." I wondered if maybe this was someone trying to write a book as if they were Harry Potter, but the name was copyrighted so they used something close? But then I picked it up and "Harrius Potter" was actually the title of the book. So I flipped it open and the text was definitely in a language that I don't know. The inside flap, though, was in English, and I discovered that this was actually the first Harry Potter book translated into Latin. Then I looked back at the shelf I had gotten it from, and there were several other children's books translated into Latin, including Green Eggs & Ham. What is this about? Where is the market for children's books in Latin? Isn't Latin a dead language? I'm very confused by all of this... Does anybody else have any thoughts?