Some Personal Stuff

Every now and again, I do a post like this to keep interested readers informed of what's up in my neck of the boonies. A few things:

1) The adoption process is proceeding. All our paperwork has been submitted and is currently being translated over in Kazakhstan. Once the translation process is complete, the documents will (oddly) be delivered to the Kazakh government via their consulate in NYC. No, I don't understand, but that's the deal. The good news is that we've been told by our agency that we might get an invitation to travel to Kazakhstan as early as next February. We'll see if this actually pans out, but every indication we've gotten is that the adoption might happen sooner rather than later. We're obviously very excited and are trying to keep things in balance if it turns out that more snares are in the offing.

2) The Christianity Explored course that we've been hosting since September recently concluded. I'm pleased with the way it went. We reliably had around 15-17 people in our home each week, and best of all, nobody peeled off even though it was a 10 week class. My hope is that this class might provide a good foundation for subsequent rollouts and give us some momentum for evangelism as we head into the new year. We are hosting a Christmas dinner party on Saturday 12/15 for the group members, and we've invited some other folks as well. Any readers who wish to come to the party are very welcome. I relish the opportunity to meet new people, so don't be bashful if you wanna come.

3) Starting in January, I will be teaching a Sunday school course at our church titled "Christian Hospitality - A Way of Life". I still have to prepare most of my lesson plans, and I'm starting to stress about it (tick tock, tick tock). But I'm really looking forward to it. As I say in the introductory lesson plan, "Martha Stewart didn't invent hospitality, and perhaps more heretically, she hasn't perfected it either." Christian hospitality has become my main ministry and academic interest dating back to my last year at seminary, and I'm really looking forward to this upcoming class where I will have the opportunity to continue deepening my understanding of hospitality along with the other folks who might attend. Again, if anyone is interested in attending the course who resides here locally but doesn't attend Faith Church, please get in touch with me to find out more. If the course goes well and people respond positively to the material, I may try and submit my course lessons to 3Mil for publication, or at least try to make them available on the church's website for others to peruse.

It is a busy but exciting time.