We (almost) finally live in SA!

Okay, so my hair faded really quickly. Darn. I'm going to dye it again soon, drastically darker, so hopefully it will fade to the right color. :-)

I spent Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday in Midland with my parents. I didn't do too much, ran some errands with my mom, visited Leslie, etc. Josh has been observing the building of a condo on the beach in Alabama this week but he gets to come home tomorrow!! Yay! Then he'll head back for his LAST week of training - wahoo!!

I forgot to write about something last time. So, the last Sunday Josh & I were in Houston, we visited Lakewood "Church." Yes, Joel Osteen's "church." Goodness, we need to pray that people are not deceived by him!! It's really sad that God's name can be placed on what Joel says. If you are not familiar with him, his "sermons" consist of him telling you, in some way, how you can make your dreams come true, how you can make yourself earn lots of money & be healthy & happy, & how we can use God to do those things. Listen to him sometime. I get so frustrated, mainly because I can't tell if Joel knows he is exploiting the name of the Lord & His Word, or if he is just terribly, terribly deceived as well.

Anyways, for those of you who haven't been to Lakewood, the singing is very high energy, like a concert (apparently the music team writes the songs they sing, so we heard, so we didn't know any of them), Joel rarely mentions scripture & definitely doesn't use his Bible, & - this part is an absolutely mystery to me - almost EVERYONE seems to give money during the offering. Not quite sure how he convinced everyone to do that (I'm not sure that I would be motivated to give if I did not know the Lord & love His church!)... but everyone seemed to put a white envelope in those buckets. We checked out this envelope - you put your name, file number, & amount on the outside - oh, & if you want any of the money to go to missions, you better put an amount in that box, or they won't. They don't give to missions unless the giver specifically says to.

Joel is in a very dangerous place. God is not One to be exploited.

I'm not as good as some at summing up what Joel says, so just Google "Joel Osteen" & read the articles that come up.

OH, I almost forgot. There was a man outside of the building when we left, preaching (I've definitely never seen anyone outside a church preaching!). He had a sign that said "Joel is lying to you" & the one thing we heard him say was, "Do you really think Jesus would die for you so you could make a lot of money?" True, although perhaps not the most effective way to try to show people the deception going on inside. Phew. It was quite the experience.

In other news, I bought baby stuff for Ranelle's baby shower Saturday - it's the first time I've ever bought baby stuff. Weird.

We've had some of my wedding cake in the freezer & I'll pull out a piece every once in a while, defrost it, & eat it over a couple days. That cake was soooooo good (I can say that because I didn't bake it, just chose it!). Yummmmm... I love frosting.

Time to go use that gym we've been paying for but haven't been to in a month!

J&C