tonyandkirsten.org

It starts so young…I’m not sure how concious she is that she’s doing this…but Madeline’s actions appear to be ever so slightly manipulating us…or at least pushing and prodding us to let her get her way!

Things didn’t go quite a smoothly as we had hoped with Tony’s costume for the Rock costume party, so we didn’t even get to leave the house until after 8pm. Madeline seemed a little crabby before we left, and barely cheered up when we arrived at the church building. She acted hungry after we had been there a few minutes, but wouldn’t eat. After walking around with a very sad little ducky, I tried again to get her to eat and fall asleep in a portable crib in the church nursery.

You should have seen the look on her face! It was as totally sad as she could manage. She rarely extremely happy about going to sleep, but this was different. Her face was saying, “Why are you laying me down in this strange place???” I tried to let her cry herself to sleep as usual, but the screaming just got louder and instead of being curled up in her usual, relaxed position for falling asleep, she still was stiff with her head in the air. It was clear she wasn’t going to fall asleep there any time soon. I picked her up, and nearly panicked — she had little red splotches on her face around her eyes…something I had never seen before. Time to leave!

Exhausted, we left the party after having been there slightly over an hour. Arriving home, her face was back to normal and she was smiling and laughing in the living room. She ate a little more and fell asleep with only a few minutes of normal crying. Amazing. She did NOT want to be at the church building tonight and communicated that enough that we acted. Pretty good for a little girl who can’t even talk yet.

Tony went back to the party and I’m trying to relax and unwind after that tiring hour at the party. I’m just glad the real Halloween is tommorow…so we can put Madeline back in her costume and take cute pictures….That’s the best part of putting a baby in a costume anyway. Maybe I’ll think of somewhere interesting to take her all dressed up.

I’ll make Tony put his picture back on for pictures too, and post them soon — He was a penny! One of the most novel costumes I’ve ever seen!

If you do, Forbes Magazine can help you out. This is your opportunity to disguise your face as President Bush, Bill Gates, Tolkien, or one of several other celebrities past and present.

Madeline will be making her Halloween debut tommorow as a ducky (does that surprise anyone?)… If money had been no object, a cute ladybug, butterfly, or Pea-in-a-pod might have been her atire. I couldn’t bring myself to even spend the $10-$15 it would have taken for a used costume or something on ebay…for something she will only wear for a couple hours at most. Costumes like the ladybug, butterfly or others by designer Tom Arma are sometimes several times more than that even on ebay. I also just saw these for the first time tonight. Hmmmm…..Ideas for next year, maybe?

My total spent this year on Madeline’s costume is about $1.65 so far, thanks to a great garage sale find. I have a few finishing touches left, but hopefully it will turn out as well as I picture in my head. There will definitely be pictures posted sometime after Saturday night in the photo gallery.

I’m still not sure what I will wear to the costume party tommorow night. With the theme being “I Love the 90s,” it makes me wish I had saved a few things from my high school years. Oh well. I am sure I can find something similarly discarded at Goodwill.

I played a good game against Tony, but “azine” for 72 points was just too hard to beat.

Oh well, there’s always next time!

Okay, so web surfing, game playing and the like isn’t just about wasting time. Everyone needs a few hobbies and ways to relax, right? And Fantasy Football (my new hobby this fall) is only a couple of months long, so I can still take on other new hobbies…right?….

After reading a Slashdot story about the Alternative Reality Game “I love bees,” Tony and I were both really curious to learn more. Alternative Reality Games (ARGs), we learned, involves problem solving, code breaking, puzzles, mysteries, fantastic stories, and a little bit of role playing. The games are played out in real time via the web, as well as sometimes instant messages, chats, blogs, phone calls, voice mail, and text messages as players work their way through a storyline. Most games involve player cooperation to solve puzzles and complete other aspects of the game. Once a game reaches it’s conclusion, it’s done forever and players move on to other games.

After reading many pages of information about the “I Love Bees” game and listing to hours of a sci-fi audio drama associated with the game, we’re making plans to get in on this game ourselves and look for a payphone downtown Ames that will ring next Tuesday afternoon. I kid you not. Crazy, huh?

We’re getting in kind of late on the “I love Bees” game - It’s scheduled to end in early November. As I read various websites and forums dedicated to the ARG genre, I learned that there are several other games now in play, as well as half-dozen or so more that are scheduled to start in the coming weeks or months. Some games seem to have many hundreds of players (like “I Love
Bees”) while others may be less complex and have a smaller audience.

Playing ARGs is definitely something I could sink waaaay to much time into. But with a little bit of judgement, it could be another fun hobby to occaisonally dabble in. It combines my interest in science fiction (since many of the ARG game stories fit in that genre) with my often insatiable curiousity, my love of trying new things and of course my sense of adventure. Who knows, it might even be an interesting way to meet people we might otherwise not have an opportunity to reach out to if other Bee fans are also looking for that ringing payphone.

If you are wondering what to get Maddie for Christmas, guess no more…She has an Amazon Wish List! She’s really not that picky, so these are just some suggestions…cheap immitations from Target and Wal-Mart or gently used items from your local thrift stores and garage sales are just fine.

Oh, and Madeline got her first email address too: madelinebrie at gmail.com. If you send her email I promise to read it to her! I know you are laughing now…but she’ll thank us about eight or ten years from now when all the cool gmail addresses are taken and she’ll be one of the only kids her age with a gmail address that doesn’t have a number or some weird words in it.

Happy shopping! It’s only 69 days until Christmas!

It’s already incredible that I have one friend living and serving in Honduras…What’s even more amazing is that I will soon have two friends there! Last night I got to hang out with Leanna, a good friend of mine from high school. She’s been living in Rochester, Minnesota and working as a nurse at the Mayo Clinic. I got a call from her a couple weeks ago asking if she could spend the night on her way to Colorado. When I saw her in April she told me she had taken a short term mission trip to Honduras, and that she was praying about going back for a longer period of time. Now, she’s decided to take the plunge and go for two years…so she is out raising support.

Leanna is going to be in Teguicigalpa working with a ministry that serves impoverished children, providing them food, clothing and basic medical help along with sharing the gospel and other Biblical truth. She is able to play a unique role because of her nursing background, helping with the medical needs.

I’m really proud of my friend Leanna for stepping out in faith and doing this — Especially since she has to raise support to cover her expenses! She is the shy, reserved type so speaking in front of churches and taking initiative with people to tell them about her ministry is way out of her normal comfort zone. But she’s doing it, because she’s convinced that God wants her to go.

If you have a moment, please pray for Leanna that God continues to give her courage as she raises support, and that she would be able to get her support raised in time to get to Honduras by her goal-date of early February. Other than a couple of weeks off for travel, she is still working full time until December 1st, and then part-time until she leaves, so you can also pray that she is able to make the most of the limited time she has available to raise support.

Wow. I can’t believe it. I just enjoyed an hour of TV. Not just that, but a prime-time show on one of the networks you can get with a broadcast antenna. Not one of those cool documentaries on the History Channel or the ever-popular Trading Spaces on TLC…but CSI:Miami on CBS, a top-rated drama.

It wasn’t like I was just bored and had nothing better to do. On Monday nights Tony usually goes to the dorms to watch Monday Night Football with the guys. He planned to go after working on a project at home, so he wasn’t ready to leave until close to 9pm. By this point in the evening it was also clear that Madeline was not having one of her better nights. She was a little crabby, but wouldn’t lay down for a nap. She didn’t want to play or eat. The only thing that seemed to make her happy was carrying her around. Continue reading »

In my weekly extended times with God, one of my favorite things to do is to read a book. While I always bring my Bible and spend time in the Word, it’s also quite a treat to get time alone to read, without Madeline or housework or admin tasks to distract me.

This week, besides a good book (”Life Management for Busy Women,” which I’ll have to write about some other time), I also brought an old black binder filled with notes taken mostly from late 1995 through 1998 (the years I was a student at ISU). What a goldmine! It’s a regular 1-inch binder and it’s nearly full of college-ruled filler paper pages filled on both sides. I had almost forgotten how much time I spent not just taking notes at conferences and LTs I went to, but also on taking detailed notes on tapes I listened to and on some of the books I read.

This binder is full of what shaped me as a young Christian — the Truths that helped me develop the passions and convctions I now hold. Well, definitely the convictions…some times I’m afraid the passion is a little lacking these days…but reading these notes definitely helped me to stir up a little of that passion within.

I could post many tidbits of the treasure, but here is one that caught my eye in particular from the first big conference I went to — the GCM National Convention in 1995… Continue reading »

Building relationships with non-Christians and sharing the Gospel has never been one of my strong suits. Since going on staff a little over five years ago, it’s been a real struggle to consistently have unbelievers whom I am directly influencing. I’m finding that to be even more of a challenge now that I have a baby.

Our team is primarily doing ministry on a co-ed dorm floor, and we’ve discovered that a lot of young, unsaved college guys are weirded out by babies. The girls love her, but on a co-ed floor it’s rare to visit and not find guys and girls hanging out together. It’s kind of a six of one/half-a-dozen of the other type of situation, but I definitely don’t want to unecessarily get in the way of the outreach that is going on by bringing our daughter with us. If our team had something scheduled in the dorms like a Bible study that might work better than just random hang out time…but God hasn’t led our team in that direction at this point so it’s really not an option.

I’m sure I’ll be able to spend time at Willow without Madeline occaisonally, and it probably won’t hurt to bring her over to the dorms every now and then. But, I am thinking that if I truly want to have a “personal ministry” of outreach I’ll need to have other ways of getting to know people outside of our team’s outreach in the dorms. God may still give me some opportunities with freshmen girls that other people on our team are reaching out to, but more than likely I’ll be playing a supporting, behind-the-scenes role in their lives and it will be the girls who are still in school and living in the dorms that will have the actual opportunities to share with them.

I would suspect that at this point in my life it would be most effective for me to reach out to other young married women, with or without kids. And reaching out to that demographic might yield the added benefit of making some “peer” friends…since I hardly ever get to spend time with any other young married women. Even older-than-college single women might be a group I could have an influence with.

The problem is…how to develop this personal ministry “on the side” while I am still involved with The Rock and college ministry as my main focus? I don’t have tons of time, but I would probably have some time during the day to fit in a new activity or a couple of new friends. When Madeline gets older there will be activities I could take her to where I can meet other moms — everything from story times at the Library to play groups to “mom and me” swim class. But things like that are probably at least a year away. Our neighborhood is mostly college students and older people so I’m not sure there is a lot of this type of outreach potential with our neighbors.

So, do any of you have any ideas/thoughts/suggestions on how I can work to develop more of a personal ministry with non-Christians?

For your viewing enjoyment…

More pictures in the September Madeline album
Pictures of Madeline’s adventures at Encounter
Assorted ministry pictures from the last couple weeks

And there might just be a picture of me with carrot slices stuck to my face around there somewhere…but you’ll just have to find that for yourself.