What an exhausting week and yet not really much happened that is worth updating y'all about. How do those weeks happen? Friday night rolls around, your house is a mess, you're exhausted, and yet when you look back at what you did that week there's really not much that you remember? Thankfully, after a week like that comes Saturday. For the most part Saturday wasn't a very memorable day, either, but it ended on a good note. We went to a friend's house for dinner. Altogether there were five couples there. Technically, the host wasn't physically present - we found out upon arrival that he was taken to the hospital on Friday for pneumonia - but he urged his wife to continue with the gathering in his absence. We had a marvelous time. It was sort of potluck style - we brought dessert and deviled eggs (ohh, my mouth waters just thinking about them!!). An Indian couple brought a tasty rice and chicken curry (Joanna - her mother tongue is Telugu - we thought of you!). Other dishes included steak (it's been so long since we've had beef and it was very delicious), chicken (marinated in some sort of yummy-awesome-sauce), peanut noodles (unexpectedly delicious as Susan generally doesn't like peanut-flavored dishes), salad, as well as a completely fabulous and somewhat spicy eggplant and vegetable curry. It was great to hang out, relax, and talk with people of such different backgrounds but united through Christ. Two of the couples will be in our Bible Study resuming next month and it was nice to gather socially outside of the study. We were so blessed by the hostess' hospitality and can't believe we haven't imposed on them more :) Today after church we visited the would-be host in the hospital. It turns out that he doesn't have pneumonia after all (although the doctors don't know what caused his coughing fit that took him to the hospital in the first place). We told him all about the gathering yesterday and he reminisced about how he and his wife used to do things like that more often. We'll just have to encourage that type of activity more in the future - with us invited, of course! He ended up coming home from the hospital around 5pm and alls well that ends well. Now for another week...

Labels: NY

Another fun-filled week of adventure (and, yes, it was blazing hot... again). On Monday we went to a friend's house for dinner. Walter is one of Ivan's coworkers whom we met in DC, since he was in the same LL.M. program as Ivan. Now they work together at Ernst & Young and we all hang out on occasion. Our original plan was for Susan to come into the city around 6pm when Ivan gets off work and enjoy a leisurely stroll to Walter's apartment. However, work on Monday turned out to be crazy-busy and neither Ivan nor Walter got off work until closer to 8pm! That doesn't happen very often, but it left Susan hanging around E&Y for two hours with not much to do. By the time 8pm rolled around we were very hungry. Walter's roommate started working on dinner, so we didn't have to wait too long, before we were served a feast. Walter is from Peru and his mom owns a restaurant. You can guarantee he's a good cook! He fixed us "Spicy Hen" (Ají de gallina) which is a phenomenal Peruvian dish served on rice and potatoes (here's a recipe, not from Walter, but worth a try - let me know if you do). We enjoyed a great dinner with Walter, his roommate (who's working on a law doctorate S.J.D.), and Benjamin (another E&Y coworker).

On Wednesday, Ivan preached his second (and final) sermon for the summer. We're going through a series on "A Biblical Worldview" and his topic was "A Biblical Worldview of Work and Money." Since Ivan has been preparing for this sermon for about a month, we've had lots of time to apply what he's been learning to our own financial situation. We've been quite spoiled these days with an ample salary that doesn't require us to count our pennies and be extra careful. That has led us to be somewhat wasteful in several areas, so we've buckled down and created a budget to help us trim out the fat. Again, Ivan took the day off of work so he could spend the morning finalizing his notes and the afternoon practicing his delivery. Ivan's not a huge fan of topical sermons, so he was hard pressed trying to find one passage to focus on for the sermon. In the end, he had three points and had to settle for one main passage per point: Work (1Thes 4:11-12), Save (Pr 6:6-9), and Give (2 Cor 9:6-7). Here is the handout in case you're interested. Apparently you can order a copy of his sermons on CD ($3), but the Wednesday Night sermons aren't available for download from the church website (www.ns-bc.org). But, I highly recommend this sermon if you're interested in revisiting your perspective on work and money and compare it to Biblical examples.

Now, as if those two highlights of this week weren't enough. There's more. That's right: more! Today the ladies of our church gathered at a member's home for a pool party and bbq. It was so much fun - we wish we could do that more often! The catch is that the house with the pool is an hour away. Susan decided to carpool with some friends and ended up with three other ladies in her car. We enjoyed great conversation on the way out there and it really helped the drive go by much more quickly. About 30 ladies were there and we enjoyed fun games in the pool (which was a nice relief after being in the hot sun), great food, a wonderful devotional message prepared by Rayna. A few of us even tried out the trampoline briefly! Before we knew it, time had flown by and it was already 7pm. We piled back into the car for the long ride home. The conversation was more subdued, because I think we were all a bit tired, but we had a quick and safe ride back home.

Labels: NY

Another month has begun. So far this summer we have enjoyed rather mild temperatures with short, enjoyable bursts of rain. Well, August has decided to buck the trend and be a "real" summer month. Wowsers, it's been hot! And humid! Anyone missing CA yet? YES! WE ARE!! We finally bought an air conditioner thru-the-wall unit for our living room, so we hung up a curtain across the hallway and manage to keep the front of the house a fairly decent temperature. We turn off the AC when we go out and it's not uncommon to come back to a house that's 87 degrees. Blech. Unlike CA where it's almost certain to cool down at night, we've been getting no relief after the sun goes down. So, we've started to sleep on a mattress in the living room. We don't like running the AC 24/7, but that's what it's been this last week. "Welcome to New York."

Labels: NY

This was a fun week for Susan. Her sister just finished up working in South Dakota and came by New Jersey to hang out with her ex-roomie, Kristen, for awhile. So, after church on Sunday Susan drove down to NJ and spent a few days with the girls. We cooked yummy food, played fun games (our cousin taught Claire FLUXX and she taught it to Susan - that is an intense game - you have to keep your wits about you!), and overall just relaxed and hung out. Claire and Kristen went tubing down the river on Saturday and they got sun burnt extremely badly, so our hang out time was punctuated by frequent visits to CVS for more aloe vera. We've always wanted to get a hard-sided suitcase and put flag stickers on it from all of the countries we've been to. For the job in South Dakota, Claire bought such a suitcase so we proceeded to buy a dozen or so flag stickers online to start Claire's collection. Another reason why this is a fun week is because one of our parents celebrates their birthday this week. We couldn't be there in person, but we're happy to celebrate vicariously with them.

Labels: Quick Trip

Whew! What a long week! This week was VBS (Vacation Bible School) at our church. Originally, Susan wasn't going to be able to help because she was scheduled to go to the Web Science Research Week at RPI in Troy, NY. Susan was looking forward to connecting with more people interested in similar research, comparing ideas, learning from each other, and just overall being encouraged in our research pursuits. However, that plan ended up not being feasible, so Susan was at home this week instead. She volunteered to work with VBS and was assigned to work with a group of children. By the third day her group included four kindergartners, two first graders, and a fourth grader. Rather than divide the groups up by age, our church mixes different ages together so the older kids can help and be a good example to the younger kids. Unfortunately, Susan's group didn't exactly have any "older" kids - although her 4th grader was a great helper. By the end of the week, Susan was worn out by those four little people and she was reminded once again why she didn't go into Elementary Ed! Kudos to you primary school educators who manage to put up with kids who can't read, don't follow directions, and only listen to you if you tell them to "put on their listening ears" (I don't know about you, but I was born with my listening ears firmly attached to my head!) Who comes up with these things?!

She was thankful that other people were in charge of the snacks (thanks, Janet!), teaching time (great job, Won!), crafts (you rock, Susann!), and games (hurrah, Caleb!) [and, of course, honorable mentions to Skeeter and Miss Skeeter - yes, if you say it fast enough it sounds like "mosquito" with a southern drawl]. We learned some great Bible verses and heard all about the miracles God performed in freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. We also learned about passover and how it anticipated the Messiah's death, burial, and resurrection. We are so thankful for Jesus, our Messiah, who lived a perfect life and died the death we deserve for our sins and then rose again demonstrating His victory over death. It's always good to be reminded of that and so, instead of focusing on the exhausting time with a bunch of rug rats, we need to look back on this week of VBS and praise the Lord that many children heard the Good News of Jesus Christ and pray that He would use this week to draw some of them to Himself.

Labels: NY

This summer our pastor started a Preaching Lab for some of the men in the church. Ivan was invited to join and, with about 10 other guys, he met regularly with the pastor learning and practicing sermon preparation. Last night, Ivan had the opportunity to preach at our Wednesday night service. It has been quite awhile since Ivan has preached (unless you count teaching 5th-6th graders at our church in California), so there was a fair amount of nervousness. Ivan took the day off work to finalize his notes and then spent the bulk of the day practicing. His assigned topic was "Bearing One Another's Burdens" (we're doing a "One Another's" series on Wednesday nights) and his main text was Galatians 6:1-6. I must say he did a fabulous job. Sure there were some hiccups (for example, he started out talking far too quietly and there was microphone feedback), but overall it went quite well. I consider a "good" sermon to be one where I learn something new (or am reminded of something that I already know, but need to hear again) and where there's an applicable "call to action" or suggestion for change. I got both of those last night and thus his sermon was a booming success in my opinion. Sitting in the audience I was nervous for Ivan and I'm really in awe of those pastors' wives who sit through their husbands sermons week after week. How do they do it?!

Labels: NY

NY, how do I hate Thee? Let me count the ways...


So, for those of you who follow us on Facebook, you might have noticed that I'm having some trouble sleeping tonight. I blame it entirely on an evil NYS DMV experience.

Let me start from the beginning...

Having decided to abandon our CA residency (which is a long story in and of itself which might get it's own posting some day), we agreed to get NYS driver's licenses and register our vehicles in NY. I spent about 3 hours on Thursday doing research on the NYS DMV website to determine what forms and supporting documents were necessary to bring. It required a few phone calls to DMV and our auto insurance company to get everything in order and on Friday morning we found the closest office to Ivan's work. We rendezvoused around 10am and walked to the Herald Square DMV, arriving between 10:30 and 11am. The first thing we see is a long line at a window marked "Information - Service Tickets". After doing some reconnaissance we were told that everyone had to wait in that line, explain your business, and get a ticket to be serviced. Oh, if only it were that simple. Truly, the only entrance to the DMV office was that roped off line, so we determined that the information we received was reliable.

Instead, we got to the front of that line and we were told that we had to go to a different, even longer line to get our photos taken for our driver's license and then they would give us service numbers to actually get our licenses and change our vehicle registration.

After an hour, we made it to the front of that line only to learn that there was a different "shorter" line to get the photos we needed. We did manage to get a service number for the car registration issue. Indeed, the other line was shorter - no one was in it - but there was also no one servicing that line. We asked a few people and finally after about 5 minutes someone came to help us. He looked over our paperwork and determined that the documents we brought to prove our NYS residency were inadequate because half of them had "FL 3" as part of the address and half didn't. The half that did, would have been enough to prove our residency, but neither had both of our names on it. The half that didn't were supposed to have been enough to prove our residency, but the person at the window said he couldn't accept them since they were issued by the same company. Nowhere on the website did it say that there was a restriction about bringing documents issued by different companies. We then tried explaining that we rent the top floor in a house and we get our mail whether it has the "FL 3" or not, but he wouldn't budge. He did, however, give us a service number to talk to his supervisor. So we waited some more.

The supervisor echoed the same things the first guy said, but consented to walk over with us to discuss the issue with the first guy. We had to wait some more, since the first guy was helping someone else. Eventually they relented and they approved our residency documents. Then we had to wait in line to get our photo taken. Then we had to wait in line to get a service ticket. Then we had to wait for our numbers to be called. So we had three numbers: one of each of our licenses and one for the vehicle registration. By now, we've had the number for the vehicle registration for over an hour and they still hadn't called it. Eventually they called the number for our vehicle registration. Ivan kept watching the "big board" for our other numbers to appear, but then they needed both of us in order for them to process the vehicle registration since both of our names are on the title (although, one of my questions over the phone to the DMV the prior day was precisely this and they said I could do it without Ivan's presence). Meanwhile, Ivan's number was called, so he left. It didn't matter anyways, because the special insurance card that I had requested from our auto insurance company didn't have both of our names on it, so they couldn't process it anyways. Blech.

As that was being explained to me my number for my license was called so I collected my documents and went to the next window. Finally, something was being processed. Although I had filled out a special application to get the enhanced driver's license, the guy helping me assumed that I was getting the regular license, but thankfully asked before completing the transaction. When Ivan was done with his license we double-checked what type of license they gave him and found they had done a regular one instead of the enhanced, so he had to go back and have the transaction reversed and process a new one.

Eventually, 4 1/2 hrs later, we left the DMV having only accomplished 67% of what we went there for. And they aren't open on Saturdays, so we have to go back next week with Ivan taking more time off work, to get the registration straightened out.

Labels: NY