We're going to Hawaii...

Just kidding, not quite Hawaii but Moorhead, MN. Far away from the beach but we could not be happier! We will be at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Moorhead, MN. A church of about 535 members and weekly attendance near 300. We have already heard very, very good things about our supervising pastor and his wife from numerous sources. That was our biggest request for our year of internship...a positive place to learn and grow.

The majority of my time will be spent doing campus ministry at the colleges in the surrounding Moorhead/Fargo, ND areas. I believe the two main colleges are the University of Minnesota at Moorhead and Concordia Moorhead. I will be spending about 75% of my time doing ministry at the colleges and 25% doing ministry in the parish. Hopefully, I will have plenty of opportunities to preach, teach, and learn from all the people of the parish. My time at the colleges seems to be to primarily just be present on the campuses. Incarnational ministry and relationships... I love it! Also I will be leading Bible studies and hopefully helping start and establish a weekly, evening worship service for college students. (Guess it's a good time to learn to play that ol' guitar!)

We don't have many other details beyond this as of right now. We have to wait awhile before we can work out the details of our living arrangements, job for Calie, and things like that. But again we are really, really excited. Plus we will be about 3 hours to family and friends--that's seven hours closer than where we are now. About 1.5 hours to a certain cabin on the lake. About 9 months of winter for snowmobiling, if not more! Oh, and I can't forget to mention that Calie is super excited to watch the MN Vikings year-round next football season!

So this was our fallout from Call Day 2008! No doubt God has blessed us, and all the future vicars with places to learn and grow. We are so happy to have a place to be excited about! Thank you to everyone for all their thoughts, prayers, and words of encouragement. God is good, Jesus is Lord, and remember that no matter where you are, you are in the mission field! Look out Moorhead, here come the Vera's!

It's here

First of all I would like to dedicate this post to our most faithful reader G. This one's for you!

Well, I know that I told you all that next time I blogged it would be about our fabulous weekend with our friends in Kansas City attending the MN Twins games. Well time has once again passed me by and now we are here at one of the more important days of our lives...call day.

Yes indeed, in a few short hours our fate will be sealed as we are told where we are headed for the next year of our lives. We have no idea where they are sending us, or to do what. A bug has been planted in our ears that Campus Ministry may be in our future, but we will have to wait and see what they tell us at the 3:00 service. Since we are "V's" I don't expect to know until about 4.

Shortly after the service ends I hope to blog to let you all know where we are going! Until then we could sure use some prayers that A. the rain stops, B. we get a placement where we can thrive, and C. everyone gets placements that are good and suit them best. I know that God knows what He is doing, but a little extra prayer never hurts!

Earthquake?! In St. Louis?!?

Yes indeed! Last night at 4:37 I woke up to loud noises. Our windows were shaking, which is not uncommon since they are neither new or good windows. The brass knocker on our door was knocking away and my bed was shaking. I believe my words were something like, "Geez!". After the windows stopped rattling and the door knocker was quite, I tried to go back to sleep, only to realize that our bed was still shaking. It felt the same as when Steve shakes his legs when he can't sleep. So I asked him, "why are you shaking your legs?" he replied "I'm not". So that's when my mind started going and I knew that we had just been through an earthquake.

This morning when I got out of the shower I was going to wake up Steve and tell him that I thought there was an earthquake last night, but I didn't think that he would believe me. (He does not get as excited about this stuff as I do!) He was already watching the news and confirmed what occupied my mind from 4:37am until a few minutes before my alarm went off. Isn't that just the way it goes too? You fall back asleep just before you have to get up!?

So here are the facts: The earthquake was located in Mount Carmel which is 131 miles East of St. Louis in Illinois. It is right on the boarder if IL and IN. It was rated 5.2 on the Richter scale. The shocks have been reported to have been felt in Louisville, KY, Chicago, IL, and Cincinnati, OH.

This is definitely the hot topic of the office today, and I wonder how many times I will have a conversation about this today? But I am excited to say that I have now officially been in an earthquake!

I would like to add to this post, that we just received an aftershock of the first earthquake at 10:28am. I still think that it is exciting to experience this, especially in two different locations. I do have to say that I prefer to be at home with Steve.

Running out of time!

Well, There is just SO much to say under this topic!

First I will say that I am a touch sad that my embroidery class is now over, and we have been thrown to the wolves to try to do this on our own. I don't anticipate a problem, but now I just need to get the time to order the fabric and get going! Time seems to be running out on me!

I do not, at least right now, have pictures of the final two projects. I promise they will come.

Time is running out on our lives here at the seminary. Good, bad, scary, nerve wracking, exciting, and sad are all feelings that are running trough our heads. Steve probably has a few more that may not be appropriate! We are down to 5 days until we officially know where we will be headed after this summer for the next year of our lives. We are running out of time!

Right now I am running out of time, as it is 5:30 and I am still at work, trying to leave. I am waiting for a phone call, and thought this would be the perfect time to catch up on something that I have pushed aside for "when I have time". I just realized that is not going to happen, so this is the short and simple message that I have. We are running out of time!

I will blog again soon to talk about our Twins weekend!!!
Until then, thanks for taking your time to read this!

A New Hobby

I (Calie) have started a new hobby. I am taking a wives class through the Seminary to learn how to do ecclesiastical embroidery. This means that I am learning how to sew the stoles that Steve will be wearing as a pastor. If I get good enough, I would even like to sell them.

So every Tuesday night I meet with 14 other wives and a teacher, who is also a Sem. wife, to learn how to embroider. The first week we accomplished learning how to "couch" stitch. Here is the picture. While it's not perfect, it was a good learning tool.

I was the only one who actually finished the "homework". Our instructor was so impressed she showed off my creation and called it "amazing". I leaned over to my friend and said, "it's either amazing, or shows you how big of a loser I am" She told me to go with amazing, but I'm leaning towards the other one.

The second week we learned the Satin stitch. Here is the picture of this sample. (also not perfect)

Sorry it's so dark, I'll try to take a better picture soon.

I know that this week I am not the only one who finished, so I won't have to through the embarrassment again! Thank goodness!

So tonight is the third class and I am excited to start another pattern. I think that we are learning the long and short stitch tonight.

I will keep you updated on my progress!