Over the Break

Christmas break was a flurry of friends, family and festivities. We let the blog and updates go during the break. We were blessed to spend 2 ½ weeks in California, and still have a bit of time left to prepare before the semester. By the grace of God neither of us got sick during the trip!

Because we had 2 ½ weeks, hiking and walking were a part of our daily routine. One night we were star-gazing and heard crunching in the brush nearby (it was very crunchy everywhere because of the lack of rain), and three coyotes appeared, scaring me half to death–we fended them off with the towels we’d been laying on! Other nature escapades included a visit to the sierra redwoods, aka The BIG Trees! What a magnificent grove of ancient trees.

We made 140+ bars of oatmeal-goat’s milk soap with Payton’s mom—I’d almost forgotten how smelly goat’s milk is when it mixes with lye!

I cleared out our bookshelf before we left and tagged all of the books we hadn’t read, grabbing a few before I left. I managed to finish quite a few while sipping tea on the back porch (and some in the airplane):

The Dangerous Duty of Delight – John Piper
The Forgotten Arts, Books 1-3 – Richard Bacon
To Train Up a Child – Michael and Debi Pearl
Is God Really in Control? – Jerry Bridges
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God – J.I. Packer

Payton reread “The Autobiography of George Muller” and started on another book or two while we were travelling.

Payton and I decided to break into the first four books of the New Testament again, almost making it through the gospel of John together. I had just finished Matthew and also made it though Luke. Both of us felt like the gospels were the haziest in our studies and merited more study.

The 3 hour time change was rough, making me hungry and awake/sleepy at all sorts of random hours. I can’t imagine the jet lag from going overseas someday! Speaking of overseas, Payton got to share some of what God has done and is doing in our lives with his old youth group in Lake Don Pedro. We loved the fellowship of the believers and encouragement of that little community while we were traveling.

We still have just a bit of time before our break is over. I plan on doing a bunch of boring things like sorting papers and getting rid of our possessions and transferring files to our external hard drive. The only exciting thing I might do is attempt to make Indian food. My mouth is still watering from a dinner this summer when we tasted it for the first time. Payton said he could be a vegetarian if we could eat food like that all of the time. I agreed–it was that good.