Greetings to you all in the name of our Heavenly Father. With almost an entire month having gone by since my last post, I have some catching up to do. I survived final's week and actually made it through the hardest quarter of my seminary career. The amazing part is I not only made it through but was even able to keep my grades up as well. Praise be to God who was with me through it all. I feel like I learned so much last quarter, but I am happy it is over.
I had an amazing two week break between the quarters. It was just a relaxing and restful break with no homework due or any worries. I spent the first weekend, which was Valentine's Day weekend, with Erin. We went out for a nice steak dinner and had a great weekend together. Then that Sunday she had to go back to Indianapolis for her last two weeks of clinical and I headed to Decatur. I spent Sunday and Monday at Nate's hanging out with him, Kari and the boys. They did not have school on that Monday because it was President's day, so I had a good day spending some time with the boys. Then I headed to Nebraska. I spent Tuesday through Saturday in Seward seeing college friends and Bill and Jami. That was the week they got all of the snow, which I was super excited about. My friends that were doing their student teaching had a couple of snow days so we got to actually hang out and have some fun. Then I went to Iowa for a couple days.
Then on that Tuesday when the big snow storm was moving through Missouri and eastern Iowa, I was supposed to go back to St. Louis. I went through Kansas City instead of the normal route of going east through Iowa and then south. I had good roads the whole way except in Kansas City. I had one close call where a semi cut me off and I missed his back wheels by literally inches. Again, the Lord was with me and my angels were working hard to keep me safe. I made it back to St. Louis that night.
Wednesday, two of my my friends, Chris and Sam, and I went headed out to Kentucky. We spent Wednesday through Friday completing the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. This is seven bourbon distilleries that are a part of this "trail". If you take all seven tours and get a passport stamped by all seven, you have completed the trail. You mail in your passport and they mail you back an official Kentucky Bourbon Trail t-shirt and your passport back. I am proud to say we did indeed complete the trail. The seven bourbon distilleries were: Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, Heaven Hill (Evan Williams and Elijah Craig), Woodford Reserve, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, and Bourbon Town Branch. I listed them in the order that we visited them. It worked out to be an amazing trip. We had three private tours because we were the only ones there and most tours only ever included one or two others besides us three. I learned everything you could ever want to know about bourbon and I gained an appreciation for good sipping bourbon. I would highly recommend this trip to anyone, because even if you are not into bourbon, the trip is still an amazing sight. The scenery of the Kentucky countryside as you drive from each one to the next is beautiful. Also, the distilleries themselves are beautiful old buildings and some were almost like small villages. Four Roses looks like a Spanish mission and Woodford Reserve is a historic land sight for their old beautiful limestone buildings. Maker's Mark is literally set up like a village with the buildings looking like houses and stores. We saw huge horse ranches where the Kentucky thoroughbreds were running along the black wood fences. It is a beautiful part of the country.
The only hiccup we had along the way was the brakes went out on my car. Luckily it happened between spots and not while we were driving. I found a local mechanic who was able to get me in the first thing the next morning and got them fixed. He was a nice guy and the price was not bad at all. I always worry about things like that because they really have you in their hands. I had no choice but to get it fixed and he could have charged me basically whatever he wanted, but luckily he was a fair and honest guy. He even showed me some other things he recommend I get fixed before they go bad.
The trip was actually pretty cheap since hotels and gas was split three ways. The tours only cost an average of five bucks a tour. I did end up buying two bottles of nice but not expensive bourbon. I bought them because they were the smaller distilleries's bottles that I cannot find in St. Louis. I also got an awesome souvenir set. I bought a shot glass from each distillery and then I got an actual bourbon barrel stave which I am going to use as a shelf to put all the shot glasses on. This was pretty cheap since shot glasses were always the cheapest thing in the gift shops and the stave was cheap too. I mailed in my passport and am now waiting on my t-shirt. If you have any other questions or are actually interested in this trip feel free to contact me and I will tell you more.
One of the coolest parts of the trip was one night we were playing cards in the hotel lobby. A guy our age came up and asked if he could play too. We gladly greeted him and introduced ourselves. We found out he was a union construction worker and there were a bunch of them there for hazardous material training classes. We ended up meeting several of them, but there were three who sat with us and talked with us most of the night. All three had lived a long hard life. The one guy was 19 and was already married, divorced, and had a two year old son. The guy who played cards with us was 24, had a daughter, and was engaged to a girl who had a son. The third guy was only in Kentucky on court order. He had been in jail in Jersey and they agreed to let him out if he went and lived with his father in Kentucky. All three had been to jail at one point or another, all three were working back breaking jobs just trying to make a living and get their life back on track for their kids or themselves. The one from Jersey told us he had read the entire Bible in jail but didn't really understand it. We ended up spending the rest of the night building relationships with all three and witnessing when we could. Sam even gave his bible to the one who had read it and not understood it. He put his email address in the cover so he can ask any questions he had. When we finally called it a night the one who was playing cards with us got very serious and earnest and thanked us for what we had said and done. We did end up exchanging contact information with him and I hope to keep in touch with him every once in a while. It was amazing how a simple card game led us to sharing the Gospel with three guys who needed to hear it.
Spring quarter is looking to shape up to be a very good one. Erin is back in St. Louis again, which I am very happy about. She loved her clinical in Indy, and was sad to leave. I am glad she had such a great experience, but am glad to have her back too. She starts classes again Monday. Logan got here last night and we are going to hang out later today. I think I am going to thoroughly enjoy the classes I have this quarter and the lighter work load will be most enjoyable. I am working more hours again now that I am not swamped with classes. I got another job where I will be putting several hours in as an office assistant for my old boss Kim. They rearranged who was head of what and my old boss Kim got moved to Residential Administrator. She was sad to lose me so she offered me this new job and I gladly took it since it will provide me my most hours now. It is really nice cause I can go in whenever I want and work, but don't have to go in if I am busy.
My thought for the day comes from the sermon I heard this Wednesday. The sermon was part of a series and the theme was light versus dark. It was a good sermon, but one of the bad things about taking classes at the seminary and especially homiletic's classes, it becomes very hard to just listen to a sermon. Instead, your mind begins to think of what you would add or subtract to the sermon if you were preaching it. It takes work to make sure you are intentionally just listening to the message as it is. However, Wednesday night as I was listening, I thought I knew where he was going and I waited for him to get there. He never got to it though and I realized I had done it again and tried to make it my sermon. While he was preaching about dark versus the light, he used the illustration of a family vacation of going down into the caves and then coming back out into the light. It was a beautiful illustration, but I heard this light and dark contrast with the idea of a cave being dark in a Lenten sermon, and my mind could not help but go straight to the tomb of Christ. His dead body was laid in dark cave where there was no light. The light of the world was shut-in in complete darkness and for those three days it seemed as if the dark, or evil had won. However, on Easter morning when the women showed up at the grave there sat the tomb open and empty and sitting on the rock was an angel who was like lightning and white as snow. Even the one who came to announce that the light of the world had conquered the darkness was seen as light. We have our hope and joy in our faith because of the fact that even that dark tomb was not able to defeat our Lord. No darkness can overcome the light we have in Christ. I kept waiting to hear this, but he never preached it. Again, it was a good sermon with the same message that our light has defeated the darkness of our world. However, I just thought it would be good to remind myself and all of you that our Lord not only spent his life in the "darkness" of our world for 33 years, but He spent three days in the absolute darkness of the tomb, and He rose victorious over all darkness once and for all. Praise be to Him who sent His Son to die in darkness, in order to rise victorious and be our eternal light of the world that we cling to faithfully.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please use this Lenten season to remind us of the suffering, pain, and death Your Son went through for our sake. Help us to repent of our sins, beg for Your mercy, and cry out for Your Spirit to be our guide strengthening us in our faith, in the one true faith of You until our final day. In the name of our Savior who is the light of the world, Amen.
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