Pain and Grace

Actually, no, this isn't a really in-depth posting about life pain and God's grace and stuff. It's the painful memoirs of Dorinda's muscles after soccer game.

You see, I don't play soccer. Never have. Still don't. I think the last time I kicked the round ball in anything that attempted to resemble the team activity known as a "soccer game" was three years ago. And running? I run a mile every two months or so. That's my current level of physical activity.

So Saturday evening's 2+ hours of soccer has left its mark on my muscles. Or rather in my muscles. All that lactic acid...

The first part of the evening consisted of trying to get open and running after the ball - supposedly playing some postition called "forward." After running completely out of breath, I switched over to defend. I made one really good block -- DannyP kicked the soccer ball full force into the goal -- except I was in the way. Ooph! There went my wind again.

So despite my lack of experience, it was fun. I shared with my team at one point, "It's a lesson in grace. You guys are really (really!) good. But you share so much grace with me, I'm not afraid to play soccer with you. Thanks. It means a lot. You're an example of God's grace."

And Julian even tried to teach me the basics of being a goalie. You'd be proud of me, cduskin!

Another late night post

I'm off to bed, but I just had to post. Thanks for your prayers for Thursday! The Lord answered prayers in so many ways!

• A friend invited me to lunch, rescuing me from working through lunch hour (my all-too-often tendency that gets me a friendly lecture from my co-workers). That lunch resulted in someone to help with the punch for the intern graduation and cake plates for the reception (tomorrow)!
• Our desktop assistant and our IT summer intern were both amazing blessings on Thursday. Between the work they did then and the last two days, we're actually ahead of schedule on login preparation!
• I had a great trip to IA for family reunion and got to visit with college friend Liz on the way. She took time off work just to pick me up at the airport, eat brunch with me, and drive me across KC to where my family could pick me up. THANKS, Liz! I'm so glad I got to see you!
• My time with my family was good and I got to hear my sister's engagement story and visit with great-aunts and uncles and a few first cousins-once-removed and several second cousins. And I got to meet my adopted Russian second cousins for the first time. We had lots of fun together.

A quick prayer note: Caz - one of my interns - left the internship Monday to pursue other ambitions. Caz leaving partway through the year like this has been a little hard (okay, a lot hard) for myself, Jes, and Cas. Please pray for the Lord's guidance in Caz's life and for the Lord's grace for Jes, Cas, and myself. I know God doesn't waste anything - please pray that he will use this for his glory and that we have our eyes fixed on Him. THANK YOU!

AHH!!!

My coordinator Matt is out sick - food poisoning or something.  He's been struggling with this bug all week and he's still out today at the doctors.  My Desktop Admin is at the hospital with his wife - the labor has started and Baby Annie should arrive today.  And I have tomorrow off!  Which means we need to get everything done today.  Two new logins for tomorrow and another two for Monday.  Yikes!

Too crazy to post

It's almost too crazy busy to post, but I have to keep you updated 'cause you guys are my prayer warriors.

• Thanks for your prayers for GFA's RYP conference! It was amazing. And all the name tags got printed and assembled and the registration computers worked! We did have an interesting time since the registration printer insisted on sending out puffs of smoke about twice a day, but nothing burned up. That's a good thing.
• I'm heading to Iowa this weekend for a family reunion. Yay! for getting to see family and Uncle Stanley and the rest of the crew! And yay for getting to see college friend Liz on the way!
• Continue to pray that I would have the Lord's wisdom on how to lead Bible study here at the intern house and what we should do our next section on.
• I got to spend time with Steph, Sara, and Dani - the interns that lived with me last year. It's neat to see how God has worked in their lives through your prayers! Steph has started a Bible study for her co-workers and has led one of them to the Lord. Considering at the beginning of last year, she had never really read the Bible for herself...
• I had my weekly fellowship time with Auntie Candi this evening. She bought yummy chocolate chewy cookies just for me....
  

RYP Conference

The last two weeks have been crazy busy, especially as we've been praying and preparing for the GFA's Renewing Your Passion Conference. On Sunday, I called a couple of supporters and asked specifically for prayer -- for the 1000+ nametags I was overseeing the assembly of on Monday, for the details of the week's schedules, for grace with interns...

Praise God for his faithfulness! I'm off to bed now, but I'll be heading for the Dallas conference site about 6:40 tomorrow morning... oh wait, I guess that's this morning now... to help registration set up.

Wish I could see you there!