Busy Week and Many Churches

So another successful week has past.

I'm still keeping quite busy, and this week I've been working on my Exegetical paper for New Testament. I'm studying the story of Jesus walking on water in Matthew, and it is fascinating what I've been able to learn so far. I like that in my New Testament class we will be studying each book individually, and we can better understand the picture each of the gospel writers were giving of Jesus. I am enjoying getting to know the Bible better in this way. In Church History I am also quite enjoying myself as we discuss Constantine and monasticism. I love history, and learning the history of our Church is like learning all the family stories. The class is wonderful and I'm always excited about going to it.

I'm still keeping busy with work and being out with my friends. I'm also still working on balancing all of that out, but it is nice to have the problem of too many social engagements rather than too few. I have successfully become a crocheter as well as a knitter, and I get together with several women on Sunday afternoons to craft and enjoy each other's company.

Some of my most interesting adventures lately have been in visiting churches as I search for my Ministry in Context site. As I visit several different churches, I am finding I can more easily say what kind of church I want to serve in, both now and in the future. Many churches are not very good at welcoming strangers in their midst, which is not to say they are bad churches, but it can get easy to stick with talking to the people you're comfortable with in a church and not notice the new faces passing you by. I also really would like to be involved with a church that is focused on outward ministry. A church that looks at the world at its doorstep and finds ways to work in their neighborhood and show God's love to all the people they encounter. I would like to work in a church like that now so that I can learn how to better lead a church like that in the future.

In other church adventures, I went to a Spanish service this evening. It was really interesting, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much Spanish I have retained since I took it last several years ago. I was even able to understand the majority of the sermon, which pleased me. I am going to eventually take a Spanish for ministry class here, and Trinity is building a bigger focus on it so that it will be more available. Learning Greek has made me realize that I actually do like languages, so I am looking forward to taking that another semester.

For now I have to get ready for a rather full and long Monday coming up.

Kathryn