Boot Camp is OVER!

He can finally leave! We went to the beach that afternoon :-)

Tom's Emblem Ceremony

Here is the moment Tom offically becomes a Marine.

Tom's Graduation Weekend

What a crazy weekend! Tom is officially a Marine and I have TONS of pictures from the weekend. I'll also be adding video as I get a chance (meaning, once my computer cooperates).


Meanwhile, I'm quite busy at work after being gone Thursday and Friday, but I PROMISE to update on Mexico, Hawaii and all the happenings of our lives very soon. Bob, I will be sure to let you know when I finally write about Mexico. There is much to write about and we saw the Lord do some amazing things while we were there! I can't believe July is almost done. Time flies when you are ridiculously busy. Weird. Have a lovely Tuesday!

After Mexico...

We've been a little bit busy lately. I know I've said that before, but this time tops all the rest. We left for Mexico on June 23rd and returned June 30th. After getting some salads from Jack-in-the-Box on our way home, we arrived around 9 pm and went to bed shortly thereafter. Sunday morning found us both sick (Happy vomited twice that night and I had a pretty nice fever) and unable to do much of anything. I literally slept almost all day. Monday I went to work with a low fever and feeling much better, but not 100%. Happy stayed home since he now had a higher fever. By the end of the day we were both feeling better and figured we got food poisoning from our first dinner back in the United States. Welcome home!

We both worked on Tuesday, July 3rd, and the office closed early for me. So I got a manicure and a pedicure before heading home to finish packing and leave for the airport around 4 pm for our 7 pm flight to Oakland. We arrived in Oakland that night, were picked up by my mom-in-law and headed over to Grandpa's house. The next day was the Gilmore 4th of July "Family Reunion," which I attended for the first time! Thursday, the 5th, we left from Oakland for Hilo, Hawaii, around 3:30 pm. We arrived around 6:45 pm (Hawaii is three hours behind California), rented a car and began our two hour trek across the island to Kona, where we were staying. We were in Hawaii until Thursday morning when we drove back across the island for our 8:45 am flight. We were back in LA around 7 pm and back home around 9 pm. Friday we both went to work, Saturday we unpacked, cleaned, visited some friends and their new baby, grocery shopped and prepared for Vacation Bible School the next day at church. Since Sunday and Monday were basically more of the same (cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning.... you get the point), I'll just move on.

The reason I was updating, aside from the fact that we haven't in a LONG time, was to point out that there are pictures from Mexico and Hawaii on our web albums. I must warn you now that there are over 300 from Mexico and almost 200 (I think) from Hawaii. Thank you for all your prayers and for bugging us for pictures :-D More updates will come soon!

Going Places With God

I've been wanting to do this for quite a while, but it just hasn't happened. However, now is finally the time for (insert triumphant music here) my first book review on this blog. That's right, I've stuck my big toe into the vast ocean of online book reviews. You can find my review here at amazon.com (why? because it's kind of cool to see something from someone you know on a major website. that or I'm just really conceited.) or posted below. Please let me know what you think and please point out any mistakes or things I could work on as I plan on doing this on a more regular basis.

I love talking to people about international travel. Many people have been to places that I have never been to and it is always an enlightening, educational and entertaining experience to listen to the tales of their journeys. However, there is just something even more exciting and refreshing about reminiscing with someone - whether or a close friend or even a complete stranger - about a place in the world that you have both visited. These kinds of shared experiences provide for sharing fond memories, lessons learned, dangers averted (or not!), anecdotal stories, cultural faux pas and much more.

This is how I felt reading through Going Places With God. In the fall of 2004 I spent a semester studying in the Judean Hills of Israel, some 15 miles west of Jerusalem. So as I read one or two pages each morning in early 2007, I was taken from my apartment in Orange County, California and transported back to the Middle East, a place that I came to love and still am learning to love even more.

Wayne Stiles has a God-given ability to take - sometimes in just a sentence - a piece of biblical geography and fire an arrow of application directly at the reader's heart. For example, on Day 64, Stiles applies the idolatry that King Jeroboam set up in Dan in northern Israel to our easy, convenient and recreation-centered American lives. With four crisp and precise paragraphs, he gives a brief summary of Jereboam's sin and then transitions to how a wicked king of the northern kingdom 2900 years ago and his treacherous syncretism in Dan and Bethel can be relevant to today's reader: "Ease must never determine our spiritual priorities."

Stiles makes a typically boring subject to most evangelicals a way to relate God's truth to a generation desperately in need of it. The maps and pictures throughout are very helpful, but they could have been referenced a little better than the tiny font at the bottom. Most days, I forgot the references were even there. I also enjoyed the travelogue at the end of the book. It was very interesting and allowed Stiles to meander through a more specific and touching tribute to the land he has grown to love more after every visit.

For the experienced traveler and for the homebody in Somewhere, America, this devotional will allow you to see the "boring" details of the Bible in new and refreshing ways. You can see Stiles passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ in his attention to the meaning of inspired geography. It is a very different but very solid way to spend your quiet time with God. I highly recommend Going Places With God.

We're going to Mexico!!!!

Tomorrow morning at 5:30 am, we'll meet the group and head over to LAX for our 9:55 am flight to Mexico City. From there we'll take a slow bus to Bernal, which apparently is about 3 hours (by slow bus) north of Mexico City. I thought this would be a GREAT opportunity to share some prayer requests because I know many of you are praying for us as we serve the Lord alongside the Kulls (missionaries our church supports). These are in no particular order:

1. Pray for unity in the team. So far the Lord has greatly blessed us in knitting our group together, but there is still so much more we can do to grow in this area.

2. Pray for focus for the team. This is a HUGE one because it's so easy to get distracted with other things. And we all know the attention span of high school-aged boys, even though they are great guys! :-)

3. Pray for the team to be unaffected by the elevation (i.e. elevation sickness). This is, specifically, a concern of mine. Pray that even if anyone does experience it, they are still able to participate in the ministry with a good attitude.

4. Pray for the people we will meet.

5. Pray for clarity in sharing the gospel.

6. Pray for our interpreters. Some of them are a little rusty with their Spanish, but they are all working hard at it.

7. Pray for the Kulls and their on-going ministry.

8. Pray for the various aspects of our ministry. We may or may not be helping build their church and house, participate in sports ministries and children's programs, perform dramas (mimes) and who knows what else!

9. Pray for our leaders. They are doing an excellent job, but it's always easier to lead people who are willing to be led.

10. Pray for flexibility! If you haven't figured this out yet, we need to be ready and willing to serve in any way. That's why Mexico's nickname is Flexico.


Now that it's been approximately two hours since I started this post, I'll leave the prayer requests at ten. We will be back pretty late Saturday night (I believe our flight lands around 7 pm). Thank you so much for all your prayers! Have a wonderful week!

Paul Potts

This certainly is unlike me, but someone at work pointed this out to me because we both like Andrea Bocelli. If you know who Andrea Bocelli is (and like his voice) then you should DEFINITELY watch this video. If you don't know who Andrea Bocelli is, you should still watch this video. This is Paul Potts. It's seriously amazing!

Some guy at Disneyland :-)

As promised, here is the video of Kobe Bryant at Disneyland. You can see his wife walking ahead of him once they turn the corner. She's pushing a stroller. I didn't notice her until I watched the video later. Then again, I didn't even know that Kobe was married.... I'm so on top of things like that.



I've also added pictures to our web albums from our day at Disneyland and our afternoon at the beach on Sunday with some of the couples from our young married Sunday school class. Oh, and there will be more videos on the sidebar as Happy tried to get out of the hole he was buried in. Quite hilarious.

p.s. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!!

Discerning Reader

This is a site I highly recommend for good book reviews from a Christian perspective. Most of them are on Christian biographies, Christian living or theology. However, other books are also reviewed. You can find the link to Discerning Reader on the sidebar now. So go and read!

MacArthur Awarded Runner-Up

Last Friday, the bastion of truth on television, Keith Olbermann, declared Dr. John MacArthur the runner-up for "worst person in the world." That's right. Dr. MacArthur is now only "worsted" by the "worstest" person in the world, Bill O'Reilly. Give me a break.

Here's the actual transcript if anyone's interested.