Just because, just for fun, and to share a bit more about me…

1. First thing you wash in the shower? face

2. What color is your favorite hoodie? tough choice between the gray one & the red one

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? in a heartbeat!  Actually, in about 30 minutes if I’m lucky…

4. Do you plan outfits? that could make Sunday morning a bit easier

5. How are you feeling RIGHT now? lazy - I’m stuck in a sunbeam

6. What’s the closest thing to you that’s red? the rug on the floor - NOPE! my notebook.

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having? I remember I had some crazy ones this am, but don’t remember the content.

8. Did you meet anybody new today? Not yet.

9. What are you craving right now? San Pellegrino Limonata - fortunately it’s right next to me.

10. Do you floss? Sometimes, but not enough.

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage? cabbage burgers… oh yeah.

12. Are you emotional? occasionally, but I try to suppress it.

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000? with the girls lately… they seem to want to a LOT.

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it? um… yes.

15. Do you like your hair? overall.  still feels a little short for me though (even though I cut it 10 months ago)

16. Do you like yourself? generally.

17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush? If he was paying.

18. What are you listening to right now? the wind in the trees, the birds chirping & A whispering while she reads.

19. Are your parents strict? They used to be. They’ve relaxed now.

20. Would you go sky diving? absolutely.

21. Do you like cottage cheese? Yes. But the drier the better. I don’t like a lot of liquid in it.

22. Have you ever met a celebrity? Like been introduced? not that I can recall.  been close to a few though.

23. Do you rent movies often? a bit too often some weeks.  Blockbuster online lets you trade in @ the store for instant gratification.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you’re in? M’s shoes, my wedding ring, lots of random glass stuff.

25. How many countries have you visited? 8 I think… perhaps more.

26. Have you made a prank phone call? looooooooooong time ago

27. Ever been on a train? yep

28. Brown or white eggs? blue & green ;)  OK, brown.  cage free, hormone free, laid within the past week… you get the idea.

29. Do you have a cell phone? Yes.

30. Do you use chap stick? not chapstick brand, but yes

31. Do you own a gun? a couple

32. Can you use chop sticks? Yep

33. Who are you going to be with tonight? Eric & the girls

34. Are you too forgiving? depends on the person.

35. Ever been in love? deeply

36. What is your best friend(s) doing tomorrow? who knows.  working?

37. Ever have cream puffs? Yum.

38. Last time you cried? when we went to see Up! a week or so ago.

39. What was the last question you asked? “are you sure you read all of these books in 30 minutes?”

40. Favorite time of the year? Autumn

41. Do you have any tattoos? nope

42. Are you sarcastic? Who me?  It’s my first language!

43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect? no… is it good?

44. Ever walked into a wall? walls-no.  Door jams and open doors-entirely too often.

45. Favorite color? red & orange

46. Have you ever slapped someone? yep - hard too.  left a hand print on his cheek.

47. Is your hair curly? Naturally.

48. What was the last CD you bought? I can’t think of the last actual hard-cased CD I purchased.  digital was… um… Temple Scene - A Good Day To Disapear

49. Do looks matter? Sometimes.

50. Could you ever forgive a cheater? I have.

51. Is your phone bill sky high? normal for a cell phone

52. Do you like your life right now? Yes and no.

53. Do you sleep with the TV on? nope.

54. Can you handle the truth? Yes. although its not always easy to hear.

55. Do you have good vision? Not …. at …. all ….

56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people? hate is such a strong word.

57. How often do you talk on the phone? semi-often, depending on the day.  some days not at all.

58. The last person you held hands with? Eric

59. What are you wearing? pink & taupe tanktops, khaki skort, glasses, scrunchie

60. What is your favorite animal? um…

61. Where was your FB profile picture taken at? sitting in “my chair”

62. Can you hula hoop? not too well

63. Do you have a job? I’m a Mom (among other more monetarily beneficial positions)

64. What was the most recent thing you bought? Churched & a book for the girls (Amazon ROCKS)

65. Have you ever crawled through a window? Yep.

Wow!  Today was our last day in the Little White Church for the Summer, and we were running with a skeleton crew for the worship team.  Lots of people were out of town or home sick so it was nearly a skeleton crew in the pews too, but we still had the privilege of gathering together to worship God.

Summer scheduling is often difficult, and the past 2 weeks have been ne exception!  We had a piano, acoustic & drums last weekend, and acoustic & drums this weekend… and no male singers at all for either.  Very girlie lately (which ain’t all bad… but is different).

Anywho, here is the list:

• Lord, Light The Fire Again [E]
• Desert Song [D]
• You Gave Your Life Away [E]
• Take My Life [D] (Tomlin/Nockles version)
• kids message on Trust
• Everything To God [D]
• announcements
• Lest I Forget [B] (Rebecca St. James)
• Communion
• Message
• Blessed Be Your Name [G]

Yep, it was a bit more subdued than normal, but that is to be expected when it’s acoustic led (and not rhythmic acoustic).  Taya had a bit of feedback off and on, but it seemed to work itself out by the 2nd song.  She was using a different amp than normal, since we cleaned out as much as possible last week so we’d have room to pack up everything this week.

High Point:
~ Lest I Forget was cool - we haven’t done it in months (unfortunately) and it was nice to do it with just the acoustic & djembe.  They gave it a very different feel.  Finishing up Jim’s sermon with Blessed Be Your Name was pretty amazing too though.  He shared some of the things that God has brought he & his wife through - especially in the last 14 months of looking for a new job.  It’s always amazing to see someone peacefully and joyfully going through something that would make most of us panic!

Low Point:
~ Everything To God.  Wow, it was sssssssllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww today.  Still a great song, still went well with the message, but needed to be sped up at least double!  Oh well.  That tempo gave the kids time to get all of the motions in!

So, how was YOUR weekend?

*this is part of Fred’s Sunday Setlist bloggy carnival - head over to check out what worship leaders and congregants all over the world did at church this week!*

I was bopping around Twitter this morning and came across Joshua’s post (re-posted below) and I thought it was such a great idea I’d share it.

The idea?  Try to keep live on the positive side for a week.  Does this mean forced happiness?  No, it just means that you try to look at the positive side on things rather than going immedietly to the negative side of it.

Want more info?  Check out Joshua’s post below:

… or, How To Spoil A Dad in a few easy steps!

Yeah, I know, there’s a Sunday Setlist in here too - part of Fred’s carnival.  But I’m combining to save time or something.

The muzik:

• Sing, Sing, Sing [A]
• Hosanna (Praise Is Rising) [F]
• Fairest Lord Jesus [C-D] (Nockles)
• kids
• Love The Lord [D]
• announcements
• message
• Your Mercy [F]

Yep - a shorter service means fewer songs (but only by 1).  I think Sing Sing Sing gets longer each time we do it… Chris keeps adding a chorus here an instrumental there, another chorus (or 3)… I think the song is up to like 8 minutes or something now.  But it’s fun to sing (which is good with how repetative it has become these days!)  Seriously.  To Tomlin’s recording we have added a 2nd chorus @ the beginning, 2 instrumentals and 2 choruses @ the end.  yup.

But I skipped ahead of myself.

We only had 6 people today - 3 singers, 1 keyboard, 1 drummer and 1 injured acoustic player.  She did great, but man do I feel bad that she came to play anyway when she could barely stand up!  Next week it’s just her & the drummer… isn’t Summer vacation fun!  Chris switched to keys since it fills in the sound better than electric, and it was great… even though most of us are feeling under the weather.

Fairest Lord Jesus… this is a great version!  It’s the one from Watermark with the addedin chorus.  Once people figured out the melody it went really well.  Yeah, it grew a little longer too (but that was my fault!)  It just seemed too soon to end it after the 4th verse. *shrug*

Love  The Lord was a bit slower today as well, since Taya was hurting - I let her set the pace that she could cofortably play, and it worked really quite well.  Jen thought it was easier to do the motions too, which helps.  Your Mercy was… well, it’s just strange to me when there’s no electric.  I’m so used to the sound that without it seems, well, lacking.  But it worked out.

It being Washington and all and the first day of Summer AND a day that we planned a BBQ, we woke up to rain.  Beautiful, drenching, soggy ground rain.

And I was praying for sun.  I know - weird.  Me actually wanting sun!

By the time church was over, however, the sun was peaking out (although there were very light sprinkles even while it was shining) and everyone was able to hang around and fellowship.

Now to the best part of the day…

It’s Father’s Day here in the States, which means that we get to spoil the lone gent here in the Hudson household.  Poor guy is surrounded by girls - even the cat is a girl!

He mentioned about 3 weeks ago that he’d been craving some red meat… and seriously, who doesn’t from time to time!  No, we really don’t eat much meat around here (too expensive).  Strange since we are all such carnivores!  So, for Father’s Day I picked up a couple of steaks…

Yesterday we had a BBQ with Eric’s Mom, and Tami & Jason to celebrate both FD and mom’s birthday.  Complete with a Cold Stone cake!  The meat was a top round London Broil.  Two, actually.  And they were HUGE.  Marinated in a garlic hoisin sauce for a couple of hours then grilled to perfection… ah yes.  Tasty.

But today is Father’s Day, right?  LEftovers just wouldn’t do.  No, we had to have something new… like top sirloin.  Plus all of the fixin’s o’course.

• Top sirloin rubbed with Montreal Steak Seasoning and seared in a butter & merlot reduction, then broiled for 10 minutes.
• Herbed new potatoes - dry roasted in a 450F oven with chopped sweet onions, oregano and herbes de Provence.
• Honey-Ginger-Dill glazed carrots.  Oh, and they were sooooo good.
• Sauteed mushrooms - sauteed in the drippings from the seared steak with some balsamic vinegar and the rest of the secred ingredients.  Sorry, my Daddy’s recipe (tweaked, of course)
• Artichoke with herbed butter & herbed sour cream for dipping.
• salad w/ crumbled feta, cranberries and cucumbers .  While balsamic vinaigrette.
• Fresh Vienna bread (a Haggen’s thing - slightly sweet, slightly crusty french-style bread.  very good)
• Sparkling lemonade

Yep - that’s spoiling the gent!  Oh, and we left the house so he could take a nice nap too.  Had to go to the store to get ingredients!

So that was our Father’s Day… relaxing, lazy and topped off with yummy food.  I’m getting ready to devour a leftover peice of birthday cake now… red velvet cake w/ strawberry ice cream.  Yum!

How was YOUR Father’s Day?

Conservation Tip #29 - eat local!! from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

As this short video shows us, our food is more well-traveled than we are!  All of those miles add up to a lot of money spent and resources wasted.

Summer is here, and with it come the availability of fresh, locally grown foods that we can feed our families.  Many families are planting a garden this year, but if you don’t have the time or space for that you can check to see if there is a CSA farm near you - that’s Community Supported Agriculture.  They usually give you a great bargain for your produce, and more often than not it’s all organic!  For example, our local CSA (Garden Treasures) has plans ranging from $450 to $800 for shares in their produce… and we will be getting produce each week from this Thursday (June 18) until November 27… That’s 5.5 months!  It’s all organic, grown within 5 miles of my house, ans saves me a TON of money.  The smallest share starts at $18/week.  To get a comperable amount of produce each week I can easily spend $80 at Safeway… and it’s not organic or local!

Don’t have a CSA drop point near you?  How about a farmer’s market?  There are farmer’s markets all over the place, and the produce is (generally) locally and organically grown.

On top of that, you can build a relationship with the people who grow your food!

This is just one way to both improve your families health and cut down on waste.  Eating local saves you money, helps the farmers actually make money, cuts down on the poisions that are put into our food and runs off onto our rivers, and cuts down on travel time.  And the produce is better for you, since it was generally just picked within 2-3 days on your family eating it.

That sounds like a win-win to me!

To help find a CSA farm or farmer’s market near you, check out LocalHarvest.org!

Part of Fred’s Sunday Setlist bloggy carnival.

What a beautifully cloudy day!   It’s gonna be a short one today - lunch is cooking. 

The Liszt:

• Everlasting God
• Your Grace Is Enough
• Made To Worship
• Come Thou Fount
• kids message
• Everything To God
• announcements
• message - Now You See It, Now You Don’t
• Communion
• Your Grace Is Enough reprise

We were down by a few people today (and next week too) so the sound wasn’t quite as full as normal.  No keyboard does make a difference in the sound!

High point: Surprisingly, Everything To God was my high point.  That song is a love-hate thing for me… I love the idea behind the words, but it takes a TON of air to get through.  This morning it was so great though - I love watching the kids really get into it!

Low point: we had a great rehearsal… but the service was not quite so perfect.  Starting tempos were off, long outros that I had to just stand there for… not my fav. day.  Not bad, just not my fav.

The message was from Ecclesiastes & Colossians, and focused on our stuff.  As Americans, we have such a consumer mentality.  Having “stuff” isn’t necessarily bad, as long as it doesn’t take or focus off of God or take over our lives.  I’ll post the sermon when it gets uploaded - it was a good one!

That just about sums it up!

How was your service?

Recent events have brought a thought to my mind…

…Namely the murder of a doctor while he was attending church…

…and a simple verse in the Bible.

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35

It seems that The Church has gotten a little off of the narrow path as of late (and by late I mean over the past 1500 years or so).  We are supposed to love one another.  We are supposed to love those whom God has created - even if we don’t like the sin that they are committing.

There is another verse that these events brought to mind…

“Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,
“VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord.”  Romans 12:19

… which is at the end of a passage on how we are to serve one another.  I highly recommend reading through Romans 12 if you have the time - if only for the reminder of how we are to treat one another within the body of Christ.

Then, of course, there is that short little verse in Exodus 20:13 (and Deuternonomy 5:17) which has just 4 little words:

Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Um… yeah.

So far I’ve been staying pretty high-level, common knowledge with these references, and yet so much of the Church at large seems to forget that they exist!  Why is God so often used as an excuse to show cruelty?  Just a few examples:

• The Crusades (it was really all about the wealth of the area… Europeans had never seen anything like Byzantium!)
• Hitler’s oppression of the Jews (and let’s face it, he’s not the only one!  Many “Christians” show heavy anti-symatism)
• the Religious Right using their bibles to bash anyone who gets in their way.
• The Pharisees & Sadducees who were the earthly force God used to hang Jesus on the cross… and who then persecuted His followers, forcing them to the ends of the known earth.

I said it was just a few examples… that list could go on and on and on.  We have all experienced it - someone using God or their faith as an excuse to put someone else down.  I daresay we have even done it once or twice ourselves.

But what does Jesus call us to?  Does he tell us to go out and sin against God in His name?  Does He send us out to steal, kill and destroy?  It seems to me that description was reserved for a different kind of roaring lion.

No, He called us to love.  To build relationships with those that we meet on a day to day basis, to share Jesus with them - and occasionally to use words.

Folks, our actions should show them Jesus!  We should be living our lives in such a way that people see HIM when they look at us.  We are called to be salt and light to a lost and dying world - something that is hard to do when our lives are no different than theirs, and is especially hard when we are behaving with less self control or morality.

Here’s a crazy thought…

What if we took the energy that we normally would use to cut down others or vent our frustrations and instead spent it on reaching out in love to a lost and dying world?

What if we focused our attention on taking a meal to the neighbor who lost a loved one or who recently had a child or lost their job?

What if we offered to watch the kids down the street for an afternoon or evening so their mom could have some down time or go out on a date with her husband?

What if we baked a double or triple batch of cookies and took the time to walk around the neighborhood and share the extras with those who live around us?

What if the next time we wanted to say something negative or derogatory about someone we reigned in our tongue and prayed for them instead?

What if instead of watching 3 hours of TV with your kids tonight, you played a game with them?  Or spent 10 minutes each night memorizing a scripture verse as a family?

What if we allowed the love that is God so fill our lives that it overflowed into everything that we did?

Somehow I think that if The Church would focus on Love, we could change the world.

They will know us by our love and be changed, or they will see us through our hate and turn away.

01-we-are-one-in-the-spirit-_-by-our-love

One last reminder… revival starts in the heart - yours and mine.

I think I need to go bake some cookies.

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This is part of Fred’s Sunday Setlist carnival - take a few minutes to check out what other churches are doing all over the country - and world!

We were down by a couple of people today, but it was a great one!  It was one of those days that I did less leading and more worshiping…

da liszt…

• Come, Now Is The Time
• Blessed Be Your Name
• Made To Worship
• Revelation Song
• kids message
• Everything To God
• announcements… LOTS today!
• Message - Ecclesiastes 1-3
• Everything To God - reprise

We started the day with kind of a sparse crowd, but by the time we got to the 3rd song the pews were getting filled up.  My youngest was… umm.. belting it on the first song.  It was cute, but kinda distracting that I could hear her over everyone else ;)  She was singing her heart out to Jesus!

Blessed Be Your Name is one of those songs I can’t not worship to.  I also have a hard time not singing harmony (even though I tried not to!)  We were down by 1 singer today, so I was trying to stay on the melody as much as possible.

Made To Worship went well, but wasn’t spectacular (for me anyway).  I like it, but I’m still learning it…

We introduced Revelation Song to the rest of the church (we led it last Sunday night for the handful that were there), and it went over really well.  Those that already knew it were singing along from the very beginning, and I think most others had joined in by the 3rd chorus.

I *huge puffy heart* that song!

The glimpse of heaven that it offers is… well, words cannot describe at the moment.

Ms. Jennifer read the kids a story that was taken from Eccl. 3, but put into kid terms, and then we sang Everything To God… just a tad slower than New Life Worship does it.  OK, it was a LOT slower than they do it!

Pastor Chris spoke from Eccl. 1-3, bringing out how without God everything is futile… but WITH God… well, that is a different story!  I’ll post the link to the message when it is live tomorrow.

We finished up the service with a reprise of Everything To God - Chorus, bridge, chorus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

High point?  Musically it would have to be Revelation Song.  The team has fallen in love with it (yay!) and every single one of them truly worships while we lead it.  The other high point was  getting to see some old friends that came for a visit before they head over to Europe for a month.  Hopefully they will be back to visit again after their trip.

I didn’t really have a low point this morning.  It was a great day!

So, how was YOUR service?