Way tougher than me

Aaron and I went to the women's hockey game last night. One of our leaders for AIA (Athletes in Action) is on the team. It's amazing to watch her and the other women play. I was just amazed. And she scored a goal! I think I'm so amazed by their atheltic talent because I am so lacking in that ability. The other 2 women I work with are runners, and again, it's awesome to see their gifts and talents in their sport. I continue to be amused by the irony of where God has placed me - doing ministry in my area of greatest weakness. But that's usually how He designs it, I guess :).

And since I was talking about food in my last post, here's another idea to try. Aaron and I made cornbread pancakes yesterday which we'll have every now and then. You just take the little Jiffy cornbread box, and on the side it gives the instructions for how to alter the recipe to make pancakes/waffles. If you like cornbread, these are really good.

Here's what's "in" at the Joneses...

• Soup - I made my 4th soup in the last 2 weeks for supper tonight. I've just been hungry for soup with how cold it's been.
• My crock pot - cooking above mentioned soups in the crock pot - nice to have dinner ready when it's time to eat!
• Monk season 5 - an excellent show if you haven't seen it. We're borrowing the set from our co-workers. Since there isn't much on lately, it's been a good alternative.
• The Biggest Loser - the show we are actually watching/taping each week. I'm always amazed by the transformation by the end of the season.
• Ice crusted inside the windows - again REALLY cold and we're learning we have air leaks...
• Ticket to Ride - a great game by the makers of Settlers of Catan if you've heard of that. I don't like Settlers but I love Ticket. Aaron and I play this often, especially when we're between semesters and home more evenings.
• Lifting weights - Aaron and I go to the Y on Monday and Wednesday mornings and lift together. He's a good coach, and I'm getting stronger :). Also, a bonus, there's an awesome guy named Dick who is retired and his job is to go around the Y and talk to people while they work out. He's got a booming voice and always says stuff like "Can I help you with that?" and point to the speed buttons on the treadmill. And if it's a Monday, he'll ask if any of the "younger" people (I count in that apparently) have had a wild weekend, but if I've had a wild weekend, I doubt I'd be at the Y at 6:30... My first morning there this fall he had a shirt on that said "I get paid to talk". It was great :). I wish you could meet him.

That's all I can think of at the moment. But I'm including the recipe for my favorite soup (it's at least in my top 3). It's pretty healthy, REALLY good, and quite filling :).

Pizza Soup:
2 – 14 ½ oz. cans crushed tomatoes
2 - 10 ¾ oz. cans condensed tomato soup, undiluted
2 ½ C. water
3 ½ oz. sliced pepperoni, quartered
1 med. Sweet red pepper, chopped
1 med. Green pepper, chopped
1 C. sliced fresh mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ tsp. rubbed sage
½ tsp. dried basil
½ tsp. dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Garlic Break
Shredded Mozzarella cheese

Simmer together until veggies are tender. Serve with garlic bread and cheese. You can also prepare like French onion soup with bread on top, topped with cheese and broiled. This cooks up great in a crock pot. Also, you can substitute V-8 for the amount of liquid in the tomato soup and water – about 40 oz. of V-8, and it doesn't taste any different. I haven’t tried Turkey pepperoni yet, that’s the next thing to try.

Baby It's Cold Outside!

Wow, the weather this past weekend was enough to take your breath away. I know most of you have been experiencing the same. We went to the grocery store on Friday after work so we could just stay home over the weekend. I had to meet someone on Saturday, and we went to church on Sunday, but otherwise we stayed cozy at home. On Saturday we turned up the music and cleaned the crazy. It felt good to get the house in order. That's always the best feeling to be in your just-cleaned house knowing you've bought a little time until you have to do it again :).

Also, so sad about the Packer game yesterday. Yes, I am first and foremost a Bears fan, but I live in Wisconsin and married a Packer fan and so we cheer for them as well. We had students over to watch the game (about 15 or so came plus our staff team), and if you could have heard the roar when the Giants missed that field goal with 4 seconds left. Oh, and we also hooked up the video projector that we use for our weekly meetings and watched the game in a 5 foot by 5 foot picture on our basement wall :). Can I just say again how grateful I am (we are) for this house. It is such a blessing to have the room to have students over. I've just loved it.

Classes begin tomorrow - it was good to see the students last night and today. We met with our student leaders to get some planning done today. I'll keep you posted on how the start of the semester goes!

Birthday Trip

So here's my 3 best friends from high school. We were pretty inseparable. And even with jobs and husbands and kids, we continue to get together whenever we can and decided that this year, since we all turn shmlirty - oh, my hand must've slipped :) - we should do a celebratory trip. And because one of us is pregnant, and we'll be getting Jee in a few months, sooner was better than later. This past weekend we went into Chicago together and had a great time! Mostly, we went out to eat and shopped - all in all a good time, I think! So happy birthday ladies!

Update on Ben

Thanks for praying for Ben. He wasn't doing well at all heading into this past weekend. He hadn't eaten in a week and was deteriorating. But then Elizabeth reported on Monday that he got up, ate, and was walking around the house. Pretty miraculous, I'd say! I was so excited to read that. So thanks for praying, and I'll keep you updated.

Now we wait

Hi! Well it's been a long time since I've posted! We had a great Christmas with our families. From there we went up to our Christmas conference (TCX - Twin Cities Experience) which is a 4 day conference in Minneapolis. We had 70 students from the campus go - the most we've ever had! It was an amazing time. There were moments when the presence of the Lord was so sweet. It's a great time (for staff and students) to connect with the Lord and has always been one of my favorite things in the year.

On our way up to the conference, we stopped at our adoption agency to drop off the paperwork to officially start the process to adopt Jee. As far as I can tell, the paperwork should have arrived in Korea on or near the 1st. So I'm starting our 12-14 week wait time there - we have 1 week done :).

Also, I had asked for prayer for Ben a little while ago. Here's a recent update from their blog:
"We have all been sick with a flu like virus. Ben is really sick. His o2 [oxygen] level is in the low 50s. He says that he can't see again and that he is scared. He hasn't eaten anything in three days. He just sleeps all day. Please pray for him to feel better and to see better again."
If you could continue to pray for little Ben, I would greatly appreciate it, and I know his family would as well.

Special Christmas Gift

As Christmas quickly approaches, we have a special gift to tell you about. We got a call last week about a 6 month old baby girl from Korea. So we prayed for a week and this past Monday started the process to adopt her! We're really excited! The paperwork should take 12-14 weeks to process, and so hopefully we'll go mid-March to pick her up. She's such a cutie. I'm so sorry I can't get the pictures to post. They came in a document form, and I'm not super technically inclined to change that. But I'll work on it and try to get them posted soon. Her name is Jee Eun, which we'll keep for her middle name. For now we call her "Baby Jee" until we find a first name. So just wanted to pass on the news! We're really excited and can't wait to meet her!

If I don't get a chance to post in the next few days - Merry Christmas!

Please Pray for Ben

Those of you who followed our journey a year ago with Payton remember us mentioning the friends we met, Mat and Elizabeth, who were at Mayo for their son Ben who was born with half a heart and they adopted from Korea. They were part of the reason we started to pray about adoption. Anyway, this summer and fall, Ben was having problems, and at this point, there's nothing medically they can do to fix those problems. So Ben is now on hospice. So if you could just pray for Ben and for Mat and Elizabeth. Along with the stress and sadness of having a sick child, there's other very stressful things in their life at the moment as well. If you could just pray for them, we'd really appreciate it. My heart is so heavy for Elizabeth, but I know how the Lord sustained us and how he can sustain them as well.
We love you all, the Joneses

Let it snow...

December has come to say hello, a few times... We got 6 inches of snow on Saturday and more yesterday (I don't know how they officially measure, but it was about 5 inches on the ground?). So we've already got huge shovel/plow piles all over. I like it when I can be inside and watch it gently fall. Yesterday I had to be out in it - messy roads, brush off the car, walk through slush, brush off the car again, shovel... I was crabby :). So now we're supposed to get more tomorrow! Welcome winter I guess.

But I am loving all the Christmas lights and Christmas music and Christmas goodies :). We got the tree up last week, and I made some treats on Saturday (peanut butter balls, which I remember my mom making when I was little, and oreo truffles - my new favorite I think). Last weekend was our first home in 3 weeks; so it was SO GOOD to be home and go to church and do laundry.

It has been super busy the last few weeks. We've had a lot going on on campus. We're doing Christmas outreaches this week, and I'm just trying to get everything wrapped up (or start things and wrap them up) by the end of next week. The students have finals the following week.

We had a great Thanksgiving. We were at Aaron's family's house - fun to hang out and play games. Aaron went hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving and the Friday after. He did not get a deer, but he did get a speeding ticket. Maybe we should have gotten a picture with that instead... So overall, life is busy lately but good. We have not heard a word lately about adoption, and therefore the wait continues.

PS - If anyone is interested in the oreo truffles (which do not require any black beans :) ) you just take one normal size package of double stuffed oreos (I just made them with the regular, and I think you need more frosting to get it to mix well) and put the whole cookies (frosting and all) in the food processor until they're totally crushed and all crumbs. Then you mix the crushed cookie with a softened, 8 oz. package of cream cheese. Chill that mixture and then roll into small balls. Then chill or freeze those and dip into chocolate. They're really easy to make and oh so tasty! For me, they've made about 5-6 dozen (and mint oreos are very good as well).

Life Options

This past weekend we had a conference called Life Options. This conference is just for Juniors and Seniors and is gives very helpful, practical wisdom on how to understand and discern God's will, how to think through stewardship of your life, and offers potential short-term ministry opportunities. I love the content and feel it's information you need and can use the rest of your life. For us as staff, we call it our shot in the arm. It's a reminder to me of why I do what I do and that I wouldn't want to do anything else. The exciting thing is we usually have a small number attend, maybe 8-12 students, but this year we had 49 students come! It was incredible! And it was so much fun to have that many students there.

And here's the group!


For adoption, we're continuing to make steps forward. We've been on the list for Korea, and they've added us to the list for Ethiopia (they recommended we wait on the dossier until a child would possibly become available). So now we continue waiting for a referral. When we get a referral, we'd check out that child and then decide if that's our kid! Then if we accept that referral, we wait another 3-4 months until we go pick him/her up. So the referrals can come at any time now! Our social worker has officially completed and written up our home study. There's some grants we want to apply for and will need that completed home study to do it. There's another form we need mail in - requesting permission from the government to bring in a child - so we're ready to send that this week. We'll continue to keep you posted!

Full House (and lots of pictures!)

I am SO grateful for the amazing house the Lord blessed us with. It's been so great to be able to have people over, even large groups of people over, and have the room (if a bit tight) to do it. So here's some pictures of what we've been up to in the last couple weeks.

We had our AIA leaders over for dinner. Here's the boys, Josh, Dan, Bryan, and Aaron.

The Women's soccer team here is amazing; they were 6th in the country last year. We have about 5 girls from the team that come to AIA. I wanted to take steps to serve them and get to know them. So, as they were heading into playoffs, I hosted a team dinner for them, all 28 of them. It was really fun! We set up 3 tables and managed to get everyone in. The first group of 10 girls showed up after practice, and I greeted them as they came in. When I turned around from the front door, they were all in a tight line in from of the counter ready to eat! I was a little nervous because I wasn't quite ready, but they waited patiently and managed to go through about 5 pounds of spaghetti (I had no idea how much they'd eat and bought 9 pounds :) ). Here's a picture of many of them; some had already gone home. But the team is still in it and has more playoff games this weekend!

One of our AIA leaders, Dan (pictured above as well), came dressed up ready to serve the women. Here he is (in an apron Aaron made in home-ec in junior high) with the remainder of the sauce. The roaster was FULL before... I'd say we went through about half the sauce. It was a good learning experience to know what I'd need to feed this many people. My plan going in was to just cook a whole bunch and see how we ended up! :)

We're doing an outreach strategy on campus called Christmas Study Breaks where women invite friends into their dorms/homes and have a little Christmas story and share about Jesus as well. So we had a "sample" so they could see what it is and sign up to host one. We had over 50 people! A few women from my church came and about 45-50 students. As we were about to start and most everyone was downstairs, I wandered to the front room and saw all the coats and shoes piled and just had to get a picture. It was great to have so many women there!

Here's a 3-picture view of everyone downstairs...
The left side of the room.

The center of the room.

And the right side of the room.

So here's some of what we've been up to recently. It's been busy but really fun!

As for adoption, we're waiting to get our instructions for the paperwork required for Ethiopia so we can get put on the list for that country. We're starting the waiting, and we're excited - so hopefully we'll be able to be patient.

We hope you're all doing well. Much love, the Joneses

Home Study

We finished our home study on Friday!!! I'm very excited! It feels so good to have it done. The social worker came to our home and briefly walked through it and then talked to us for a few hours. So with the home study done, we're now on the list for Korea. We'll get the instructions for the dossier (paperwork the country requires for adoption) for Ethiopia this week. When we finish that, we'll be on the list for Ethiopia. So things are moving forward. So now, as far as timing, it depends on how long it takes us to get and accept a referral for a child. Then once we accept a referral (where this will be the child we'll move to adopt) we'll have to wait to travel to go pick them up - for Ethiopia it'll be 3 months after we accept the referral and for Korea it'll be 3 1/2 to 4 months after we accept the referral. We're getting really excited and continue to pray for this little one the Lord has for us. So as far as we can tell, a little more paperwork and then we wait (but of course, there'll be more paperwork when we have the baby...). I've ordered a couple books to start reading in the meantime. We'll continue to keep you posted :).

Halloween Party

The students hosted the Halloween party last Friday, and I wanted to post my 3 favorites. I thought they were pretty creative.

The first is pretty obvious... The Bible

These 2 wore a square piece of cardboard that said "bread" on the back and then the intials on the front give it away: "PB and J".

These four are the good luck trolls - you can't see very well, but they all have their hair sprayed up with colored spray and the shiny coin on their belly.

Duluth and Other news

After the first 6 weeks of the semester, we get a 4 day weekend. It was much needed. So Aaron and I went to Duluth for a night to stay at a bed and breakfast. I've driven through Duluth but never actually been it the city. I really enjoyed it. It's right on Lake Superior, and the city rises from the shore, and many of the streets are quite steep. Our bed and breakfast was in a neighborhood with a lot of old homes and mansions around it, and because the neighborhood steeply rises from the shoreline, you could see the lake even 7-10 blocks inland. It was really pretty. And there's a fun area down by the canal with shops and restaurants that is fun to walk around. We want to go back because it was cooler and rainy and really windy, and that hindered us from going to some of the great parks north of the city. And apparently there's a park that has a lot of hawks and eagles (we did see 3 bald eagles pretty close on the drive home, though and that was fun). So I can now recommend Duluth if you've never been there.
Pictured is a lighthouse (one of 2 to enter the canal) and the bed and breakfast we stayed at - it was really nice.

When we got home we began working on the house and getting some of the things we needed. We're finally getting some of our pictures hung and have a few more things to get ready for our home study on Friday. So it's been really good to start catching up on "life stuff" the last 2 days. We still have some paperwork to fill out by Friday...need to get going on that! :)

Also, we had some of the students over for dinner tonight, and one of them told me you could take a normal brownie mix and instead of adding the eggs, oil, and water, you puree a can of black beans (liquid and all) and add that and bake as usual. I know, I was a doubter too, but she brought the brownies tonight and I have officially taste-tested them - pretty good! The texture is less "greasy" and more chewy than normal brownies but still really good. So I HAD to pass on that tip. I mean, it's not going to make brownies a health food, but every little bit helps :). And please post if you try this - I'm curious how many people will give it a try :).

There's been some really cool stuff happening on campus lately. I'll try to post some of that soon too. It's really been incredible; the Lord is working in the hearts and lives of students. It's so fun to watch and be apart of!

So I think that's about it for now. Hope you made it through the random topics... enjoy the brownies! :)

Updates

I have been wanting to post for awhile but just haven't had time. The last few weeks have been very full. I had some involvement in getting Fall Retreat together, and we've been trying to get some adoption stuff together along with the busyness of fall semester. So here's a few posts of what's been going on lately.

AND Go Bears for beating the Packers...
And Go Bears for choking and losing to the Vikings... We went to the super bowl last year, really...