Vibrant fall colors

Vibrant fall colors, blue skies, warm autumn days--what a great time at St. Anthony's Retreat Center at The Springs Retreat.

"The Lord will Guide You Always" Is. 58:11

We had a wonderful time at The Springs retreat last week. What a fabulous opportunity to join 18 other women in seeking the Lord. Most of us come weary from being very busy or from difficult circumstances and we needed to be refreshed. It is incredible what Jesus does to minister to each of us during this time as we remember that He loves us and desires to fill us up to overflowing with Himself. He is the Living Water, the River of Life, the Eternal Spring. All we need to do is come away and make some space in our lives to be with Him and we are refreshed.

Isaiah writes: "The Lord will guide you always, He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scourched land and will strengthen your frame, and you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." It's amazing to watch this promise be fulfilled while we spend time in silence and solitude, in prayer and in The Word, worshipping and resting, talking with other women and being alone with Him.

Our next retreat is April 2-4, 2008 at Three Rivers. You can find sign up information on the NEWIM website.

Operation Christmas Child

Operation Christmas Child, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Everyone put together boxes for children from poor areas as part of our holiday celebration. The group that comes to our Bible Discussion at San Jose State also contributed items for a little boy and girl. I'm hoping that we'll hear back from them so we'll know where the boxes went.

Happy Birthday, Jon

Happy Birthday, Jon, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Jon's parents are missionaries in India, so Colleen asked me to do a little birthday shopping on her behalf. We brought the gifts to Jon and he gave us a tour of the International House at San Jose State. Seems like a great place to make friends from all over the world. Jon really likes living there.

Half Timers at the Munns

Debbie and Julie, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

A whole bunch of us went over to the Munns for a great night of laughing and THE BEST tamales! Oh my gosh--I haven't had such great tamales since we left Los Angeles. Kevin encouraged us not to get discouraged...it's only the 5th inning -- life isn't over. Debbie, MIke and Julie, and Myrna, are the greatest hosts.

Lunch Bunch today

It was so moving today to spend some time looking at the life of John the Baptist and realizing what an incredible God we have. All of the the other "gods" demand all kinds of things, but our God simply asks us to be honest with ourselves and admit that we don't love as we should. Why is admitting that we're sinners such a struggle? I guess we don't like to admit that we aren't perfect. John was pretty clear: repentance prepares the way for us to receive Jesus.

As we read a prayer of confession from the Common Book of Prayer, I could see some of the women at our Bible Discussion tear up a little. God's grace touches us deeply.

Putting books in order

Dancing in the Aisles, originally uploaded by Nellish.

Because the books fell from both sides of the aisles and off of various shelves, we had to resort all of them.

After the earthquare

Typical aisle on the 8th floor, originally uploaded by Nellish.

King Library was designed to sway with a quake, and sway it did, dumping many, many books onto the floor. (I think I heard someone estimate the over 100,000 books were on the floor.) While it presents a big mess, no damage was done (which is the ultimate goal.)

Micah all dressed up

Click the title above to see a photo of Micah ready for Halloween.

Library 2.0 conference

I went to a conference at UC Berkeley yesterday on library 2.0. Some ideas stand out:

1. If you create a blog or a wiki in order for people to be able to see what you have to offer, you may be disappointed that nobody comes and finds you. You have to market your blog and get your name "out there" in the social networking groups or you'll be spending a lot of time for no purpose. People won't just stumble onto your blog.

2. Introverts who don't like to spend a lot of time face to face with folks often really enjoy being "out there" with lots of rather personal information and people. They become extroverts online.

3. Blogs are great for creating an online archive of information that would otherwise get buried in someone's computer files or email. I think we should start a blog for library facilities - where we can discuss the "why" behind policies and best practices during emergencies, and resolution to facility concerns. A suggestion blog might be great as well. People who are interested could subscribe, then when new items get posted, they'll be notified.

4. I like the idea of putting photos from our Special Collections on FLICKR.

5. To begin with, the Internet was for easy access to information. Now, the web is for participating in creating the world of information. Web 2.0 is about easy, intuitive editing and publishing as a natural part of daily life. We all want access to all information and we think we can get what we need in an hour on the web to make all of the decisions that we face.

6. I think that "screencasts" - creating a video of what someone is doing on their screen would be a great training tool for learning how to use new PeopleSoft modules, etc. Then I could watch someone walk through how to do e-recruit without having to spend hours in the usual online training. Watching someone navigate the screens and a good guideline for questions that might arise, and I'd be good to go.

7. Who are the people we should be looking for to join our library staff? James Neal at Columbia University is looking for people with a commitment to rigor, to research and development, to assessment and evaluation. People with the ability to write and pitch a story -- people with marketing and communication skills. People who will engage in the campus community and get involved in the politics. People who are able to be innovative and take their idea from conception through to final evaluation -- people with project development and management skills. He is looking for entrepreneurial skills, resource development, leadership, and people with inspirational capacity. Oh, and of course, people with deep subject and technical expertise. Wow!

Ashley turns 19

Ashley had to have a burnt almond cake from Dicks Bakery for her birthday!
We enjoyed meeting her new boyfriend, Matt.

The papers are signed - the building is sold

Terry signed the papers this week -- the church building is sold.

Several years ago I led the attraction team at our church. Our focus was to attract more people to our church. This was new for me. We'd always been active in leading people to Christ without concern over whether they came to our church or joined another. But our church was getting smaller and smaller every year -- unless this trend stopped -- well, the conclusion is rather obvious.

We had a thriving AWANA program, an active womens ministries, good Bible studies and small groups, a fabulous youth ministry, and care ministries. The Sunday morning childrens ministries were great. The worship and the sermon were great. We were doing a lot of wonderful ministry but our church attendance on Sunday morning continued to decline. Actually, it had been declining for 40 years -- every year we'd lose about 8 more people than newcomers who came that year.

So the attraction team got our website up and made sure our advertising was good; we walked the neighborhood and talked to folks. We prayed. We had special events to encourage people to invite their friends, we spent several months using the curriculum from Willow Creek to train the whole church on Becoming Contagious Christians. We started a great youth volleyball league and had about 60 families participating. As always, new people came and were assimilated into our church which was really great; but some died, others moved away or stopped coming, and the decline continued.

We began asking what we could do to help our church survive? We could get a new sign, paint the building, update the building. We could be intentional about letting community groups use our facility and invite them to join us on Sundays. We could start an afterschool care program. We talked with experts who help churches in decline and learned that once a church is down to 75 members, you drop below critical mass. There aren't enough people or funds and every year you find you have to cut back the ministries and are less able to attract new people. We needed to do something while we still had the ability.

Did it make sense to spend $250,000 to update our building, in hopes of growing to 200-300 people, when we only had 40 parking spaces?

Then the Lord brought a new question before us: How can we use everything we are and everything we have to do the most that we can for the kingdom of God? Kevin began preaching the parables and we began listening to the words of Jesus and praying. Jesus values the lost, the poor, the people who never come to church, and the hurting in our communities. Jesus values having his followers take risks--don't bury your wealth, invest it. Jesus values boldness, living out our faith. Jesus values growth and new life. We realized that our greatest financial asset was our building -- and if we had $4 million in the bank, we wouldn't put it all into our building.

We decided to sell the building, invest half of the funds in reaching people with the gospel through starting new churches in the Bay Area, save half for a new building some day, and give a 10% for compassion and justice ministries locally and globally. Bold, risky, inline with the values of Jesus. We're all in, sold out, fully invested in kingdom work, fully dependent on the Lord to use us to be salt and light in the world. The journey has been breath-taking, totally transforming all of us from being focused on survival to being focused on mission. We are passionate followers of Christ, giving up something that was important to us in order to give it to God and have him use it for eternity.

This week we signed the papers. The building is sold. We are so excited to see what God will do.

Has God spoken to us? Are we listening?

I read Malachi this morning and was thinking about what the prophet said to the Jews who had returned from exile and were just completed with the wall around Jerusalem and their new, smaller temple. They'd been making alliances with the people living around them. They'd taken the daughters of foreign gods for their sons to marry. The mothers of their grandchildren where teaching their children to worship the false gods. The priests and leaders were more apostate than the general population! How was Israel to be a light to the nations about the one true God if their priests were corrupt? Who would tell them that God loved all people and wanted a relationship with them? The Jews were being assimilated...becoming like everyone around them. Then, under Ezra's leadership they started becoming "people of the book" -- they decided to send back their foreign wives and their children. They had made some very difficult decisions in order to be the people of God. But would the reforms last?

It's really incredible that Malachi's words were the last words that the Jews recognized as God's word to them. There's lots of Jewish history written -- but none of the texts were considered Scripture. So what was God's last word to them?


The Lord had heard their questions:

How has the Lord loved us?

How have we shown contempt to the Lord's name?

Why doesn't the Lord pay attention to our sacrifices?

How have we wearied the Lord with our words?

How are we to return to the Lord?

How are we robbing God?

What harsh things have we said against the Lord?



They seemed clueless that their actions had totally offended the Lord. He said that he would send his messenger who would prepare the way for the Lord himself was going to come. The Lord would come into his temple, into Jerusalem, and he would be like a refiner and purifier of silver to purify the priests. "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."



Silence...hundreds of years of silence.



Has the prophet Elijah come? Has the Lord come into his temple?

I think he has. What has he said? If the priests were getting it all wrong. If the people weren't listening to the prophets -- then the Lord himself was going to come. What did He have to say?

Friday at the West Shore

Friday morning we walked down the trail by the condo and saw a couple of sea turtles eating sea weed in the surf. This was the first time we saw turtles on Kaua'i. They don't seem to be as prevalent as on O'ahu. Then we headed for a little souvenior shopping and the West Shore beaches that we hadn't seen. Stopped at Jo Jo's for another shave ice but they were way too crowded so we tried the "original" Jo Jo's just around the corner -- not sure what that's about. But it was actually much nicer inside and the shave ice was great. We walked out on the pier and sat down to enjoy our treat.

We had heard that Polihale beach was awesome so we headed there. It truly is the end of the road -- actually 4-1/2 miles past the end of the paved road. I didn't read that carefully enough until we were about a mile down the bumpiest dirt road in the world. I was seriously getting car sick from being tossed around by all of the pot holes. We gave up and went to the next to the last beach which was beautiful and saw miles of sand dunes.

We stopped at Roy's for our last dinner on the island -- I had to try their Salmon and Butter fish - awesome and Kevin had their MahiMahi...which was pretty good as well.

We've had a fabulous time here. A great vacation. Wow!

Evenings on Kaua'i

It's dark by 8:30 and there's nothing to do so we have enjoyed watching several dvds I checked out from the library:

Unforgiven,
Cry the Beloved Country
Decoration Day
The Magnificent Seven
The Lord of the Rings
ABC News - Heaven

Now I know what a "spagghetti western" is. We never have time to sit and watch dvds -- so this has been really fun.

Walk along the beach

We took a walk out to the point to see if we could see where the fire was. From the top we couldn't see it. We thought it would be fun to see the sandy beach on the other side so we walked down to Gillin's Beach. After several hours in the sun, we enjoyed sitting in the shade by this pond.
The sunrise was spectacular.
We thought we should see what we could find beyond the next point. We walked to the next beach and across the little river. The Maha'ulepu Beaches are really sandy so we didn't need our reef shoes...good thing because we didn't have them. We didn't actually have anything because we were just going for a little walk. No sunblock, no water, no towels but what a great time. I thoroughly enjoyed walking in the surf. What a great beach.

When we got to the point just before Kawailoa Bay it was all roped off. A woman with the State of Hawaii was there protecting a monk seal and her 8 day old pup. She had binoculars and we could see the mom and her pup. Only 1200 monk seals are known to exist -- this is the 4th pup born this summer on Kaua'i and we were blessed to be able to see it.

Since we'd been out in the sun for 3 hours, we decided to walk the dirt road back. We discovered the section of the old plantation (right next to the stables and Po'ipu Road and Po'ipu Bay Resort Golf Course) that had burned.

We had a fabulous dinner at TidePools - had a window table (but there are no windows) and watched the koi in the pond below. They were jumping totally out of the water and we got splashed at our table a bit. The sunset slowly and we enjoyed crab cakes, Ono and Opah.

Wednesday -- Another beautiful dawn

Wednesday on Kauai-1, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Ninini Point

Wednesday on Kauai-3, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

We drove up to the north shore -- got totally rained out -- and after looking for the Mission House museum and doing some research on the church in the Princeville library, decided we were done with the rain. We drove through some beautiful plantation residential areas, but the rain was relentless. When we got back to the sunny south shore, we did a little sight seeing closer to our condo. The golf course at the Marriott is beautiful.

Wednesday on Kauai

Wednesday on Kauai-2, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Chickens are everywhere here--even at the beach. We thought we'd check out snorkeling at Lydgate Beach. They have a great place for snorkeling and nice bathhouse facilities. When we checked out the prices to buy gear -- the masks started at $50 each. When you add the cost of flippers and snorkels it gets a little pricey. We'll have to do some more shopping around or rent gear.

Tuesday Sunset over Niihau from Waimea Ridge

Tuesday Sunset over Niihau from Waimea Ridge, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

We enjoyed the sunset from a mile up the Waimea Canyon ridge. There are two little islands off of Kaua'i that we could see in the distance. The largest one is Niihau. There's a sugar plantation there and about 200 Hawaiians who continue their native traditions, speaking Hawaiian as their first language. They make beautiful necklaces from the tiny seashells on their beaches. Children have to come to the mainland for school beyond the 8th grade.