oh lovely day. or, teambuilding + rock and roll = best tuesday ever.

yesterday was one of those fabulous, near-perfect days. one of those days where the glow stays with you for the remainder of the week.

my team spent the day getting out of town and our busy routines to have a team building day. it was so wonderful to be together with no agenda but building our relationships with each other. i adore my teammates! we spent the day at la fontaine de vaucluse, which is incredibly beautiful. pictures coming soon.

last night i got to be a rockstar, and it might have been the best night i've had in france. my band, weatherbeat, played a show at ipn, a club here in aix, and it was amazing! we rocked so hard and we packed the place out. i've still got the after-concert glow. check back on the blog very soon for lots of pictures, stories, and video clips from the show. for now, i'll leave you with our band photo (which was plastered on posters all over town for a week). i'm a proud mama, and this band is my baby.



i'm blogging right now from the balcony of my hotel room, overlooking the rooftops of aix and the rotonde fountain. no, i don't usually stay in hotels in my hometown just for the fun of it. but this weekend is my flatmate hilary's wedding, and the caterer (a friend from amsterdam) is staying in our apartment all week so she can do all the food prep. which means andrea and i get a little vacation in our hometown. we're enjoying it so much! and yes, getting ready for my big concert in the hotel last night made me feel even more like a rockstar :)

Back from the Netherlands. Or, Home is where my guitar is.

my two week sejour in the netherlands is over and i am safely home in aix en provence. it was truly a wonderful time. hopefully i'll post some pictures soon. or even a photo essay, perchance?

the best part of the field orientation, hands down, was the daily "soul care" sessions with hud. (even better than sprinkles for breakfast, you ask? yes, i reply, even better! wisdom from hud is like heavenly sprinkles for the soul). hud is the psychologist/pastor on staff with christian associates, and each morning at fo he led us in thinking through what it means to truly develop in a relationship with Christ, peeling back all the layers of the soul and going deep, that we may be transformed. i think i get so much from hud because he is all about bringing together psychology and spirituality (my two favorite things!) in order that a person may find wholeness and experience the freedom that Christ as for each of us. hud shared a lot of really fascinating and important things with us, and i'd really like to post some of it here eventually, along with some things i've been processing.

fo1 and fo2 were both really wonderful experiences. i am so thankful that my organization values the spiritual health and personal development of it's staff above all else. even though there was a large amount of (great) input and it was emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually intense, fo was such a peaceful and refreshing time spent with my church planting brothers and sisters.

i returned to france (complete with suitcase, this time) late friday night, and proceeded to jump right back into life here. one day later i threw a bridal shower for my darling flatmate hilary, who will wed my wonderful teammate dominic in less than 2 weeks! the shower kicked off the whole two weeks of wedding festivities. i also have a couple things coming up soon that i'm over-the-top excited about (i'll just leave you in suspense for now...) so i'll be pretty busy for the next couple weeks. but it's the very best kind of busy.

Life in the Netherlands, or, Holland is lekker, Part Three.

As un-French as you can get
the other day amy and i were enjoying some bagel sandwiches for lunch at my new favorite cafe in the hague. we were sitting at a four top, because it had been the only free table when we came in. we're halfway through our meal when a group of 5 comes in, and the waitress asks us if we'll move to a recently vacated 2 person table. we didn't mind, of course, but as i carried my lunch across the room, i was struck with the thought of how different holland is from france. in france, mealtime is a sacred event, and a waiter would never commit the cardinal sin of interrupting your meal and asking you to move tables.

Sprinkles for breakfast
i used to think that the only people who would legitimately eat chocolate sprinkles for breakfast every day would be young children slightly lacking in parental discipline. however, along with being every sugar-crazed child's delight, sprinkles are an acceptable and even typical dutch breakfast food. they are called hagel slaag and the dutch eat them on sliced bread every morning. you heard me right, people: sprinkles on bread = normal adult breakfast. in defense of the dutch, though, hagel slaag is chocolately amazingness and if i was allowed to eat it for breakfast every morning without judgement, i might do it too. it is pretty lekker sprinkled on a slice of peanut butter toast.

Life in the Netherlands, or, Holland is lekker, Part Two.

Holland has the coolest pubs
the oude mol

Life in the Netherlands, or, Holland is lekker, Part One.

hello all. i am in the netherlands right now. i'm right in the middle of my 2 week stay- i've been here since tuesday and i'm still here until friday. i'm here, along with 3 of my teammates as well as some other cool church planters from elsewhere in europe, for part two of christian associates' field orientation (you'll recall i did part one in october).

here are just a few musings from the lands of nether:

Monasteries are like college
ca puts us up in a monastery for our 2 weeks of field orientation. that may seem weird, but it's actually not bad- we all get our own room, it's right in the center of town, and there's no curfew. i really really love living in community with my dear fellow church planters for a few weeks. and it feels like we're all living in the dorms at college- right now i'm staying up late, wasting time on the internet and emailing with my teammate who is in a room right down the hall.

Luggage is optional
since we're staying in a monastery, i decided to go with the simple living theme and go without all my luggage for a few days. actually, the choice for me to be without my stuff was not my own, but klm's, when they left my suitcase on the runway in marseille. oh, they quickly realized their mistake, of course, and put it on another flight so it would catch up to me that day, but they accidentally put it on a plane headed in the opposite direction. it all worked out well in the end, though. i got my suitcase delivered for me, right to my door. and i learned that i can go without clothes and everything for 2 whole days.
(interesting side story- my teammate teal's bag was also left behind. when we arrived in the hague, i told him we should probably go to the store to pick up a few essentials, since we may be without luggage for a few days. i bought a toothbrush and deodorant. teal bought a six-pack of beer. i guess men and women really do have different priorities.)

i have many more dutch musings to share with you, but my (tiny monastery) bed is calling my name. i'll post a few more over the next few days. goedenacht.

It's like I'm back in college. Or, a case study in procrastination.

This is how you can tell I'm procrastinating- I'm writing a blog post. I just wrote one like yesterday. Normally I'm lucky if I can get one up every couple weeks.

I don't know what it is about me, but for some reason, when I have a large amount of work to get done and a very near and rapidly approaching deadline, my procrastination instinct kicks in. It's 12:30am and I've already spent hours browsing Facebook (darn you Facebook) and reading blogs belonging to people I don't even know. I've also cleaned the kitchen, brainstormed ways to keep the pigeons off our balcony, created 3 new playlists, drank several cups of tea, tried on my favorite turquoise high heels I haven't worn in over a year, and counted the exact total number of days I've lived in France (818).

The sad thing is, the work that is making me procrastinate is actually fascinating and enjoyable and stimulating. It's really really good stuff, and normally I would be thrilled to spend time doing the kind of things it's asking of me. But the fact that there is a looming deadline inevitably makes me think that counting the number of umbrellas we have in the apartment (there are 8) is more deserving of my time than intellectually and spiritually stimulating work.

(For those of you who are worried about me getting my work done, or not doing work that reflects my best efforts, don't you worry your pretty little heads. I learned in college that I truly do my best work under pressure, and I have never ever not met a deadline, even with my best procrastination efforts. Plus, I've done a lot of the work already, I'm almost done.)

Ok, I'm gonna go do yoga stretches in the living room.

Then back to work.

Easter = awesome. Or, how to celebrate Easter just like the early church did.

Ok, I know I'm a few weeks late in recapping Easter on my blog (does that really surprise anyone?), but I love Easter, and the blogger in me couldn't resist at least a few lines to express how much I love Easter at [iccp]. We always come up with very creative ways to celebrate Easter. Like an outdoor sunrise service at the Barrage de Bimont. I guess it didn't occur to me that sunrise service means you have to be awake early enough to see the sun rise. And this year we decided to actually experience the rising of the sun by having our service outdoors. 6am when it is -0.5 degrees celsius is what I call a shock to the system. He is risen indeed.

Seriously though, it was beautiful. Almost 100 people came, and we sang lots of songs, and drank hot coffee from thermoses, and Darrin talked about Jesus giving his life for us and to us, and we huddled around a fire in a trash can. For real. It felt like raw church. And there is nothing quite like watching the sun come up over Mount Sainte Victoire.

We did lots of other cool things to celebrate Easter this year. Check out this video for a small taste of what it's like to celebrate Easter with the [iccp] family. I love this family.

Cool videos make up for tardiness, right?


(Thanks to Jeff Fountain for the video)