Officially Settled In

This week was pretty routine with work being during the day and ESL (I have about 15 students), wing night, and homework happening during the evenings. Churchill played a show Friday night and I went to that. Yesterday I read all day and then went to a church dinner in in the evening. Today I'm finishing my homework and keeping a periodic eye on the football scores.

My classes have been a lot of work and a lot of fun. As a class we are comparing the Greek account of the origin of the gods and a trilogy about murder, conspiracy, family, and justice with the Pentateuch (Genesis - Deuteronomy) and Joshua. Two things I've learned is that I tend to read my own ideas into Bible stories and that it takes a long time to read through Genesis. Seriously, it's a really long book. We have three weeks left before taking a week off and beginning the next 8 week course.

For work on Thursday and Friday I attended a training seminar on teaching abstinence. My understanding is that I'll have some opportunities to teach this periodically in various schools in our school district. The class was very informative and helpful and I even made a few new friends in the class.

Oh, and the Iowa Hawkeyes are 4-0 and that makes me happy.

Church this morning was 2 1/2 hours long. No Sunday school. Just the main service. 2 1/2 hours. But it was great. Testimonies took about 45 minutes and the sermon was great. What I like about the church is that it's full of new believers with really messy pasts (some people's lives are still a mess) who have been radically changed by the gospel. The testimonies I've heard in the past two days include testimonies from multiple single moms, at least one homeless guy, a husband and wife who have left everything for the gospel and found out they are now losing their house, a former prostitute and stripper, a church elder, a guy who recently finished a 20 year prison sentence, and many others. The church is less now a year old and has about 175 attendees. I'm really looking forward to the mens' prayer breakfast this upcoming Saturday morning and since the church is four blocks away, I can just walk to it.

That's enough for now. I'll try and have some pictures for my next post. Without all my awesome students around, I don't have as many opportunities to take pictures.