California for Stefani

Well, we are back from our vacation. What a great time we had. Here was our itinerary…

Seattle – 1 night

DisneyWorld – 3 nights

Carnival Dream Cruise – 7 night Western Caribbean, ports including Cozumel, Roatan, Belize & Costa Maya

Florida – 4 nights – sights including Kennedy Space Center

Seattle – 1 night

What a great vacation and now we are back home to regular life. I don’t mind that too much because it gives us the opportunity to save up for our next vacation.

We have been struggling with coming back home to the pains of being here. We are trying to figure out how to deal with that. Doug posted on his blog kinda how we feel about it all, and so I won’t try to go over it again. Doug's Blog

Something I thought of today though, and I am going to try to explain it. It all started with reading a blog of a friend of mine who quoted a verse from the Book of Alma… well… I know my Bible a little, and I know there is no such book in the “regular” Bible, so I asked her were it came from and she told me it was from the Book of Mormon. She told me they use this book as a companion to the Bible. That made me think… and so we chatted about it with my parents for awhile and then started to do a bit of research about it. Doug gave us a quick history lesson of what he found out and then we left it alone until our drive home from my parents.

I was having some issues with believing some of how it came about, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized… what does it matter? Does it change my relationship with Jesus on if someone else believes that there are other books written about Jesus? Not a chance! And who am I to say it is true or not? It doesn’t change my Christian views, so why should I worry about it or even put any thought to it? What I see as the “regular” Bible is just a piece of our Christian heritage, and who knows what else is missing from what we were taught. Even the Bible can be interpreted differently and if you don’t believe that, look around and see all the religions that have stemmed from different versions of our “regular” Bible.

Now you ask… why am I mentioning this? Well because the above belief will probably get me in a lot of trouble in the “regular” church who believe solely in the “regular” Bible and have no flexibility in what else is out there. How do we survive in that type of structure? I don’t think we can because in the end someone will always want us to change to their way of thinking and I have no desire for that. I want to have an open mind to all that is out there and the various versions of what a relationship will look like with our Saviour, Jesus Christ. I want my relationship with Jesus to be built on my faith and not what others tell me it should look like. He is excepting of everyone, and so I have to follow that same rule of thinking. So unless church has changed in the last little while, I don’t think we will fit in much. So… what do we do about this? How do we go about surviving here in White Rock with all the bad memories of friends past? How do we go about making new friends that believe in Jesus Christ and not have to succumb to the “regular” church way of thinking? Well… I think we need to have a bit of change of heart… stop looking at what isn’t to be (Mexico) and look at what might be… where do we find this? I was thinking that Doug and I need to find our hearts desire… what makes us tick? Is there an area that we feel God is leading us? If we stay in our cave and hide away from people, we will never show the love of God to people. How do we go about showing what God is all about to the people in our community? How do we show how loving God/Jesus is to everyone, from all walks of life? It won’t be by staying locked up in our house and it won’t be by being pissed off in church all the time… so where do we go? We need to focus on where this might be… no matter how small it is. Do we volunteer somewhere in something that we have a heart for? I know for now it isn’t in church because so far all church has been is a place where they want the members to all think the same. So we need to look outside the box (or church) and find it somewhere. We need people around us… people of all walks of life… we must be needed somewhere… we need to find that place and ask God to guide us in the right direction.

We need to forget about the past and work on the present and future…we need to see where Jesus wants us because he isn’t going to give us this interesting view of thinking and then hide us away in our little condo in White Rock. I am very curious to see where he will guide us, too, because I want to be open to where He thinks we should be. I think it will be small though, because we seem to be good at the little things. I want to look towards this and see what areas we are good at. Maybe work with seniors? Maybe with kids? Homeless people? Single parents? Cooking for others? Teaching computers? Teaching English? Doing some bookkeeping? Playing guitar (that is Doug)… who knows… we have some talent… wonder if they can be used to show how wonderful God/Jesus is and what a great friend he is. I love him with all my heart and I want the world to know that he is amazing and loves everyone no matter what.