A BIG HUGE THANK YOU!

Hey you guys, thank you for your gift. I've had a real negative out look on things lately; and your act of kindness has put an abrupt stop to it. I still can't believe I've got such awesome friends, but I'm really glad that I do. I love you guys. I know that I might not show it the way most people do, but you all mean a lot to me.

our version of "the other guys"

Hot diggity. I can post.

Continuing the discussion about prejudice...

We've each got our prejudices, to be sure, but is it possible that because of our age and location and (hopefully) our propensity toward peace, race isn't one of 'em? Maybe that's why we had a difficult time making it through the last chapter and coming up with examples of how we can help to heal the gaping race wound. We don't seem to have issues of racial disparity slapping us in the face in these parts. Native Americans face the most discrimination in our state, but again, there aren't many of the Native population anymore in the white bread Flathead Valley, or if so, I am not aware of Christ-following Natives worshipping separately. Doing cursory google and phonebook searches, I can't find any churches that list themselves as being particularly Native or Polynesian or Hispanic or what have you, whereas that is common some places. For sure it was in Anchorage.

What if, as a group, our prejudices are instead toward those in the mainstream christian subculture? I have to admit that, on a personal level, mine often are. I tend to assume that people who wear massive amounts of "christian paraphenalia" (as if that's even a logical phrase, because can things be christian?) or listen to christian radio all the live long day, or agree with everything a pastor says aren't really thinking. And, that might be true. But does that make my prejudice justified? Does that make the people involved any less valuable? Nay!

Leaving group last Sunday evening, Jason and I talked about how interesting it was that we were lamenting the intense segregation of churches by their denomination when we ourselves are pretty much creating yet another split. We know that the house church / small group concept is much more biblically and historically accurate than clustering up according to specific theological stances to meet in buildings and to pay staff to do the important stuff.And yet.

How can we maintain ties with a larger family / network of believers, even if we don't agree with their chosen format, and do it with honesty, keeping it real? Or is it necessary to maintain such ties? I was going to suggest that we skip ahead to the chapter about falling under the church's authority, but I see now that it is the next chapter. I haven't read ahead, but I'm guessing that may be an important next point of focus for this group.

Indians

So what do you guys think about the plight of the native Americans? And if there were a tribe trying to regain it's independence from the United States what would you think about it?

Question

So who are the pennies of society? Those people nobody wants in their metaphorical pockets. Those people nobody wants to pick up when their laying on the ground. And I don’t mean lepers in India, but people who we can touch in our everyday lives.

Why is there hunger?

With more than 40 million acres of America covered in lawns, turf grass is our largest irrigated crop.

When addressing the issue of hunger here are some facts that should be considered. If we were to take only ½ of this 40,000,000 acres and devoted it to food production we would produce 212,420,000,000lbs. of food annually. The average American eats 1,500lbs. of food in a year. So then, if everyone in this country sacrificed only ½ of their lawn we could produce enough food to feed 141,613,333 people. To put that in perspective that is the entire population of Russia, or roughly 15% of the people on the entire continent of Africa. Think about it, if we all grew vegetable gardens instead of lawns we could grow enough food to feed almost ½ of the people in North America, or every starving man, woman and child in Africa with enough food left over to feed an additional 83,226,666 people. Just some food for thought, or is it some thought for food?

Sunday Night Cooking and Location Schedule

Date--------------------Cooking--------------------------Location

June 7th-----------------Nikki---------------------------Stetson's
June 14th---------------Jason----------------------------Stoffer's
June 21st---------------Justin---------------------------Stetson's
June 28th---------------Alex-----------------------------Stoffer's
July 5th-----------------Jesse---------------------------Stetson's
July 12th----------------Lori-----------------------------Stoffer's
July 19th---------------Emilie---------------------------Stetson's

Busy, busy, busy

Hey everybody! Where are all the bloggers??? Well, we have been unbelievably busy kicking off the summer - I just want to start by saying you guys all rock! I think I can concur with the words of our homie Dan Lowe when saying, "We're doing it folks, we're doing it." The community garden is a total success....things are already growing as I'm typing this. We have tons of plants getting large in the green house anticipating the last frost in the Northwest, and the irrigation system is almost completed. I'm excited to say that Camille has joined our little band of merry folks - at least for the summer - and that will make for a super rad addition (to say the least). We have been meeting every Sunday night for our community meal which has really been encouraging. Its so nice knowing that our family is growing deeper and deeper relationally. Tim and Arianna's wedding is just around the corner - July 3rd - which is super duper. About three weeks ago we slaughtered and packaged our meat birds (22 of the feathered monsters), in record time I might add. Thanks so much to Jay and Tina Stetson (my parents :) for giving us a place to keep them and helping with all the work. Hopefully we can give everyone a more detailed update soon but for now, its simply (haha) gardening, community meals, and studying the 12 Marks of a New Monasticism.