Reflecting Nehemiah... my life at Calvin College

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The Definition of Faith

i don’t see snow anymore!

my pastor, rob bell said this once in a sermon (i don’t remember it exactly, but i’ll try to paraphrase) with great conviction and celebration: “we in grand rapids know what faith is. faith is believing that one day, the sun will shine, the snow will melt, and spring will come.” an inside joke us grand rapiders share is that the winter lasts forever. BUT, spring might be just around the corner. we’re above freezing now during the day, and we’re also seeing more and more sun. you don’t understand how excited i am about the sun (well, you might if you’re reading this from grand rapids). just the other day, aaron and i hauled up our patio table from under the deck and had our first dinner party. grand rapids is so beautiful when the sun’s out and it’s not freezing.

the site of our future community garden

first project for the spring/summer/fall: a community vegetable garden between our house and emily’s house (yes, that’s emily, my blogging neighbor). i just got back today from lowes with packages and packages of vegetable seeds. we bought tomatoes, string beans, cucumbers, sweet peppers, and much more. a neighboring professor offered to lend us his rototiller, and my biology professor is giving us baby tomato plants. pretty soon, the large patch of grass that always just gets yellow under the summer sun will be transformed into a thriving vegetable garden feeding two houses for the entire summer (i hope). i have no experience in gardening, but armed with google and advice from my biology major summer housemate david cutter, this garden will prevail!

korean and western food

aaron and i had our first dinner party (actually, this one’s our second, but i didn’t get photos of the first one) featuring my dish of bulgogi and rice and aaron’s dishes of salmon and potatoes. i’d like to say we purposefully pursued fusion cuisine, but we actually decided to eat outside together and share food after we had already made our dishes. whatever, it was still delicious.

aaron’s masterpiece: yummy salmon