I suppose 7 months is a long enough vacation from blogging, though a 7-month update is probably not what I will post for now. FIrst off, I have been blog-tagged by Guamo, so to get that monkey off my back, here goes:

1. The # of books I have owned: I really have no clue. I would say that is somewhere in the 'couple two or three hundred' (as they say in Texas) range, combined with the books I had and read up through high school (however, those books might be making their way to the International Library in Sendai, so maybe I'm not legally allowed to claim them). That is way more of an answer than Guamo wanted, I'm sure.

2. Last book I bought...since I doubt you all want to hear about my Int'l cookbook, I think the last one was Short Stories by Barbara Kingsolver that I got at Goodwill. I believe it cost me a dollar. But I like her writing and it was worth it.

3. Last book I completed: The 3rd of a series of Amish books that Dan's Mom lent me when we went to Japan. I think I read all three of them collectively in 3 days. Before that, the last book I completed was "Kashikogi", a book about a father and his kid with cancer in Korea (translated in Japanese). The book was great, up until the ending, about which I complained for at least 2 weeks after I finished reading. I'm actually still disappointed and mad that it ended that way, and I am tempted to digress here, but I will hold my tongue, fingers, whatever.

4. Ten books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

The Poisonwood Bible
The Bible (the original)
The Cost of Discipleship
Split Seconds
A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23
(sorry, I can only think of devotionals right now)
American Tragedy
Catcher in the Rye
(ah, now I'm out of devotional territory)
The Client
Almost any hymnal
Anything by Barbara Kingsolver

5. What I am currently reading:
The Poisonwood Bible (again, for only the ???th time)
The Cost of Discipleship
Biology of Plants
Mycorrhizal Symbiosis (ahem, yes, my comps are coming up this semester)
Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (from Tom)

6. 5 bloggers I am passing this on to...
seeing as it took me this long to reply, I'm guessing that anyone who wants to answer has already done so. If not, I give you the permission to do so. Enjoy.

Now for the update...
You all can read about Dan's accident where he plowed into a car with his bike and "superdanned" over the car, landing on a laptop in his backpack that probably saved his life. Well, that was certainly something to be thankful of (the surviving part), and we have been living with a little more gratitude for life and health and daily food since then. SInce then, we have gone through a roller coaster type of spiritual reckoning, trying to figure out what God has planned for us this year. That was kind of hard, because the year (school year) had already started a few weeks ago and we had no clue at that point. We were involved with teh youth group, but felt very much out of it. I will speak for myself when I say that there was a lot of bitterness towards the other leaders who, in my opinion, had their theologies all wrong. I would go to youth group events and mull to myself about how wrong the others were and whether it was even worth going there for the kids. I'm sorry, I'm not making too much sense here, so I'll get to the bottom line. We had a retreat last weekend with all the leaders, and we spent all day Saturday sharing our faith stories. This was a painful thing for some, and I learned about a lot of peoples' faith--many of which I still don't agree with. By this I mean that for some of them, faith in God seems to be an optional thing, and as long as you are "spiritual" (whatever that means), you're going to heaven. Oh, and by the way, according to some, there is no hell, because that isn't a pleasant concept to think of, and I don't want some of my friends to go there, thus, I don't believe in it. ??? Try writing a Religion 103 term paper with that logic! is what I thought. It still doesn't make sense, but neither do my actions toward these people. They may have messed up ideas about God and hell, but perhaps I, with the bitterness and the mistrust and being hung up about the existence of a hell, am the one who needs to remove that plank from my eye. So that was the message that I got from this retreat. Basically, my faith hasn't changed, and neither has the faith of some of the leaders. We are all equally stubborn and unyielding. Great combination, eh? However, if I am to reach these kids, and possibly these leaders, my actions need to match my words, and the bottom line of God's gospel is love, regardless of what the other person has done to you or others. Obviously it gets sticky when you point out that loving can sometimes mean admonishing or correcting someone's point of view, but perhaps that would be more easily accomplished if the foundation of unconditional love was built first, which means getting rid of the bitterness and hatred and judgments and allowing God to take care of their souls and theologies. SO for now, this year, we're sticking with youth group, and if this is where God wants us, so be it! We'll see what he has in mind for us. And with that attitude, I must admit that this past Wednesday (our first youth group) went really well, and all the leaders seemed much more rooted in the Word and committed to serving God. So I'm very excited for this year.
Other than youth group, I am still directing my choir, which is still about the same size as last year, but hopefully will grow some more this year. My comprehensive exams will be sometime this semester (probably December), so I have a lot of studying to do, not to mention the few experiments I should throw in here and there. At any rate, I have that peace that this is where I need to be right now, and that's about all I need to keep moving forward. I hope that you will all be filled with the same peace this semester, because it is something I wouldn't give up for anything.