What I'm Loving - August 2011

• I’m loving that the D-backs are in first place for the NL West. Here’s to hoping that they can hold out.

• I’m loving that Awana has started back up and that I get to see my girls on a regular basis again!

• I’m loving that it’s almost time for Soma’s fall retreat! I’m looking forward to good fellowship and time out on the boats.

•  I’m loving this:

• I’m loving that the HOV lane is open on the eastbound 101. Eliminating the construction shaves a whole 5 minutes off my commute every morning and has completely eliminated the stop and go traffic that I used to have to sit in. It may not sound like much, but an extra 25 minutes each week does add up! Now if they can only finish the westbound 101....

• I’m loving that it looks like things might be coming together for me to go on a missions trip sooner than I had expected. More details to follow later. 

Is it God's will for your life to do XYX?

Statements like the following tend to irk me:
"If it’s God's will for me to go to Biola, he'll make it happen."
"If God wants me to marry Bryan, he'll work out the details."

Does God want you to go to Biola or NAU? Does God want you marry Bryan? Would God object to you going to Biola or marrying Bryan? I’d wager a bet that He wouldn’t. Maybe Bryan would be a great Godly guy for you to marry! Maybe you should pray for God to give you wisdom about how to proceed with your relationship and that you make wise choices throughout. Maybe you should pray that God could open a door for you to go to Biola and maybe He will. But are you going to be out of line with God's will if you go to NAU instead?

Early on in my life one thing I never could understand about the idea of God having a detailed will for us is what happens when we go the wrong way? What happens if His will is for us to go to Biola and we go to Arizona Christian instead? Is His will like a GPS unit that just automatically re-calibrates and comes up with a new route based on which turn we actually made? Does an entire lifetime of little details -- the guy you would've met at freshman orientation at Biola who would later become your husband, your five kids, your nursing career, your house on Maple St -- just disappear and suddenly a new plan is God's new will for your life? Or are you forever ruined because you made one wrong turn early on in your life? Seems a little problematic considering that we're all sinners.

I've come to realize that God's will for our lives is pretty darn simple. God's will for your life is that you become more like Christ. In his book Just Do Something Kevin DeYoung expands on this just a bit by saying that the will of God is:
That we live holy, set apart lives. (1 Thes 4:3)
That we always rejoice, pray and give thanks. (1 Thes 5:16-18)
That we are to know god's will so that we can bear fruit and know Him better. (Col 1:9)
That we be filled with the Holy Spirit. (Eph 5:17)

I think it's pretty plain and simple. That's not to say that we can't talk to God about any and every situation. God can, and does, open doors (or windows occasionally, maybe even a side gate). But I don't think that God is waiting for us to check-in with every decision we make. Go to Chipotle for dinner or Pei Wei? Hmm, what do you think God? Should I witness to that guy over there or no? Oh, you already answered that question in the Bible? Uhm...could you give me some sort of sign, just so that I can be sure? And what about dinner?

In my first few years of being a camp counselor I used to hate the God's will question. Mainly because I hadn't figured out the answer to the question myself, let alone well enough to explain it to someone else. It's somewhat sad that it took me so long to realize how simple it really is.

Side rant: My other issue with the first two statements in this post is the laziness involved in them. I hate it when people are being passive because they are "waiting on God to reveal His will". God has already revealed His will!

Questions that I think are worth asking:
Does this decision line up with what I know Biblically?
Does this decision bring me closer to God or distract me from Him?

But please, let's stop asking if it's God's will for you to go to Disneyland or not this summer.

One thing that I do take a lot of comfort in is the fact that God does grant us wisdom (see James 1:5)! One of my favorite things to pray for has always been to ask Him for wisdom for how to deal with a certain situation. Maybe if we spent more time asking for wisdom instead of praying for Him to reveal His will we'd end up a little bit closer to where we need to be.

Mandy and Personal Finance

As most of you already know, I’m somewhat of a nerd. I get excited over things that would make other people cringe. I’m also a detail person, which is why things like making a budget are exciting to me. When I was nineteen I took a college course on personal finance and loved it. If I’d taken it earlier in college (I was one semester away from graduating at the time) I might have considered adding a second major. I’ve contemplated getting a Master’s degree in something finance related. I’ve since decided not to go that route for numerous reasons, but my love of all things personal finance still remains.

I'll be the first to admit that I haven’t always handled money as well as I should, and I probably still spend money too easily. However, over the last couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing how I spend my money and researching things relating to personal finance. I’ve also spent time figuring out what the Bible says about how we handle money. I’m by no means an expert, but this is my blog so I figure I’ll pass along some of my thoughts on how to handle money.

A starting point...
The starting point for myself, like most people, was deciding what tool to use to handle my money. If you aren’t using a money management tool of some sort, you’re probably not going to be very successful in your attempts to manage your money. Some people find an Excel spreadsheet will do the trick for them (I’m not a fan of this method). Others prefer to use software packages. A few I hear a lot about are:
Mint
Mvelopes
You Need A Budget

Which do I use?
I use Mint, which is a web-based software package now owned by Quicken. There are probably hundreds of reviews online telling you why Mint is awesome so I'm not going to bother outlining every feature or telling you why you should use it. Feel free to look up the more recent reviews of Mint if you're interested. But I would like to share some of the reasons why I love it and how it suits my purposes well.

For me, the most notable things about Mint are:

1. It's free (woohoo!) 
2. It's web based
3. It's got a slick interface (the software engineer side of me is happy)

I'm a big fan of web based apps because I spend half of my day at a work computer and half of my day at my personal computer. I also have two laptops at home and sometimes have to switch between the two of them, so a desktop app would not suite my purposes very well.

Envelopes?
A lot of people are fans of "envelope" type systems, particularly Christian finance advisers (Dave Ramsey, anyone?). While I see the value of that, I originally wasn't interested in budgeting my money up front. I was more concerned with figuring out where my money was going each month. And in reality, before you can start budgeting you need to quantify your spending, so it turned out to be a good first step.
 
Mint makes it really easy to categorize every transaction (from all of my accounts, in one place, with almost zero work on my part) and then provides me with great ways to work with my data. The pie chart showing where all my money goes on the “Trends” tab is my favorite feature of Mint. The pie chart also helps me break down and sort out my transactions at the end of each month if I haven't already done so or if something gets categorized incorrectly.

(not my account, just a sample)

 
Once I had a good grasp of where my money was going (which took a couple of months) I got a lot more interested in tightening up my budget in certain areas. I use Mint’s “Budgets” to create an envelope system of sorts. I’m not a hardcore envelope budgeter though, so if you are, you might find other tools to be more to your liking. Mint is a great starting point if you're not sure what method of budgeting you prefer. It's worth your time to use Mint just to figure out how you're spending money even if you use it for nothing else.

For me, I’m sticking with Mint because it’s web based and because it helps me keep track of what I’m spending where. And I just plain like it.  In the end, it doesn’t really matter which app a person uses, as long as they’re using something and it works for them.

More on my actual budget later...

Golden West Camp 2011 = Success

Another year of camp has come and gone. I can't pinpoint all the specific reasons, but I have to say that 2011 was without a doubt one of the best years Golden West Camp has ever had. Oddly enough, I'd say that 2011 was a year with the most controversial curriculum to date, shorter evening sermons, and yet it was a year that had one of the largest spiritual impacts on the campers that I've ever seen. The reason for this, you wonder? I think it was more about individual communication and relationships than intense messages in a large group setting. This isn't so say anything against either of the pastors who spoke at camp this week. They brought the word of God and they brought it well.

But it was the one-off conversations that counselors had with campers and the individual questions that were raised that had an impact in my mind. I wish we'd had more time to deal with individual questions than we did, but I'm thankful for the ones that did get answered. And luckily, with camp being so small in numbers this year I feel like most of the campers have made enough of a connection with counselors that they were able to be ministered to in ways that weren't always possible with a larger camp.

Why do I come back every year?
There are numerous reasons why. One of the reasons that I come back every year is because I've grown attached to the campers that keep coming back year after year. I've built up strong friendships with a lot of them. At this point it's hard for me to imagine what camp would be like without them there.

The biggest reason that brings me back every year is because camp has had an impact on me like few other ministries ever have. Sure, a lot of my love for camp came from the fact that it was just plain fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with that either. But there were spiritual changes that happened in me as a result of camp and friendships that were strengthened through years spent at camp together that couldn't be easily reproduced in any other setting. In fact, a couple of those friendships are still going strong today, partially as a result of our continued devotion to camp.

A few picture highlights of the week...

 Cabin 10 was the best cabin in the whole camp. I consider it a privilege to get to work with girls as amazing as these five are.

There was a lake experience. It was epic (and I have the cuts and bruises to prove it). Better picture coming later.

14 years (of camp) with these guys

At the end of the week the points ended up with the teams finishing in Awana order

We have an amazing group of counselors who provide the best support group that any of us could ask for.

Traditions live on.