Desmond

A while back there was a blogger I loved reading because he usually challenged me to think. Since then he has closed his blog (miss you Desmond) but he still gives intriguing comments on blogs, so he is not totally gone. He began a process of getting to know readers by asking them questions, and here are the ones he asked me.

Desmond Jones said...

Just Me - Hi! Haven't seen you around in awhile

OK, let's see if I can come up with five questions worth your while to answer. . .

1) I'll start with the obvious one, since you went to all the trouble of laying it out there for me: What is a 'liturgical Pentecostal'? I'd be interested to hear about your religious/spiritual background more generally, and how it affects your life today.

I was fortunate enough to be raised in the church. My Dear Sweet Mother took us to the Lutheran Church where God met me at a very young age. Though I didn't really know it at the time, the repetition of the liturgy and scripture teachings grounded me deeply in God's word, and this formed the foundations that would provide me many answers throughout my life. When I went to college my main form of rebellion was to seek out something different in a fellowship. The one thing I felt was missing in the liturgical services was a passion in prayer and worship. It was here that I felt the power of the Holy Spirit and God's ability to answer prayers. Now I seek out churches that have a respect for the grounding of liturgy as well as a passion for seeing the Holy Spirit at work.


2) How did you meet Your Sweet, and how did the two of you decide to marry? (I don't know that I've ever said so, but most days, as I kiss Molly goodbye on my way to work in the morning, I say, "Farewell, my Sweet"; so we've got that in common, too ;) )

Now I work with high school kids and I love telling them that I met my husband when he was my student. They start hooting and hollering because they are thinking that he was a 17 or 18 year old. In truth he was 28 and I was 31.

When I went overseas, I specifically picked a mission organization where we taught in the public schools. So for four years I taught English as a second language and when I came back to America I got a job teaching English to internationals getting ready for college or grad school. It was great having in the same classroom Arabs, Japanese, Koreans and Brazilians. My Sweet was one of those students. While he attended my school, I never thought about him in that way – I have always put married men and students in that “don’t even think about going there” category. But after he graduated, he asked me to a party, and things went on from there. We dated for several years because I wanted to be more certain we could deal with issues of differences in culture and languages. Also, at the time My Sweet was spiritually seeking, but was not a Christian. I know that a person’s spiritual beliefs affect how they live their life and I had told My Sweet from the very beginning that I would not consider marrying him if he did not make his own commitment to Jesus. On New Years Eve he decided that Jesus was the one he wanted to be following, and a few months later we were married.

I want to take a bit more time to answer the other questions, so stay tunes.

As a final note I just want to say, “Thank you Bob Barker for bringing lightness and joy.”

Joie de Vivre ~ A Hearty Joy of Living!