this from John Piper

Oh, that the risen, living Christ, therefore, would come to us (even now) by his Spirit and through his Word and reveal to us
—the supremacy of his deity, equal with God the Father in all his attributes—the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies;
—the supremacy of his eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning, but simply always was; sheer, absolute reality while all the universe is fragile, contingent, like a shadow by comparison to his all-defining, ever-existing substance;
—the supremacy of his never-changing constancy in all his virtues and all his character and all his commitments—the same yesterday, today, and forever;
—the supremacy of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox, and all the information on the Internet look like a little 1940’s farmers almanac, and quantum physics—and everything Stephen Hawking ever dreamed—seem like a first-grade reader;
—the supremacy of his wisdom that has never been perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled the wisest of men;
—the supremacy of his authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch, who changes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings; does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; so none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
—the supremacy of his providence without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of the Amazon forest, or a single hair of any head turns black or white;
—the supremacy of his word that moment by moment upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms and subatomic world we have never yet dreamed of;
—the supremacy of his power to walk on water, cleanse lepers and heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise, with a single word, or even a thought;
—the supremacy of his purity never to sin, or to have one millisecond of a bad attitude or an evil, lustful thought;
—the supremacy of his trustworthiness never to break his word or let one promise fall to the ground;
—the supremacy of his justice to render in due time all moral accounts in the universe settled either on the cross or in hell;
—the supremacy of his patience to endure our dullness for decade after decade; and to hold back his final judgment on this land and on the world, that many might repent;
—the supremacy of his sovereign, servant obedience to keep his Father’s commandments perfectly and then embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly;
—the supremacy of his meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick;
—the supremacy of his wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb;
—the supremacy of his grace that gives life to spiritually dead rebels and wakens faith in hell-bound haters of God, and justifies the ungodly with his own righteousness;
—the supremacy of his love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners and frees us for the ever-increasing joy in making much of him forever;
—the supremacy of his own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint;
And if he would grant us to know him like this, it would be but the outskirts of his supremacy. Time would fail to speak of the supremacy of his severity, and invincibility, and dignity, and simplicity, and complexity, and resoluteness, and calmness, and depth, and courage. If there is anything admirable, if there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in Jesus Christ.

Chusok

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the Chusok holidays here in Korea. (I can't believe this is already my second Chusok to celebrate in Korea!) Most everybody has these days off work and many people go to their hometown, or the house of the oldest son in the family to meet with relatives, and in the case of non Christian families, they bow to their ancestors, thanking them for the harvest, I think. The traffic is so bad that sometimes a four hour trip can take 12 or more hours, since there are only so many roads and not so many days off to go somewhere.

Last night, a group of us was hanging out in Suji and we saw many groups of foreigners heading out of town with their bags packed to go to Thailand, China, or wherever on their few days off from hogwan teaching. We (the team) are all staying in Korea. One guy from church has invited all of the team over for dinner at his house on Tuesday, the actual day of Chusok. I made plans to go to a prayer mountain where my friend Okja's brother lives. I'm not even sure where we're going, I just know where to meet Okja and her mom on Tuesday morning at the train station. I'm looking forward to experiencing something new and seeing a new part of Korea. Hopefully I'll come back with some good memories and good stuff to tell all of you lovely people who read what I write.

Today after life group, we took a small hike up Namhansanseong, a mountain nearby. We had in mind to watch the sunset, but it was a little too cloudy to actually see the sun go down. We did have a lovely view over Seoul, and the weather was just about perfect - a nice cool breeze up there.

I am wondering if Koreans get the "holiday feeling" of excitement about seeing family and time off, and just a sense of expectation that I get when the holiday season comes in America. I don't have it yet, because this isn't familiar and tradition filled for me yet. Maybe if I live here long enough, I could feel the same expectation in Korea.

good food, good friends, silly bank

Monday nights are one of my free nights, so today I called a friend to see if she wanted to hang out after I got off work. We met at a subway station nearby and went to Insadong, the place to go to buy traditional crafts - lots of pottery and paper. She had found a traditional restaurant for us to try. They served mostly North Korean style food, she said. It wasn't so different from the Korean food that I am used to, although it was a little. We had doenjang bibimbap and bindaedduk. It was tasty. After that, we met another friend and went to a tea shop. We sat on the floor near a window that opened out on the patio, and it got chillier as we stayed there. It rained most of the day today, so that made it a lot cooler. It's so nice. We had an excellent time just chatting about stuff. When we left, my cheeks hurt from laughing so much.

Today, I went to the bank during my lunch break to check on my card. I asked if they could make it into an automatic withdrawal transportation card, and they told me that it wasn't possible for foreigners. That's really funny, because Donnie and Shannon have that feature on their card. Oh well. The other funny thing is that they made me a new card to change the spelling and this time, they got my first name right but misspelled my last name. When I saw that, I just started laughing. I hadn't gotten frustrated with all of this until today, but still it made me laugh, so I couldn't stay frustrated very long. Seriously, I don't care anymore if I get one with the right spelling, because I don't think it matters. I kept the one with the misspelled first name instead of the misspelled last name. I guess I thought that Lele Sadler is funnier than Lela Saller, especially because some kids in the youth group in Dripping called me Lele as a nickname.

I just made some yummy milk tea and am going to snuggle up in my bed with the window open to read a little. Yay! Fall is excellent.

read this

jen lemen: the pages of my prayer book: silence, midnight doubt & celebration of ordinary things

These are beautiful words from the blog of someone I don't know, but somehow I found her blog and read it. Read them too, you'll be glad you did.

rain songs

This morning, it was raining. It wasn't raining hard, just a little drizzle, when I went out jogging. My cute neighborhood store lady saw me walking by with no umbrella and she quickly offered to loan me one. I didn't take her up on it, but thought it was a nice offer. So, I went for a little jog around the lake near my house. I am really gonna miss this place when I move back to Suji. It's a perfect place to exercise - close, and the scenery is nice. I've been jogging there twice while it was raining, and both times, they had rain music playing. They must have a special "it's raining" mix. It includes "Raindrops keep falling on my head", "Somewhere over the rainbow", and a few other songs with rain in them. Really funny. I wonder if they have a music guy who is in charge of putting on the rain music when it starts raining. That would be a sweet job.

After a little exercise and a shower, I took off to Suji for our picnic. Scott is going home on Monday and we had a little church gathering in Suji. We wanted to have it outside, but it was still a bit rainy and wet, so we stayed inside. We spread out the picnic blankets on the floor in the living room and pretended it was a picnic. We had some tasty food. I made chocolate chip cookies, apricot and white chocolate scones (recipe from Rose Young, but they're not quite as good as hers), and some cream cheese and tortilla roll-ups. One of our church members from Alabama made some tasty barbecue in her crock pot, and we had a lot of other good stuff, too. Mmmm.

this is our road trip group, minus johnny...i just got some new pictures downloaded from a friend and wanted to share! 

we went to this "ranch" that's used for raising cows and stuff, i think, but also for tourism...it was mainly just a lot of hills, but really beautiful! 

scott, me, jason at the korean i-35 sign! i wonder if we could take it all the way to austin... 

johnny and me with our watermelon ice cream in front of a buddhist temple 

taking the gospels seriously

Mike Cope's blog: "Really, it's a dangerous thing to teach the gospels. What if . . . well, what if some students took it seriously? What if they decided not to explain it away or dumb it down? What if they decided to follow the Way of Christ for a lifetime? What if -- without condemning others around them who've made different choices -- they chose not to live with a polite, domesticated version of the story of Jesus?"

This is from the blog of a preacher in my hometown of Abilene, Texas. I just started reading it lately. He has some good thoughts! I want to be a person who takes these gospels seriously! I want to live in the radical way of Jesus. Oh, Holy Spirit work in me!

As I write this, the rain outside starts coming down stronger. God, wash me in your presence so I can live the in the example Jesus sets for us!

6th time's the charm

Did I say I was going to have success in picking up my check card today at the bank? Well, I guess that partly came true. I went to the bank, passport in hand, to pick it up. They gave it to me. I checked it out, because Jason picked his up yesterday and his said JasonKirscit instead of Jason Kirsch. I wasn't so surprised, then to see that mine said Lele instead of Lela. I asked the girl if that was ok. She was a little embarrassed and said that she would make a new one and call me next week when it's ready. It also doesn't work as a subway/bus card, which it was supposed to (they told me it would when I applied for it). So, when I go to pick up my card next week and ask about the transportation card thing, hopefully it really will be my last visit (visit number six just to get this stinkin' card made.) In Korea, as in many countries where you don't speak the same first language as the people you are dealing with, things tend to take longer. I guess I can just double the saying the third time's the charm - in Korea, for foreigners perhaps, it should be changed to the sixth time's the charm.

Here's a brief history of Lela conquering the check card retrieval process:
visit 1: I ask, in Korean, if I can get a check card. The girls behind the counter laugh and send me to someone else. He is not confident enough in his English to speak it directly, so he writes everything down first and then says it. (I'm not kidding.) No progress is made. He takes my phone number and I tell him I will come back later.
visit 2: I come back, with a few new rehearsed Korean phrases under my belt, and get an application for the card. They want to see my passport. I don't have it on me, so I decide to get help from a friend with the Korean application form and bring my passport back later.
visit 3: I am armed with my passport and a filled out application. Jason goes with me and thinks this is a piece of cake, because he gets an application filled out on his first try. Ha!
visit 4: I get a call the next day saying something about a PIN number. We both go back, give them a PIN number, get a small present for having to come back because they forgot to ask us the day before.
visit 5: I receive the check card with a misspelled first name. They tell me that they will make a new one and call me. I find out later that the transportation card feature doesn't work.

I told my friend Okja about this tonight. (She's my Korean tutor, also.) She said, "Well, Jesus wants you to just keep showing His love to those bank tellers!" Amen.

fall is here

Two Fridays ago, I was walking near the Jamsil subway station with a Korean friend and she proclaimed "kah-ul itda" (fall is here). I don't know the exact Korean spelling, so I'll just leave it in the English form. There was a cool breeze and it felt really good. Since then, we've had a few hot days, but the nights have really been excellent. In Suji, it gets even cooler - my feet were cold as we prayed in Donnie and Shannon's apartment on Wednesday night with the windows open and the breeze flowing through. This morning, I pulled out my quilted robe to hang up in my bathroom again. This is the robe that, on my last night of packing before coming to Korea, my cousin Sarah told me "Don't do anything silly like not pack that robe. You're going to want it." She's a smart girl. I'm glad I have it.

Soon, we'll have leaves changing colors and soon after that it'll even be cold and snowy! One of the guys at our university life group said that when he stayed a year in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he had a hard time believing a new year had come because it never snowed. He had lived in Korea all his life and that was one physical mark of time he could rely on!

Well, I wanted to post something because I feel like I've been neglecting my blog. Now that I have checked that off, I am gonna have a bagel and coffee before I head out to pick up my check card from the bank (finally! success in getting the check card!) and then on to work. Thanks for reading, friends!

quote for the night

"Which is weirder, seeing a guy in a girl shirt, or seeing a foreigner?" - Koh, our friend and translator, at dinner, after telling us that we stare at people just like the Koreans do. (This guy we were looking at was wearing a black see through shirt with huge red flowers on it.) Guilty, I suppose.

my kids are way cute

Today, in my K6 class (my youngest class - they're 6 years old Korean, which is about 5 American age), I had pairs of students come up to the front to practice saying our new phrase. They think it's great to come to the front of the room and do this. One of them would hold a pencil, a marker, an eraser, etc. and the other one would ask "Can I use your pencil?". The other one would then hand over the pencil and say "Yes, you can!" The one littlest guy, James, came up, and I was squatting down to be at their level and remind them of the phrase if they needed it. He backed right up into me to feel more secure, and then held my hand. How cute! I love these little Korean guys. They will hold onto each others hands as they run in from the playground and even sit together holding hands sometimes. Of course, the girls do it, too, but it's cuter when the little boys do it. They're not ashamed! Here's a picture of a few of the students in this class for your viewing - it was taken during the winter, so everybody has lots of clothes on.

James is the one in the grey vest, second to the right 

mornings off

This week, I have all the mornings off because intensive classes ended and kindergarten English classes don't start until next week. It's really excellent, but I feel like I haven't gotten much done. Yesterday was good - I had to go turn in my old phone (it was part of the deal on my new phone) at TechnoMart, so I got there by 10, had some breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts, and turned my phone in. Then, I met Jason at the bank and we were successful in applying for check cards that will also work as transportation cards on the subways and buses. It was my third try, and it was the charm. They understood what I wanted, we spoke a mix of Korean and English, and the cards are being made.
This morning, however, I woke up and prayed a bit, then checked my email and answered a few of them (one of my goals for today was to try to reduce the number of e-mails that needed to be answered in my inbox), but then I fell asleep as I was reading on my bed. I ended up being awakened by Jason signing on to Yahoo Messenger. When Jason is getting up earlier than me, that's a bad sign. (He also generally goes to bed later than me, but anyway...). Jason, hope you're not offended, but I don't think you read this anyway. If you do read this, I'll buy you dinner. (It doesn't count if someone else reads it and clues you in.) So, when I did get up for real at 10, I went jogging, then came back to eat a late breakfast and head to work. Hopefully this week of restful mornings will make me energized for those extra kindergarten classes next week!