School's out for...two weeks! We finished the quarter and are very excited. JJ still has one big exegetical paper to finish that's due next week, so he's not totally free yet. Still, it feels good to be on break.
Yesterday, we went to a Jewish Orthodox synagogue for Sabbath services as the last part of JJ's cross-cultural module. And boy was it a different culture! We had to sit on separate sides of the synagogue with a partition separating the men and the women. It was very--check that, impossibly hard to follow what was going on. Thankfully, JJ sat next to someone who willingly explained some things to him. It was impossible for me, though, to really figure out what was going on. There was a lot of chanting in Hebrew, lots of bowing, lots of talking. You wouldn't believe how people just came and went during the service and talked amongst themselves the whole time! Very different from a Lutheran service! There was a Psalm reading and then several prayers were chanted. Some people stood while others sat. If someone ever tells you that Lutheran services are inaccessible to outsiders, ha! Tell them to try going to a synagogue! Anyway, it was a very surreal experience. I'm not sure how educational it really was, since I didn't know what was going on! But it definitely was exposure to a completely different culture, and that was interesting.
This week JJ and I celebrated Fat Tuesday with a dinner of pancakes and funnel cakes. I didn't know this, but JJ told me that it's traditional the day before Lent to have pancakes or doughnuts or other rich foods. This is because the day before Lent started, everyone would use up all their fat and shortening and rich ingredients that they wouldn't be using during Lent. Well, we'll probably still be having rich foods during Lent (praise the lard!), but it was fun nonetheless. In chapel we had a wonderful divine service for the first day of Lent with the imposition of ashes. On Thursday, we used the service of corporate confession and absolution. It's hard to beat divine service one day, and confession and absolution the next! It has been a very edifying Lent so far, but it is hard to believe we are in Lent already.
We wish you all a blessed Lent as we prepare for our Lord's death and resurrection.

Last week of the quarter!
Thank you to everyone for your prayers. We have a busy schedule this week but are looking forward to our break come Friday. We have plans to travel to Michigan to visit my grandfather and then to Wisconsin again to stay with JJ's family. Hopefully the weather will be nice for us!

Great news! the LayBible Institute's Seminar on Man and Woman in Christ led by Dr. Biermann is now available on iTunes. For those of you who already have iTunes, search for the Concordia Seminary store and look in Congregation Resources. This is an excellent seminar that JJ and I took last spring. It discusses in detail the God-given roles for men and woman. I highly recommend it! From iTunes you can also watch/listen to classes on Lutheran doctrine and history; chapel sermons; and seminary workshops, seminars, and symposiums. If you don't have iTunes, you can download it here.
And while I'm plugging something, I'm going to plug my new line of cards. You can buy a book of my encouragement cards here. They're small notes with my original photography, art, and poetry that you can cut out and mail in a regular size envelope.

BUY NOW!

Well, JJ is going to have a busy week this week. Poor guy has been working so hard and not getting much sleep. He has three papers this week, a presentation due today, and a sermon to memorize for Saturday/Sunday services this weekend and a new one to write for class by Friday. He will be very busy! He also has Sasse discussion group, intramurals on Tuesday and Thursday, and vicarage workshop on Wednesday. Oh, and he's doing incense in chapel tomorrow morning. The lad is booked! and by the end of the week, he will be bushed! It's times like this where, I think, it's a bit harder to actually enjoy seminary! Of course, he loves all he's learning, but some times, there's so much to learn all at once that you don't have time to enjoy it; you just have to do it! After this week, the last two weeks of the quarter will be much easier. If he can survive this week, he should be ok!
The weather has been warming up a bit here, which is nice. The fountain in the middle of campus is frozen still, but the sun has been out. JJ is looking forward to "his" soccer field thawing and drying out so that he can get some guys together from spring soccer. The Seminary club team, which he coached this past fall, was the best team the Sem has ever had (or so said Dr. Voelz, who used to be the coach). JJ is hoping to be able to arrange some scrimmages with the team and anyone else that wants to play because they were such a great team and had such a fun time playing with each other. I regret that I was a bad scrapbooker and didn't take a single picture all season! Hopefully, if they play again this spring, I'll get a few pictures.
Our intramurals team is in the playoffs for basketball and resoundingly out of the playoffs for volleyball. We had our last volleyball match on Thursday and quickly and profoundly lost as usually. It's kind of sad because that's the one sport I play! (and the one sport our team's lost at so far...hmmm...I wonder what that says...?) Oh well. I'm not as bothered by it as JJ; I can enjoy myself most of the time even when we don't win!
JJ and I were able to attend the Making Abortion Unthinkable seminar on campus this weekend. It was moderated by Dr. Gibbs, using a curriculum put out by Stand to Reason. The curriculum had five (I think) sessions, which took us through the four steps of the art of pro-life persuasion: Reclaim the meaning of abortion, Simplify the argument, Argue logically and coherently, and Answer the pro-abortion rhetoric.
The first step involves using images carefully and wisely to reclaim the meaning of abortion. Our society is visual, and moral truths are frequently taught via graphic images. For instance, when you think of the holocaust, what image do you think of? What images does the media use when talking about the holocaust? These images are very disturbing, yet they are used to portray the truth about the atrocities that happened. Yet what images do you think of when you hear the word abortion? What images does the media use? They don't use any images of abortions themselves or of aborted babies, rather, of protesters and the like. So, we've lost the meaning of the word abortion in our culture; we hear the word but we don't associate it with what's actually happening. We talked about how to use images appropriately, and then we watched a short video that showed what abortion really is. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen, and there wasn't a dry eye in the room. Anyone who is unmoved by the facts of abortion needs to see the reality of abortion. I don't think you can be half-hearted about this issue after you've seen pictures of the bodies of aborted babies.
The second step, simplify the argument, taught us to bring all discussion of abortion down to this basic question: "What is the unborn?" That is the heart of the issue. If the unborn is a living human person, than you can't kill it. If it isn't, then there's no reason not to kill it. So we learned lots of techniques to keep the argument on the real, central issue of what the unborn is.
Third, we learned how to argue that the unborn is a child and that abortion is wrong. We learned scientific facts proving that the child is alive from conception (even before, since both the sperm and the egg are both alive), that the child is undeniable human (it has human DNA), and that the child is its own unique individual (its DNA is distinct from its mother's) and a valuable human person (human value cannot be based on size, level of development, environment, or dependability).
Finally, the last step, we discussed common pro-abortion rhetoric and how to answer it.
The workshop lasted most of the day, and we got lots of materials to keep. The workbook will be a great resource as it contains everything in the videos we watched. It was a very informative program that I heartily encourage others to participate in. It was a real eye-opener too. There is so much at stake in this debate; it's literally a life and death issue!
Well, that's all for now. As always, thanks to all who are encouraging us with their support, prayers, time, and love. God's blessings and peace!