Our Church

Carrie and I had the pleasure of worshiping this morning with our church - Vintage Faith Church. This is the church that we have been a part of since we've moved out here. Recently, our church joined ministries with First Presbyterian Church of Santa Cruz. It's kind of a wierd relationship, as there is one set of buildings and one staff for two different churches. We aren't becoming "presbyterian," nor are they becoming non-denominational. One of the pastors compared it to a KFC/A&W - 2 eateries doing a whole lot of sharing under 1 roof.

It's actually kind of a cool story - allow me to explain. Vintage Faith Church (VFC) is actually a church plant of Santa Cruz Bible Church. We were meeting in their facilities, but the location wasn't the best. One of the visions of VFC is to have a presence in downtown Santa Cruz. So, we as a church were praying for options to open up downtown. An anonymous donor gave a bunch of money to purchase a building, but no one was selling space downtown. So, they were starting to consider other alternatives. Somehow our head pastor, Dan Kimball, heard that First Pres might be a good church to talk to. First Pres is in an amazing location - very close to downtown, a high school, a middle school, and their parking lot is used during the week for UCSC. So Dan calls First Pres' pastor up to talk about the possibilities. Their pastor then tells Dan that their church leadership had been praying about talking to Dan about the possibilities of joining ministries! God was clearly working in both of these churches, long before they knew it.

So since this Easter, our churches have been sharing. I think it's been going really well. The First Pres people have been really welcoming, and it's been great to have a better representation of the different generations (VFC was heavy on the 20 year-olds and light on everything else). We started a series today dealing with The DaVinci Code, looking at what we as Christians believe and how those beliefs originated. I'm really looking forward to it.

This photo was taken at our church a couple of weeks ago. It's only in Santa Cruz that you would come across this in the parking lot! (Those are wetsuits, in case you can't tell). Out for a surf before the gathering!

Dinner with Bridget

Last night, Carrie and I had the pleasure of dining at the home of Bridget De Yager in San Jose. Bridget is a friend of mine (Jeremy) from high school and college. She now teaches at San Jose Christian - where Carrie will be next year! We're excited about that. It was great to catch up with her and look through some old pics. How crazy is it that we now live about the same distance from her in California that I did growing up in Iowa!

A New Job!

Carrie and I are pleased to announce that Carrie will be teaching at San Jose Christian School next year! This seems like an answer to prayer, as we were wondering what she should do next year. She was hoping to get into a teaching credential and master's program starting June 2007, but we weren't sure what to do in the mean time. It turns out that San Jose Christian will pay for most, if not all, of her schooling for the credential and masters, while she teaches!

The position is 3/5's time. She'll teach 2 6th grade classes of science, and most likely 2 6th grade classes of Bible. Although it will be a little over a half-hour commute, she will be able to carpool with a good friend (who also happens to be the other 6th grade teacher) who lives in the area.

The superintendent, Al Kosters, not only hired Carrie, but also hired our brother-in-law, Craig Stiemsma, a few years back!

If you want to check out the school's website, you can find the link on the right hand side of this page.

Gezellig

Hi. So we now have a blog. Why? Because we have very important, insightful thoughts that we are sure your life will be the better for. No, not really. We actually have a blog so that we can keep family and friends updated on our life with stories and photos. Yes, we could email. But, this seems cooler, and, you can read at your leisure. You don't have to be plagued with emails from us, but now the choice is up to YOU!

As you can see, our blog's name is "Gezellig." For all of our "if-you-ain't-Dutch-you-ain't-much-family-and-friends," Gezellig (Geh-ZEL-ick) is a Dutch word meaning cozy or comfortable. Jer's Dad used to say it a lot when he was visiting our house (cabin). We have great mental and actual pictures of him reclining in a borrowed Lazy-Boy from next door, right next to our wood stove, sleeping. When I googled gezellig, I ran across one page that said the California translation would be something like "kickback" or "chill out." Another page said that a gezellig environment is one that allows good times to happen.

So, out of all of this, arises the name for our blog...because it's an important memory we have of Dad...because we hope that when you read our blog, you'll have somewhat of a gezellig time...because we hope to share a lot of our good times with you.

We don't know how often we will update the blog or how long we'll keep doing it. Hopefully we'll be better at this than emailing. Check back often, and comment on the posts if you like. Let us know if you have questions.