We Made It!

I think we've both been waiting for some really exciting things to happen to us so that people might want to read our blog.  And here we are...2 months later :)  And on the one hand, yes, we survived our first year of seminary!  Thank you, thank you!  And yet, it is a month beginning with the letter "J" and when it is one of these "J" months, we have what is called fittingly called, "J-Term".  In order to stay on track with a three-year program (and if we don't, then well...we'll be here for-e-ver [think Sandlot]), we must take 5 classes per semester.  In order to accomplish this and stay sane...and by sane, I mean gainfully employed, sanitary and fed, we usually take a "J Term". 

This "J Term", Noel is taking Hebrew Exegesis which is a fancy way of saying translating several passages of the Old Testament, the whole book of Jonah, learning more syntax than she ever wanted to know and getting all sorts of fodder for hip sermons on the OT.  It's fun!  She thought she wasn't going to be able to venture on this little project with the same professor and teacher whom she previously ventured through Hebrew II with, but God aligned things marvelously (as He's wont to do) and so there she is.  Every morning for two weeks, you can find her studying Hebrew or chatting nonchalantly with her Hebrew buddy, Ben.  The prof told us not to sit by each other, but secretly I think we're his favorites :)  Lift up Noel that her memory may prove vast and capable in the area of Hebrew and that it would stick and that God's Truth would be deepened in her gut as a result of her study of the Old Testament in Hebrew.  (She's thankful for already learning some interesting tidbits!)

"J Term" holds Evangelism and Church Planting for Greg.  He has been reading a few books in order to prepare book reports due prior to his class which starts next Monday.  None of these books, as of yet, have been all that great and would probably appear mundane and uninsightful to most of you, so we will not recommend them here.  We are both hoping for his sake that the reading material improves and becomes less formulaic (and for Noel, too, because she has to take it sometime in the next year).  A good book on evangelism and church planting is hard to find, so it seems.  Chatting with a friend the other night, we thought that perhaps this class needs some good missional church, how-to-church-plant-and-be-missional kinds of books.  Ironically, we are feeling quite a lack in the "How To" area in most of our classes.  Like, where there's a will and a theology, there must be a way, right???  Well, we believe so...or else what kind of theology is it, really?  Anyway, that's a different soap box for a different day.  If any of you have any suggestions on good church planting or missional church books, please let us know!
And pray for Greg as he is in class all day every day next week that he would learn what it is that God has for him.

When not in "J Terms" ie most of the summer, we can be found at our various jobs.  Greg is still at Starbucks, though he was just relocated...AGAIN.  But, it's all good.  He's at a slow, giant cafe store now that is a great hang out and lets him engage with customers as he likes to do (which Noel doesn't understand at all :) ).
Noel is a manager at an outdoor pool in Midland, about 35 minutes northwest of where they live.  Thus far it's been both a challenge and fun.  Last week, she had a good conversation with Grandpa Jim, as she calls him, about the woes of western PA and the seeming epidemic of very young moms (and dads).  More on that later, but it's people like Jim that make Noel's days out in the sun, yelling at kids and saving lives all worth it....well, that and the wicked tan she's getting!  Just kidding, pray that the both of us would live the joy of the Lord at work and would be lights in dark places.

Thanks for reading, Pfiles.  We regret that we will not be traveling anywhere much this summer and so will not get to see many of you.  But, please do come see us if you're over our way!  And let us know if we can be lifting you up as well.  We wouldn't have made it through our 1000th day of marriage and our first year of seminary without your love and prayers...fo' real, we mean that. 

incomplete works of greg

So, since we mention the "work" we do, but you only actually ever see swanky pictures of our social lives and crutches to get us through a harrowing seminary experience, we thought we'd show you some of the fruits of our labors.  It is sort of difficult to post large papers or things that would require a lot of context but we have done our best to post what is most accessible and brief. :)

One of our classes was Biblical Interpretation/Intro to English/Greek/Hebrew grammar and our final project was to read a book called "Drama of Scripture", basically an overview of salvation history which unfolds in 6 "Acts" (plus an Intertestamental period).  Using this format, we were to develop a teaching program on these 6 acts taught through whatever medium we preferred so it was a creative opportunity for us.
Greg chose to use the German national anthem to set a hymn based on the six acts from the drama book.

“The Drama of Scripture”

words by Gregory Pfeifer, 2010

music by Franz Josef Haydn, “Austria” 1797

http://www.digitalhymnal.org/dhymn.cfm?hymnNumber=423 for Hymn Tune 

1-Creation

God created out of nothing

All things by His spo-ken Word:

Light and life in heav'n, earth, sky, and sea.

God called all He made ve-ry good!

Making ma-n in His own im-ag-e,

God spoke His first co-ve-nant,

“Be ye fruit-ful! Mul-ti-ply and fill!

Have do-min-ion o-ver all I have giv'n!”

2-Fall of Humankind

God gave only one com-mand-ment:

“Eat from this tree and ye shall die.”

They, forgetting God and choo-sing self

dis-o-beyed and foll-owed a lie.

Man's re-la-tion-ship with God was bro-ken

yet He still would pro-mis-eth:

“From the woman's seed shall come vic-tor-y

He sha-ll crush the head of sin a-nd death!”

3- Kingdom Established in Israel

Is-ra-el, God's cho-sen kingdom

blessed to bless the sons of man.

Out of bon-dage through the wild-er-ness

God led them to the Pro-mised Land.

Gave them kings and priests, judges, prophets, Law

through whom co-ve- nants un-furled.

“I will be your God. You, my people.

From you will come the King who will save the world”

4-Redemption Accomplished by Jesus

Jesus Christ ful- filled the Co-ve-nants

wri-ting Law and Bless-ing with-in.

Second Adam, Hope of Is-ra-el

Conq'ring King o'er death a-nd sin!

The In-car-nate Word lived and dies for us

rose a-gain to reign on High

“God so loved the world: He gave His own Son

Who-e'er be-lieves in Him shall have Ne-w Life”

5-The Church and Jesus' Mission on Earth

God the Fa-ther sends Sal-va-tion forth.

God the Son se- cures Re-demp-tion.

God the Spi-rit leads the Church in Truth

who Par-ti-ci- pates in His Work.

Ci-ty on a hill. Light to Nations fill.

Com-mis-sioned by Christ our King:

“Go into the world make di-sci-ples

by Fa-ther, Son, and Holy Ghost bap-tiz-ing!”

6-Return of the King

Wai-ting for the King to come a-gain

long-ing for new earth and new heav'n.

All things shall be once for all re-deemed

through the judg-ment of the Lamb.

Part of one Story from Fall to Glory

Jesus comes to write the End,

“Lo! I'm coming soon!” we say when you do,

“Ma-ra-na-tha come Lord Je-sus! Amen!”

This Hymn is designed to support a 6-part teaching program, each verse coinciding with the content of the teaching to introduce the Parish to the “Drama of Scripture” as a way of situating the narrative of the Bible in its own context as well as our own context in the unfolding Story. The hymn tune was chosen as a familiar one, often associated with “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken” (1982 Hymnal, Hymn #522), which is a Hymn concerning the Church. The familiarity with the tune, also used as the music for the German National Anthem, “Deutschlandlied”, allows for ease of teaching the new text. Similarly the familiar tune turns the focus away from learning the music to paying attention to the lyrics. Though pedagogical in nature, this Hymn, as with all others, ought to inspire to worship. To help facilitate this worshipful experience, the lyrics attempt to draw the singer out of self and upward to the Lord by emphasizing God's work.  The hymn tune has three sections per verse. The first section introduces God's activity, the middle section briefly relates the impact of the activity and each verse concludes with God speaking words of covenant exhortation, except for the last verse where the Church responds to the final words of Christ as we now await His return, reminding us that we are within the time frame of that verse and the chapter of the “Drama” we find ourselves.

And now for the rest of the story...

And now...the moment you've all been waiting for!

The view from our front porch to our street...that truck is a staple of Melrose Avenue

it belongs to our neighbors across the street, I totally could have sworn that it had a "charleton heston is my president" sticker on it, but I checked again the other day but nope, wasn't there.

maybe i'll get Denny (our neighbor who owns it) one...i guess my imagination thinks it would fit!

This was out first real meal in Ambridge.

Lemon dill salmon and salad...yum!

FYI, our camping chairs are still in the front and seem to have become permanent lawn fixtures.

Our quaint little porch and awning area.  To the left you can see St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox church.

They're our landlords and currently, our pirohy dealers of choice. 

Lesson #1 in Ambridge:  Fridays are Pirohy Fridays at the churches...pretty much ALL the churches.  That means on Friday, you can go over to the basement at St. Vlad's and find several folks ready to serve you hot, cold or frozen potato or sauerkraut pirohies with or without butter and onions.  Fr. Michael says that people don't understand the concept of tithing and they expect a little extra, so they do the pirohies :) 

If you come visit, you're sure to find us with some of these on hand or we'll take you over to St. Vlad's for some pirohy goodness.

Woo hoo!  One of the first things we noticed in Ambridge is how much they like to party...not in the classical sense but rather churches like to hold festivals and our first week in town, Good Samaritan Parish, one of five churches on our street, was having their annual festival.  As you can see below, it was an event sponsored by Miller Lite...okay, we're not actually sure that's true but it was really funny that they had a beer tent with different cover bands and lots of two-steppin'.  

Our particular vice took the form of BINGO!!!!

  We figured the house always wins but in this case, we didn't feel too bad givin' to the house :)

And then....Noel won!  We had played a couple of different nights, it was 7 cards for $1.00 so we really only spent about 5 bucks, but check out this card...single winner, baby!  14 bucks in our pocket, awesome.

Here's the tell all sign...it was great.  The priests of Good Samaritan live down the street from us and they're really really kind.  Maybe cuz of the Miller Lite? ;)  We tried our first pierogies here...yum-my!

Another Pittsburgh favorite that we experienced: 8 dollar tickets for an enjoyable night at the ball game ain't too shabby.  Ah, it's nice to be in a town where the team sucks and the price reflects it.

It was a really fun outing with a bunch of Trinity peeps.

So, for Pirates games, they literally shut down the bridge to cars and people just walk on by...can you imagine the rioting if they tried to close down a bridge in Chi-town?

So, you can't play ball?  Well, kill 'em with aesthetics!

PNC has an AWESOME view of the city and the river which runs right by it.

Look! Isengard!

Same ol' us

This is Gabe, he likes to make funny faces and yelling for the Pirates,

he's our friend Geoff's kid (and Erin's too...gotta give credit where credit is due)

I love this photo, I caught every person off guard, awesome.

All these people are Trinity folks...Geoff is on the far left with the orthodox priest beard, Chimela is from Africa and he's sitting below him, Karen (and her husband, John, who wore matching Canada sweatshirts to the game) and Meg are down in the seats by Greg and they're awesome, Trevor's the Yankees fan from South Carolina, Paul was clearly caught in the flash light...he's from San Diego so he pretty much looks awesome no matter what.  Brian is over there in the Cubs outfit, but get this, he's also from San Diego.  Weird, eh?  Mike, Scott and Bartholomew are in the back row and they all rock.  The first two are our neighbors and we like to hang out with them.  Bartholomew's from Tanzania and has two sets of twins!  The Africans enjoyed the game though I think it was mostly because they got kettlecorn. :)

*****************

 There's a better shot of our friend, Brian...the security guard stopped him, looking quite concerned and partly perturbed, to inform him that the Cubs were not in fact playing in PNC that night.  Brian was like, "oh yeah, I know, I just wear this to all baseball games."  Hilarious.  Pittsburghians definitely take their sports waaaaay too seriously...especially the ones that really suck. 

And here's the real reason that everyone goes to Pirate games: Pierogy races!

Oh yes, you read that correctly...those are pierogies on the field.

In case you're wondering, the purple one named "Oliver" won

Pierogy butts!

 And then, the Pirates actually won...astounding us all!!!  Obviously, Geoff and Ben were just a little excited.  They probably won because Mike was in the back praying that it wouldn't go into extra innings...I said, AMEN and AMEN!

So, as you can see, God's put us in another great city with more great people...and thankfully, a waaay shorter commute to get to urbania.

The Move

6,000 miles and gabillions of bird poops, dust storms and intermittent rain later, we arrived in Elmhurst, IL
Pseudo home sweet home where the Pechanios took excellent care of us...even though we proved to possibly be the most difficult houseguests they've ever had...more on that later!

Well, here's the dirty car:

 Then we picked up the truck and the moving party began

Special thanks to Phyllis, Jenn and Matty for all their help, sweat and tears
(just kidding...unless you did actually cry)

 On one hand, we felt like, "awesome, all our stuff fit in this one unit" but at the same time, we said, "man, we've got a LOT of crap"...and we're only in our 20s...more stuff to Freecycle, I guess (yes, that was a shameless plug...go check it out, it's green, it's free, it's cyclical...what could be better?)

 So proud, so muscular.
In his favor, we did manage to fit all our stuff into the 16 footer, just perfectly.

 

 Sorry about the really dirty windshield...imagine driving with that thing.
Also sorry for the short supply of photos from this trip, things like time constraints, a UTI and not traveling with the truck the whole time held us up.  But, we arrived in Ambridge to about a dozen folks on the lawn ready and willing to help, even after having moved about 3 people earlier in the day.  The whole truck was unloaded in about 45 minutes and there began our relationship with our new community.  Alleluia.

 And that's just the beginning...

Road Trip

So, many people have been wondering why we're moving our stuff into storage and when we're leaving officially. You can look up this information on the Timeline (following the tabbed links at the top) but you also can just continue reading.

July 23rd will be the official last days of work for the both of us. We will then photograph a wedding on the 24th. The 25th will be our last Sunday at Resurrection and then weeping and gnashing of teeth will ensue.

But once we've had our fill of sackcloth and ashes, we'll wave farewell to Chicagoland on Thursday, July 29th and head for the lovely little town of Joplin, Missouri...well, actually their KOA Kampground. Why they believe they can get away with spelling Kampground with a "K", I have no idea. Possibly because all of their Kampgrounds include gamerooms, flush toilets, resort style pools and plenty of RV space. Who knows? In any case, that's where we'll be.... Lest you think that Joplin is merely a tribute city to the late, great Janis, think again. It's actually just a pit stop on our way to San Antonio, the land of Miss Congeniality, the archnemesis of Lady Joplin (citation needed). There we will stay with Noel's family for several days and torment her poor retired Dad and chase their nephew around...and around...and around...but indoors, because Good God, it's humid!

Basically, we keep finding ourselves daydreaming about the Kampgrounds we will enkounter, the glorious majesty of El Paso/Juarez, the enchantment of New Mexico, the guano of Carlsbad Caverns (the handing over place of the lovely Katherine Noel Collins), the UFOs of Roswell, the salsa of Albuquerque, the mile-highness of Denver, the Shining hotel of Estes Park, the rapids of la Poudre River (pronounced "poo-der" [middle school giggle]), the camp (note: with a "c") where Noel worked as a young warthog, the glory of the DeZwaan aardvarks in Idaho, the yellow stones of Old Faithful, the evil that stalks the Badlands and our descent back to Chicagoland, some way, some how. Probably by the grace of God.

Then, grab our life from storage, stick it in a truck and complete our journey to Ambridge, PA. Well, it'll really be just the beginning....

Now, if we could only finish packing our stuff. Bleh. Prayers coveted and appreciated. Tata for now.


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907

“This far” is our adventure into Seminary that we each have been on for quite some time with the Lord, but in His mercy and grace has recently started to take shape. Noel and Greg are both going to Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA starting in the pfall. Ambridge not being one of the major metropolitan areas in the United States may not be a familiar location to all so think of Pittsburgh (2 Super Bowls in the past 4 years, current resting place of Lord Stanley's cup---for now that is; I think they have a baseball team too) Industrial city by the river, a kind of Chicago Jr.* Now travel into the boonies over the hills to the west about 20 miles where all the steel refineries have closed down*... you've made it to Ambridge!! Seriously, we're very excited. The Chapel is nestled between the local Hair Salon on one side and Barber shop on the other. The main Campus offices are slightly overshadowed by the Sunoco and just past a short bar crawl you'll find the 8-lane bowling alley... simply fantastic! If Barney Fife grew a lumberjack beard and could down a Rook's Fish Sandwich, he would fit in well in Ambridge.

So, as you can see, we're excited about the community. Classes start on 9/07 and both Noel and Greg will begin their 3-year studies towards Master of Divinity degrees and eventual ordination into the Anglican church (whatever she looks like 3 years from now).

We have recently found a home in Ambridge, on 907 Melrose Ave. It's a property owned by St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church (winner of the coolest Saint name award*) and is a Triplex (think duplex with an extra plex shoved in the middle). We'll be on one of the end units with 2 bedrooms- we'll need to put up our guests! An unprecedented 2 bathrooms, and a basement with washer AND dryer! Once again we're very excited.



For those who know us uncannily well (or have a thing for numbers), we feel as though God has given us a coincidental sign of His affirmation by way of the 907 connection, which just so happens to be our wedding anniversary.



*needs additional citation for verification