After a relaxing weekend, the week has begun in earnest. It was a good day at work, though. After my funk last week, being able to have a good day no matter what's happening is such a blessing! I stayed fairly busy until lunch, and found a few things to occupy my afternoon. I'm in the hematology department right now, historically my least favorite area of the lab, but I'm making the best of it. The worst part is making blood smear slides--I don't have the technique fully mastered yet.
Yesterday at church one of the young men, Joshua, gave the message. As I understand it, he is 19 years old. He did a really good job, speaking on Psalm 22. I am impressed that the church, though not having many in attendance, is seeking to develop the talents of the young men there. I don't know yet why God brought us to Des Moines, but I wonder if being involved at Bethany might not be part of the plan.
Friday morning I started looking at one chapter in Psalms each morning as I eat breakfast. It has been an uplifting experience, and something I wish I'd been keeping a priority more consistently. Abi and I usually will read a few chapters each evening, but getting some time in the Word before going to work is also important. What I'm trying to do is take some notes on the chapter and then read the corresponding section out of Spurgeon's The Treasury of David.
It's already 5 PM. We had an early supper a little bit ago as I was hungry and Abi hadn't eaten lunch. I'm tired, but it's too early to go to bed. There's some reading to be done, and then we'll see where the evening takes us.
I hope you all had a wonderful day, and I will catch you later!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Settling in...
For those of you who don't know, Abi and I moved to Des Moines, IA, on October 3rd, 2011. I have taken a job as a Medical Technologist at the VA Hospital here in Des Moines, and things are starting to get settled for us. We've upgraded housing a bit, going from a two-bedroom apartment of roughly 850 square feet to a two-bedroom townhouse at just over 1000 square feet. It's a very nice place, one major advantage being a utility room with laundry hookups, of which we took advantage within a week or so of moving to town. The first night here my dad and sister-in-law Susanna stayed with us to help rearrange things on our second day, and within a couple of weeks we hosted a friend of Abi's for a night as she was moving from Illinois to Idaho and we were pretty much on the way.
For about a week and a half, ending this past Thursday, I was under a very dark cloud, being quite grouchy and looking for everything about our situation that I could dislike. My attitude was very hurtful to Abi, especially since I was very closed off about the whole thing, but thankfully we were able to talk as we lay in bed Thursday night and a ray of light broke through. Yes, there are things about our situation that I find less than desirable, the commute to work being near the top of the list (it's hard to adjust to a 20-25 minute drive after living only 5 minutes from work). But there are a lot of good things about where we're at now, and the way we got to Des Moines was so undoubtedly God's leading that there must be some reason we're here. I still don't know exactly what that reason may be, but there's plenty of work to be done for His Kingdom, and my moping about doesn't do anything to further that cause.
We've attended Bethany Baptist Church here in town for the past three Sundays, and will be heading there again this morning. It is a smaller congregation, but the people are friendly, the preaching comes out of the Bible, the singing and music is wonderful, and it's very possible we've found our church home.
And with that, it's definitely time I got up, shaved, and got dressed. I've already been through my morning Bible reading and my daily perusal of the comics, and I've had a bite to eat, so I really have little left to do for the morning routine.
May you be blessed today as you serve the Lord!
For about a week and a half, ending this past Thursday, I was under a very dark cloud, being quite grouchy and looking for everything about our situation that I could dislike. My attitude was very hurtful to Abi, especially since I was very closed off about the whole thing, but thankfully we were able to talk as we lay in bed Thursday night and a ray of light broke through. Yes, there are things about our situation that I find less than desirable, the commute to work being near the top of the list (it's hard to adjust to a 20-25 minute drive after living only 5 minutes from work). But there are a lot of good things about where we're at now, and the way we got to Des Moines was so undoubtedly God's leading that there must be some reason we're here. I still don't know exactly what that reason may be, but there's plenty of work to be done for His Kingdom, and my moping about doesn't do anything to further that cause.
We've attended Bethany Baptist Church here in town for the past three Sundays, and will be heading there again this morning. It is a smaller congregation, but the people are friendly, the preaching comes out of the Bible, the singing and music is wonderful, and it's very possible we've found our church home.
And with that, it's definitely time I got up, shaved, and got dressed. I've already been through my morning Bible reading and my daily perusal of the comics, and I've had a bite to eat, so I really have little left to do for the morning routine.
May you be blessed today as you serve the Lord!
Welcome
Hi there, and welcome to the new Joe Westbrook Experience.
I kinda lost my purpose with the old blog, and so I decided to start fresh. That, and I wanted to change the e-mail address tied to my blog (how's that for a reason?). It was such a little thing, but it was frustrating to be logged in to the blog and have to either log out or run a different browser to log in to different Google functions with my main e-mail address. So now, here I am.
My previous blog ended up being basically just posts about my exercise activities. While I will likely be posting those things again for those who are interested, I don't want that to be my main focus. What I want to be in the habit of is sharing things related to Christianity and encouraging anyone reading this to examine their lives from a standpoint of faith -- if you're already a Christian, I hope what I have to say will be a blessing to you and will lead you to a closer walk with God, and if you're not a Christian, I hope you will consider what I say and begin to think on Jesus Christ as someone more than a man out of history.
I will do my best to answer comments and questions, but you have to realize that working a job that keeps me out of my house for 9 1/2 hours every day and needing to spend time with my wife, Abi, will prevent me at times from getting online. Also, as a courtesy, I ask that even if you think I'm totally off my rocker in anything I say, you keep your comments clean -- not just toward me, but toward anyone else who has commented. I will not tolerate profanity and any such comments will be deleted the second I am aware of them.
With that, I hope you have a blessed day, and enjoy the experience!
I kinda lost my purpose with the old blog, and so I decided to start fresh. That, and I wanted to change the e-mail address tied to my blog (how's that for a reason?). It was such a little thing, but it was frustrating to be logged in to the blog and have to either log out or run a different browser to log in to different Google functions with my main e-mail address. So now, here I am.
My previous blog ended up being basically just posts about my exercise activities. While I will likely be posting those things again for those who are interested, I don't want that to be my main focus. What I want to be in the habit of is sharing things related to Christianity and encouraging anyone reading this to examine their lives from a standpoint of faith -- if you're already a Christian, I hope what I have to say will be a blessing to you and will lead you to a closer walk with God, and if you're not a Christian, I hope you will consider what I say and begin to think on Jesus Christ as someone more than a man out of history.
I will do my best to answer comments and questions, but you have to realize that working a job that keeps me out of my house for 9 1/2 hours every day and needing to spend time with my wife, Abi, will prevent me at times from getting online. Also, as a courtesy, I ask that even if you think I'm totally off my rocker in anything I say, you keep your comments clean -- not just toward me, but toward anyone else who has commented. I will not tolerate profanity and any such comments will be deleted the second I am aware of them.
With that, I hope you have a blessed day, and enjoy the experience!
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