Auxano Christmas

From Left: Eric, Brad, Jen's face, Shayla (lying down), Me, Steph, Katie, Jeremiah, Matt and Gussie.

I know, I know. I'm a total slacker. It's been almost a month since I wrote a blog post and I know you have been eagerly anticipating my every word. Or not. Maybe you didn't know this about me, but there are three things I'm really good at: puzzles, slacking and not getting around to things. I'm not even very good at puzzles.

The last few weeks before Christmas break have been a lot of fun. After the Annual General Meeting at Camp, Eric and I drove down the road to where a bunch of trees had been cut down and stole one. Best way to pick a Christmas tree ever. We had to cut off the bottom and a large section of the top just to make it fit in the living room, so it looked like a tree was growing through the floor and ceiling. It would have made Charlie Brown cry. We had classes with the wonderful Pam Welle on Spiritual Formation and she taught us how important being alone with God is. God and I went for walks together and may or may not have napped together. The key idea I got from that week was that you will know that your being alone with God is affecting you by how much more loving you are to people. That week was our family Christmas party at the Rentons and we had a gift exchange made up of either funny or useful unwanted house items or something under $5. There were quite a few gifts from previous years - an old Snuggie, a Darth Vader toy - as well as some joke gifts like a board game all about cats, called, if can you believe it, Cats (when I looked inside, it had first, second and third place ribbons that said things like, "You are a cat lover!" and "You know a lot about cats!" What they should have said was, "You are a freaking cat psychologist!" or "You know a lot about cats! You probably have too many of them," and for first place, "You know waaaayyy too much about cats. There is something wrong with you. Please get your cats spayed or neutered, they are probably a fire hazard.") My night was made when Rachel Zalinko bequeathed me her ugly Christmas sweater. It's pink and has reindeer on it. I don't know why she didn't want it.

My future husband.

Then we had our classes on Romans with David Banks, a fantastic man who knows a lot but is super humble about how he shares it. The last week of Auxano was practically a vacation, other than some work we did at camp. We had a fun DTG (Ditch the Girls, Ditch the Guys). The boys went out in the woods and had a manly adventure. The girls painted ceramics in Chemainus and baked cookies. We are trying really hard to break stereotypes. No actually. To break them the girls decided to have a secret wrestling match downstairs because that's what the boys always do, but it turned out to be not so secret as the boys knew what we were doing right away just by the crazy noises we were making. That actually happened. We had Christmas morning at the Auxano house on the last day. It was such fun! I woke up the girls and Jeremiah woke up the boys with a cup of hot chocolate. The hot chocolate didn't wake them up, we did. That would be bad ("Merry Christmas suckers!" - hot chocolate to the face.) We did Secret Santa and I got Matt the greatest present ever - according to his standards of the greatest present which you will probably not understand because you are not childlike. It took me a long time to figure out the difference between being childlike and being childish. You probably haven't figured that one out yourself but as I keep being reminded, I am quite old (25). I will explain it to you: being childlike means you have the faith of a child, which Jesus says to have, whereas being childish just means that you are stupid and annoying. Anyway the gift I got Matt was a "Thomas the Tank Engine" coloring book and crayons. He's British. Gussie gave me the most thoughtful gift ever: a little tack board with her favorite Scripture verses on it and a framed picture she took of me and Leilani, the Rentons little girl. We had a feast that the amazing Kelly Watt provided for us and Eric made us pancakes. It's just what he does.

Jeremiah and I thought this was supposed to be a creepy photo.

On December 6th we all had to say goodbye to each other for our month of Christmas vacation. This is how it went down:
Me: "Guys, guys, stop crying, I'm only going for a month."
Auxano students: "But Faith what will we do without you and your wise advice? Who else will advice us in our residence as our very own Resident Advisor?"
Me: "Beloveds, this is your time to rely on God, not on mortal (wo)man. Man cannot live on bread alone but on the word of God, Deuteronomy something something."
Steph and Matt: "She's so spiritual!" (waving the little spiritual flags Steph made. No really, she made those.)
Me: "I know. It's ridiculous."
Auxano students: "Will we ever see you again?"
Me: "What are you, illiterate? I'll be back here January 6th. So will you. Don't ask stupid questions."
Katie: "I'm going to miss you so much!"
Me: "I see you every Sunday at church. What's wrong with you."
Auxano students: "Our prayers are with you, oh wise one."
Me: "Save your prayers. I don't need them. I'm already too spiritual."
Pastor Tom: "Faith, are you paying attention? You look like you've been day dreaming about something ludicrous during my very important class on the Pentateuch."

Of course, this conversation is completely fabricated. For one, Mondays are my day off so I don't get to sit in on Pastor Tom's classes. But I think it paints a pretty accurate picture of how important I think I am to the program, AKA my self-delusions.

Merry Christmas!

We got Auxano versions of Jones Soda bottles for Christmas. Every detail is packed with awesome!