Adventures: New York City NY

After Thanksgiving, we spend the weekend in New York City! Stephen was looking at a car ('78 Jag) in Connecticut, but decided not to buy it. So we took the train the rest of the way to Grand Central. 

We stayed at Simon & Jeannine's apartment. Simon is one semester from completing his Master of Architecture at Columbia. In February, Jeannine will finish her nutrition internship at various hospitals around town. 

On Sunday, we visited their congregation at Trinity Grace Church, meeting at a school auditorium. They are planting new churches across the city. 

We first visited the World Trade Center Memorial. Turns out, you need to make reservations online. It's free, but so popular they only let in so many people at a time. So, we missed out. But we did get to see the new tower under construction. (Below... the car we didn't buy and the memorial we didn't see.) 

Photos this trip were taken with Stephen's new iphone, since our camera batteries died on the trip there. At the New York Public Library, they are celebrating 100 years and had a special display of their prized pieces, like the Guttenberg Bible. Ginger was excited to see the original Winnie the Pooh and his friends. 

We took most of our photos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We loved the musical instruments display.

Stephen's favorite collection was "Arms and Armor"

The classical Greek wing reminded us of Rome. .

 

Ginger made an airbrushed cake meant to imitate NYC street paint-brush artists. 

We celebrated Ginger's 26th birthday with our friends. 

Adventures: InterVarsity Fall Retreat, NH

Rhode Island and Connecticut students went back to Toah Nipi for a Fall Retreat. After we arrived, it snowed and snowed!

The prayer station evening had many artistic ways for students to connect with the theme of "Identity" for the weekend. My favorite station was of masks that people wear- a mask that makes you feel comfortable, but isn't who you really are. Below, Lindsey adds a mask to the wall. One mask says, "I'm fine. I don't mind. It's okay," of a student trying to cover up his real feelings and hurts. We invited students to be real with God, and open to being who He wants us to be. 

 

Two stations below share expressions of God's vision for who you are, and burning in a fire old lies about yourself.

Early morning sessions had students met for prayer, and to pray for each other personally. Our praise band led songs about understanding identity in Christ. The RI guys staff also performed silly musical skits to understand identity. 

My group had ten RIC students, who all enjoyed being silly, playing in the snow, and also each heard powerful and personal messages from God through the weekend. 

Jill became a Christian on their spring break trip to New Orleans last year. But she felt like she'd wandered some, and needed this retreat to re-focus on God. The topic of the retreat was "Identity." During one evening with prayer stations, she was doing an artistic sculpting prayer station. There was a pile of little stones and one fell on the floor. She turned it over, and "Jillian" was written on it. 

Jill turned to her best friend, Michelle, and said, "Did you write my name on this stone?" Michelle said no. Jill dug through the other stones- they were all blank. She asked the staff, but no one knew how her name got on a stone. She finally said, "God's calling me by name!"

Michelle became a Christian at the same time as Jill, and although she has continued attending church-related things since then, she had a good revelation over the weekend also- "Before I was a Christian, I spent my time trying to get people to accept me through drinking and partying. After I became a Christian, I kept trying to get acceptance- this time through doing good Christian things. But this weekend, God told me I'm supposed to pursue Him, not pursue the acceptance of Christians."

Adventures: Kapalkas Visit

Ginger's parents came in visit in October, taking Amtrak again.

Stephen gave tours of his project on the navy base and the construction site.

We explored some new parts of the island, and bought pumpkins. 

 

We spent a lot of time in Jamestown, on the nearby island. Beavertail Lighthouse.

 

We spent a weekend in Rye, NH, visited our friend John and Holly. They took us to Strawberry Banke, an old neighborhood in Portsmouth from the 1700s which has been preserved. We played some old children's games.

 

Ginger met the resident cat. There was a stuffed-toy version of this cat in every house with a different colored badanna. The children's tour had a worksheet for them to list what color bandanna was found in each house for extra fun and prizes. 

 On our way home from NH, we stopped in Boston to see the USS Constitution. Sadly, we just missed the closing tour, but got to look at the outside anyway. We did get to tour a WWII ship, the USS Cassin Young.

In Jamestown, we visited a historic windmill, and firestation full of old fire wagons. Where ever we went, Mom & Dad found plenty to photograph.

Adventures: Fall in Newport RI

Reflections on our wonderful summer home in Newport. 

Ginger worked for Majestic Cruise Company, selling tickets for 1-hour cruises that include narrated tours of the harbor. She also got to give the tours one day when the guides were all out. Some days had fancy lunch and dinner cruises. 

We went swimming in the ocean on a stormy but warm day, and enjoyed rain while being mostly under water already...

We renewed our membership to Newport Mansions and got Tim to join us in some tours. Below, Chateau Sur Mer. 

Our puppy Clementine is now 9 months old, and weighs 33 pounds, probably her full adult size. That's big enough to drive, right?

Our landlord, Paul, let us use his kayaks at the north point of the island.

 

 

Paul and Stephen did a lot of work on the apartment over the summer, including installing a fireplace.

We didn't buy tickets to the Newport Folk Festival this year, but we did listen from the water with Phoebe on her dingy. There was a huge community of people listening from their boats, swimming, and having fun. Phoebe found several people she knew as we drove around.

Stores on the wharf boarded up for hurricane Irene, often with mocking signs:

Newport didn't suffer much building damage, but the storm was hard on the trees, and we lost most of our fall leaves.

 

We lost our electricty right after the news channel downgraded Irene to a tropical storm. We took some steaks out of our freezer and went to Tim's house to use his electric gas stove. We also drove to the shore to see the waves. All beaches were carefully monitered by police. After 36 hours, our power returned.

 

We did some apple-picking at Sweetberry Farm.

 

and took more silly photos!

On Stephen's birthday, we visited Kingscote Mansion.