Brief Update

Hello friends!

Summer's getting near the final stretch (though it feels like we live inside the sun lately), and school will start back up at the end of the month. I just finished up week 5 of a 6 week summer intensive on Biblical Hebrew, which crams a full year of Hebrew into 6 weeks and tells you that you like it. Seriously though, it has been a really cool language to learn so far, very engaging and artistic. My professor is amazing, and she reminds me of my Mom with her passion for God's Word and some of her mannerisms. I think they would get along well if they ever met.

The North Park campus has always had lots and lots of crazy squirrels. When I was in undergrad, we would see them everywhere and joke that they were plotting to take over the university. Well, nine years later they haven't diminished one bit and they are a bit more bold than they used to be. Sometimes when I go out back to dump some garbage in the dumpster, I inevitably encounter one in a predictable but always surprising encounter that goes like this: I walk out my back door with a bag from the kitchen trash, usually thinking about something for school or whatever, and when I lift up the lid to the dumpster, there sits a suddenly panicked squirrel who was helping himself to some morsels of food. As soon as he sees me, he jerks back and forth looking for an escape route and then leaps into the air with claws and incisors outstretched, which causes me to freak out and drop the garbage bag as I cover my head. Then the lid to the dumpster, which I have let go of in my panic, slams down with a BANG that adds one last element of terror to the whole encounter, as the squirrel darts off into the bushes. Of course the squirrel never leaps directly AT me when it escapes, but it doesn't help that some of them actually have red eyes and I swear they are smiling at me when I walk by them on the campus.

Pray for us... that we would be protected from the squirrels, yes, but also just for our family as we have been tested in our faith lately. We truly appreciate all of you and your prayers for us. We hope your summers are times of refreshment and rejuvenation (and that you are keeping cool!).
Much love,
Mark