Here we go again ...

Well, another semester is here for me and my fellow classmates at SWBTS. This semester I am taking two writing seminars (Eschatology & Baptist Theologians) and Theological German. On the schedule are 12 book reviews and two 30 page papers ... so, you know what that means for this blog: not much time to do much independent writing, with the exception of a few "quote" posts here and there, and the future publication of 12 book reviews and two series. One series will be on AH Strong's ecclesiological views (they are quite interesting) and the other will have something to do with Anabaptists and eschatology.

I hope all of you are doing well, and I look forward to future interactions.

House for sale.

Most of you who know us, know that we have a house for sale in Wake Forest, NC. This is the house we had been working on and whose progress some of you have followed through this blog. We are trying to sell it by word of mouth, so as not to pay the huge real estate agent fee, so if you know of anybody who could be interested, please refer them to the bog we have dedicated to the sale of the house:

http://mnchome.wordpress.com

We're still alive ...

So they say that unless you blog at least every three days, you lose your readership ... well let us see: my last blog entry was June 11th. I guess I lost my readership, except for all you folks that are real hard core Maël and Cindy fans, or all of you that use feed readers ... so for y'all: we're still alive.
Much has has happened this summer. Both of my paternal grandparents passed away. We finished remodeling our house. We moved to Texas for me to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Busy summer.
I do plan to finish the senior pastor series, and possibly another series I started two years ago and never finished. I also plan to try to opine a little more on what I am studying and reading. I have lots of home improvement articles from my experience with the house. In short, I have enough to blog every three days ... now, where can I get the time?
Enough for now.

End of the school year.

Wow, another year has gone by. I have just finished my second and last semester at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, and have 1 more Monday class to teach at The College at Southeastern, then the summer begins. This is going to be a busy summer. "Why?", you might ask. Well, let me tell you ...

Two years ago I wrote a blog post entitled Deciding in Community (I more recently posted an update on that prayer request in Deciding in Community ... Update). Since then, though, there has been another opportunity for us that we and our community of believers have been praying about: going to SWBTS to pursue another PhD, this time in theology, to then be able possibly to go to France and do some theological education (details here are still very fuzzy). After two long years, much prayer, and many people approaching me confirming God's leading, we have decided to pursue that option. That means that we will move to Fort Worth, TX; we have to be there no later than August 17, 2009.

... and that means that we need to finish remodeling the house so we can put it on the market to sell. We also need to pack and move all of our junk, and we have less than 3 months to do it all !!!

As for writing ... I'm going to try my best to finish my current series on the senior pastor in a timely manner, but besides that and the occasional pictures of the house, this will probably be a quiet summer.

We covet your prayers, both for the summer and for the years ahead.

Cook-out at the Disseau's.

Last week, I had several students from my Statics class at St. Augustine's College, and a few others, come to the house to eat and hang out. I have often wanted to do this, but in the many years I have been teaching college level classes, I have never quite gotten around to it.

We did not discuss forces and moments or centers of gravity, but life, dating, cooking, fishing, ethics, and much more. It was nice to be able to relax and get to know my students a little better. Unfortunately, I will not be back at St. Augustine's College next year, but luckily, due to technology, I'll be able to keep in touch with some of them.

May I urge the ones of you who are in academia to take time to spend with your students on a non-academic level? These young adults need mentoring, and mentoring goes far beyond just academia. I promise you, you will never regret pouring your life into theirs, after all ... that is what teaching is all about.

Update ...

A new year has started, and it brings to the light the fact that another year has passed ... and that I have not blogged in a while: not that I have not wanted to, I just have not had time. 

So what is going on in our lives? Well, I have a new job. Since August 2008, I have been Assistant Professor of Engineering and Mathematics at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, NC. After three years of teaching high school, I have gone back full time to my true profession: college teaching. So in the fall I taught: Intro to Engineering and Problem Solving, Intro to Electrical and Computer Engineering Laboratory, Foundations of Physical Science, and 3 sections of Foundations of Physical Science Lab. In the spring I should be teaching: Engineering Graphics, Statics, 2 sections of College Algebra, and 2 sections of Foundations of Physical Science Lab. With this new position, which has taken a lot more of my time than I was expecting, I have dropped my adjunctive teaching load at The College at Southeastern to one class: Introduction to Computers. 

What have I been doing with my spare time you might ask? Well, I have been working on the house more. It used to be that during the semester I could only work on a small project. I had to wait for breaks to get stuff done. Now, I have a little time many evenings to do stuff. We've been working on the kitchen, the fireplace, molding throughout the house, and more. Below you will see pictures of the kitchen progress.

BEFORE

NOW

It is still not finished. We will be making new doors 

for the cabinets and adding marble tile counter tops

and backsplash.

BEFORE

NOW

We needed more storage room, so we added a

pantry. We will be replacing the 4 ft. kitchen 

window (just to the right of the picture) with a 4 ft 

french door to replace the lost door.

 BEFORE

NOW

The wood door will be replaced with a white door

to match the other doors in the kitchen.

I will be posting pictures of the fireplace as soon as I am done with it.

We also made time for some fun during December. We had friends over to help us go caroling in our neighborhood. Cindy's Mama stayed with us during Christmas week. We opened our home up for friends on Christmas. And we had a big New Year's Eve party with (and without) lots of friends.
As for writing ... I will try to be better in 2009. I should have a series come out pretty soon on the senior pastor: a paper that I am revising and expanding and that I will post here, probably in February. I also have many more other thoughts that I want to write down ... we'll just have to see what happens. In the meantime: y'all have a Happy New Year!

Pictures of the season

Sorry I have not updated the blog in a while. We have been, and still are, very busy. So I figured, I would just post a couple of pictures and ask you to be a little more patient with me ...

Fall is setting in here in Wake Forest, NC, and the temperatures are dropping. While Cindy does not like the cold, it has its benefits: firewood burning season has officially opened at the Disseau's.

And it's a good thing too, because we have had our first snow flurries. I did not see it, but Cindy took pictures of what looks like a blizzard (see the white streaks).

But all this cold unfortunately has also forced us to pick all of our green tomatoes that were still on the vine. Cindy is currently wrapping them in newspaper (a trick Grandmother Schoolbus' neighbor told us about in October). The hope is that they will slowly ripen and that we will have good tomatoes for a while longer.

I've been rated!

So, from time to time, I am in the habit of doing a Google search on my name. It is always fun to see what pops up.

When I did it a minute ago, I found that I had been rated on RateMyProfessors.com. I did not know that this site existed and even less that someone had rated me. So since this blog is about sharing our lives, I figured I'd share it with you: apparently I'm hot!

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1045849

Today's Medical Industry

I recently had to have outpatient surgery for a tonsillectomy. This is what I woke up with!

At first, I thought that this was an indictment on our medical community. You know, one of those cases where you go in for a simple tonsillectomy and instead the surgeon made a mistake and performed plastic surgery to turn my "hobbit feet" into beautiful feminine feet.

But, I had to stand corrected since my throat was hurting and all: obviously they had taken away my tonsils. It is then that I realized that in today's economy, private clinics are looking for that edge, which will get them customers. I was not aware of it, but apparently the clinic I went to, was having a special: cut out your tonsils and while you are under anesthesia, you get a free pedicure.

Actually, this is the handy work of Brandi M., my good friend and surgical technician on my case, who thought it would be funny to have her co-worker paint my toes while I was under. I'll get you back, Brandi ... I'm not sure how yet, but I'll get you back!

Graduation

Well, it is official now. I have my Master of Divinity with Pastoral Ministries and Biblical Languages. Cindy's mom and Bro. Ronny were able to come up for the ceremony. Tonight we get together with other graduates from Messiah and a bunch of friends to share in the life and celebrate.

One Week to Go!

After 6 years, I have finally finished my MDiv program at SEBTS. I took my last final yesterday, and now I am just waiting for commencement. God willing, in a week, I'll have to change my profile description to omit "seminary student". After 16 straight years of college, I am finally going to take a sabbatical from school. Hallelujah!

Hopefully this will give me some time to write all that has been floating through my mind in the last year or so, and to finish a few series that have been left unfinished. So if you had given up on me ... hopefully, I'm baaaaaack!

10 Years

Today marks my and Cindy's TEN year anniversary. Like many have experienced before us, and many will experience after us, ten years is one of those milestones which elicit feelings of unbelief of how long and of how short it has been: it's hard to believe that it has already been ten years since the day we said "I do," and yet it feels like we have known each other forever and have always loved each other, yet ten years is a lot less than forever.

As I think of a description of who I was ten years ago, I can't help but think "immature." I was a brand new believer in Jesus Christ, 23 years old, working on my Ph.D. in AE, with many selfish dreams. Now ... well let us just say that God has been refining me (He still has much work to do),I'm 33 years old, finishing an MDiv and considering another Ph.D., this time in Theology or Philosophy, trying to be like John the Baptist and allow Christ to increase in my life and Maël to decrease.

I've been blessed with a lovely wife who has been my helpmate on this journey, which is much different than the journey we thought we were going to be taking ten years ago. A wife which God has given me to love me, to encourage me, and as a friend once said, to keep me humble.

To our past ten years, Honey: may God grant us many, many more.

blog-bernation

As most of you can tell, I have not written in almost a month. I have two series that are not yet finished, and I would love to spend some time finishing them, but I have been busily working on the house.


Hopefully, I will find some time in the near future to post some, but in the meantime, I am in blog-bernation (both writing and reading blogs).

Deciding in Community

The more I study the New Testament, the more I see a pattern of community involvement in many aspects of the life of the church. We see such patterns in passages like Acts 13:1-3 and Acts 15:6-29. Because of this conviction, I read the following letter to our church this morning:

Dear Messiah Family,

All we do as a body, personally and corporately, should be guided by the Holy Spirit which is according to the will of God. For this reason, I keep on reminding us that throughout the NT, we see that the church is guided by the Holy Spirit resulting in the believers being all in one accord. I strongly believe that God has put us in community for good reasons, and one of those reasons is that when we all seek his wisdom, I strongly believe that He will not only reveal it to us, but that He will make it known to the body in unity.

It is for this reason that I come to you this morning with a prayer request on my and Cindy’s behalf. I thought about sharing this on Sunday night, but I wanted to make sure that my words would not be misunderstood or misquoted. BTW - for this reason I will be posting this letter on my blog, so that people can go and read it if they have any doubts about what I said.

Cindy and I have no intention of moving from this community unless God directs us to do so. I hope this is evidenced by the fact that we bought a house in the community, and we felt so comfortable about the fact that we were going to be here for a while, that we bought the house with a little help from a government program which will penalize us if we sell the house within the first 5 years of ownership.¹

In mid February, I was contacted by LC, a Baptist college in Pineville, LA, asking me if I was interested in applying for a full time math faculty position starting this fall 2007. I answered that I was not interested, but they were persistent and have asked me to consider applying and interviewing for the position now, but waiting to start in fall 2008. Because the job description is very much so what God has gifted me & given me a desire to do and because the administration has been persistent in thinking it could be God’s will for me to fill the full time position and because this opportunity came to me completely unsolicited, I have decided to fill out the application and see where God takes it.

I believe that, like in Acts 13 when the Holy Spirit told the congregation at Antioch to set aside Paul and Barnabas, that if this is God’s will, He will affirm it not just to me, but to this entire body. This thinking is not a foreign thought to our Baptist heritage: there once was a time when a pastor would not leave a congregation until both he and they agreed that his departure was the leading of God.²

Messiah is our family and we could not think of seriously considering this opportunity in secret, as some pastor might sometime feel compelled to do. Cindy and I, like you, seek to serve God with all our heart, our strength, and our soul. We do not want to move from this community at this time, but will obey our Father in heaven in whatever way he directs us. Please be in prayer with us that we all will discern His will in this issue, as well as all areas of life: private and corporate.

¹ I am not mentioning this because of the financial implications, but just to point out that we had no intentions of leaving the area when we bought the house.

² H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman, 1987), 77.

Taxes ...

For all of you trying to finish your taxes before April 17, let me point you to the IRS website where you will find a list of many Free File Alliance Companies which will allow you to do your taxes for free, provided you fit their criteria. I'm personally using H&R Block's TaxCut Free File.

Also, don't forget to consider the all new "Federal telephone excise tax refund" and "Energy efficient home improvements" credits!

Still alive ...

So, life has been busy lately. I have not been reading or writing much, but I have been doing lots of thinking, thus hopefully I will have some time to write it down soon.

On the house front, with spring comes much yard work. Cindy has waged battle against the invasion of the weeds (click on the picture to see the transformation).

Together, and with the help of a couple of neighbors, we have also moved two Bradford pear trees and a dogwood tree from the front of the house to the back yard.
Finally the table saw is being set up in the dining room so that I can start cutting molding for the bathroom mirror and then have it set up to help with the hardwood floor installation.

Young Christian Filmmaker

I just wanted to put in a plug for one of my students: Josef Solc. His passion is movie making and will soon transfer from Southeastern College to UNCW to pursue a filmmaking degree. Josef has recently submitted an entry to the new FOX reality show On the Lot. You can view Shadowlight here. His movie is about hopelessness resulting in suicide: a hopelessness which is way too common among unbelievers and unfortunately also among believers. Even though it was hard to portray this in a 5 min film, Josef has shared with me that his passion is to be able to make movies with an underlying Christian worldview. So, if you get a chance, support young Christian filmmakers like Josef.

Second snow of the year ...

Well ... yesterday it snowed again! It came down harder than last time, but did not stick as much. I got to stay home from work: I slept in, spent some good time in Bible study and scripture memorization, got some school reading done, and got some work done on the house. As for the dogs ... as you can see, they loved to play in the snow ... just like kids.

Purpose ...

Having been at SEBTS since the Fall of 2002, I have run into many people and have had many conversations with them. It is not uncommon for me to talk to some who are at the end of their time here and who unfortunately feel like this has been the driest spiritual experience in their life.
How could one feel dry at seminary, you might ask. Well the following conversation will probably answer the question for you, as it usually does for them ...

"So why are you here at seminary?"
"To get prepared for the ministry!"
"So God has called you to minister?"
"Yes."
"Have you been doing that these last years?"
"Well, no, I've been too busy with school and work."
"So, what you are saying is that you were created for a purpose, and you are not fulfilling it. Can you understand why you are miserable? "

Are you fulfilling your purpose in life?

First snow of the year ...

It is snowing! So I took the opportunity to go out and take our new camera (Sony α100 digitlal SLR) out for a test spin. This picture is not full resolution: I am at home with dial-up and I did not want to upload a 10Mpixel picture. I will write more later.