back to school

Scotty and Crystal working on Math homework together.

We’ve been keeping ourselves out of trouble by staying busy. We are both going to school full-time and working full-time:

Scotty is studying Business at Linn Benton Community College. He plans to transfer to Oregon State University for Spring term. His favorite class right now is Business Law. He is also taking Introduction to Business and Calculus. He is still building houses with Steve Oien Construction in Philomath, but he has to cut a couple hours in order to attend school. To make up for this he has taken a weekend job at Paul’s Place, the restaurant he worked at in high school. He really enjoys working there again as he missed some of his old friends.

Crystal is enjoying her first year at OSU. She is majoring in Communication and really loving it...you all know how much she likes to talk. She is still working as the bookkeeper at Bridge Builders International. In addition to bookkeeping she has been helping promote the summer projects that BBI will be hosting in Latvia. The projects are similar to last year, there will be the 2nd Annual Thomas Kinkade Art Camp and “teRiga”, a city service project with American and Latvian youth volunteers. More to come on these later.

Doxology

We have been attending “Doxology”, the new college-age service at Jefferson Baptist Church, for about nine months. Peter, Scotty’s brother, is the college pastor there. We have been a part of the core leadership team since the beginning of Doxology. Scotty is in charge of some of the operations of the service and Crystal sings in the band.
Doxology is a little bit different than what you may expect from a Baptist church. There is a strong emphasis on art and community. The walls display paintings, photos, poems and many other forms of art. The worship band plays mostly original music, and there is often interpretive dance and artistic videos as a part of the service.
There is a coffee shop after the service every week. It has a casual atmosphere where people feel open to converse with people outside their social bubble. There is also a small stage where musicians from Doxology have an opportunity to share their talents.