Curling with Friends

A few weeks ago I hit a major milestone in my life, my 30th birthday. To celebrate, I wanted to go curling with friends. However, it was in the middle of crunch time at Regent so we postponed the celebration until after exams. Well today was the day. And it was awesome!!

First off, I thought curling would be super easy and my ticket to future Olympic stardom. And at the same time, I thought it would be impossible and we'd be falling all over the place. Fortunately I was wrong on both accounts.

It didn't take long to figure out the technique but it was really difficult to make a good shot. As for walking on ice, it wasn't that difficult. We had special grippers on our shoes that really helped.

The hardest part was launching the "rock" (which weighs 44lbs). This is called 'delivery'. It is hard to push off, balance, and launch the rock at the right speed with the right curve at the right spot. Here is a picture of our friend Josh taking his shot.

On the other end the Skip (Liz) helps tell the curler where to aim by pointing her broom and uses hand signals to indicate what kind of rotation to use.

Between them are the two sweepers who sweep the ice in front of the rock. Why do they sweep? Honestly, while we were curling, I didn't know. Roger, our instructor just told us when to sweep but we were having a hard enough time making shots that it didn't seem to matter. I looked up on wikipedia which said that sweeping makes the stone go further and decreases the amount of curl. We'll know for next time. Here are our two friends Carine and Esther sweeping.

Finally, here's a video of us in action. First you'll see Jenny and then me delivering our stones.

My shot, was the closest shot of the whole match within 3 feet of the button (dead center). I wish I had taken a picture as proof.

It was a ton of fun. Oh and here's a funny series of liz who slipped after one of her shots.

Major Announcement

I'm smack in the middle of crunch time at Regent with three major projects to complete in the next 2 weeks plus a big time History exam on the 19th. And if that weren't enough, I'm starting a weekend class that evening for which I haven't even started the readings. But I've got a huge announcement.

We are ONE YEAR AWAY FROM GRADUATION!!! That's right. Graduation. Which means all you folks who promised you'd come visit us have 365 days to get here. Technically graduation isn't until May 2nd. And technically they call it convocation. But lets get serious, I'm gonna be thinking too much about other things (like starting a kick-butt job [wink wink nudge nudge]) to show you around Vancouver.

So if you wanna see me...

and Liz......







You are gonna have to book some flights, board some trains, or hop on some boats. And do it soon. We would love to see you and show you our city.

St. Matthew's Day

Saint Matthew's Day is a cultural holiday celebrated on March 18th. It is named after Saint Matthew (c. AD 1983–Present), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of the Americas.

Saint Matthew's Day was made an official holiday in the late twentieth century and is observed by the Sidell Family, the Schultz Family, friends of St. Matthew and a small enclave in Vancouver. The day commemorates Saint Matthew and his arrival in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as celebrates the heritage and culture of Southerners in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, throwing Frisbees, and the wearing of orange and maroon attire or flip flops. Christians also attend services and the Lenten restrictions on eating hot sauce and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption.

Saint Matthew's Day is a public holiday in Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Wilmington, North Carolina.  It is also widely celebrated by the Southern diaspora around the world; especially in Canada.

Matt's Birthday Wish!

View from the Chuckanut Drive Oyster Bar during our lunch

View of the Birthday Boy

Happy 30th Birthday Matt!

An Academic Update

Some of you have asked, just what exactly it is that I'm (Matt) studying. Well today, I'm going to try and answer some of that.

First of all. Regent is a pretty academic place. Professors are smart. Like, I-learned-German-to-read-Hegel-in-his-native-language smart. Who is Hegel? No idea. But people at Regent could probably tell you loads. Last week, I was having a conversation with a history prof about a paper I had just finished for another prof in which I identified the major themes that shifted culture from accepting moderate alcohol consumption to demanding teetotalism. I was trying to tell him which books I read for my research and couldn't remember one. He told me the author and title, and then proceeded to tell me that this particular author was the expert in the field and it was a good thing I included his work. What I'm trying to say is people take academics seriously. 

The problem is, well, I'm not exactly an academic. I'm not trying to belittle myself. I know I'm smart. I have a card in my wallet that tells me so. But I'm not an academic. Academics do this stuff because they love it. But I don't love reading high level criticism, German philosophers and early church fathers. Learning Greek over the summer and fall nearly killed me, and lets not even talk about Hebrew. 

Academics for me is a tool. I'm learning so that I can answer with confidence the heart level questions people (including me) have. And some of the things I've had to learn to be able to answer those questions have been crazy hard (see above paragraph for examples). But the reward is pretty fun.

Some of the topics I've studied: 

• Athanasius- Bishop of Alexandria, defender of trinitarian orthodoxy, chief contributor to Nicene Creed, and friend of the Desert Fathers (earliest monastics)
• Late Medieval Mystics- Bonaventure, Teressa of Avila and John of the Cross
• Reformed Baptist understanding of the Eucharist
• 20th Century Revivalism- Pentecostals and Billy Graham
• History of the Christian Pastor
• The Chicago Statement on Hermeneutics 
• Assimilation Ministry in a local congregation
• Shifting attitudes to alcohol in the church: a move toward abstinence
• Charles Spurgeon's Pneumatology (doctrinal beliefs regarding the Holy Spirit)

For each of these, I probably read 6-10 books or articles. Which is just enough to start grasping the real ideas. 

Anyways, along the way I've picked up some specific tools like biblical languages, exegesis (figuring out the details of the text), hermeneutics (figuring out how to interpret the exegetes [people who do exegesis]), and some good old fashioned academic skills like researching and writing.

After this semester, I'll have completed 64 of my 90 credits. Each credit hour represents about 45 hours of work. By the end of summer school, I'll have just 18 credits left to graduate. Most of those final credits are electives, since I've front loaded the hardest classes. That gives me plenty of time to job hunt, which I'll start doing sometime around Christmas.

Well that's it for now. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of me typing at a kitchen table about things.

A perfect Sunday?

What makes for a perfect Sunday here in Vancouver??  A great church service, friends, lavender lattes and most importantly.....the SUN!  The sun came out today!! I saw it!  Really!  It was bright, warm, and such a lovely site! Y'all just don't understand how much we've missed it.

For those of you who don't know, Matt and I have been searching for a new church to attend here in Vancouver.  We've gotten a chance to try out a couple different churches in a variety of denominations and worship styles.  It's been fun to experience these different places and reaffirm the types of services we enjoy.  Today we attended First Baptist, one of the churches in the heart of downtown with our friend Karen.  After a great and refreshing service, we ate brunch with our friend at Cafe Medina.  Yum!! It was super tasty! Lavender Mochas, cute little Belgium Waffles with fruit compote or salted caramel sauce, Saussion de Paris, Fricassé, I could go on....

After brunch we decided to maximize our time out in the sun and walk down to the beach!

Flying Home

Friends and Family.

I'm writing briefly from Gate 90 in Vancouver. Tomorrow I'll be celebrating my grandfather's life with family and friends in Greenville. It's hard to describe the sadness of a life lost and the joy of a life well lived. Some of you knew my Grandpa. I think he was a pretty exceptional man.  Here is his obituary.

Before he died, Liz and I got a chance to see him over Christmas and during some brief periods of lucidity he told me that he was proud of me. That I was doing the thing (ministry) that he had prayed I would do for a long time and that I had a really great wife (who he correctly predicted I would marry when he first met her). Those are words I'll treasure for the rest of of my life.

My grandpa was a pretty neat man. He met my grandma working at a summer camp when she was a waitress and he was a busboy. They eloped and then a week later he shipped out for WW2. He was a cryptographer for the army and when I asked him what the neatest message he ever deciphered was, he told me it was the message that the war was over and he was going home. He played football for the Chicago Bears briefly. Then went on to grad school. I think he has a Ph. D in statistics but I don't really know. Growing up he always said he worked at 'the barn' so I thought he was a farmer. I found out later that he was in charge of a really big company.

He was the smartest man I knew. But he had some funny quirks. Duct tape was his tool of choice, most often to fix the other tools that he broke. He was obsessive about raking leaves. and when his rake broke, rather than fix it, he stuck a nail in the broken handle and picked up each leaf individually.

I miss him. But I am grateful that he loved the LORD and taught his family to do the same.

-matt

Grandpa Kettleson update

Hi Family and Friends,

I know a lot of you are wondering how Matt's Grandpa Kettleson is doing.  Here's a link to the website (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jerrykettelson) to update you on his progress.  Please keep Matt's family in your thoughts and prayers.

Matt and I visiting JK after his surgery in December.
Such a sweet man!