I have been reading daily in my Bible. All is well there. I have been reading Matthew in th New Living Translation. I think I'll try and have a podcast about biblical translations sometime soon, if anyone wants to try a conference call with me. I am also reading some texts on the Methodist Church, of which Dawn and I are members. We are transferring our membership from Texas to the church down the street. I am researching the social principles and the doctrinal statements because I am considering a course to become a licensed local pastor. I am very interested in what everyone thinks about that. I feel like I need to continue studying in a larger context the stuff that I have been reading lately. If I am raising questions and challenging the beliefs of my family, I think that I need to do it within a structure that provides some direction and that I can rely on to ground me in a faith system that I know and trust. I haven't signed up for anything yet, but I have been checking it all out and want to make a decision soon.

In other news, the grocery budget struggle continues. It turns out we are not as good at it as I had expected us to be. In other words, I am not as good at it. It is easy to sit around here and type and go on and on about sacrifice and the things I am going to do to practice it, it is another thing altogether to change my behaviors and the things that I understand about eating and feeding my family. There is a strong force in our culture that suggests that food comes first, so buy the good stuff and then budget the rest. Food is such an enormous part of our life and routine, and not just sustenance food, I'm talking about gourmet cooking and "eating right," that it is hard to think in terms of spending less money on it. i will have updates on how much we are spending, but for now you can rest easy knowing that we are already over budget.

yikes.