Update by Hannah

So I feel there is a lot to catch all of you up on. so I'll go date by date.

May 24th
Mooseheart Graduation. Oregon home had one graduate this year. Her fun personality has been missed by all and we are excited to see where her future takes her.

That afternoon our home entertained Oregon Moose members for lunch. The girls did a great job expressing their appreciation to the Moose members and all that they provide us to keep our house up and running. The Moose members presented the house with and their state flag.

This is the whole gang except for our graduate and one other girl who went home for the weekend, this particular weekend.

May 27th

We had a new addition to our house this day. Some of you may remember that we asked for prayer as our house adjusted to a new youth in the home. She put forth a good effort and we look forward to her return this fall as she is visiting with her grandmother this summer.

June 13th

RANDY'S 27th BIRTHDAY! We enjoyed a Friday night celebration with few friends at Mooseheart at the Roundhouse in Aurora, http://www.walterpaytonsroundhouse.com/ . We had a great evening having dinner, watching a stand up act and then enjoyed some live music in their outdoor garden/patio.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RANDY!

June 14th
Batavia Moose lodge put on a fishing clinic for all the youth at Mooseheart at our lake. So we took all the girls to go fishing for the day and believe it or not ALL girls fished and caught a fish; multiple times! All the girls got to keep the fishing poles so you can trust we will make many more trips across campus to the lake so Randy can get in his man activity as he's dominated by much girly time.

Whose Role Is It?

Great posts from the last discussion. Continue with those thoughts!
I think the question of "Does Faith affect our politics?" has been answered pretty clearly and our goal will be to define exactly what that looks like for followers of Christ.
Several different topics have been mentioned and we will get to all of them eventually. Right now I would like to focus on one in particular.
Much has been mentioned about the role of government, specifically when it comes to caring for the poor and oppressed. As followers of Christ we are called to care for and love those who are seen to be "in the margins" of society. It was mentioned in one post that "we are all children of God no matter what our status, race, gender, nationality, etc." We are to follow the example of Christ in loving and caring for all people. However, when it comes to "government programs" and subsidies to help those less fortunate in society, we find that many evangelical christians would line up against these programs. Is this contrary to the bible? Another post mentioned that although we are called to care for the less fortunate the bible does not say that it needs to be provided by government. I think this point will define our discussion. We know that the early church had a practice of caring for each others needs. They sold posessions and goods and pooled their resources to give to whoever might have a need. (Acts 2:44,45) For the next two thousand years the church continued to care for those who had needs, and not until the last century did the government get involved. Is the "church" still capable of caring for those with needs or has this problem become too big? Did the government step in because needs weren't being met?
Does our biblical calling push us to support a candidate who will create larger and more effective programs to care for the poor and oppressed in our country? Or does it call us to reject government involvement and stand up as followers of Christ to support those with needs both in our country and around the world? What say you?
-Randy-

Wanted: Honest Opinions

I've heard my whole life that the two things that you don't dare discuss are politics and religion. Well, I've never really been one to steer clear of controversy so why start now?
Last night I had the thought for this post while I was lying in bed. I honestly could not go to sleep because my mind wouldn't stop racing. Here's what I want to do. I want to have an honest and open conversation about the two forbidden topics. I would like to have discussion on some of the following questions:
Should our faith or lack of faith have an impact on our politics? Should followers of Christ be concerned with political powers? - As a follower of Christ what are your hot-button issues? What would make you vote for one presidential candidate over the other? As a person who is not a follower of Christ, what are your hot button issues? I'm sure there will be many other questions that arise as we begin this discussion.
I would like to start with having anyone who reads this post to comment with either a specific issue or a list of top issues that you feel are important when deciding who to vote for in the presidential election. I will use these comments to drive the topics of future posts. We have five months before the election, I'm sure we can cover quite a bit during that time. haha.
Note: if you are reading this on facebook notes you can join the discussion by going to www.lifewiththeriggs.blogspot.com
Let's do this!
-Randy-

Random Thoughts

I just realized it's been several days before I posted anything on here and I didn't want the millions of viewers to continue to be disappointed every morning when they wake up and and run to their computers to check for the new update on Life with the Riggs' only to find another day has passed and still no update. (How's that for a run-on sentence?!)

We haven't had a real eventful week. Hannah and I worked Monday -Wednesday and have had the last two days off. Several of the girls have gone to visit their guardians for a couple of weeks so we are actually down to three girls in the house right now, which makes things seem really quiet!
We bought bikes Wednesday night and tested them out yesterday. There is a biking/running trail that runs along the Fox River across the highway from where we live and there are also a few other riding areas so we are excited to check those out.

I was reading yesterday and ran across this information:
"Sales of bottled water are estimated to be between $50 and $100 Billion (US) annually and increasing approximately 7 to 10 percent annually. In 2004, sales were approximately 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons). It's a strange irony that folks in countries with cheap, readily accessible drinking water spend enough money on bottled water to provide water for the rest of the world." Jesus for President p. 244

This makes me really uncomfortable. I encourage you to think and pray about this with Hannah and I. Maybe you would like to make a donation to help bring clean drinking water to the 1.2 billion people in the world who are dying of thirst. World Vision (worldvision.org)is the organization that we prefer to use.

Graduation Weekend!

The past few days have been pretty eventful for Hannah and I, starting with our last day of training on Friday. It definitely is a nice feeling to be done with training and to be able to start doing our job. Saturday was graduation day and we had one senior from our home. Graduation was Saturday morning but the festivities lasted all day. Along with graduation, Mooseheart also hosts the Pilgrim Ceremony on the same day. This is the ceremony where Moose members are recognized for reaching the highest level of honor within the Moose. Moose members come from all over the country including the state of Oregon, which is the delegation that specifically sponsors our home. After the morning ceremonies, we had 16 of our Oregon friends come to the home for lunch. It is a great way for them to be able to see what they are investing their time and money into, but it can also be a little stressful. However, while they were here they also informed us that they are trying to plan a trip where they would pay for our whole house to fly to Oregon for a week next summer. They are extremely generous! They also brought us an Oregon state flag that flew above the state house. It is now flying from the front of Oregon home!
Today was a bit more relaxed. Hannah and I continued our "church search" by visiting Trinity Nazarene church in Naperville. Of all the churches we have visited so far, we were definitely most impressed by this church. We attended their second service which is a contemporary service. Unlike some of the others we have visited, they were able to pull off a contemporary feel and it was still worshipful. There is a lot to be said for that. I felt like I was at church instead of a concert, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
After church, Hannah's good friend Dale who lives in Chicago came to visit us. She and Hannah have been close for a long time and Dale manages a Starbucks in Chicago, which is pretty cool.
Later I did as little as possible at home while they went shopping!
Well, tomorrow is our first day that we will be working with the girls all day long so it should prove interesting. We also have just found out that we are going to be getting a new girl in the home. This girl is currently living in one of the other residence homes just across the street from us and things have not worked out for her there. Moving her into our home is her last chance. If things don't work out here then she will most likely be demitted. From what we have been told she has a grandmother who is her guardian and lives here in the states, but if she gets demitted her grandmother will be sending her to Liberia with some of her other family members. If you know anything about Liberia you know how dangerous this could be for her. Her grandmother has begged Mooseheart to keep her here. Please pray for us and this situation. She will more than likely be moving in on Tuesday.

Defending the Cause

"For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing." Deuteronomy 10: 17-18

Hannah and I had our first consultation meeting today with our consultant, our direct supervisor. During that meeting we were, for the first time, able to hear some of the details of the lives of the girls who we are responsible for. Some of those stories include a girl whose father is in prison and who's mother was a drug dealer before dying in a fire, another whose mother is fighting leukemia and whose sister has a brain tumor, a physically abusive, alcoholic father is the story of another, and on and on. We of course were aware that many of our girls would come from these types of environments, but hearing these stories today was a reminder of why Hannah and I are here.

The scripture from Deuteronomy that is shown above is one that I ran across a couple of weeks ago as I was paging through my reading journal. It obviously had stuck out to me at some point since I wrote it down but when I read it this time it seemed to have gained some significance. I believe that as followers of Christ we are to not only live our lives so that someday we may go to heaven, but we are also to live our lives in a way that would help bring heaven to earth. We are to play an active role in making God's will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. There are certainly many of ways of doing this, but for this time in our lives Hannah and I felt that we were specifically being called to serve in this capacity. We are excited about the opportunity and ask for your continued prayers in this journey.

What are other ways that we as Christ followers can act to bring God's kingdom to earth? What say you?


-Randy-

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

I understand that this is Tuesday morning but I feel like this is my first chance to write about a busy weekend.
Following training on Friday, Hannah and I had to go get our Illinois drivers license. We've had several tests during training but I think the written test for our drivers' license stressed us out the most. We hadn't really thought about having to take one so it scared us a little. But, we both passed and are now officially residents of Illinois. (Which by the way, means Barack Obama is now our Senator.) We also opened our banking accounts here Friday afternoon, which is always important!
Hannah's cousin Owen was married on Saturday in nearby Wheaton, so Hannah's parents drove into the area Friday evening. They actually drove our Durango up to us which we are very thankful for. We met them for dinner at their hotel and visited for a while. While at the hotel, we were just getting on the elevator when an elderly African American gentleman walked on. He was all dressed up with a baseball cap on. When he stepped on, he held out a baseball card in a protective cover and asked me if I had ever seen the man on it. It was a baseball card of himself! His name is Joe B. Scott and he was the first African American to ever play in a game at Wrigley Field. I spoke for just a few moments on the ride up and when I got ready to step off of the elevator I started to hand him the card back, he just shook his head and told me to keep it. He had already signed it before he gave it to me. Pretty cool!
Saturday morning we met Hannah's parents for breakfast, did some outlet mall shopping, and then brought them to Mooseheart for a quick tour before heading to Owen and Hillary's wedding.
Sunday was our first anniversary! I can't believe it's been a year already! I've heard that the first year is sometimes rough and that makes a lot of sense that it would be. But, I've got to say, there has been nothing hard about spending the last year of my life with my beautiful wife, Hannah. She is an amazing wife and I feel like the luckiest man in the world! I thank God for her!
We revisited Orchard Valley Community Church again Sunday and I think ruled it out as an option for us. This church shopping thing is tougher than I realized.
Well, need to head to training!

-Randy-