marty's fast food feast for the last supper.

Fast food feast for the last supper. Went to 6 places. Gotta feed marty well before she goes back to africa. the menu consisted of:

chick-fil-a nuggets & fries.

jack in the box tacos, jr. bacon cheese burger and curly fries.

whataburger ketchup

chicken express sweet tea

chili's chips and queso

wendy's frosty

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

be thankful while "doing"

"Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." - Col.3:17.

today is thanksgiving. currently, i am sitting on my couch watching star trek with my family. we ate well and i'm sure more eating will happen as the evening progresses.

in honor of thanksgiving, here's a short list of some things i'm thankful for:

• salvation through Jesus
• family
• friends
• my new house
• fudge pecan pie
• the staff and students at the UNT BSM
• my church

straight up...

here's a video that my friend michael did of a classic... enjoy.

pictures from the weekend...

here are some pictures from my weekend in nashville.

rachel and erin and their pregnant bellies:

erin and her son liam.

normal

i am writing this post from an airplane... about 30,000 feet in the air. this astounds me. and while this is anything but normal, this fact is not what this post is about. just wanted to fill you in on the random coolness i'm experiencing right now. i'm a techie... stuff like this makes me smile. it's totally worth the $10 fee to be able to say i checked my email and blogged from the sky! now if i could only get the guy in front of me to leave his seat-back in the upright position, all would be grand! (i've got long legs and a laptop in my lap... his consistent seat adjustments are getting annoying.)

i'm heading home from a great weekend in nashville visiting my college roommates and their families: erin & jeremy and rachel & brian.

this trip provided an opportunity to meet erin & jeremy's 10 month old son, liam, for the first time. it also allowed me to see erin & rachel's pregnant bellies.

it's amazing how much has changed since our belmont days. in the midst of marriages (theirs) and children (their's as well)... it was amazing how "normal" it was to be with them again. it had been over 4 years since i'd seen rachel and a few years since i'd seen erin, and yet we could pick up where we left off.

(the guy in front of me is still adjusting his seat. he can't make up his mind.)

it was fun to reminisce and talk about life and all that's going on. erin and i lived together for 4 years and we lived with rachel for 2 of those years, so you don't have to explain anything... there's something comforting about being around people who truly know you.

"normal' hasn't been a part of my vocabulary lately... so this weekend was refreshing and a nice break from all that i have going on right now.

i'll post pictures from my weekend when i have the chance to move them from my phone to the computer. ok, i'm going to sign off... we're encountering some turbulence and we should be starting our descent pretty soon.

i love technology!

Fall Preview... a "TRUE"tt blessing.

i took a few students to visit truett seminary in waco this week. it's extremely exciting when i have students who are pursuing a call in ministry and i get the opportunity to walk with them as they seek the Lord. while they were visiting classes, talking with professors and mixing with other prospective students... i worked on BSM stuff and had the opportunity to visit with some good friends. i spent time with 2 friends (katie and emily) who served as BSM interns at the same time i did.

coffee with katie lasted a couple hours and provided an opportunity for us both to catch up and unpack all that's been going on in life. i am so thankful for her friendship and i wish that denton and waco were a little closer together so we could sit face to face more often. she's such a blessing.

after lunch, emily and i went to the parking garage starbucks (yes, they have a starbucks and a chili's too in their parking garage) to catch up. i so enjoyed hearing about all she's learning in her 1st semester in seminary... and was reminded how glad i am that i'm finished with school! (well, at least for a while).

i thank God for community and an chance to talk with girls who understand my life and ministry. such a blessing.

fake friends

my students tell me that they can't wait to graduate so that we can be "real" friends. they think that because they don't know everything about me... we're "fake" friends.

i take this as a compliment.

that means that i'm doing something right. that boundaries are in place. they recognize that i'm not just another friend, because another friend is the last thing they need.

they need someone who invests in them. disciples them. points them to the cross. challenges them with accountability. spurs them on in service. helps them grow.

the funny thing is... they know me. they know my heart. they know what God's doing in my life. they know they can always call me, just preferably before 10 pm. they know i like dr. pepper, enjoy cooking and like the food network. they know i'm a musician, a sister, a friend.

you see, they know me... the real me... but i will not share my burdens with them, because they don't deserve the burden. it's not theirs. they think they want to know every detail and struggle of my life, but they don't. those things are reserved for my God, my family and friends.

i continue to learn the necessity of Christian community. it's necessary if you want to grow, change and become more like Christ. God has blessed me with amazing community. A family who loves me and friends who ask the hard questions... remember my answers... and then ask those questions again.

this responsibility is not one that should be placed on the shoulders of the students i work with. even though the number of years aren't that different between us... college ministry means that i can't cross that line... i can't even have one foot on both sides of it.

boundaries. they are necessary. they are good. i'm learning just how good they really are.

it's official. i'm an adult.

i've twittered about some decisions i've had in my life and i promised to share the details... so here you go.

this week... has been one of the most interesting ones of my life. i don't know why i'm surprised though. this has been one of the most interesting years ever.

this week... i realized that i am an adult. yes, i know that i'm 28, but sometimes i don't feel quite that old.

this week... i made an offer on a house, and one counter-offer later, the contract became official.

one of my closest friends lives in a new neighborhood in denton and since i'm at her house a couple times a week, i've watched the houses being built around her. we explored them as they were being built and talked about how much fun it would be to be neighbors. i never actually expected that i would ever be able to afford a purchase like this, but God started to put together the details in ways that i never expected.

the house is currently still under construction. it's 2 doors down from susan (the friend mentioned above). it's red. and if all goes as planned, i'll be closing at the end of october.

the house is over 1300 sq/ft, has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen and a 2 car garage (it's a tandem garage, you park one behind the other).

the flooring (wood floors and carpet) will be going in this coming week... and i'll be picking out the carpet this monday. lots of exciting stuff.

while this experience is exciting, it makes me miss a friend of mine... a friend who would love to help me pick out carpet, paint colors, a refrigerator and dream about all the fun things we could do with the backyard. this friend loves painting walls and working on a house more than i do, and i wish i could share this experience with her.

so now i must venture into the world of mortgage companies and closing costs. i'd appreciate your prayers as i proceed. i trust that if this is where God wants me, the details will continue to fall into place. if it isn't and it doesn't work out... i'll be disappointed... but i know He must have something different awaiting me.

thanks for the prayers my friends. and a special thank you to my parents who have played a huge part in making this a possibility. they're support, advice and encouragement in my life is a daily blessing, and they are just as excited about this as i am! mom's doing decorating research and dad's making sure we ask all of the right questions.

click here to view the construction of the house. i'll try to post pictures of the progress as everything continues to come together.

should i be upset?

how do you feel when you realize that you've been "de-friended" by someone?

some of you have no idea what i'm talking about... most of you however, know exactly what i mean. it amazes me how technology lingo becomes normal in conversation. for example, "googled" is an understood verb meaning, "to search for something on the internet." anyway, i digress.

so for further explanation to help you get through the rest of this post... when you decide to share information and connect with someone on facebook, it is called "friending" them. when you decide to take that back, it's called "de-friending."

i don't know about you, but the moment i realize that i've been removed as someone's facebook friend, i'm not sure how to take it. i'm not an extremely sensitive person, but for some reason, "de-friending" bugs me. i admit that, on occasion, i have participated in a de-friending or two... but the act usually involves people i haven't ever had a personal relationship with or thinks that facebook is the appropriate medium to cram useless information down my throat.

because of the kind of ministry i am involved in, i spend a lot of time using social networking tools. next to email, facebook and twitter are the two most popular internet sites visited by my computer. they help me keep in touch with friends, students and publicize the happenings of the ministry where i work. in other words, whether it's good or not, social networking is an actual part of my interaction with community. it's definitely not my main source of community, but it's community none the less.

(social networking mixed with the Gospel is something i think about a lot... specifically, how do we use the internet for eternal purposes? click here to read a previous post about the topic.)

i wish that being removed as someone's facebook friend, being blocked from following someone on twitter, etc didn't impact me... but sadly, it does. the actual impact depends on the person and their involvement in my life.

what about you? do you feel rejected when excommunicated from someone's social networking neighborhood? or am i truly getting more sensitive in my old age?

i was on a lonely road and i was traveling, traveling, traveling...

(if you don't know the song that inspired this blog title... click here and enjoy "all i want" by joni mitchell.)

i leave on wednesday and will be gone for about a week an a half. here's a map of my travels:

here's my schedule:

wednesday, 7/15 - drive from denton to abilene for super summer.

friday, 7/17 - drive from abilene to houston to spend the weekend with my friends, melanie and richard.

sunday, 7/19 - drive from houston to corpus christi for my vacation. i'll be spending the week with my parents.

saturday, 7/25 - drive from corpus back home to denton.

i'll cover over 1200 miles during this road trip. should be fun.

i like steak. potatoes. shrimp. and pineapple.

a few weekends ago, i spent a saturday afternoon and evening with my friends the dewoodys. we started off our afternoon adventure by watching the wolverine movie. after that, we decided that we needed to find something for dinner. not just any random food would suffice that evening though. we hit up kroger to buy a plethora of red meat, potatoes, pineapple and shrimp.

everything was grilled on the dewoody's brand new cast iron grill pan (the billowing smoke was totally worth it!). susan wrote all about our meal on her blog as well, you can read it here. i took care of the steaks while susan totally owned the pineapple.

here are some pictures... (courtesy of susan's camera and blog).

brown sugar grilled pineapple. marvelous.

needless to say, we ate good. jealous?

brulee-ing the creme

if you know me... you know i like to cook. baking, that's another story. for some reason it intimidates me. while i was in corpus with my parents over spring break... they introduced me to the wonders of the "mini torch." my dad made creme brulee and we each got to torch our own dessert. of course, i instantly fell in love... not with the great dessert... but with the ability to play with fire. in the kitchen. with a torch. and burning things on purpose.

my mom thought about buying me my own torch to take home with me and then realized that taking it on the plane would have caused quite an ordeal, so i went to bed bath and beyond and bought one when i got home.

my friend susan and i decided to make some creme brulee and try the torch out. here's a picture of the torch in action.

susan wrote about our brulee-ing adventure on her blog, click here to check it out.

stay tuned for some more cooking adventures...

sideshow in downtown denton

what i thought was going to be a nice low-key evening at home... turned into one of the weirdest experiences of my life. my friends susan and dale called to see if i wanted to join them for dinner. even though i had already eaten, i gladly accepted the invitation to hangout with them before they leave town for spring break tomorrow. after enjoying a meal and conversation at el guapo's mexican restaurant, we headed to downtown denton to go to a used book store. the book store was closed... but we found this guy hanging out on the square (this video is of him playing tonight, whoever posted it was on top of things! i've only been home about 20 minutes):

of course, we got sucked in and ended up watching the majority of his show. it was quite the experience... we all agreed, we'd never be the same again.

day off with the dewoodys

i spent my day off with my friends, susan and dale. susan blogged about our adventures during lunch.

click here to read about a little boy that still has us laughing.

who is your God?

as i sit on here on my couch, i can't help but think through this past week. not only am i a planner, i'm an analyzer. which means, i think ahead... and i think backwards. both are dangerous. so as i wade through last week i see many ways that the events have revealed my God to me.

who is your God?

let me tell you about mine.

• my God is a healer. a close family friend... so close we call them family... has been fighting brain cancer. no one has ever survived it. he's lived longer than he should. he went in for an MRI this week... and they couldn't find any sign of it. my God heals. while we don't know the future of this situation, i know that in this moment, God's love is more real then ever.

• my God is my sustainer. i'm tired. i've had a crazy past few months... actually, make that a crazy past few years. and yet when i don't know where strength will come from, He provides.

• my God draws people to Him. i see this every day, even when i'm not looking.

• my God gives. i have people in my life that love and support me. i don't deserve them.

• my God forgives me, which gives me the desire to change.

• my God loves. He loves me in-spite of me.

there's so much more that i could write. my words will never be enough to describe my.

so i ask you again, who is your God?

a mile high visit

i spent the past weekend in denver visiting with holly and angie, some college friends.  we hadn't been able to spend time together in years and it was great to get to see them.  a significant amount of time while i was at belmont was spent with these two girls.  they are blessings that i continue to thank God for.  after about 10 years of friendship, i can look back and see how God used each of them in my life in ways that they would never know.  

we spent time playing games, enjoying the mountains and trying to catch up on the past few years of life.  lots has happened in each of our lives, and in the midst of the changes and growth, it was amazing how comfortable it was to be together.  that is a rare blessing.

these girls are two of my favorite people in the world, and i wanted you to get to see them.

a facebook phenomenon making an appearance here.

if you are on facebook you know about the uprising known as "25 things about me." i think i'm the only one on facebook who hadn't filled this out yet... so i'm giving in to conformity... here we go, 25 random things about me:

1. i'm originally from oklahoma but i proudly call texas home.

2. i lived with cinderella in college. literally. =) and loved every minute of it. i was blessed with some great college roomies.

3. i have a strange fear of fish... not of seeing them or eating them... just don't want them to touch me while i'm in the water. the thought creeps me out.

4. all but 2 pieces of furniture in my house were given to me.

5. it took me over a year to use my kitchen aid mixer for the first time. i've been told that is a sin, so i pulled it out last week and made banana bread.

6. i love to cook, and for some reason, baking intimidates me.

7. i put my movies in alphabetical order. my books are sorted into categories and then alphabetized. i won't even mention how i organize my CDs. my students tell me that makes me OCD.

8. i love music but hate listening to the radio.

9. i fell in love with england one summer.

10. i have great parents who are very neat, organized and have degrees and careers in science (pharmacy and medicine). i on the other hand, hate to make my bed and some how convinced my advisor to let me take horticulture instead of biology. i got my 4 hours of science credit by doing lawn work on my university's campus.

11. i went to belmont university... before anyone had really heard of it.

12. i've seen carved wood bears that look like they are peeing... in alabama... and have pictures to prove it.

14. i love road trips with friends. this trips have included... 3 michael buble concerts in 3 days, a zebra invasion, a new kids on the block concert, staying in a W hotel, tons of trips in college, etc.

15. i taught myself how to play guitar and piano.

16. i enjoy keeping in touch with people that have made an impact in my life.

17. i participated in an amazing prank war in college with 2 great friends. it involved a BBQ grill, mini alarm clocks and breaking and entering.

18. i love that my job is investing in college students. i can't believe they pay me to do it.

19. i talk to my mom at least once a day.

20. i appreciate my friends more because i know what it feels like to lose them.

21. i arrange my wednesday nights around top chef... and my DVR is there to back me up if something comes up and i can't be home.

22. i love blogs, facebook, twitter and other social networking things... because i get to see what God is doing around me and keep in touch with people.. and then i usually write about what I read here: www.stephaniegates.blogspot.com.

23. because of skype, it feels like i've visited senegal.

24. i almost had cancer.

25. i thank God for john 3:16.

confessions of a drama queen

i hate drama... and yet, it seems to be a consistent part of my life.  i've decided drama happens when you spend time with people... when you work with college students... and when you are in ministry.  all of which, i will gladly keep in spite of the sometimes annoying excitement they bring to my life.

tonight was spent hanging in a completely different drama queen world.  i watched the miss. america pageant with some friends of mine.  my friend susan graciously opened up her home (as she frequently does) to host the event.  as with many of our events, we had to have a "theme" for the food.  tonight's theme: small, skinny and prissy.  our food selection included: tiara shaped cookies, mini chocolate cupcakes w/ pink sprinkles, kabobs (chicken, shrimp and beef), chips and salsa, chocolate fondue, fruit, etc.  we had quite the feast.  (when i get a picture of our spread, i'll include it with the post)

it was quite enjoyable watching the pageant with these ladies.  we each had our own tiaras and "jewelry" and quickly chose the "states" to cheer for.  for us, new york, indiana, florida and arkansas were the favorites.  how about you?