Shabab Fund Raising

We are planning our year shabab conference, and we needed to raise money to cover all the costs. So the shabab came together to make Koshari (that is an Egyptian meal for you who don't know) to feed the whole church and ask for donations. It was so much fun to see how we all work together for one goal and the blessing of being one team. God blessed our time and blessed us with great donations.

It tought me so much about our church and how people are really feel passioned about every ministry and whenever we ask for help they want to help. I also realized the importance of having working committed youth in the church and see how a church without any youth is considered dying church. Thanks every one getting together to make it happens.

The Blessings of Change

I have been following other blogs on the web lately. I recently found myself interested in what people have to say, I started to find joy and amusement of what people got to write about themselves. I guess reading people thoughts and writing gives me small side view of their lives, but importantly, it gives me a snap shots of who they are from the inside.
I recently came across this blog and read her post about change and made me wonder how our life goes by so fast and we don't stop to notice it.

I used to view change as most of us view it, uncomfortable, and such inconvenience. The reasons behind my thinking was that I had my own plans for my life and never thought of my creator plan for me. That post made me look back at my life and all of its seasons. How often it changes and how often it is pretty even in every season. But it was hard to see how pretty it is, because while I may living is one season, was dreaming of a different season which was the source behind an unease I felt but never noticed that I also made.
I guess, I had a misunderstanding of what my creator thought to plan for me. I thought comfort and he thought peace. I thought happiness and He thought Joy. I thought money and He thought contentment.

Now, I regret those moments, that I thought to seek what I want and not seek His desires of me. I regret wasting those times of my life, instead I could have been enjoying those moments of joy that my creator brought to my season no matter what season it is. I am learning to live the moment to its fullest no matter what season I am in, because the change isn't in my hand but it is in my creator's. Therefore, there is no more fears of the moment I am in, there is an open chest of what joy each moment may brings even the unexpected ones.

PanCake any one?

Cooking together become one of our fun hobbies to do together. On the weekend I wanted pancakes, but we didn't have it in a box. So we decided to make it. It came out so god and we enjoyed each other making it.

Dinner at Jimmy's

Another Friday night dinner plans, Jimmy and his parents generously invited all the shabab over their house and made it such great dinner. We loved the food and the company was amazing. So many laughs.

Spring in NE

Spring is here, we are enjoying it so much. Every where we go, trees and flowers are blooming and it brings joy to our heart. God is amazing is His wonderful work.

Eli's Surprised Birthday

On Friday Night, sylva made food for every one and we all went to Eli's house to wish him a happy 40th birthday. It was a great time. God bless for having good friends like that who can make good food :)

Couples: Wife Submission is questioned?

“23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”
Ephesians 5:23-25 (TNIV)

Have you had a problem with that verse before? Hmm be honest. Isn’t hard to submit some times to God nerveless to another human being?
I am sure so many of you out there are woman who strong in mind and personality and won’t like to hear that word to submit.

So, lets think about how we should submit to God first. When God promises his protection and love to us, he makes a covenant with us to deliver his promises.
Now question yourselves, how you get to enjoy his love and protection. The answer is within submiting. As we choose to go under the Lord authority, we choose to enjoy his blessing and the deliverance of his promises to us.

Remember God always give us the power to choose him or others. But as we submit/choose him, we trust him to do the right thing and expect that even though his decisions maybe different from ours, that he wants and does what is best for us.
The amazing thing about that is that when we submit to God, we do it with all love and willing heart. As a result even when he decides differently for us, we take it with an open heart and less doubtfully.

Now, let’s turn back to our partners and our husbands to be exact. I am not going to tell you that God commended you to submit to him. But I am asking you? Do you trust your husband? Do you believe that he will do what ever is in his power to protect you and provide for you? Does he tries to learn to be more like Jesus and set a good example for your and for your family?

Before you answer all the questions, let me ask you another question. Do you expect that your husband some times makes the wrong decision?

Let me explain, sometime we hold our husbands to such high standard like Jesus and expect them to be like that since you as a wives submit to them, which is totally wrong.
But our trust in them should not fail, nor our love. Your respect to him should not shake. Instead we should embrace them with patience and mercy as they try harder next time.

Here is my two sense, wives need to love their husband and trust them and understand that they entered with their husbands under a covenant which allow you to enjoy his love and protection as you embrace submission to him. You need to express your trust in him by submitting to him with love just as we do with God.

Stuart Greaves said, “submission is just letting your husband love you.”. As we enter and accept God authority over us, we allowing God to love us and embraces us with his blessing.

If you change your attitude toward this verse and think of it that way, your perspective of marriage will be totally different. I want you to think about how powerful you are, making that choice of allowing your husband to love you as you submit to him.

Remember that the covenant you entered with your husband isn’t conditional contract. His love is extended no matter you choose to submit to him or not. But think of the advantage that you and your family will enjoy as you allow him to love you.

Husbands and Wives, remember that you both are there to wash each other feet.

I really encourge you to read Humble Submission by Paul J. Bucknell

I would also like to hear your comments.

Couples: Polite Relationships is questioned??

How many of us tries to be so polite in a relationship? We try not to express too much of our anger and too much of our so not cool emotions to our partners.

Reading these words from a blog I came across made me wonder:

"And while I was angry with my partner, disappointed and appalled that the curtain of good fortune was being torn down in front of my eyes…our relationship grew. I found that I needed to complain to him, cry to him, shake my fist at him.

I realized for the first time that I had an actual relationship with God. I realized that my frustration and tears meant that I really did believe He was there. That He was not a distant clockmaker or the leader of an exclusive club. I realized he was my Father, the only one I could turn to. Simplistic as that may sound, it was a revelation for me."

Here is my two sense. It's easy to have faith when things are going well. Or at least holding status qua. But when we face the dark side of life, when we have to turn and stand nose to nose with the unpleasant, frightening, heart-breaking face of suffering and death, things lose their clarity and our believe in love shakes.

See, many of us learn not to question God and not even doubt him, but I know it is my right to question God, so when it comes to relationships, we sometimes don't dare to enter into conflict with our partner, We be afraid to spoil our love.

Today, I want you to change your way of thinking and think how a conflict can be the tool to draw us closer and closer as couples.

Conflict is the tool to vent out our emotions and disappointment. It is the emotions that we express our frustration.

Here is the key how you use conflict to your benefit.

Listen carefully to your partner during conflict, Listen and find how he or she feels. Then, take that to heart and start responding in a very kind, gentle ways.

I want you all not to avoid conflict, but to see it as an opportunity to find out what makes your partner upset and sad, and as a result take notes and start a new journey of expressing love.

I encourage you to stop with these polite relationships and have an constructive conversions about what really need to be worked on.

Don't forget: Get Angry but don't sin.

Couples: Ten business strategies to organize your family

Reading the Cnn/Living section today, I came across a great article that I had to share with every one. I really like number 1,3,8 and 10. It is really important to learn from other and look on others mistakes as reason to learn.
Patrick Lencioni writes:
About 11 years ago, two big things happened in my life: My wife and I started a family, and I launched a consulting firm. For years I was much more successful at running my company than managing our family -- probably because I was taking specific steps to improve my business, then going home and winging it.
Well, a few years ago, it occurred to me that this made no sense, and that my family was in fact an organization, too -- the most important one in my life.
That realization was probably provoked by an innocuous (or so I thought) comment to my wife: "You know, honey, if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they'd go out of business."
I'll spare you the gory details of her response and just tell you that we eventually decided to figure out whether the tools and concepts I applied with my clients might help our home run more smoothly. I'm here to report that they absolutely did and might help you, too. (Don't worry: None involve persuading a 10-year-old to endure the agony of a performance review.) Real Simple: How to make good decisions
1. Identify your core values. Companies define their core values because they provide a great framework for making all kinds of decisions. To apply this idea to your family, think about what common traits each spouse admires in the other. One of the things I love about my wife is that she is unafraid to speak her mind or stand up for her beliefs.
We wanted to pass that trait on to our four sons, so we made it a core value. (Our others are creativity and passion.) Then, when one of the boys was sent to the principal's office for defending a classmate who was being bullied, we made it clear that he should be proud that he had stood up for a friend.

2. Establish a single top priority. If everything is important, nothing is. Too many companies fail because they spread their time and energies too thin. Answer this question: "In addition to our day-to-day responsibilities, if we accomplish one big thing as a family in the next few months, what should it be?" And then work on it. It could be anything from "Help Dad get healthy" to "Spend more time together as a family at home." Real Simple: 14 shortcuts for everyday tasks

3. Keep your values and top priority visible. You don't need an engraved plaque to remind you of what's important. But it's good to have a ready reference. My wife and I were out on a date around the time we were coming up with our family's list of values and top priority. She borrowed a waiter's pen and wrote them on the paper tablecloth. After dinner she neatly tore off that section and stuck it to our oven, where we could see it every day.

4. Don't make snap decisions. Companies (and families) tend to take on commitments out of peer pressure or guilt, before they understand what's involved. Often it's not a single big project, but the dinner date, bake sale, and sleepover that all add up to make a family frantic. Which leads us to number 5.

5. Understand your opportunity cost. In business, when taking one course of action prevents a company from accomplishing other tasks, we talk about opportunity cost. One of the best decisions we ever made was to let our sons opt out of Cub Scouts (the opportunity), which was eating up our weekends (the cost).
Why cut that and not, say, guitar lessons? We decided that Cub Scouts was a little too regimented and that music better suited our style. Knowing the decision reflected one of our values -- creativity -- removed any sense of guilt we might otherwise have had.

6. Assess which balls bounce and which ones break. Sometimes tasks that feel urgent can actually be ignored. (In other words, those balls will bounce.) As we were getting ready to have our fourth child, I was overcome by the urge to landscape the front yard and to start going to Pilates. Would the house be overtaken by a jungle?
No. Did I need to touch my toes again? Well, eventually that might be nice, but not right now. What I really had to do was prepare my home and family for something that mattered -- the arrival of Baby Number 4. The rest could wait. Real Simple: How to worry less

7. Don't confuse long-term strategies and short-term tactics. For parents, this can take the form of discussing what to have for dinner in the same breath as whether to change jobs. Or trying to make a decision about finances or discipline while brushing your teeth and getting the kids off to school. Vital issues can get short shrift or be entirely lost in the minutiae if you don't stop, filter them out, and return to them later.

8. Meet often to review your progress. Don't groan. This is not a bad episode of "The Brady Bunch." But families do need to meet once a week, for no more than 10 minutes, to review what's going on and what adjustments need to be made to their time and priorities. We've noticed that our twin boys get a sense of clarity and accomplishment from our Sunday-night discussions. They like talking about how we're doing as a family and seeing their role in it.

9. Get out of the "office" from time to time. Most executives I work with develop a condition I call adrenaline addiction: They're convinced that they can never slow down and think about the big picture because there is so much to do right now. Which inevitably ends in burnout.
Parents should also take time as a couple to review calmly the bigger picture of their family, even if it means just going for a drive with the radio off. A long date or a weekend away can pay huge personal dividends even if you have to shell out for a babysitter.

10. Welcome productive conflict. When executives can't argue, they can't make good decisions and commit to them. Families are the same. Remember -- many of the ideas I've described here were born out of a messy, tense discussion I had with my wife when I clumsily critiqued the way we were running our family. For the record, she's not mad at me anymore.

Easter 2009

Another day full of events, another reason to thank God for our church. Easter is an amazing day to realizes the grace that we live in. God amazing love is to give himself to us in order to save us. One of my favorite parts of the bible is reading Isiah 53:4-12. The amazing tangible words of his love is moving every time I read it.

Back to yesterday where we had an amazing time, the Church will decorated really nice and the choir did a great job singing. It is a blessing to have such committed people. It is the reason behind the success of the church is having committed heart behind every ministry and service.
Soon after church, we enjoyed a sit down dinner that uncle Reno and other prepared. What a great service he does. His heart to help always humbles me.

Tony and Bisho opened their home again afterwords and we went to their home and enjoyed watching an Arabic Movie. Silvia and Micheal showed up and we celebrated their birthday before they take off to Egypt.
Again, We are blessed to have such amazing people and friends. You are a blessing and source of encouragement.

For full screen pictures click
Slide Show

Arabic Church on Twitter

Yesterday we celebrated an amazing day of Easter when we enjoyed every one company at a sit down dinner at the church. Tony Zaki took this picture during dinner. He posted on the new Arabic Church Twitter, to follow what goes around the church and any events please go to Arabic Church Twitter and click follow.
At the same time you can follow what Z Couple are doing by going to Z Couple Twitter.
I am going to post the Easter pictures by this evening...

Couples: Make Love vs. Fall in Love

I didn't know how to word my title this time around, but I thought it may bring your attention and make you read til the end.

Our society teaches us about how to fall in love and how great it is. It commercializes the passion and the emotions that love brings to our lives. We grow up watching, learning and fantasizing about the day we fall in love and live above the clouds.

I am not here to declare war over the emotions of love and how up lifting it is, but I want to explain that real love is not all about the emotions and living above the clouds.

Let me give you an example, The Christan love isn't words of hope only, when Jesus promises for example to love us and protect us, He isn't just giving us words of hope, love and emotions of security. No, His words are tangible love the goes beyond the words and the emotions. Real love is what keep couple together when the emotions fades away. Maybe I shouldn't say fades away, I should have said, Love is behaviors that we take after the heat of the emotions cools down.

So, I am encouraging every one: after falling in love, is to start making love to your partner. I am not only encouraging you, but challenging you to develop those behaviors that shows/express and make love. Try to make it a habit to make love and express it in away that your partner recognize it.

Here is what I mean, find every thing you know about your partner that make him/ her feel loved and start taking a daily tasks to express it to him or her. Start expressing/making love to your partner on daily basis. Don't let your love stops at the emotion limits, instead take it beyond that commercialized boundaries and stand strong for the reality of love that support, protect, encourage and love without seizing.

Remember I Cor 13.4-8a ... Love does not seek its own.