Monday, June 16, 2008

Weekend Warrior Wannabe's

I had a little fun thinking up the title of this post. I would really like to think of Steve and I as the crazy, energetic, adventure hunting, thrill seeking weekend warriors that make the covers of outdoor magazines, but, at best - for now, we are the people who read such stories and are inspired to strap on our camelbaks and find a little park. :) We're working on the whole "blazing new trails" part. One big inhibition for me (kar) is snakes. Sorry, but if there is a path less taken by me, it's most likely the one with snakes. However, I am discovering that the trails with the most snakes happen to be the ones that are paved with blacktop. So, that is a good thing for my weekend warrior aspirations.

On saturday we drove east of Salem for about 45-50 minutes. It was a beautiful drive, especially since I bought new sunglasses! We passed through the towns of Gates, Aumsville, and ended in Detroit. We checked out the Detroit lake, the North Santiam River, and the Detroit Dam. You can also see snow-covered Mt. Jefferson in the background of Detroit Lake. It was pretty fun, but I'm really looking forward to seeing some more mountain terrain and stuff. **These are not my images** Images courtesy of Wikimedia, Panoramio.com, and beloblog.com



Well, that's all for me right now. Hope you all enjoy your week!

Love,

Kar

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

We're Married!!







Married and finally home! The wedding was beautiful. Our honeymoon was a lot of fun and just the relaxing time we needed to begin our life together.

It's so great to be home! We flew into Portland at 10:30pm pacific time on Sunday night. Steve's awesome dad picked us up so we could get home. He helped us haul our gigantic checked baggage and bought us hamburgers and milkshakes. Yum!!

So we're on our second day at home and we're expecting a delivery from Sleep Country USA. I helped Steve carry out his awesome plan for bartering and we got a mattress and box spring valued at about $1300 for $700 with free delivery. Talk about exciting!!

I had a few surprises when I got home. I got to see the gorgeous bed Steve had finished building for us before the wedding. Wow! When we got to the house from the airport, Steve had me wait in the car while he and dad carried the bags in. When they were finished, Steve came back to the car and carried me over the threshold. So sweet! I absolutely love our house. We're so incredibly blessed. Steve showed me how his mom had stocked the kitchen with food before we got home. Then he said, "There's one more surprise... The french doors of the kitchen we closed, so Steve pushed them open and there stood a piano! Ahhh! :) :) :)

Steve hadn't told me, but months ago he bought a beat up old piano off of Craig's list and had been taking his lunch breaks off to work on it. He would also tell me when he got home that he just needed some down time, but tells me now that he was actually working on the piano! I couldn't believe it! I have the sweetest husband ever! Wow! A piano! For me! We still have to paint it because right now it is a blueish-gray from primer. We're still deciding on color...

I am going to start looking for a recipe for breakfast now. I have my own kitchen! Woo hoo! :)

Love you guys.

Steve & Kari Hornaday

Pastor's Notes From Our Wedding Ceremony:

Congregational Welcome and Greeting

Thank you for coming to witness and share in the wedding of Steve and Kari. This really is a joyous occasion and the families are glad that you are here. However, I'd like to invite you to become more than a spectator. Become a participant, and let these moments that have a lot of emotional warmth (because of our love for Kari and Steve) become moments when we open up to an element of the miraculous, and I mean that sincerely. The Bible records the presence of Jesus at one wedding we know of, and it's the wedding that is marked bit the miracle of the water being turned to wine. He is still in the business of doing the same thing, but it's not a water-to-wine miracle so much as it is the ordinary to the extraordinary. Our humanness needs to be touched by divine grace in order for the beauty of a wonderful marriage to occur. And that requires a miracle. And in this moment, I believe we can all open our hearts to a miracle, not just praying for Kari and Steve, but for ourselves, saying “Lord, do something of Your grace in my heart while I'm here, too.”

Prayer "Join me in praying for the couple and for this ceremony. etc."

Giving of the Bride

Who gives this woman to be married today?

Today Steve and Kari are becoming a family of their own. They will still be a part of your family but now they are distinct. I encourage you to support them and aid them as they work to build their own family with its own traditions, strengths, and ways of doing things. Welcome them into your extended families, but give them the freedom and room to develop and build their own family as well.

Charge

Steve and Kari, today you are here before this congregation and before God to unite your lives in marriage. You are dedicating yourselves to each other and to God. You are promising that you will live together, share your lives, and love and cherish each other. But you are also dedicating yourselves to allowing God to use, not only each one of you individually, but you as a couple as an instrument of his will. In order for God to fully use you you will need to appreciate each other's gifts and abilities. You will need to forgive each other's faults. It will require an unfailing devotion to each other's welfare and development. There must be an agreement between you to eagerly seek God's purpose for you as a couple and family.

I charge you, therefore, first of all to consider that the promisses that you make today are made before a God who remembers your pledges and who holds you responsible for perfoming them. Fortunately he will also help you keep them. Seek his strength and look to him to guide you and protect you.

I encourage you to share your joys and worries, your successes and your struggles. Cling to each other no matter what happens so challenges are met by united strength and victories by united joy.

Recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as the head of your house, the ruler of your destinies, and the object of your deepest affection. If you do, he will guide you and give you his peace.

I have gotten to know this couple

You may find it interesting that they met 24th of Sept 2006. Now getting married 1 year and 8 months later. During that time they have grown in their commitment to each other AND their commitment to their faith.

I have seen their relationship centered on Christ

Opening Prayer & Reading--Julie

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.

For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.

But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.

Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone?

And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him.

A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.

Pastoral Address

Introduction

Often Love at Weddings - special music mentions love - front of your bulletin is a description of love - Marriage is looked at as the outcome of these two loving each other - For any marriage to work need love

But this word "Love" means many different things and stands for many kinds of feelings and emotions

Sexual Love - Love only lasts till the next partner

Self Serving Love - Love that cares more about self than the other - as soon as the other quits satisfying or exciting - this love moves on

Jose Luis Ferreira, 31, and Eva Maria Alvedro, 24, of La Coruna, Spain, are marrying, but they're not yet sure if it's a lifetime commitment. They've signed a short-term marriage contract, with an option to renew. After two years, the couple will reevaluate the pairing and will then decide whether to sign on for a longer hitch. (AFP) ...The only amazing part is that the AmSteveans didn't think of it first. This is True 1998

Love Shallow and Superficial - It loves because of outward beauty, position, wealth, or fame - when the beauty fades, when the fame dies so does the love

Emotional Love - Love that feeds on a feeling - when the feeling is no longer there neither is the love

    Couple vows: I promise to stay with you as long as I love you

Marriage calls for a completely different Kind of Love

When go to Bible find the example held up is kind of love Christ had for us

Ephesians 5:21-28

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 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 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Christ's love not self seeking Agape' love - includes seeking the best for the other person

Christ's love was sacrificial

Jesus knew that sin separates us from God - it was necessary for him to die on the cross - expand

Christ's love was Costly

Night before he was crucified prayed

sweat

somehow we have this view of Christ plastic figurine moving through each part of the story

    Mr. Bill - Like Kenny on South Park - from Saturday Night Live

We forget that he was living, breathing, feeling human being. pain of being whipped, nailed to the cross - emotional pain being deserted by disciples

Christ's love is not demanding - We don't have to measure up first

Romans 5:6-8 "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.11

This is the kind of love the two of you need to have for each other

You have both experienced Christ's love - both have asked Christ to come into your hearts

I believe that you would also want anyone here who does not know Christ's love to know it

Illustration: THE THIRD STRAND

From its very beginning, the institution of marriage has been the God-ordained bonding of one man and one woman to become one flesh as long as both shall live (Gen. 2:21-24). But if the two are to become one in a growing, lifelong union, God must be central to that relationship. His will, His help, and His blessing are essential for any marriage to become all it can be.

Leadership magazine carried a short item sent in by Catherine Paxton that illustrates the importance of letting God be uppermost in the marital relationship. She wrote, "A braid appears to contain only two strands of hair. But it is impossible to create a braid with only two strands. If the two could be put together at all, they would quickly unravel. Herein lies the mystery: What looks like two strands requires a third. The third strand, though not immediately evident, keeps the strand tightly woven." Then Paxton concluded, "In a Christian marriage, God's presence, like the third strand in a braid, holds husband and wife together."

Conclusion

It is around this central truth that you will build your life together - that your love will grow. It is in giving your hearts first to Jesus and then to each other that you will find true love.

Our Love in Our Own Words--Steve and Kari

Exchange of Vows & Rings

Vows - Christian marriage is most serious because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate that the two of you will become one. Before you lies a future with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows. These elements are mingled in every life and are to be expected, but for Christians they are not there to be received with resignation but with hope and joy and all the spiritual gifts God's Spirit promises us.

Stephen Lee Hornaday, do you take this woman to be your wife, to live together in holy marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and do you now give yourself to her completely body, mind, and soul that from this day forth you shall be hers alone, so long as you both shall live?

Steve: I do

Karen Lin Ottum (Ah-tum), do you take this man to be your husband, to live together in holy marriage? Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and do you now give yourself to him completely body, mind, and soul - that from this day forth you shall be his alone, so long as you both shall live?

Kari: I do

Rings (Rob holds mic for each)

Steve, please repeat after me: Kari, I promise before our family and our friends, to be your loving and faithful husband, to share my life with you, in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad times, for as long as we both shall live

What symbol do you give of this promise?

A ring.

    (Take rings - hold one up) The ring that I hold represents the commitment you have just made. This ring is a circle, signifying your unending love and devotion to one another. It is composed of a precious metal, refined by fire. Your marriage will be tested by the fires of life. Yet, by God's grace you will grow stronger in him and closer to one another through these trials. Let God's Word be your source of direction during these times and always!

Kari, Let this ring be a symbol of my promises to you and a reminder of my unending love and faithfulness to you. I am honored to call you my wife.

Kari, please repeat after me: Steve, I promise before our family and our friends, to be your loving and faithful husband, to share my life with you, in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad times, for as long as we both shall live.

What symbol do you give of this promise?

A ring.

Steve, Let this ring be a symbol of my promises to you and a reminder of my unending love and faithfulness to you. I am honored to call you my husband

Lighting of the Unity Candle

(Mothers come forward light candles and give to Steve and Kari)

God's Word tells us that we are the light of the world. Each of these two candles burning represents this truth. But you are becoming one! From now on your light will be joined and you will burn as one. Your focus shall be for each other rather than for you individual selves.

In the Bible, Phil. 2 says to not merely look out for your own personal interests but also for the interests of others. "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than yourself." Your joys will now be doubled and your sorrows cut in half. You are each a gift from God to the other. As you light the center candle, our prayer is that your marriage would so shine before men that they would see your good works and give praise to the Lord Jesus Christ!

Special Music- Come Walk with Me--Robert Hornaday

Closing Reading--Rob

Numbers 6:24-26

The LORD bless you
and keep you;

25 the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;

26 the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.

Prayer

Let us pray for this couple as they start their married life together. Please pray for them--silently or if you wish you may pray out loud. I will close us in a few moments

Wedding Pronouncement

Announce - Since they have made these commitments before God and this congregation, by the authority of God and the laws of this state, I declare that Steve and Kari are husband and wife. God has joined them in a holy union and will make them one flesh. Steve and Kari, you will no longer be two independent persons but one. "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

(Steve and Kari) Kiss

Introduce

Mr. and Mrs. Steve and Kari Hornaday

Recessional--

Announcements:

    Memorial table for Kristine (Kari's sister)

    Release people

    Group Picture below balcony

    Reception

Thank you for coming. The Lord Bless you and keep you!