Mmm Coffee :)

I can honestly say that I have never had so much coffee in one week... let alone one day. Ever.
But the coffee here is so good, I mean like amazingly good. 

In the 5 days I've been here, I've been to 6 different coffee shops, as well as had my brother make me several lattes from home; he can make an extremely yummy latte. And the result of consuming all this caffeine will mean that I will definitely need to ween myself from it when I get back in Durham.

I really should be going to bed, but I'm going to quickly tell you what I did yesterday and today.

Yesterday, Jonathan and I took the Water Taxi to downtown Seattle and walked around the Pioneer Square area. We mostly checked out shops here and there and snapped pictures along the way. Two places that really made a stamp in my memory would have to be the Seattle Library (holy cow the architecture is OUTSTANDING, I don't think I've ever seen such a cool public facility) and The Elliott Bay Book Company. Elliott's is a huge bookstore that I could literally spend hours in if left alone. Today, Jonathan and I got to travel to Ballard, get lunch and again browse the local shops and then go to Fremont and do the same.

In the late afternoon I met up with Steph Gwaltney and had the 3rd latte of the day at a coffee shop called 'Hotwire' in The Junction. Yes, you read that right, I had 6 shots of espresso today, all of which were fully caffeinated. It was wonderful to catch up with Steph. We used to grab coffee or take long walks back in the day, so it was a treat to be able to do it again.

Tonight we had J + E's small group over at the house. We had dinner together, fellowshipped, and studied Matthew 4:1-11. It was such a blessing to be apart of the small group and heed the wisdom of the older ones surrounding me. One thing that was brought up that really resonated with me was the fact that while Jesus was in the wilderness, it says that the devil visited Him and honestly tried to tempt Him, in other words, the devil taunted Jesus. The devil even used practical things (like bread for his physical hunger) to temp Jesus, to allure Him into sin. Yet Jesus was selfless, he wasn't focused on taking care of his own needs/physical needs, but the needs of others. Jesus had every capability of turning rocks into loafs of bread, but he didn't because that's not why he was in the wilderness. Isn't that incredible? Way too often I give into temptation, I fall into selfishness; I put my physical needs above my spiritual needs even though Jesus clearly points out that it should be the other way around. Wow. I'm so thankful that Jesus loves me no matter how imperfect I am. He knows my heart, my selfish ways, but loves me just the same. My Lord is a marvelous God!

Okay, off to bed I go.

Night!