Church Search + Monterey Adventure

Our church search was short and intense!  Starting the first Sunday morning I arrived, either Steve and I or just I attended a service every Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday evening.  Our friend Jason from Cornerstone recommended a church that we ended up falling in love with, called Trinity Bible Church.  It's about 40 minutes South of us, but well worth the drive!  It's a small church (~200 people) who are very warm and very devoted to the faithful and careful teaching of Scripture.  We are very much enjoying the teaching on the Gospel of John.  Pastor Manny is a really passionate and studious teacher and he always seems to answer the questions that a careful reader should have but that we often overlook, especially in a book as familiar to most of us as John.  And he has been teaching on the providence of evil in the evening service, which challenges the capacity of my brain!  God's sovereignty and His holiness are so evident in this series!

Anyway, there are about 5 1/2 hours between the end of the morning service and the evening service, and since we are already 40 minutes South, we have been using our time to explore!  Just about 45 minutes further South and West is a gem of a coastal town, Monterey.  Steve had the Sunday after Thanksgiving off (hooray!), so we went adventuring during the time between services.

It was a great chance to take in the California landscape.  We passed through Gilroy, the garlic capitol of the world, and another town that declared itself the artichoke capitol of the world!

When we got there, we didn't have much time (we noted a lot of traffic heading back North due to the Thanksgiving holiday) since we wanted to be sure to be back on time for church.  But we after a quick stop at a candy shop and carrying $20 worth of saltwater taffy (which we still to-date have not finished, although we are close!  I keep shoving handfuls into Steve's coat pocket when he leaves for work)...

 ...we strolled down the beautiful coast for a bit toward the next town, Pacific Grove...

And we said hello to the harbor seals!

And finally, I got my Starbucks on at Cannery Row :)  While I sipped on my latte, Steve enjoyed the most expensive (and quite delicious) chocolate milkshake EVER from the Nestle store. 

Overall a fun adventure!  They have a famous aquarium there, which we hope to get to someday as well.  We have taken one more Sunday adventure (a shopping adventure to the Premium Outlets in Gilroy) since being here, and plan on taking more at every opportunity!  We are thankful for these fun adventures and the privilege of witnessing the beauty of God's creation.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! :)