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I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. 1 Peter 1:7 (The Message)

Fire and Light Studios is an amazing place. Not only is John a great teacher, but his shop is filled with thousands of pieces of glass in many different colors and designs, most of which I have never seen before. There are also no less than seven working kilns. That’s how many I have counted, there may be more that I haven’t seen. Today, we had work in three different kilns. A small kiln held little pieces that will be pendants. We made them while we were learning about inclusions, placing bits of glass and metal between two pieces of glass and sealing them in the kiln. We cut silver and copper foil out with a paper punch. I used the shape of autumn leaves on some, dragonflies or unicorns on others. John warned us that the foil may change colors depending on what glass we used with them. Some glass is “reactive” meaning it changes its composition or that of the metal when the two are placed together. It takes the heat of the kiln to bring about the transformation. It will be a surprise tomorrow to see what takes place. In the medium kiln, we placed some woven squares. Using two colors of glass, we made strips which we then layered in different directions to look like weaving. As the glass heats, it dips and rises depending on what glass is underneath it and looks as though it is interwoven, when in reality, it is simply layered. In the largest kiln, which John calls Goliath, went our dimensional pieces. We spent most of our time yesterday and today working on these. They started with a base which we fused yesterday. Then, we added a design which we tack fused to stick the design to the base. It will keep the texture of the design. I made a large red bowl over which I put swirls and “nuggets” of iridized glass to give a reflective pattern. I also made a winter scene of a bare tree branch with a cardinal in it. The highlight of the day was when John showed me how to use a blow torch to pull the glass into twists and curves that look exactly like twigs. It is incredible what changes take place in the glass when the heat is applied. The same thing happens with us. God allows suffering and trials in our life to change us for the better. It may not be comfortable at the time, but in the end, we become a thing of beauty.