NEWS FLASH!

I am not physically fit, according to my HPER class. 20 situps in 1 minute, 44 cm on the sit/stretch, 0 chin-ups, and 13:49 on the mile. Oh well.

Howdy

Hello all. Today is TX Ticket sale day. Hence, a short post. Crazy. Have a good Monday.

Slow and Steady

Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It'd really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment. They expect you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then usually decide against it.

How Do People See You?

I hope that's not completely true!!

God is good.

There's a song in my newest piano book: God is good, all the time. He put this song of praise in this heart of mine. God is good. God is good, all the time.

I don't know if I have the words to express how amazingly God has worked in my life. First, the opportunities for camp have abounded. I'm in the process of appyling at my 4th camp, and all references have agreed to refer multiple times over.

Everytime I feel overloaded and busy, God provides a way out. Today, a dear friend and I were to meet. She has the flu. Although I sincerely wish she didn't have the flu, it gave me time in my day to do a phone interview. Last week, work got canceled because they had to go to a funeral. Same story, wish it didn't have to be that reason, but it was a much needed time off.

So, this afternoon I'm awed by how good God is to me. Here's a few more things that really made my day today:

1. Waking up and exercising and feeling so AWAKE and ALIVE!
2. Hearing Sherri Lantinga say some awesome things in my HPER class.
3. Feeling the work load taken off in a class
4. Actually seeing and talking to a friend that I barely see anymore
5. Seeing a woman take care of her disabled brother and doing it without question.

And just as I began, I'll end with another song: Count your blessings, count them every day. Count your blessings count them one by one.

Pictures

So, here are some of the pictures from the conference over a week ago in Connecticut. They are (in order) 1) The shore of the Long Island sound behind the convent where we stayed. 2) After swimming in the sound. 3) The three of us girls doing our "sinatra hands" 4) The convent where we stayed in Madison, CT. 5) The little bit of New York we saw, where Men in Black was filmed.

Good Morning

Camp. Camp?? Camp!!

Let me begin this saga at the very beginning. No, not at birth. Try about a week ago.

About a week ago, I realized that I would like to do something "worthwhile" with my summer - something that may be misssions related. This can be quite a dilemma, since many of these things do not pay or actually require me to pay them money. Problem. Nikki needs money for that Dordt place.

So, thinking it through, thinking about experiences friends have had, I start to think about camp. Camp, I think would work. Camp.

Then, yesterday, I see an announcement in the TODAY. All of the big RCA camps will be on campus interviewing "tomorrow" (now today). I freak out. Like I have time at all to interview. I'm not prepared for interviews! The thought has barely entered my head, much less become what I want to do. Camp?? No, I think. God is telling me no, obviously, since I wouldn't have any sort of time to interview.

Today, I share my feelings with my dad. Say, I'd love to interview, but it's just not possible. I have no time in my schedule. Busy from 8:00am to 5:15pm. He replies: If it's something you need to do, then you need to interview, you need to make it happen, and you have to make choices. So, then, he says, what can you cancel?

Nothing, I reply, dejected. I think I want to do it, but I can't cancel anything to squeeze in interviews.

Next thing I know, I'm filling out an application, thinking about who to give references to, and begging for the interviewers to squeeze me in for an interview. Sure, the first says, I'll take you right now. I pray Sarah will forgive me for pushing our meeting back and say "okay." Next thing I know, I'm promising to call him to finish the interview and he's setting me up with two other interviews. Instead of sitting in the library for ASK Center work, I find myself interviewing for camps.

So, Camp!! I'm warming up to the idea. A lot. I interviewed for 3 camps (Iowa, Michigan, Illinois) and I can't wait to hear back, even if I have to wait until mid February.

So, the saga of the question of Camp. To do or not? Interviews over, we'll see if I actually get any offers.

Sunday night

Sunday night. I'm sitting at my desk trying to determine if my sore knee is from residue pain from the dislocation or if it's from when I hit my knee on the steering wheel today or if it's a combination of the two. Either way, it makes for a sore knee, which is not the nicest thing in the world.

Semester started. But you know that already. It amazes me how easily I can grow so full of things to do. 2 weekly meetings, 6 hours of ASK Center work, 4 hours of Hope Haven work, 18.5 hours of class, GEMS every other week...It gets to be some pretty busy days in there, especially with plenty of homework thrown in there.

But I'm still excited for my classes. I'm interested to see what they hold. My missions class is focusing on issues that we specifically chose, so I think that will be good. I'm still unsure about my world religions class - I'm not sure that I agree with the way that the professor proposed that we learn about world religions, but that doesn't mean that it will be a horrible class. I tend to think that I'll learn that I agree with him, he just didn't use the right method of explaining. We shall see.

I'm rejoicing, realizing that I've finished my homework, which means that I can work on finishing my "Street Children" book before I start another book. And get enough sleep for another long day.

Hooray.

I win!

Ever set deadlines for yourself to get things done? I do. Lots. And I don't get them done, a lot of the time.

So, today, a tired me said to myself, "okay, I'm going home, then I give myself 45 minutes to finish this reading and do my assignment so I can hit the bed by midnight."

I did it in 35 minutes. So I'm now rejoicing. And I'll get to bed by midnight.

Tomorrow's Friday!!

This is bad...

Ahh! Lacking motivation and it's only the 2nd day of classes. Got a few pages to read for my Spanish lit classes. Granted, I'm excited for the class, just not for the intro to literature. Wondering is I can get away with not reading it...realizing that I can't...moving on to the realization that I will have about half an hour between Hper 10 and the class to do the reading. Good. I feel better now.

In other news. I've been reading an amazingly powerful book about street children. It is aptly titled Street Children. I forgive the author for the non-creative title, because it really is opening my eyes to what happens out there.

Saw a picture of a young, poor, foreign child when I went to the bathroom today. It was just sitting there, on the diaper changing thing. That was after singing The Potter's Hand in Praise and Worship. God's not being quiet about this with me. So, I may not to get to stay close to home like I would like to. It's not going to be the easiest thing in the world, but I'm letting God teach me to take care of others before myself as well as teaching me to expand my borders and listen to what he would want me to do.

Like the cliche, not so politically correct phrase, goes: If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.

So, those are my thoughts.

Start of the Semester and other comments...

So, the semester officially started today. That included a visit to the rec center to surrender my money in order to attend the beautiful college. I've had two classes so far, so I'm still pretty jazzed up for the semester - Hper 10 (laugh all you want - we've all had to take it...), and then Hispanic Literature, which I'm excited for because I love literature and I love the Spanish language. What a combination...

Tomorrow I have Issues in Missions and Evangelism, Greek 102, Major World Religions, Spanish Phonology, and Spanish Conversation. In that order, with a 2 hour break in there. During that break I plan to eat and get groceries for baking with the GEMS.

Now, I'm killing time until I work. As of right now, I have a break from 11:30-3:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don't plan on that lasting - I imagine that it will be taken up by other things once my ASK Schedule gets set.

Moving on to other non-school comments:

I drove to Sioux Falls twics in three days, first two times I'd ever driven to Sioux Falls. Picked people up from the aeropuerto, good to see people, people I love, people I've missed. They were good excursions.

I feel the need to retract my prior comment on the fact that I don't want to get involved in foreign missions and that I only want to do local missions, if that's what I do. The more I think about it and talk with people, I understand that I may not want to do it, but that doesn't mean I won't eventually do it. We'll see where the Lord leads me in my journey, but I'm lately feeling like he's smiling, saying, you may not want to go abroad in order to stay close to your family, but I've got different plans for you. Like he says in Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

So if that prospering hope and future means spending significant time away from my family, hanging out with people of different cultures and showing God through every way possible, then that's what I'll do.

So, if you ask me in the near future what I'm planning on doing after college, I still won't know. But here are some things that will be included in my list of possibilities: overseas missionary, local missionary, work with Wycliffe Bible translators, translation, work with a missions org. by way of organization, work in a church...and the list goes on. I imagine I'll be involved in more than one of these things over the course of my life.

So there you have it. What I'm really thinking.

Back to the Midwest...

Well, I'm finally back home in the good 'ol Midwest and no longer on the East Coast. Sigh. I'm actually quite glad to be home.

It was quite a stretching type week for me. I learned the I do not want to go overseas to be a missionary. I might be an at-home missionary, local missionary...that's still an option...but I don't want to go overseas. I learned that there are such a diverse amount of views in the Christian faith...I met people of the Mennonite, Anabaptist, Moravian, and Pentecostal faiths. I was surprised to learn that we reformed believers were in the minority.

But, a learning week. Met a bunch of people from all over - Redeemer (Canada), Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Myanmar...

And, I went swimming in the Long Island Sound. In probably 35 degree weather. The water was cold. Quite cold. And we ran in twice. It was a great time. Pictures may be forthcoming, but I don't have many yet, since I let Anna take most of them, so I'll be getting them from her.

I should tell you a little story, though, about the worst travel day ever. After a New Year's Eve party, Sarah and I stayed up and left the house at 2:30, armed with coffee and prayers we would stay awake. We did and arrived in the Omaha airport at about 5am. We checked in and hopped a 6:30 am flight to Detroit. When we arrived in Detroit, Anna met us and informed us that our flight from Detroit to New York/La Guardia had been canceled.

So, we made our phone calls, told the necessary parents and professors, and we went and haggled with Northwest. We ended up being rerouted to Indianapolis and then to LaGuardia. Instead of landing in LGA around noon, we didn't arrive until 6pm. So, you say, not the end of the world. Numerous people have experienced flight days like that. Insert 2 college girls on no sleep except for naps on a plane, weird eating schedule, sick feelings for 2 of the three girls, and the 3rd girl running on 1 1/2 hours of sleep. We were dead on our feet. Barely dragged ourselves into the McDonald's in Detroit so we weren't so sick feeling.

So, crazy travel day. Yesterday was much better, pretty much went the way it was supposed to.

That's all I've got for today.