New Quarter

I saw the world's longest mullet on Monday. It totally went past the guy's waist.


As if I wasn't unmotivated enough for my last quarter check out my classes:

• Legal Aspects of Managing a Diverse Workforce
• Employee Relations
• Public Policy in Business
• Personal Selling and Sales Management

Yeah. I want to skip them already. And it was so nice today, but I went to class.

I am already looking into Grad school... is that sick or what? I can't wait to get out only to go back. Something must be wrong with me!

I am going to Chicago next weekend! Woop Woop!

Lesson From Mississippi: Prayer

I was reminded on this trip that prayer is the proper response to any situation. I used to struggle with the command to pray continually. Still do actually, but it's getting easier.

On the way down our OLD bus had some electrical problems. It would run, but we were running out of power for out headlights. We prayed and they worked.

Each night we had devotions with the kids in different cottages. The older teens talked about God and sex and how God does have a plan for sex. The little kids talked about how to be good friends. My group was in Emergency Care, the place kids go right after they are taken from their homes. We talked about Trust, Love and Hope. The three girls could not understand why God was putting them through this, yet they turned to prayer for help. Prayer seemed to be the only thing that comforted them. It was their only hope.

We almost killed someone and almost died ourselves. Let me explain. Jackson has one of the highest crime rates in the country and we were staying right in the middle of the Queen's and the President's gang territory. That's why the campus was gated. We left for Ohio at 1:45 am on Saturday. About a mile from the village we were passing a bar that was closing and there were people everywhere. Cars were blocking the road and people were in the street either yelling or directing traffic. Our brakes went out. There were two people in the road in front of us and I am pretty sure that if we had hit them there would have been a riot and I don't think we would have lived. We started praying and at the last minute the emergency brake caught and we slowed down enough for them to get out of the road.

They dropped us off at a church parking lot and limped the bus to a shop where they determined that they needed to take the brakes apart to figure out what is wrong. The Village sent some vans for us and we went back to sleep. Unfortunately, everything we had was packed on the bus. I slept on the floor with 3 other girls with just some foam for our mattress, two blankets to share and a package of toilet paper as my pillow. What an experience.

I know these seem like small examples of the power of prayer. There were a million little ones throughout the week that I am not going to try and explain. Please just trust me that I was reminded to pray. Continually. Because God does listen.

Home

DunDunDunDah!!! I'm back!

The mission trip was great! We went to Jackson, Mississippi to serve at the Baptist Children's Village. We played with the kids and worked on maintenance projects around their campuses. Hard work, but so rewarding. I'm still processing everything I learned from the trip. It wasn't a life-changing trip, but I did learn some good lessons. More on those later.

On Monday night we were playing capture the flag in the dark with the kids. It was game #3 and I was put on defensive for this game. My job was to stay hidden and guard the flag. I found the perfect spot behind a large tree. I could see around the flag and I was close enough to run out and tag someone who got too close. Early in the game the red team was circling us. We could see them, but they couldn't see us. We just waited.

At first I just felt a bite on my back. Which was strange since I hadn't seen any mosquitoes. Then I started to feel them on my ankles. One and two at first then it soon escalated into many bites. It took me a while but I figured out that I was standing in some kind of insect hole. I go running to Andy to ask which building is unlocked and he tells me to run to my cottage. At this point the bites are starting to move from uncomfortable to painful. I run hard to my cottage.

I get there and throw off my shoes and clothes to discover tons of tiny little ants all over me and my clothes. Yep. Come to find out, I was standing on a fire ant hill. I had a few blisters the next day, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Hurray for no fire ants in Ohio!

Spring Break

Finals are done. Whew.

Saturday we leave for my last spring break mission trip. We are going to Mississippi to work in a Children's Home. It should be a stretch for us. I'm a little nervous, but so excited. I can't wait to see what God is going to do.

Please pray for us. We will be working with kids who come from home lives that I can not even imagine. We will need to be understanding, flexible and loving. I am speaking in their chapel service on Sunday and I need your prayers for that.

So I won't be writing for a while. I'll let you know how the trip goes.

Professors should not be allowed to put

d) Any, or all of the above.

as an answer for an exam question.

Doesn't that seem like having two or more answers for a question?

One more final to go....

Sorry that last post was so whiny. Here's a fun light-hearted web-site of all the dumb laws in my home state. They made me laugh.

Vanity

My mom was talking about her Bible study and they are studying Ecclesiastes. It can be a downer book. In her words "It's all vanity anyway!" Not really motivating to strive for a job or a new career.

I have to say that I agree with my mom. I look at what I learn in college and it's good, but not important. I mean in the scope of eternity achieving above average returns on your innovative product investment really doesn't seem to matter. I can't really get excited about it. At my job, will it really matter if there is one more company in the world that can sell resin? I can't see that it does.

Some days it feels like we as humans have made up things to do so that we can have work to do. We've created work for ourselves. How much of all the work that we do HAS to get done for survival to continue? Very little. My job has lost the excitement it first held.

What would I rather be doing you ask? Lots of things. Working with kids down at the Boys and Girls Club. Training people to get jobs and beat homelessness. Sharing with an international student about my faith. Painting a house for an elderly lady. Feeding a struggling family. Those things make a difference.

I feel like I have skills that could be used in much better ways. In ways that would truly make a difference in this world for Christ, because really, I could care less about profit margins for our 1st quarter.

Is anyone else upset that Hersey did away with Lemon Jolly Ranchers? I am. Those were good in a lock-up-your-jaw-sort-of-way.

Fluff

So it's finals week and I should be studying. But I'm not. I am completely and 100% unmotivated. I know that this test tomorrow will kick my butt if I don't study, but I don't seem to care. Did I mention I can get B's and C's the rest of college and still graduate with the GPA I want? Not that the A-student inside of me will accept that, I just may start to care after finals. Oh well.

I finally got to swing dance this weekend. It had been over a month. Some great dancers came in and taught a workshop this weekend. I took the Collegiate Shag 1 and 2 classes. It was a lot of fun and a great workout for my calves.

While I am unmotivated to study, I am motivated to start wearing skirts while swing dancing. They just look so cool when the girl spins around. Very elegant and feminine. This means that I need to get new shoes. I currently have cheap tennis shoes that have been re-soled with some kind of leather. Yeah. Tennis shoes and a skirt. MAJOR DORK. I need to get dressier dance shoes and then I can go to fancier dances.

I danced with this one guy last night who pretty much beat me up on the dance floor. He managed to slam my arm into my nose for 3 out of the 4 consecutive turns he led. He then told me that I needed to follow better. Dude! Following your lead got me punched! Oh well. He's not from around here and I doubt I will ever have to dance with him again.

I do need to learn how to "mis-read" a lead into a dip. Some girls are really good at just spinning out of them. I never think about getting out of a dip until my head is almost on the floor. I'm ok with some guys dipping me, but not ones I don't know. I mean, I really don't want to be dropped on my head (which one guy almost did last night).

So that's my boring ramblings about finals and swing dancing. I wanted to post a really deep post about what God is teaching me and my thoughts on churches, but maybe some other time. It was time for a fluff post.

The Project

Well The Project is done. And It was a lot of fun. We helped create a Teen Center for the Boys and Girls Club. Tons of work, but God answers prayers and we got all the supplies we needed. Here are some pictures of the room:

Before:



The room was really drab and not inviting at all!!! We changed that!

After:

(Sorry some of the pictures are really light. My group member went a little crazy on the color adjustment when we scanned them in...)

Today we made our presentation of our work to our class. The director for the Boys and Girls Club was there and said that in the ONE WEEK that the teen center has been opened they have seen an increase of 50 teenagers in center. They went from having hardly any - to adding 50 in one week. They have to turn teenagers away because they can't handle that many teens. How cool is that? God is good!

Three Little Burritos

This picture was taken at Halloween in Chicago in an alley. Chris convinced Amberly and I that if we dressed up like Chipotle burritos we would get free burritos. I didn't believe Chris at first. It seemed like a really good way to get us to wrap ourselves in foil and make fools of ourselves. Finally I gave in and we bought some foil.

The Chipotle was in the middle of a bunch of clubs in Chicago, so while we are standing in an alley covering ourselves in foil, many drunk people stopped to make fun of us. Including a guy in a thong. He actually was a guide for a bus and made the bus stop so that he could mock us over the loud speaker. Yeah. The naked man made fun us.

The bouncer for the bar next to where we were standing kept telling us that we didn't need to dress up to get in. Thanks.

Once we ran out of foil we started walking to Chipotle and managed to hold up a line of traffic because our foil kept falling off. Eventually we made it and DID get free burritos. Take that naked man. See us with our prize:



(Yeah, the foil kept falling off)

What a fun, crazy, memorable night!

Shades of Grey

I don't know about you, but I hate grey areas. I am a black or white person. Give me a yes or no answer. Ambiguity, especially in moral and religious areas, frustrates me.

My culture tells me to be tolerant. To be accepting. But to tell you the truth, I can't. I can't be tolerant of grey religious areas. I can't stand it when Christians argue over doctrinal issues. I can't stand it when I don't understand scripture. I can't stand it when we make ethics relative. There must be a right or wrong answer. Why can't we see it? Why do these things look grey?

Despite our blurred vision, I do believe that God knows the answers. Truth is found in Him. However, while we are on this side of heaven, we will see through a glass dimly and will only see the black and white in shades of grey.

I hate the grey. I long for the clarity of heaven.

But until then I pray that He reveals a little more to me.

God Answers Prayers

I have a cool God-story.

The project with the Boys and Girls center is winding down. As part of our grade we are required to get media coverage of our project. This is hard to do!

Three weeks ago I was praying that God would provide some media coverage for us. The NEXT DAY the Daily News called and wanted to do a feature article on our work. They did a phone interview with me and were going to come out that Saturday to get pictures of us painting the room. I was so excited! That night at my team meeting I told my group how God had answered my prayer. I'm not sure everyone saw it so much as an answer to prayer as just good luck... but whatever.

So Saturday came and went and no photographer. None. Which meant no media coverage. Which meant my group saw God NOT answer a prayer. I was confused.

God, what are You doing? I don't understand. This would have been a great opportunity to show my team that You do care about the little things, that You do answer prayers. Now they think You don't come through.

I was talking with Tamara about how frustrated I was. I just couldn't understand what lesson I was supposed to learn here. She pointed out that the reputation of God's name was on the line and I needed to tell Him that.

I start praying some more. Praying specifically that the Daily News would cover our story so that my group could see God work. Last night I left a message with the reporter around midnight to let him know we would be doing some more work at the Boys and Girls Club today. All day I was praying that they would show up.

And they did. And took pictures.

God does answers prayers. Even small ones.

Well Hello There!

I'm back. I've missed you.

The past two weeks have been CRAZY with school and work and friends. Well I guess it is still crazy, but a whole lot less stressful now.

Today I want to tell you a story about my cousin and his wife. It happened at our family reunion. Every year my dad's side of the family gets together the first weekend in August to go camping together. I have an extremely goofy family, making it a fun weekend.

Every year at the family reunion, Uncle Glenn and Aunt Vikki take on my cousin Steve and his wife, Jodi, in a game of euchre. They are intense and you dare not bother them. They have even been know to skip ruben and pizza pie-iron sandwiches for this game! They are serious!

Anyway, one year my cousin got up and his wife asked him, "Honey, will you please get me something to drink?"

"Sure." He replies.

He comes back with a glass of water and sets it next to his wife. Jodi takes a drink of it and notices that it tastes a little funny. Kind of stale. She drinks a little more and then holds it up to the light and sees little things floating in the water. GROSS!

And then it hits her. She realizes where Steve had gotten the water.

"STEVE! DID YOU GET THIS WATER FROM THE COOLER?"

"Maybe...."

Sure enough. Not wanting to waste time walking to the drinking water, Steve grabbed a cup and scooped melted ice water out of the bottom of a cooler and brought it to his wife. Complete with floating lettuce, plastic and food pieces.

Drink up Jodi!