Themes

Each semester so far has had a running theme.  Last semester, God decided it was time I learned a bit more about who it is that I serve exactly.  This semester, though only a few days into it, has not disappointed.  The new theme is that of prayer.

In chapel yesterday, our president, Dr. Johnson, told how important it is to be in constant prayer, warring for the kingdom on our knees.  In Personal Evangelism, a class I had the day before, we were told to enlist 10 people that we know to pray for us during our semester as we carry out our assignment of witnessing to 3 people.  I've also been keeping a running list in my head of things I should be praying for.

Yes, this will be a semester of prayer.  And you know what?  It excites me!  God is going to do amazing things, and the most important thing I need to be doing is talking to Him about it.

Praise the Lord, whose mercies endure forever!

Reflections

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

 A. A. Milne

Life.  It flows along much like a stream, gliding seamlessly over its bed, waiting for no man.

In the blink of an eye, my summer has flown by.  It feels like I just fell into the welcoming arms of my family as I returned home from school.  It feels like I just began to cherish and store up all the hugs and kisses that Helen and Josiah gave me.  It feels like I just now have time to process all that I learned while I was away.

But life - ah, dear sweet life - has floated along at its usual rapid pace, and even though it seems that I have just dipped my toes in to test the waters, I've been swept so much further along the way than my brain has had time to think about.

I've spent many hours, 330 to be exact, working.  I've made guacamole, sold guacamole, stocked produce shelves, pushed carts in from the lot, bagged thousands of groceries, helped hundreds of customers to their cars, scanned thousands of groceries, returned who knows how many items, handed out who knows how many receipts, and asked the same questions every two minutes during my 6-8.5 hour shifts.

On the home-front, I've spent many hours with my sister soaking in the joys that the show "Monk" brings.  I've played multiple rounds of our family favorite, "Take 2."  I've spent a good deal of time laughing with Mom and Dad as we live up to our usual snarkiness.  I've enjoyed evenings spent with friends, catching up, seeing movies, having dinner.  I've appreciated Chik-Fil-A on their special day with a co-worker and her husband.

Even though it doesn't really feel like I've had much of a summer, I really have in all actuality.

God has allowed me some much-loved time with my family.  He has allowed me the feeling of exhaustion after working in the hot sun.  He has allowed me joy.  He has allowed me happiness and grace.  He has allowed me sanctification.  He has allowed me to share Himself with one of the families He has given me.

My friends, God has been good to me.

My heart is full - oh so full!

School starts up in a week.  If this semester is anything like the last, then I know it will be full of adventures, joys, and challenges.  But most of all, it will be a time of spiritual growth.

Somehow, it won't be any easier to say goodbye, but it will be wonderful to return to my school roots.  My heart will fill with pain again as I give my family one last hug and one last kiss.  It will be bittersweet when I insert my key into the lock at my apartment for the first time this semester.

My heart will ache with the pain of farewell, but will swell with joy as I say hello.

And so, I will continue to float down this river called life, and I will continue to be kept inside His will.

It has been a good summer, and I know that it will be a great fall as well.

It's Almost 11 O'clock...

...which means it's time for me to write a little something with enough meaning for you, as the reader, to interpret my pithy post properly.  I hope that you are familiar enough with the English norms of language so that you can understand what I'm trying to impart to you.  Please, don't take anything I'm saying out of context,  but determine the subject matter, and go from there.

As you most likely surmised from the above paragraph, yes, I'm studying for my Hermeneutics mid-term.  So many terms, phrases, and topics to memorize!  But it will be good, especially if I have good recall on test day.  ;)  Pray for me, though, because it's a multiple choice exam, and I have the awful tendency to waaaaaay over think such things, making a plausible case for 3 out of the 4 possible answers.  I really can't tell you how badly I want to get an A in this class, so I've got a great amount of studying to do.

On top of that, I've got lots of reading and researching to do for two of my other classes, which are both fantastic, and then a bibliography for one and a book review for another.  Though the last two items aren't due til the last day of class, I'd really like to get a head start on them so I won't be worried about starting/finishing those while studying for finals.

Other than that, I've also got a mid-term in my New Testament Survey class.  I'm thoroughly enjoying this one!  So many great historical background informational bits that help to piece together the gospel to make it that much more beautiful.  God is so good!  :D

So that's life in a nutshell.  Lots of studying, planned breaks of studying (Six Flags on Saturday), and school and church events on the horizon.

On a totally unrelated thread, my roommate reminded me that next Thursday is the last day of class before Spring Break!!!  I had completely lost track of time and was expecting at least another week of school between mid-terms and a week long break, so this was a glorious realization.  It's been 2.5 months since I've seen home and family, so as you can imagine, I'm itching to get back!

May God bless y'all as you go about your week!  :D 

Settling

Wow!  I can't believe I've already been in my new home for 6 days!  When did this happen?  Whatever happened to the whole "I'm just gonna stay at home, attend UT, and work at HEB" plan?  And here I am.

It didn't really sink in that I was going to stay here until Luke and my parents drove away.  It was rough, but I told myself to get over it, because this will be my home for at least the next 4.5 months, so I'd better learn to like it real quick.  :)

The day after I moved in, I caught a ride to church with one of my roommates, and directly afterwards, we headed over the house of a very kind family from the church.  We spent the entire day over there, cooking and getting the house ready for other members of the church to come over.  Hanging out with a family in a real home was exactly what I needed that day.  Isn't it funny how God knew that?  ;)

I've been keeping semi-busy, what with going to the school for work/study interviews (I'll be working in the library twice a week), making school and rent payments, and tagging along with my roommates to some of their various activities.  Last night was probably my favorite evening so far as we hung out in one of the guys' apartments that is in our same complex.  They made dinner, and then we watched America's Funniest Videos, talked, laughed, and just enjoyed being around other people.  Let's face it, having connections definitely helps it feel more home-like.  :)

Well, to wrap up, here's a list of the books I'll be studying for the next couple of months (I'm very excited!) :

• 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible
• God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible
• Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible
• Jesus: A Very Short Introduction
• The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within its Cultural Context
• After You Believe
• Imitation of Christ
• Letters Along the Way
• True Spirituality

And that's all for now!  May God bless you as you go throughout your wonderful day!  :)

On your marks!

Wowee!

My set departure for Criswell College is fast approaching!  At first I was taken a bit off guard after I found out I have to be there sooner than originally expected, but I've finally resigned myself to it.  ;)

My last day of work was Saturday.  It was rough saying goodbye to my work family, but I'm not quite finished yet.  I've still got to say goodbye to my peeps in produce, grocery, and dairy!  And there were a few people on the front end who weren't there Saturday.  (Zach just rolls his eyes when he hears that I know everybody in the store.  He likes to keep himself to the front end, and that's it.  :P)  Yesterday I drove around to various parts of the state to say goodbye to some friends who I won't see again til May.  They're all near and dear to my heart, and I can't wait to see them when I get back!

Today I've been spending some time cleaning up my room and making a mental note of what I still need to buy before I'm completely ready.  It seems to be a list a mile long that continues to grow every time I sit down.

I decided today that I'll bring 3 Bibles with me:  two will be my huge attack Bibles (one ESV study Bible, and the other a NASB word study Bible) and my easier-to-handle-no-frills ESV.

I am excited about finally having the chance to try my hand in the kitchen!  For Christmas I got a casserole cookbook, and I'll be spending some serious time copying down some of my favorite recipes from home.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it all.  Yeah, I'll probably end up doing simple things most of the time, like microwave dinners, but I'm vowing to do at least one good, home cooked meal a week.  At least, that's the plan for now....

And there you have it -- a crazy, random-yet-somewhat-connected post about the things that have been keeping me occupied.

~Moi~

Hello everyone!  I have had requests from several friends to a) write a new post, and b) give a quick update on life as it stands today.  So, without further ado, ze post:

Life this past week has been wildly crazy, to say the least.  School has become a stressful mess.  I know several of you have heard me say that this has just really NOT been my semester, and while I would love to change that statement .... I really can't.  It's been insanely tough!  But then, that's just the way school goes sometimes.  Thank God last semester went well, otherwise I don't think I would have registered for more classes this spring.  But through it all, He has been faithful.

Also on the subject of school, I'm leaning heavily towards attending Howard Payne University in the fall.  This will mean lots and lots and lots of scholarship searching as well as working my tail off over the summer in order to cover expenses, but overall it excites me.  It excites me that I might possibly have found a great college!  It excites me that I could have the chance to really try my hand and succeed!  It excites me to try something new and different!  Yes, I'm excited.  :D


Side note: It appears that Adams kids like to transfer into 4-year colleges for their sophomore year, and it seems like they enjoy picking expensive private schools instead of regular state schools, and it also looks like they gravitate towards institutions that claim the yellow jacket as their mascot.  Huh!  Who knew?  ;)

Aaaaaanyway!  Something that's kind of remotely interesting about life is that tomorrow evening Luke and I will be volunteering at the THSC gala and awards banquet!  I'm very excited about this!  Over the past two months, we've joined friends in packing folders with many, many papers for Capitol Days.  As a sort of "thank you", our friend Paul Hastings invited us to volunteer at the gala ... in which case we'd get free tickets to enjoy the event.  It's going to be a lot of fun (and I'll have you know that it took me two days of shopping to get an outfit together)!

So, God bless, and I hope to hear from everyone else soon!

Skewl

I tend to find science labs utterly boring, and I decided that in order to enjoy myself, I would have to make it fun (this term is used loosely).  We had to look at a ton of specimens under the microscope (I loathe microscopes!  They're such a pain!) and then draw what we saw (something else I loathe) and write down observations.  Let's face it, for a nonscience person, there's not much you can observe from a glob of algae, and there aren't really observable differences between 20 such globs.  I decided that in order to keep my sanity, I would identify them by other things in the world that I was familiar with.

My most entertaining descriptions:

• Euglena: It is a green algae that looks like a miniature manatee
• Closterium: It looks like a mix of a pickle and a leech.  It's green and oblong
• Spirogyra: Green, moving somewhat.  I looks like a glorified spaghetti noodle
• Polysiphonia: It's a red branchy thing with pink splotches
• Sargassum: Greenish-brownish seaweed that looks more like a holly sprig than anything else
• Kelp: It's got a long "spine" with "tentacles" growing out of it

While I wouldn't necessarily call it a "fun" lab, I was able to make it more enjoyable for myself.  Now only 10 more labs to go!