so the summer has been positively loco, but not in a bad way. just in a crazy way. i am kinda ready for it to be over, and to be in one city for more than a month!
RUF staff training was last week, and it was most excellent. i really enjoyed getting to catch up with the other folks in my intern class and learned some extremely helpful things in the sessions. i also got to meet a bunch of other interns and campus ministers and got to spend some great time with billy and ashley, my new campus minister and his wife. they are pretty much fantastic.
next week (on the 12th, to be precise) i will be moving to houston!!!!!! freshmen show up on the 16th. here we go - i can hardly wait! i even got a necklace with an owl on it to get into "rice mode."
i am so excited to be moving to a ginormous city with fantastic food and old trees and an awesome home church that is so close to home. i know, i know - 4 hours isn't exactly around the corner, but it beats 17 any day!
we had this crazy adventure when we moved my stuff out of charlotte and to dallas that i will have to tell you about later. suffice it to say, none of the four of us (mom, dad, me, and kj) got a complete REM cycle in that night.
in other news, i seem to have entered a new life stage. a few years ago, it seemed like my facebook newsfeed was full of weddings. now it's full of babies.
sorry it's been so long! now that my life will be normalizing some, i expect i will be posting much more regularly.
it sounds like it needs some oil in the wheels. it makes such distressed noises and works so hard. unfortunately, it totally screws up at the whole printing-labels thing more often than not, and that is a trifle annoying when you need return address stickers to save your hand from FALLING OFF because you have already addressed more than 100 postcards!!!!!!!
the point is, the printer is weird. and i am raising support. and it is hot in texas.
saw the entire high school musical phenomenon unfold during their own high school years.
for some reason, that is weird to me.
well, folks, i am officially living the dream. i mean, i'm not THERE yet, but we had new intern orientation last week in atlanta for RUF, and y'all, i am SO excited about all this! and i'm officially an RUF employee as of last monday! and now, in addition to taking 2 classes this summer (i'm on the tail end of one right now, and next week i'll be in dc taking the other one), my job = raising support! that way i can actually move to Houston and work with students!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok, so i am a little excited. anyway. if you think of it, pray for me and that God will bring in the money i need to do this crazy-awesome thing He has called me to.
way more updates coming soon, but i wanted to give the quick one.
(ps - if you are so inclined, you may follow the link in my sidebar now to donate money to my work with RUF at rice.)
so one of my roommates, erin, told me about this cool challenge where you take one picture every day for a year - at the end of the year, you get a collection of pics that commemorate the year PLUS you are hopefully a lot better at taking pictures. i decided to do it, and to post them all on here (let's be honest, it's gonna be way more fun this way), but thought i would wait to start till april 1. the original plan was to take a picture of my left hand with a giant fake diamond on the fourth finger and also make it a joke.... BUT i now have a way better plan. and there is no joking involved.*
i have been told where RUF is placing me for the internship. may i have a drumroll...
ladies and gentlemen, i am headed back to texas. specifically, to houston, to work for the RUF at Rice University.
i am ECSTATIC!
*that is how i'm excusing the fact that it is technically april 2....
let's see, since i wrote last, i have...
gone to RUF summer conference
moved into my apartment in Charlotte
graduated from college
hung out with my sister in my new town
gone to Chicago to attend a cousin's wedding
family vacation, including a drive from Chicago to Myrtle Beach, stopping off in Pennsylvania to visit my grandfather en route
tomorrow is my first day in seminary.
whoohoo, eh?
i'll be back more now that my life has settled down a bit, and i'll keep you posted.
first class up: pastoral and social ethics. should be fun.
these are some quotes my campus minister put on our outline for large group last night. they are fantastic.
"Before you can speak peace to your hearts, you must not only be sad for your sins, you must not only be troubled for the sins of your life, but likewise you must be troubled over your best duties and performances. When a poor soul is somewhat awakened by the terrors of the Lord, then that poor one, being born under a covenant of works, flies directly to a covenant of works again. As soon as he is awakened and he senses his need for God, he says, 'I will be mighty good now. I will reform. I will do everything I can, and then certainly Jesus Christ will have mercy upon me.' And, as Adam and Eve hid themselves in the trees of the Garden and sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, so the poor sinner, when awakened, flies to his duties and to his performances to hide himself from God. But before you can be certain that jesus Christ is in your heart, you must be brought to see not only that your sins must be done away with, but your righteousness. You must see that all your duties, all your righteousness, all put together are so far from recommending God to you, so far from being any motive of inducement for God to have mercy on your poor soul, that He will see them to be filthy rags and that God hates them and God cannot but do away with them if you bring them to Him in order to recommend you to His favor." - George Whitfield
"With our mouths we say 'Christ alone' is what makes us acceptable, but in our hearts we add Christ AND financial freedom. Christ AND approval of my parents. Christ AND the respect or happiness of my children. Christ AND the acceptance of a peer group. Christ or something. But anything that you add to Jesus Christ as a requirement for being happy will become a slave master that will strangle you. It will drive you into the ground and will hang you by the neck until you are dead." - Becky Pipert
harsh? sure, but true. it hardly does us good to pretend that matters aren't serious. which is of course what makes it amazing that what DOES "recommend you to His favor" is the completed work of Christ. That's the beauty of the gospel: that which is demanded is supplied.
and i'm back :)
this week is bound to be a bit nuts. i'm having an insanely hard time with another 20th cent. am. poetry paper... need to do this NOW. it's due tuesday and it begs for the editing eye of daddy-man. but i am having a very bad time writing it. :-( concentration level is pretty much nil.
we won, we won we won we won
we won we won we won
we won we won we won
we won we won we won we won
and we did it in less than 30 minutes
i hope you don't think i'm bragging
but lest you think so, i say unto thee
that i did not play
but like 5 minutes
so maybe i shouldn't be surprised!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
off to fall conference
yo ho ho and a bottle of flavored water
it's that time of year, ladies and gentlemen - time for intramural volleyball. being the overachieving nutcase that i am, this year i am the captain of two (2) teams - one corec and one all girls. yummy, eh?
we had practice today and let me just say i am SORE and will probably not be able to sit down tomorrow. can you believe unathletic little me (ok, not so little) is engaging in athletic activity - voluntarily? why, you ask, are you breaking out of your mold? well, i am glad to say that when my soul was being created, and God didn't put in me the athleticism and such He would impart to my sister and brother, He decided to make volleyball an exception. i'm actually quite good, considering. and i actually like it. weird, huh?
in other news, tomorrow i am making a chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake and then watching "the phantom of the opera" with some friends. i'll let you know how it goes.
chicks dig scars and glory lives forever.