A little bit of holiday fun.

Just a little something I found funny.  A more serious blog will be coming soon.  Merry Christmas!

It's the most wonderful time of the year...A Christmas rambling

Yep, it's that season again-probably my favorite holiday of the year.  I love the time with friends and family, the food, the music, the decorations, and of course most importantly the fact that it is a celebration of Jesus' birth.  :)  As I type this, I'm listening to Amy Grant singing about a "Tender Tennessee Christmas", which is a bit amusing when I really stop to think about it.  I've driven through Tennessee a grand total of two times in my life, and really have no burning desire to spend the holidays there, but I still love the song.  (In case anyone really wanted to know, which I'm sure you didn't. ;)

On the topic of music, I've always found Christmas music to be some of the best worship music out there.  I know not all of it falls into that category obviously, but if you stop and think about it the emphasis in many of the songs is one of joy and honor.  "This, this is Christ the King!", "O Come Let Us Adore Him", "Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel".  Most of it just naturally leads me to worship.  I have to admit to also being a sentimental sucker for "The Little Drummer Boy."  I know it is a totally fictional story, but the whole idea of a little boy giving the only thing he has still gets me every year.  On a similarly random note, whenever I hear the line from "Do You Hear What I Hear?" that goes "a child, a child shivers in the cold.  Let us bring Him silver and gold."  I catch myself fighting to not say out loud "get the kid a blanket, for crying out loud!"  (While conceding that gold would buy a very nice blanket indeed.)

This is shaping up to be a busy Christmas season for me, between finishing things out here with School of the Bible, fundraising, packing my life up to move into a dorm as soon as I get back from Christmas break...oh, yeah, and shopping for gifts, plus the rest of the normal busyness that seems to go with this time of year.  I will be up in Seattle for a few weeks, spending some time with my family and hopefully seeing a few friends.  There are always so many to see, and so little time to see them all.

So how do I end this rambling Christmas blog entry?  All I can do is say a very Merry Christmas to everyone, and add a scripture that is probably familiar to many of you:  John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life."  Oh Come Let us Adore Him!

Ye olde video fun

Ok, so I thought I posted the actual video the first time, but evidently not.  Here's the video I planned to post.

The changing of the Seasons

Once again, it seems to be about time for my annual blog post. I really do have the best of intentions, but seem to have a knack for neglecting this blog in favor of other pursuits. Maybe this time I can really kick-start it up again. :)

This past year has been a good one, full of both challenges and blessings. I've had the privilege of teaching in our School of the Bible here, both last year (class of 09-10), and with this year's awesome group of students. I really do love my job. I also had the opportunity to visit Seattle for a few weeks back in August (thanks Mom and Dad!) to see people again, relax a bit, and enjoy a break from the brutal Texas heat.

A new season has come again. Fall has always been my favorite time of year; cooler temperatures (although here in Texas we are still wearing t-shirts), the changing of the leaves, pumpkin pies and sparkling cider...I could go on and on with what I love about Fall, but I will spare everyone the lengthy list. The new season has also meant the beginning of a new School of the Bible. Once again, we have a wonderful group of students. 16 students, from 6 different countries. All are thinkers, and all are hungry for God. I love hanging out with them, as well as teaching in the classroom setting.

But this new season is also a time of change for me in another way. While I love what I do here, teaching as well as helping out in our Christian school's office part-time, there are other areas in my life that I feel it is time to develop. I've been journaling for years, and seem (in the expressed opinion of others) to have at least somewhat of a knack with words. I even had a snippet of my work published a few years back. :)

At this point, I am planning to make a big change in my life. I am going to be moving to YWAM Woodcrest, which is just down the road from YWAM Tyler's main campus, to do a School of Writing. The School of Writing will run from January-March, and will focus on learning how to write in different genres, as well as covering editing and how to market your work for publishing. I'm including a link to the page, at the end of this post, for those who want to see all of the details.

There is one big challenge, however, and that is the need to raise the tuition to attend the school. While I have part of the tuition raised, I still have a ways to go. I would like to ask those who read this blog to pray about giving towards my tuition. If you would like to give, you can make a check out to YWAM with a separate note saying that it is for me. If my name is on the check, they can't process it. All gifts given through this are tax-deductible. The address to send the checks to is P.O. Box 3000, Garden Valley, TX 75771.

I have also added a paypal button to this blog (kudos to my friend Jeff Holton for helping me with that!), for those who wish to give that way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to make that tax-deductible, but it is still an option for anyone who chooses it.

To wrap this rambling up, I just want to say I am realizing once again how blessed and thankful I am, and looking forwards to what is next.

http://www.ywamresonate.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=118&Itemid=54

It's been awhile...

Ok, I've neglected this blog for waaaaay too long...

I would like to claim that I have just been too busy, but really, it's just a matter of how I've been allocating my time.  I really do want to start blogging more often again.  :)

A brief update on life at the moment:
I'm still living in Tyler, TX, and still on staff with YWAM.  I went through YWAM's School of the Bible (aka SOTB) last summer, and ended it with an amazing outreach in Nepal, during the month of July.  Since then, I've been involved in staffing the latest SOTB, which began at the end of August 2009-it's hard to believe it's already half way over!  I have the privilege of teaching from time to time, as well as encouraging our students in the everyday rough and tumble of life.  I LOVE our students!!!

On the personal front, there are a number of areas in which I am being challenged right now...I will probably blog more about some of these later.  Suffice it to say, there is a lot floating around in my head right now.

And thus ends my rambling for the day...  :)

live blog from class

Welcome to the wonderful world of the School of the Bible classroom.

Theoretically, we are discussing economics right now...in reality, at the moment the discussion is centered around authority, who has it in various situations, and what is right. (For example, when is it right for the government to intervene in a situation with children, what happens when people pray for healing but don't seem to receive it, etc.) I love some of the discussions we get into here! There is quite a bit of variety in our class here, in age, experience, country of origin, etc., so the discussions often get quite lively.

Eventually, the discussion usually gets back to the topic du jour, but it takes a while sometimes. :)

It is hard to believe that the year is almost finished here at School of the Bible. It has been a busy year, but a good one. There is still a lot on my plate: preparing my final project (a paper and 45 minute teaching on the book of James), our regular homework, gearing up for my one-month outreach to Nepal, etc. It gets a bit challenging sometimes-my brain can feel so full that there seems to be no more room for even one more fact, no matter how valuable. But, overall, it has been a good year and a real time of growing.

A continuation of current class conditions-now we are discussing the free market economy and how it has changed in the past few years. What did Wal Mart music look like two years ago, and what does it look like now, because of the popularity of digital music services?

To switch back somewhat to the subject of a previous paragraph, my plans after outreach are to stay on here and help staff the next School of the Bible, which will start in September. (I get back from outreach at the very beginning of August.) It is still a real time of change and growth for me, but I'm excited. God is so good, and I'm excited to see what will happen in this new season that is opening up.

Well, I had better wrap this blog entry up for now. It is almost time for a break in class anyways.

God bless y'all! (I'm still learning to speak Texan)

p.s. if anyone who reads this blog uses Twitter, I recently joined, so you can now follow my frequent, rather random updates. My handle is missionsgirl. :)

God's mercy, and Greek wrestling

This has been an interesting but good week.

On Monday and Tuesday, we ditched our normal class schedule in favor of spending time in prayer and worship. (we also switched the schedule from starting at 7:45 a.m. to starting at 9-and there was much rejoicing!) We had some really great worship, and then wound up with different people in our school just being honest about where they are at right now.

"Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." "Confession is good for the soul." We had some really good times of prayer and ministry with each other. God is so good and so faithful. Wednesday night we also had a time of prayer and foot washing by our staff-a big blessing.

On a completely different topic, I am continuing to contemplate the monumental task of comprehending New Testament Greek. I am discovering just how little I really know about nouns, verbs, and the like. Right now, we are learning how Greek grammar works, and learning some of the Greek words, in preparation for translating 1st John later in the school (with the aid of a computer program-don't get too impressed.)

An example: How to translate the word "speak" when the "parsing code" (i.e. reminder of what is a verb, noun, etc. in shorthand) looks like this: V-PPI-3S? Thankfully, our staff has been extremely good at going over things second and third times, allowing us to use our lesson notes during quizzes, etc.

The point of this, you may ask? To better understand what God is saying in His word. There is a big difference when reading about how God deals with sin when you can see whether He is talking about someone who sins once and repents, as opposed to someone who is continually sinning and rebelling against Him. This should be an interesting study.

Well, I think that's enough for one update. We are looking at the book of Judges today in class. This should be good.