Hello Once Again!

Well, I have been meaning to update my blog again and I just never got around to it. A few things have happened since I last blogged. First, about three weekends ago a friend of mine from the Akron, Ohio area came to Cincinnati for a few days to visit. We had an awesome weekend. We even had a picnic in the middle of winter, how cool is that! Pardon the pun. It was a very interesting experience. Then the following weekend me and a couple of my friends, Sam and Rochelle, went to my house for a Casting Crowns concert. That was a lot of fun! It was a very good concert. I was very impressed with them. I had seen them in concert before and had been impressed with them then but this time I got to see more of them than before. I was impressed by the fact that the lead singer on more than one occasion would stop and say a quick prayer before he would sing. Later on in the concert the lead singer, Mark Hall, said that before the concert he and the rest of the band went through the rows of seats praying for the people that would be coming to hear them, then he asked if we would mind them praying with us now that we were there. They spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes praying with us. I had never seen that before at a concert. It was very refreshing. They really made you feel like they were doing this as a ministry not just for the fame. Well, the concert was on Friday and we went home on Sunday. The following Wednesday was the beginning of Mid-Winter Break, so I now I am home until March 3. I was so happy to get home! Janette came and stayed at my house for a couple days and we had a blast. I got to babysit my niece, Emma, a couple days as well. I really have been having a good break. I have pretty much done nothing and it has felt so good!!

I cannot wait until Summer!! I have some exciting things planned for this summer. For one, I have applied for job that I am hoping I will get. I think I have a pretty good chance of getting it though. Two summers ago I worked on a campaign for Tim Walberg who was running for US Congress. I ended up working mostly for his wife, because she took a liking to me and wanted me to help her and keep her company when she was stuck at the house doing paper work or planning fundraiser dinners. I really enjoyed working with her and we became pretty good friends. Well, whenever she sees my mom she always asks about me. Recently she asked my mom if she thought I would be interested in working on their campaign this summer, and if I was to tell me to send in an application. So that is exactly what I did. I really hope I get it. It would be so much fun to work on the campaign as more than just a volunteer. That's one thing I have planned for this summer. I am also planning on going to a few different camps. My parents are both planning on taking a few days vacation this summer so we can all go to the Rock Lake Bible Methodist Family Camp for the whole time. This past year was our first year there and it was so much fun! I can't wait to go back there again this year. Then the week after Rock Lake I am wanting to got to the Appalachian Youth Camp in Pennsylvania. Janette goes as a counselor and she said I could stay with her which will be a blast. The only thing is whenever we stay the night somewhere together we never end up going to bed very early. We always seem to stay up until three or four o'clock in the morning talking. You would think that we would run out of things to talk about but we never seem to. I just can't wait until this summer!!

Well, I guess that is about it for now. I do have one more thing that I would like to share though. For the past couple of weeks I have been studying Jeremiah 29 for my devotions. Verses 10-14 have been a real encouragement to me, but really the whole chapter has. It takes place when the children of Israel are in captivity in Babylon and God sends them a message. He tells them to go ahead and settle down, build houses, get married, have families, and when their time there is up He will let them know and will bring them out. I'm the kind of person who likes to plan it all out. When I'm planning a weekend with friends, I don't really worry that much about the details, we can just go with the flow. But when it comes to my life I like to have it all planned out. Recently I have been struggling with the decision of whether I should go two or four years at GBS. As of right now, I am going with two, but I'm not sure that in two years I will decide to go another two. And that bothers me because I want to know NOW what I am going to do. When I read Jeremiah 29 it was almost as if God was telling me to just live my everyday life and when it was time for me to move on He would let me know. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go one day at a time and trust God to tell me where He wants me to be and when. Well, everyone, stay warm and enjoy the snow while it lasts! Bye for now!!

Smile!

The other day I was on my way up to Mr. Profitt's office and I passed a fellow student who was sweeping the stairs. He said "hello" and I gave him my usual reply with a smile. He stopped sweeping and asked me why I was smiling. "Everytime I see you, you are smiling. Why are you such a smiley person? What makes you smile?" I was a little caught off guard. Why did I smile? I told him it was because I like it when I receive a smile. A smile somehow makes someones day brighter and why should I be the one to make they're day bad just because I didn't smile. But is that really the reason? I thought about that for the rest of the day and have thought about it on more than one occasion since then. Why do I smile? I don't always feel like smiling. In fact there are somedays where smiling is the last thing in this world that I feel like doing, but do you really have to feel like smiling just to smile? And why does it matter if I smile anyways? Do people really care whether I smile or not? I once did an experiment for psychology on smiles. I found this little test on line where you watched twenty different people smile and after each one you had to check whether it was a real or fake smile. The day I found the test I really wasn't in the best of moods, but by the time the test was over I found myself smiling and in a better mood. That gave me an idea for my own experiment. I had a few other people take the test and afterwards I asked them if they had found themselves smiling or in a better mood then when they had started. Most said they did find themselves smiling back. So, I guess that brings me back to the question, "Does it really matter whether or not you smile?" I think it does. But most of the time I find myself smiling at someone and I don't even realize it. So why do I smile, if not just to make others smile? "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God: ~ Psalm 146:5" Maybe that's why I smile. : ) Are you smiling?

Winter Wonderland

Well, I was able to go home this last weekend. I was originally going to go home on Friday, but then my parents called and said that we were supposed to get a big snow storm and they would prefer for me to get home before the storm hit. That was Thursday night around 9:30 so I ran down to the dean of women's office to make sure it would be alright for me to leave and was given permission. By that time is was already 9:40 and I still had to pack. I was so ready to get home that I was packed and heading down the road at 10:20. It was raining a little bit when I left Cincinnati but by the time I passed Troy it had stopped and I had a pretty clear drive until I got closer to the Michigan boarder. That was around 1:30 in the morning. Well, then I took the wrong exit, which really wasn't that big of a deal. I knew where I was, I was in Petersburg when I should have been in Dundee, but then that meant I had to take Petersburg rode, which is horrible even on the clearest days, to get home. By this time the snow storm that the weathermen where predicting had hit. So I didn't get home until 3 o'clock in the morning. That was okay though. At least I got to go home and I even had an extra day.
I will be coming home again next weekend for a Casting Crowns concert and then the following Wednesday will begin Mid-Winter Break. So this semester is going by pretty quickly and I really don't have that heavy of a load. So I guess I said all of that just to say that God is Good. He was with me as I drove home at 1 o'clock in the morning and He is with me as I continue my schooling here at GBS. Well, I guess that is all for now!