The TYPICAL Day

For all those who were worried about my crazy day on Monday, let me just say that that was mislabeled, it should have been UNtypical day. SO, this is a normal day, this past Wednesday:

11 am: wake up after a healthy 10 hours of sleep, first class at 12!

12 pm: head over to my Engineering lab, learn about resistors and started to make a motor, but ran out of time.

1:30 pm: get out of lab and go eat a healthy lunch at West.

2 pm: Go to Chemistry lecture.

3 pm: Head over to math.

4 pm: Band time!

5:30 pm: Food time again! Meet some friends to eat over at West.

7:15 pm: meet to head over to Kidder for Awake, the all campus InterVarsity worship. we share stories of how the past weekend (Fall Conference) effected us.

9 pm: finish up Engineering homework due the next day at 9.

10 pm: go play Nertz and get COMPLETELY smashed at it.

12 am: sleep time!

See, normal, 13 hour day. This is much more typical of my life at college.

Fall Conference

This past weekend, I went on a retreat with InterVarsity called Vital Faith. It was a collection of all the InterVarsity chapters from Oregon meeting together to meet, play games, worship, and connect with God. It was amazing, and I had a life-changing experience there. The speaker, Doug Schaupp (who is an amazing speaker, by the way) talked about vital faith all weekend, and how we need to have "come and see" moments about God, where we are so excited excited about his love that we want to tell everyone around us. Using a few examples of things like this happening during his college days as an InterVarsity leader, he explained how college evangelism is getting harder as our generation becomes smarter and more skeptical of faith and God (I also bought his book about this, "I Once Was Lost." So far, it's excellent and eye-opening). Oddly enough, the small group that meets in my dorm (go Sackett Crew!!) had already planned a huge event for Monday night, where we'd get a whole bunch of people together for free pizza and cupcakes before our Bible study to bring people in. Some backstory on that:

[As a campus, the thing we're trying is called the "God Experiment," where every week for four weeks we try and bring God into our lives through a different aspect. this week is Curiosity, so we were trying to bring a BUNCH of people into Bible study who might have questions, no matter what their faith. This turned out well, as we were supposed to get together by school at the conference and plan some way we could spread the love of God on campus. And we had already planned this! God was at work, and it was good!]

We had a huge number of people show up to pizza, and had about 15 people stay after for Bible Study, bringing our Bible up to about 30 people. It was exciting!

Back to the conference:

On Saturday night, I realized something. This was like the big moment, when I realized I had gone off the path, and wanted to get back on. God loves me so much, no matter what i do, and I hadn't realized this until right bout then. During the song "How He Loves" by David Crowder, the chorus "he loves us, oh how he loves us, oh how he loves us, oh how he loves" kept repeating in my head, and I realized that he loved us (I know, obvious conclusion from the words, but this was the first time I had truly believed it). At the end of that, there was an option to recommit your life to Christ, and I felt like that was the right choice for me, so I stood up. It felt so good to place my trust in God, and put my life in his hands. I had been lost, but am on my way back to the right path.

Now, I realize that there are more extremes to "being off the path." I've all sorts of testimonies of how people have been in a downward spiral; of drugs, alcohol, and depression and God shown them the light and they are a better person now because of it. I never strayed that far, but I think that what I did was enough to warrant action by God to show me how far off I had been (read my first post about my testimony for more info).

SO, this is my come and see moment, my big event, the "day I'll always remember before and after" from. And it s exciting.

God is Good!

A typical Monday (all 21 hours of it!)

5 am: get up to get homecoming football tickets vs. UCLA (GO BEAVS!!!)

8 am: the rain begins while we're still in line. My sleeping bag gets soaked

9 am: get tickets (section 113, pretty decent)!

9:15 am: eat chocolate chip pancakes at Mike's house (yum!)

10 am: bike through the rain (again) to get to rehearsal

10:01 am: realize rehearsal doesn't start until 10:30, feel silly, fall asleep on table.

10:24 am: get woken up to an attempted wet willy (gross)

10:30 am: start rehearsal. realize my sight reading skills are still good, and other people's are not...(frustrating from a rehearsal stand point)

11 am: go back to Mike's to play Nertz (ALMOST won, too!)

1:30 pm: realize you have stuff to do besides sit warming your feet in Mike's room, reading Speaker for the Dead, so bike home (in the 1o minutes it was raining, then it stopped)

1:40 pm: shower (MUCH needed)

1:50 pm: go to Chemistry.

2:10 pm: fall asleep in Chem

2:11 pm: Thankfully get woken up by a handy neighbor to pay attention (Thanks Annie!)

2:50 pm: go to Math (yuck)

3:15 pm: realize math goes WAY too slowly.

3:17 pm: fall asleep in math

3:25 pm: FINALLY get woken up by handy neighbor (thanks, slowpoke...) to continue taking excellent notes.

4 pm: go to band

4:35, 4:47, 5:02, and 5:17 pm: almost fall asleep in band (thankfully no missed entrances!)

5:30 pm: go help set up for pizza party in G lounge (tasty!)

6 pm: party away! tell people how amazing Jesus is, and how they should try the God Experiment and come to Bible Study to get cupcakes and answers to those burning questions.

7:30 pm: Bible Study

8:40 pm: get a call from JF about Africa (somewhat disappointed by result, but it was still mind opening, not necessarily in the way I had prayed for, but I'll take what I can get)

9 pm: get a call from LesUr to come fix a housemate's computer (why not?)

10:30 pm: leave LesUr's house after fixing computer and getting into an interesting discussion with M (LesUr's rommate, see UrbanOutland for more details) about Goodwill (she thinks it's gross and unsanitary).

11 pm: start Chem lab report due in exactly 12 hours

11:30 pm: realize the internet is too distracting, so moves to the lounge (no internet), where K and MW are having a nice chat.

11:45 pm: get into a discussion about women in the church and church politics in general(very interesting to hear a different perspective on this)

12:25 am: realize I have yet to do much work on lab report (10:45 hours left!)

12:30 am: talk to MW and MG (THAT was interesting and eye opening)

1 am: MW goes to bed, I go back to my room for internet to research stuff for my lab report.

2 am: a little more progress on lab report, but I am starting to fade (the screen is unfocused and I can't type to save my life)

4 am: wake up with 14 pages of random letters and a nice keyboard print on my face. decide sleep is more important than gibberish, so climb into bed.

8:50 am: roll out of bed to get to Engineering lecture by 9.

9 am: start typing this.

SO, that was a little crazier than expected, and I did get the lab report done, and pretty well, for all you worrisome parents out there who care about that sort of thing. and tonight, I'm going to bed EARLY!

Halloween

I was recently looking through my dear sister's (TT) pictures on Facebook and came across pictures of her finding pumpkins to carve. This made me think of Halloween at our house in Evanston, and how much I'll miss it this year. And yes, this is somewhat of an add-on to my last post, so i'll keep it short.

Every year for a very long time we would go and find good pumpkins to carve. Finding the perfect pumpkin was a little but more than looking at the first one you saw and saying "THAT'S IT! That's my perfect pumpkin!" You had to have options, three or four choices, eliminate some, think about it. I'm realizing I'll miss this this year. This makes me a little bit sad inside.

Christmas and other thoughts from 2 in the morning

I have realized that a lot of my posts (read: 4 now) have been in the wee hours of the morning, but no matter, I find this is when I'm motivated to write and have time to.

On that note, I've been thinking a lot about my dearest siblings. I obviously see LesUrs a lot, but I haven't seen TT in a while, nor Em. This makes me sad. We really are quite funny when we're together. Which is another reason why I LOVE Christmas. Actually, I think I'll list the reasons why I LOVE Christmas, as it seems to be too mch for a little inserted bracket ting in a sentence:

1. The obvious, Jesus was born and all that good stuff.

2. COOKIES. I LOVE cookies. And in our house, there are a LOT of them. It makes me happy.

3. Family. Because I don't know a zanier, crazier, more mixed up silly bunch of people than my dearest sisters and my parents. It's true, we have inherited our parents' senses of humor.

4. The general feeling of love and warm thoughts. I know, I know, it sounds mushy and sappy, but it's true, people are generally nicer around the Christmas season than any other time of the year.

OK, so I realize two things: 1. It's WAY too early to be making a Christmas related post, and 2: that these are all generic things that anyone can love. BUT, you have to realize a couple things, too: 1. it's 2:30 in the morning. 2: nope, that about covers it, it's 2:30 in the morning. I think weirder than normal now.

Now, I realize that some people do NOT like the Christmas season. I've actually had a couple discussions with a certain someone to remain unnamed about how Christmas is terrible, but they have their own reasons for that, and I have mine for loving them.

To conclude, I realize this post has been a little bit discombobulated, but bear with me, it is 2:3o in the morning :)

On that note, I think I will retire, but until next time, remember, God is good, and he won't let go, whether in calm weather or stormy weather. (read: Matt Redman song from worship this morning)

From the front to the rear in 8 hours or less...

Hello all! Just like to send a shoutout to my man Mr. Sanders, who is now a happy father to what I assume to be a beautiful baby girl. Congratulations!

Now, on to me. On Thursday, I went in to get my bike worked on, mostly because my front wheel was out of true from me running into a fence (I'm ok, really). That took about twenty minutes, the bike mechanic guy laughed at me a little and made a couple cracks about fences and stuff and we were good to go. Not eight hours after said tune-up, I break it again. I was biking back REALLY slowly from a dinner with the rest of my wing in my dorm from across campus. I tried to downshift to go slower and I hear this awful crunch and my bike stops. Turns out I had downshifted too hard and had gotten the mechanism on the back wheel that changes gears stuck in the spokes and torqued the metal. So now my BACK wheel is out of true and I have to wheel this thing back into the store and explain once again how I messed my bike up.

Thankfully, I found a very nice friend of mine (St. we'll call her) who has a truck and is willing to rive me to the store and back if iI accompany her to the bank. SO, that problem will hopefully be resolved quickly.

In other news, there is no other news.

Except that God is great, and his wonders know no end.

God is GREAT!

Lost and Found

More fun things with stuff being lost:

I've been trying to get into the Financial Aid office all weekend to deal with a problem on my bill, and when I finally did talk to someone I found out that I had never actually accepted $4,000 of my aid. Oops! I was somewhat distraught, as you can imagine, and called my parents to chat. They were also somewhat distraught, as you can imagine, so I went back to the office to try and get said money back. I waited in line for a while and finally talked to someone, who said that it was still available, I just wasn't looking in the right place on the website. So, I logged back onto the website and found the site I needed and got my money back! Woohoo!

This has been my weekend for losing and finding things: I lost my keys for two days, and then found them. I lost a lot of money, and then I got it back. Thank the Lord, for He is good! His love endures FOREVER.

God is GOOD. Really good.

In case you missed all my key drama, here is the full story:

On Friday night, I lost my keys somewhere in my dorm. I searched for a very long time but to no avail. I had to call the security people in my dorm to let me in late at night, and had just come to the realization that I would not be able to get my bike free without a hacksaw or bolt cutters, and that I would have to buy a new lock and get our dorm room door a new lock. This would all kind of stink. On Saturday, there was a football game, so things were closed and I couldn't deal with it. The only side effect was that I couldn't get pants for the football game, so I was a bit chilly, but otherwise, no problems yet. Sunday, I somewhat wanted to bike to church so I could go study with my dearest sister afterward (and save myself walking across campus), but my legs weren't spared and I ended up walking everywhere anyway. After an excellent dinner of omelets (free!), I found a bunch of people to play Catan with (oh, happy day! my first time since coming out here!). after winning whole0heartedly, I went up to the front desk to see if anyone had turned in keys, and lo and behold, someone had! So now I am keyed up and ready for the week, without much pain and suffering. Woot!

God is GREAT!

Thanks mom.

I just spent 20 minutes cleaning up my VERY messy desk. It is now clean and clutter-free, and I feel much better. I also feel as if my mother would be very happy about it, as she was on me all throughout high school to keep my desk clean. I've learned it now, Mom. Thanks.

Andrew Bird, in the library, with the iPod.

I'm studying in the library right now.

...

This is an odd thing for me to say, as I almost never study. However, I've decided that I should study for my first test/quiz thing in college yet, a math quiz on the first 5 sections in the chapter.

Another odd thing about this is that I can usually never listen to music when I study or am trying concentrate, as I pay too much attention to it and want to hear it better to analyze it, so I turn it up, but then I can't study. Oops. HOWEVER, I have found the perfect person to listen to while studying: Andrew Bird. His music is slow and soothing enough to drown out the noise of other people, but not enough to distract me... at least for now.

God is Good!

Unplanned Oveflow

Tonight, I had an EXPERIENCE. Not just a crazy night or anything, but a God experience. One of my new-found friends asked me to "talk about how God has been working in your life since you got here," aka TESTIMONY. NOw, I have an inane fear of that word, as I always associate it with huge, life changing-moments that happen to people who are super Godly and stuff. Never having considered myself one of these people, I was reluctant, but decided to go for it. After 4 or 5 people went ahead of me telling these stories of being in a downward cycle of drugs and drinking, I felt like my little story of how I wasn't going to do InterVarsity, but then it found me, would be insignificant. HOWEVER. as soon as I got up there, I couldn't stop shivering and shaking. Now, I consider myself a decent public speaker and don't normally freak out about these things, but I couldn't stop shaking and almost couldn't get my words out.

I realized, in front of 50 people, that I had fallen away from faith. I had "slept through" church too many times, when really I was avoiding it. I had taken to swearing and lying to the people I loved the most. Standing in front of this crowd of people I had met within the last 3 weeks, or in some cases, 3 hours, I was pouring out my soul in ways I had never imagined. My small little story had turned into a big life changer, though in the way I had ever imagined.

I always thought my "big moment" would happen at a conference or an important worship with people who I had known for a long time. Instead, it was at the second "Awake" event in Oregon, in front of people I barely knew, not at all planned for. Though I guess God doesn't roll that way, does he? He likes to throw you out there and tell you to share the Word in ways you thought impossible.

So, now I'm overflowing with the good news of God, and it's 12:35 am. I want to shout from the rooftop that God is amazing and can change lives, but it's after quiet hours.

I'll try and contain it, but who knows when it will burst out?

God does!

First Post/Explanation

There are too many people to be talking to on the phone all the time, so I decided to follow the older sister's idea and blog about my experiences and thoughts on life here at the wonderful Oregon State University. Yes, mother, I will try and keep the grammar and spelling mistakes down. Yes, I will try and post at least four times a week. No, I will not be insightful and life-changing every time, but I can try!

So, to start: I am currently sitting in HHS 231. Now, you might think that I'm a terrible person, but it's really all stuff I've learned before, in health in high school. And I can listen halfway and still write. I'm just good like that. Now my other classes are a different story:

I had my first real late night of homework last night while scrambling to finish Chemistry homework by midnight (ah, the wonders of modern technology!) and turn in a complicated engineering thing before the computer lab closed at 2. Thankfully, I was able to leave the lab by 12:08 and be asleep by 12:30 (yay!). At this time, I was VERY thankful for my new and spiffy bike (pics to come), as it made my quick commute even quicker! Unfortunately, it my hands so cold I could barely pick up my bike to take it downstairs to the bike room!

Chemistry is also very easy right now, besides the homework, which is just time consuming. In class we go over the reading (good, as I don't own the book yet, but don't worry, it's coming!), which is all simple stuff I learned in Chemistry in HS.

Math is simple so far, but we'll see how the first quiz goes on Thursday. I've been taking an average of 5 pages of notes a lecture, which will fill up my notebook fast!

On a different note, I need new shoes as my old ones have disappeared. I don't know where, but they were in a lounges and then they weren't. I keep trying to contact my dearest mother, but she won't pick up to pay for them :(

Ah well, on to meet some people to go climbing! Until next time:

UrbanInland