beth0329

Wow, so I feel like I have A LOT to write about. I've really been wanting to just sit down and write and everytime I think about it something else takes up my time. Last Tuesday's Encounter was amazing! We had staff from Cal Poly come over. Her name is Jessica and she's really cool. Two years ago when I went to Guatemala our team went to this thing called STIM (Students Training In Missions) and she was there leading a group to Bosnia. And she and her husband have been to a lot of the conferences that we all go together but I had only heard her talk a couple of times at STIM about missions so it was really exciting to hear her actually give a talk. She spoke on guilt and shame and God just completely used her to talk straight to my heart and helped me to realize that there's some guilt and shame in my heart over some things I've done and I need to let God work in that and get it out because he can still use me in my brokenness. 

I also had two group presentations last weekend. The first was on Monday in my Social Work class. My group gave a half an hour presentation on immigration. It was really good and I think we aced it. And then on Thursday my friend and I gave a presentation on the sounds /f/ and /v/. Sounds exciting, huh? :)  It's a speech class for deaf children so each team was given a sound and then we had to talk about its' specific acoustic characteristics, how to make that sound in the mouth, how to teach it to kids, etc. I think we did pretty good. It was just a little, short 10 minute powerpoint presenation. 

Let's see...what else? I finished reading The Kingdom of God is a party by Tony Campolo. It was really good. He talks about how as Christians we should creat celebrations wherever we are. And I think it was really important that he talks about how people get offended when he talks about the Kingdom of God as a party but that's because those people are thinking of party in the world's standards but God's standards of a party are completely different. It's a definite must read!

And I'm also really proud of something I bought. My best friend's mom gave me a $20 gift card to Borders and I bought Oswald Chamber's My Utmost for His Highest. It's a sort of devotional. For every day of the year he's taken a verse or two and wrote his own thoughts on it. It's soo good! I'll share today's verse and some of the things he says. John 14.9, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip?" I won't write everything Oswald says but some things are, "We look for God to exhibit Himself to His children, but God only exhibits Himself in His children...The very questions we ask hurt Jesus, because they are not the questions of a child...Realize that the Lord is here now, and the freedom you recieve is immediate." 

The weekend was good too, but I definitely didn't get the sleep I needed. Friday morning I worked at the kettle corn booth for Vintage Days. Vintage Days is a big fair sorta thing that Fresno State does every year and IV works at the a booth to raise money. And that night I hung out with Daniel and Amy and watched some 24. Saturday I worked at the booth again in the morning and then that afternoon I went to this Earth Day seminar on 'cohousing' with a friend who had to go for extra credit for her ecology class. It was interesting but I was really hungry and starting to get a headache so I was glad when I ran into another friend who was headed back to state and caught a ride with her. That afternoon I actually ended up taking a nap and then hanging out with some IV folks that night. We ended up going to Tacos, Tijuana (yummy yummy tacos) and then ended our night at Teazers. Sunday church was good but I had a HUGE scare that afternoon. I had decided to work on my Pink House application (I don't know if I've mentioned it but I'm applying to stay a year in a pink house in downtown Fresno to volunteer with an organization in downtown and learn about community and urban development) and for some reason I decided to check on the turn-in date which I thought was the 28th...turns out that it was due the 20th which was that day! UGH! So, I emailed the director and told her I had completely screwed up the turn-in date and asked if it'd be okay to turn the application in through email and then send a hard copy Monday (today). And then realized she probably wouldn't check her email since it's Sunday so I just finished the application and turned it in through email and prayed! But, PRAISE GOD! I heard back from her today and she said it was no problem! YAY! So, this week I'll be having an interview with her so please pray for me! 

Okay, I think that's a long enough update for now. I hope everyone is doing great!!

Blessings!

Wow, I haven't written anything in awhile, which is a bad thing because that means this entry might be quite long.

I've finished 2 books, both very good. The first was I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou. It's her autobiography of her childhood. Very inspiring and I realized how little I really knew about her. But the one thing that I was looking forward to it while I was reading this book was to find out why the caged bird sings and she never even mentions it but I thought she had written a poem about it so I looked it up online and here it is;

The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hill for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Wow, right? That's powerful. Maya Angelou is a black woman who grew up in the deep South with a Godly grandmother, a crippled uncle and her beloved brother. But her childhood was soo much more and little did I know that her life as a child awed me at one point and made me want to cry at others. I love to choose quotes that really affected me from books so I'll share a couple with you and then you must read it!

"I couldn't understand whites and where they got the right to spend money so lavishly. Of course, i know God was white too, but no one could have made me believe he was prejudiced."

"Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of."

I also finished Howard Zinn's A young people's history of the United States. Awesome book! It really reminded me of reading "Lies my teacher told me" by James W. Loewen. Zinn writes history from the perspective of the downtrodden, outcast, immigrant, factory worker, the least of these.
"Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change. Imagine society's power taken away from the giant corporations, the military, adn the politicians who answer to corporate and military interests...
Two forces are now rushing toward the future. One wears a spendid uniform. It is the "official" past, with all its violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, hoarding of the good earth's wealth by the few, and political power in the hands of liars and murderers.
The other force is ragged but inspired. IT is the "people's" past, with its history of resistance, civil disobedience against the military machine, protests against racism, multiculturalism, and growing anger against endless wars."
- From Ch. 14, "Rise like Lions"

I was really affected by the fact that the church doesn't seem to always play a very big or important part in our history. We're to be world changers but if we're not in the world then we're definitely not changing it. In the first chapter named, "Class Struggle" Zinn quotes a songwriter, "whose funny, biting, and inspiring songs made him a legend." And he went on to quote one of his songs, "The Preacher and the Slave"
'Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
- You will eat, bye and bye,
- In that glorious land above the sky;
- Work and pray, live on hay,
-You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

This makes me want to cry, from conviction and anger. How, as christians, can we let homeless people or friends or the person at your church come to us saying they need something and all we say is, "Just wait it out, this ole life will be over soon" or, "Well, i'll just pray for you sister/brother." Ridiculous. ACT! That's what Jesus did.

Other than reading I've been really lazy with my school work. I just seriously haven't been wanting to do any school work. Actually, Candy and I have been talking a lot about grabbing our clothes and any credit cards we have and heading to Mexico, which ultimately is only about 6-8 hours from here. We both feel like we just can't concentrate, or don't want to. So, I'm really trying to get out of that funk. The semester is almost over, gotta keep telling myself that.

The other night Candy and I were so bored and it was only like 7.30 that we sat around and tried to think of something to do. At one point Candy was like, "search google for night clubs." Soon we realized that it was a Monday night and only losers go to night clubs at that hour. Then we thought about going to the movies but for some reason we dumped that idea and then Candy brought back up the night club idea and started combing my hair and before I knew it she had some funky do going on and we had started making up our own tunes when our friend Cat walks by and our door is open. All she can do is walk in and laugh at us. So she hung around for a little while, then another friend stopped by. Finally, my hair was silky smooth from all the combing and Candy and I were hungry so we ended up getting nachos and watching TV...then feeling humongously full!

So, since you actually read this whole entry I'll reward you with some pictures from the night.

( Read more... )

PS: I've deleted my messenger from my desk top and I won't be using it until I don't know when. So, if you would like to talk please MySpace, Facebook or e-mail me. And if you'd like to know why I'm not using my messenger feel free to ask.

Blesssings

I just finished Zlata's Diary. It's about a young girl in Sarajevo during the war. She starts writing her diary right before her eleventh birthday in 1991, before the war that stole her childhood. She's called "the Anne Frank of Sarajevo" and she actually mentions Anne Frank a couple of times throughout her diary. I'm not going to write out a synopsis of her diary (you should just read it) but one line especially touched me, although the whole book tore at my heart. I'll just write out the whole entry and italicize the line that stood out to me.
I've been thinking about politics again. No matter how stupid, ugly and unreasonable I think this division of people into Serbs, Croats and Muslims is, these stupid politics are making it happen. We're all waiting for something, hoping for something, but there's nothing. Even the Vance-Owen peace plan looks as though it's going to fall through. Now these maps are being drawn up, separating people and nobody asks them a thing. Those "kids" (government officials) really are playing around with us. Ordinary people don't want this division, because it won't make anybody happy- not the Serbs, not the Croats, not the Muslims. But who asks ordinary people? Politics asks only its own people.
Isn't that the truth? It was incredible reading this diary of a little girl and even more incredible that I saw a young woman coming out of the pages, instead of a 13 year old child. War is so ugly and I just don't understand how people (and our government, political leaders) can stand by and allow INNOCENT people to die. I would like to say that our leaders care about the women, children and men of Iraq but sadly our politcs are just concerned about us, the great and mighty USA. How many lessons we could learn from Zlata.