So I'm currently sitting in my school cafeteria, counting down the hours that I get to go home (after a too long, two month stay here) and eat some real, non-hot dog food, but I can't quite get the fun feeling from the Spanish class I just finished out of my head.
Let me give you a rundown:
This is Conversation Spanish. No English. Ever. Señora Anderson will "yell" over Word documents if we do. Only talking about things that don't seem super important to me. However, I realized today that the point is to get us to talk, and feel comfortable doing so. We have tons of papers and presentations that we have to do throughout the course, and today happened to be a big presentation day. We were all to prepare a presentation that described something. Going into it I wasn't really sure what that meant, but after some thought decided to do my presentation over the wedding cake I made back in May. My presentation was alright, but the fun part came when everyone else was presenting. Everyone did a really good job, but the guys in our class did great! We only have two, so they pull the weight for keeping the class from turning hormone central. Jordan went right after I did and presented about playing the saxophone. He's a music-ed major and an amazing saxophonist. The funniest part was that Mrs. Anderson, our professor, kept requesting songs for him to play. We ended up all rising as he played the Star Spangled Banner at her proposal. It was quite hilarious for us to be standing up in the bottom of Lile Hall (which is a bit like a dungeon) in the middle of the day listening to Jordan play the Star Spangled Banner beautifully. Nothing beats that!
The other guy in our class, my friend Adam, turned his presentation about some Indonesian recipe into a cooking show, right on the spot. It shocked everyone!
What a fun day in Spanish class! I wish I could say they were all like that. Most, but not all. :)
Oh, and to top it off, the sweet GA's from the church I grew up in sent me a package today! What a great help for the two tests that I have to spend the rest of the day studying for. Thank you, 4th grade class!
I hope your Tuesday is as beautiful as mine is at the moment!
[26 hours and I'll be headed to the great state of Texas!!]
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
All Things Learned 1 | SYATP
This starts entry one in a series of entries about what I'm learning lately. I've been trying to get this post out for a while but keep getting distracted, and the following is just a portion of what all I want to share, but this is it for time one. (I plan on filling in other stuff later.) :)
Things learned at Saw You At The Pole:
We had our youth See You At The Pole two Wednesday's ago at 7 a.m., and it was so great to see middle schoolers leading prayer and worship songs in front of their school. It has to be all student led, so we got the privilege of being spectators there for support and praying over the kids. It might have been a little rocky, but still great! That night, Park Hill hosted the Saw You At The Pole Rally, which is a city-wide. We had it all planned out for Ericka, on of the admin ESL teachers here for the semester, to talk to our kids, however her mother fell that morning and broke her leg so Ericka was not able to make it. Ericka works in Asia teaching English and telling others about Jesus. So, we scrambled around and found another lady who works in our admissions office that does stuff in Asia similar to Ericka and who was willing to speak to our youth.
Amy talked a lot about what she did while she was a journeyman in China a few years ago right after she graduated from OBU. What stuck out to me the most was her relationships with her teammates. She went to China to teach English with eight girls on the team. The way she described their team was a eight ladies that were as far across the spectrum as you can imagine. On one end is a girl from New Jersey who was loud and brought the party when she walked in the room. On the far other end is a shy quiet girl who is pretty serious. And in between are six ladies who fill in the spectrum. You get the picture. The mission of these girls was to go and teach English in China and reach people for Christ through their relationships.
The verse that kept coming up to this team was:
Things learned at Saw You At The Pole:
We had our youth See You At The Pole two Wednesday's ago at 7 a.m., and it was so great to see middle schoolers leading prayer and worship songs in front of their school. It has to be all student led, so we got the privilege of being spectators there for support and praying over the kids. It might have been a little rocky, but still great! That night, Park Hill hosted the Saw You At The Pole Rally, which is a city-wide. We had it all planned out for Ericka, on of the admin ESL teachers here for the semester, to talk to our kids, however her mother fell that morning and broke her leg so Ericka was not able to make it. Ericka works in Asia teaching English and telling others about Jesus. So, we scrambled around and found another lady who works in our admissions office that does stuff in Asia similar to Ericka and who was willing to speak to our youth.
Amy talked a lot about what she did while she was a journeyman in China a few years ago right after she graduated from OBU. What stuck out to me the most was her relationships with her teammates. She went to China to teach English with eight girls on the team. The way she described their team was a eight ladies that were as far across the spectrum as you can imagine. On one end is a girl from New Jersey who was loud and brought the party when she walked in the room. On the far other end is a shy quiet girl who is pretty serious. And in between are six ladies who fill in the spectrum. You get the picture. The mission of these girls was to go and teach English in China and reach people for Christ through their relationships.
The verse that kept coming up to this team was:
John 13.35:
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
Basically what I learned from this verse and Amy was that our relationships should be deeper than friendships and completely captivate others to Christ. We should have so much love for one another that it radiates Christ's name.
I think this really spoke to me because I was dealing with a lot of things in my close friendships where I wasn't completely loving the other persons as I should have been. It was frustrating and we just weren't clicking, but God told me on this crazy Wednesday night that we should love one another so much that others will see that and know Who we truly follow. This is what I want our friendship to be about. Drawing others to Christ because of how we love one another and live life together. :)
[a few visual aides]
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