One Test Down...

and one project down too! All I have left is my Apologetics exam and my Youth Ministry paper. :0) Half-way done with my finals! It's a good feeling knowing that I've completed exactly half of my degree. It makes me feel accomplished.

Today I'm just working on my paper and studying. So it's going to be a pretty relaxed day. I might go to walmart this evening so I can pick up some more tubs to put my stuff in so it can be stored. Finals week is always good, because all you have to do is study/work on papers. None of it is completely stressful.

When I get home going to go job hunting. Frank doesn't seem to be calling me back and he keeps putting me off, so I think i'm just going to look for another job. I'm hoping Alpine Oven will hire me, because that would be a good job to have. I'm also going to check with Isabella's and see if they need any summer helpers. I'll probably end up applying everywhere though. I really need a job!

That's about all that is going on with me... so i'm going to wrap this up. God Bless!

~Liz

Skillet Concert and Last Day!

Basically, the Skillet concert was amazing. They always put on a great show, highly entertaining. :0) It's funny how Skillet brings out a ton of different people. We had parents, college kids, high school kids, middle schoolers, families... It's always interesting to me to see who comes out to these things.

Today was also the last day of classes. Whew. That means only finals and then I'm out of here! I have to get my stuff packed up and such, but that's all. :D Brad and I have only one more pre-wedding counseling session on Sunday night.

Well, I have to get going, this entry was short and sweet!

~Liz

Yay Thursday!

Today is the last Thursday of regular classes. Awesome. :0) I'll be officially done with Personality Theory today, minus the final. It's such a good feeling being done with classes and ready to take the finals. Tonight, since classes are winding down, I don't really have a whole lot to do. I'm going to a Skillet concert on campus, which I'm very excited about. Skillet is only the best.

This weekend will be all about studying for finals. I have one on Monday, a project due Tuesday, and a project due and a test on Wednesday. And then I'm done. I have a pretty good finals schedule this year. I don't really have a whole lot to study for. I'll be able to invest most of my time studying for physics, which is needed. I think I get most of it, but it's remembering what we did in February that's going to be difficult.

I called Tim Freeman last night to talk to him about speaking at youth group when I get home. I'm pretty excited to be able to speak at a youth group. Since I left for school, I haven't really had many opportunities to actually speak to youth. It will be good practice for me. He still hasn't called me back, but he's a busy guy. Perhaps he will later today.

I'm going to post the lyrics of a worship song that I've found to be especially meaningful. We sing it in Chapel a lot, and I really like it. :0)

"Inside Out" By Hillsong:

A thousand times I've failed
Still your mercy remains
And should I stumble again
Still I'm caught in your grace

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame
In my heart, in my soul, Lord I give you control
Consume me from the inside out Lord
Let justice and praise become my embrace
To love You from the inside out

Your will above all else, my purpose remains
The art of losing myself in bringing you praise

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame
In my heart, in my soul, Lord I give you control
Consume me from the inside out Lord
Let justice and praise become my embrace
To love You from the inside out

Chorus 2x
Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame
And the cry of my heart is to bring You praise
From the inside out Lord, my soul cries out 

And we're off!

The last week of classes is off and running! Today was my big framework presentation, and it went really well. I asked Dr. Mays what I got on it, and i got 95. I can't complain about that too much. :0) I also had a cornerstones reception where they thanked all of the metors and PAs. I got a fancy pen that says "Peer Advisor 2007-2008".

Now I'm just studying for my lab final and then taking it easy. The lab final shouldn't be too difficult. Apparently all he does is compile all of our quiz questions and we have to answer them again. I'm not too worried about it. The rest of the week is pretty easy. I do have another test on Thursday in Personality Theory, but its only over three chapters.

I also have a few other social things i have to attend. Tomorrow night is an Israel Fellowship. He's passing out funny little awards and announcing the winners of the photo contest we had. Thursday night i'm going to a Skillet concert. They're playing in the Belcher center. I'm super excited about it. I LOVE Skillet! :0D Friday and Saturday are supposed to be the PA get away days...but unfortunately I'm not going. My hardest final is on Monday (physics) and I can't afford to lose Saturday. I have other projects I need to work on too. So I'm not going to go to it. Hopefully everyone understands.

Dad bought my ticket home last night! That's super exciting because that means i'm flying home soon! I have to figure out packing up all my stuff and storing it. Brad and I are storing most of our stuff over the summer just to make things easier. There's no point in me bringing a bunch of crap home when I don't even need it for the summer. Especially when we'll just have to move it all back early august anyway.

The Shower the girls threw me was a lot of fun. We played the standard Bridal Shower games at food and opened presents. It was pretty fun. :-)

Dr. Batts handed back our Tracts that we all made, and he did not like mine. I got a 67. I went and talked to him about it because I felt it was worth more points than that, but he wouldn't budge. Oh well. Not many people did well on it. I just think he graded them weird. *shrugs* No skin off my back.

Well I should get back to studying... I would hate to fail my lab final!

~Liz

This week has been a little crazy!

On wednesday, I went with Cast and Crew to do chapel for a High School. Cast and Crew is a group of Ministry Majors. We're in charge of doing 1 chapel a semester, and this semester admissions liked it so much they wanted us to go do it for a high school. Anyway, the school was about two hours away and we needed to be there by eight. So it was a very early morning. Unfortunately, I was coming down with something. It's developed into a cold, so i'm pretty stuffy today. I've used a whole box of Kleenex since Thursday. Despite being sick, I got all of my stuff done and turned in two papers and took my last physics test (before the final). I think I did reasonably well on all three, so that's exciting.

This weekend is pretty busy. I have some Peer Adviser stuff to do and the girls are throwing me a party for getting married. I'm not exactly sure what to expect from that, so I might not publish anymore details. ANYWAY, I'm also working on a pretty big presentation for Monday. I'm presenting my Framework for Youth ministry. Basically i'm explaining how i'm going to do ministry. We're pretending it's an interview situation so I have to pretend i'm presenting it to a church board. I'll hopefully have it done before dinner!

Sean called me today to tell me that he and Nelson got a 1 on their violin duet for solo and ensemble. I am so proud of them! I know they've been working hard. :0) I'm excited for them both. It's pretty hard to get a one as a seventh grader!

Tonight Brad and I are going to stay in and watch a movie. I'm sick and he's coming down with it too, so we're both feeling mildly miserable. We'll probably get some junk food and watch a kid's movie. Those are always fun to watch. :) It will be nice to relax before next week.

Our last week of classes starts on Monday, but it should be pretty easy. All the big stuff was due last week, so it should be smooth sailing. Finals don't look too bad for me, I only have two actual tests. My other two final are a take home exam and a final case study for my youth class. I'll be officially done with this semester on Wednesday, April 3oth. Whew. Only two more weeks!

Blog Number Three

The weekend was rather laid back. Saturday I spent finishing up my research and started writing my paper. I'm writing on Canaanite religion. I really hate writing research papers, they always take me so long to write! I would rather just write about what I think about stuff. Like for my personality theory class. We wrote our own personality theories. That was so much fun. I whipped out that paper in half the time it's taken me to write my research paper! I'll get it done though, eventually. After this week, my work load significantly decreases, which is good. I'm not sure how much insanity I can handle!

Friday is also our last physics test before our final, so that makes me happy. I'm almost through General Physics, and it didn't kill me! Our last lab is tomorrow night and next tuesday is our Lab final. I've liked the class, for the most part. It really isn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. But I also had a really good tutor. ;)

This next weekend is going to be relatively busy. The girls are throwing me a Bridal Shower on sunday. It's kind of nerve wracking because this is the first wedding event that is actually taking place. The wedding is in less than four months now... I feel like I have so much I need to do to get ready for it. Pre-wedding counseling has been very good so far. I really like the book that Dr. Mays picked out for us to go through. We're probably going to get another book or two to read this summer.

I also have my final presentation for my youth ministry class due on monday. We had to write a Framework of Youth Ministry paper, and now we're presenting it. We're pretending that we're interviewing for a position and making the presentation to the church board. Dr. Mays even asks us difficult questions and tries to put us on the spot. It's kind of fun, but I need to get working on it to get it together in time for class on monday. i should be able to do it. I just need to get my Baalism paper written. Basically, my whole life is on hold until I get that paper finished.

So I'm watching Jon and Kate plus eight. I'm actually addicted to this show...i'm always watching it. It's just so fascinating watching the chaos that ensues. This episode they're potty training the little kids. I have no idea how that woman does not go insane.

I don't really have much else to say about my life. I'm hanging on until I get to go home. It's time for school to be done.

Blog Number Two

Today wasn't all that exciting, just the normal day of classes and such. I turned in my big Framework for Youth Ministry paper. Thirteen pages of how I plan to do ministry someday! I actually liked doing that paper because I got to write about everything I've ever thought about ministry for the last two years. I'm quite proud of it, to be honest.
In apologetics today Dr. Batts was hilarious. He came prepared for the wrong class! He's funny. I'm not particularly fond of his class because it's so much busy work. We fill out work sheet after work sheet, memorize them, and then take a test that is directly off the worksheet. It's really annoying. Every once in a while he does come up with a rather interesting assignment. Today, out of his bag of tricks he handed out a different tract to everyone. With this tract, we're supposed to analyze it and then make our own tract. I got possibly the worst tract out of the bunch. Let's look at the front of it:
Notice the title "The Grace that Saves." Also notice how utterly boring it is. If you got this, would you be interested? I didn't think so. Alright, let's analyze further. I'm not going to take a picture of the inside, but it's pretty boring too. All tiny lettering. On the front, the tract explains that Jesus loves you and died for your sins, it also lists Romans 5:19a, Romans 5:12, Romans 3:10-18, Romans 3:22-23, Romans 6:23a, and John 3:18. These are all pretty standard evangelism scriptures that establish a couple things. First, we are sinners. Second, sin brings eternal separation from God. Third, and that Christ will redeem you. I do not have a major problem with this. These are pretty typical and important. If I were going to pick on the tract, I would say that you can't really smack an unbeliever with scripture. Anyway, this isn't so bad. But then it gets worse...
The next paragraph says this, and I quote (parenthetical asides mine), "If you have not believed in Chirst enough to ask him to save you, you are lost and unsaved (a little blunt, but true). LOST NOW, CONDEMNED NOW, not in the coming age, but NOW, NOW. You are walking around condemned, lost, and sure to be in hell." Now, don't get me wrong, this is all true. But, is this really going to make an unbeliever read any further? It gets worse. "The rich man in Luke, chapter 16, has been in hell these nineteen hundred years since Jesus spoke of him when he was on this earth. This rich man is still in hell this very moment. In ten years this man will still be in hell. In fifty years, a hundred years, even a thousand years from now, he will still be in the burning pit of unquenchable fire. He is damned and lost forever. (this is my favorite part) Sinner friend, trust in Christ today. If you go to hell, God the Father won't help you out, Jesus will not, the Holy Spirit will not, because you rejected all three when you turned down Christ. Sinner, trust Christ TODAY, and know you are saved."

Ok, so, none of that is a lie. Yes, if you don't allow God to save you, you will go to hell. But this is such a big smack in the face that I'm not sure a nonbeliever would stick around long enough to get to the grace part (which is not very long in this tract. It basically makes a huge deal out of hell and not a huge deal about grace). Honestly, I really don't think this is the best way to go about telling people about Christ. We can't water down the gospel to "Jesus loves you. Love him back!" because that's only half of the story. But neither should we emphasize hell so much and scare people into "faith".

I propose a different way to evangelize. We need to love people. That means having relationships with them and knowing them. This takes time, but a relationship will go a lot further than a tract selling fire insurance. The relationship you foster with someone will establish credibility and trust. This also means that we need to live lives that are completely drenched in the gospel. Sure, we're going to sin, but we can still go a long way to clean up our lives.

Blog Number One

I've never really been good at this whole blogging thing. I expect most of my posts will be pretty boring, just telling you what I've been up to all day. But you should all still read because I might post something exciting once in a while.
I think my first order of business will be to talk about my trip to Israel. A lot of you have asked questions about the trip, and to be honest, it's so hard for me to answer "so, what did you do?". We went so many places and did so many things, I don't think I could even begin to explain it in an intelligible manner. So I'll start with the basics. We were there for about ten days, and we toured many biblical sites. We went to many places in Israel from Dan to Beersheva. I have many many pictures (some of which I've posted on facebook, in case you wanted to check 'em out) and so many stories to tell. I loved it all, but two of my favorite places were the Garden of Gethsemane and Bet She'an.

Over there is a picture of the Garden of Gethsemane. We learned that the garden was actually an olive grove. The reason I loved it so much wasn't because of its beauty (I would actually say that it was more eerie than beautiful) but because of the realization I had while I was there. The Garden is on the bottom of the Mt. of Olives, and just over the mountain is the desert. Jesus could have just run away from it all, run into the desert, and we never would have heard about him again. Being the Son of God, Jesus could have also just called down the angels or brought fire from heaven....But he didn't. I've known this for most of my life, but seeing the garden, seeing where Jesus decided to die for me was a humbling experience. It made the reality of my faith sink in just a little deeper.

Over there is a picture from the top of a Mountain of what Bet She'an looks like. This was a roman city that was extremely well preserved. The city featured an amiptheater, a theater, a bath house, and a temple to one of the goddesses. I really enjoyed seeing the remains of the city, especially the bath house. It was interesting getting just a small glimpse of life in the city. The whole trip was definitely an eye opening experience. Dr. Hummel studied at the Hebrew University for a year and he said it divided his life into two eras: Before Israel, and After Israel. Even in our short stay, each of our lives were also divided because the visit completely changes the way you read the Bible and how you think about the people.

The Israel trip was the highlight of my semester, and now it's back to the grindstone. School has been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. It's getting to the end of the semester so everything is due all at the same time. But soon we'll be done and summer will be here! This summer will be filled with working and wedding planning. I'm excited to get home and begin working on all of the details for the wedding I couldn't work on while I was at school. Latley I haven't gotten much wedding stuff done, but I'm at a point where I can't really do a whole lot here. We've gotten all of the big stuff taken care of, so that's good. Brad and I got word today that we are officially in Married Student Housing. It's a load off our minds knowing we have a living space!

I think that's basically all I have to update on. God Bless!

~Liz