Spring break!!

I cannot believe that spring break was only little more than a week ago - it seems so much longer! Christian Challenge went to Colorado Springs and stayed at Glen Eyrie, which is a retreat center owned by the Navigator ministry. It is a beautiful castle surrounded by lovely trees and red rocks.


mmmm, the castle, how I miss it so...

The weather was surprisingly nice too, no snow this time which was a bit sad, but then again it was beautiful regardless! We had three speakers:
- Brett Yohn who is the Challenge director of University of Nebraska
- Jim Peterson who lived in Brazil for over 30 years, has written multiple books, 2 of which I have read and LOVED - The Insider and Living Proof - highly, *highly* recommend you read them because they helped to re-shape my concept of evangelism!!
- Jim Downing, who is a whopping 97 years old and is still going strong for Christ! He was in Pearl Harbor, yes you read that right, he was actually IN Pearl Harbor!! He is now retired but still speaks all around the nation (and world I think) about walking with Christ.


Jim as he spoke to the USC and California Baptist Univ. groups

The conference was long, but it was not exhausting. The schedule has a good amount of free time and so even though the mornings were packed with breakfast (we had crepes one day, CREPES!! the food there was crazy delicious and not at all what you would expect at a retreat center :), then main session followed by a work shop we still had the afternoons free! It was lovely and I am still in the process of re-writing my notes so that I can organize them better because they gave us a notebook, but in order to have them handy by topic I thought I'd re-write them, plus helps me to go over them at the same time so it's a win-win!!

I'll update more tomorrow and this week with updates of things I learned, but for now here are some pictures :)


this is a bird's eye view of the Great Hall where we would have our main sessions. Lots of people as you can see! We maxed out the castle with bringing 350 people :)


This is a pic of Olivia, myself and Makena. Both Olivia and Makena are freshmen, even though I look like I'm the youngster because they are a FOOT taller than me!! Makena said they were just being my bodyguards for the day, so I'll take that :)


Rebekah and I :) she is in my life group and really has the strong desire to grow in her walk with God!!


This is a photo of the USC group on the last day. It had snowed a little bit and we were just about to leave but you can't leave before taking a group photo right?


and of course you need a fun one right? ;)


we also had a large group photo of all 350 of us, and of course the USC-ers in the back had to flash the victory sign :)

and now for the piece de resistance, I will end this post with a video from spring break. The last night we have what is called "Follies" which is basically a funny talent show. This year saw everything from a kazoo choir from Oklahoma State "kazoo-ing" Katy Perry's "Firework" to Spartan cheerleaders from Univ. of Oklahoma (a la Will Ferrell and Cheri O'teri) and a lip-synch to Mulan's "I'll make a man out of you." My personal favorite, however, was a joint effort between the schools. There was a band called the Shnazzy Shoes and the lead singer was USC's very own worship leader, back-up was an Oklahoma State-an and playing the djembe was a guy from OU. Their song? "Metabolism Baby" and it is crazy catchy and everyone was singing it that night! I have since watched it a few times on youtube :) So without further ado, I give you "Metabolism Baby"

It's a Girl Thing

So thankfully my weekend after the Superbowl was pretty awesome and free from my team getting beaten by cheeseheads. My work, Christian Challenge, had a woman's retreat all day Saturday with the option of having the girls sleep over at some of the staff women's places. We called it "It's a Girl Thing" and the theme was all about relationships, specifically woman friendships. Myself and 2 of the other staff women ran around all day Friday like we were chickens with our heads cut off getting everything we needed and cleaning and shopping and sweeping and oh my goodness it was crazy.

Saturday started at 10am for the girls and we were there at 8am to help with all the last minute stuff. Once all the girls arrived we had brunch with delicious egg & sausage casserole, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad and juice!! There were about 30 of us total, including a few of our alums we asked to stop by. Once we were all finished our first of two speakers got there. We asked Mary Ross, a Challenge alum, to share about what friendship is to her and how God has designed it from His Word. She graduated in 2007 and is finishing up her last year at UCLA law school (yes, she's at UCLA but she's a Trojan at heart :) and Mary hit the ball out of the park! She was a very good speaker, had a lot of good examples from her own life and challenged the girls to really take the time to initiate friendships with their peers in college because the old adage is true - once you graduate it's a whole lot harder to make friends!

She talked about how a friend is someone you can laugh with, cry with and wait with. She said that our culture is of the mind to just "have a lot of friends!!" but how true friends are hard to come by and it's worth it to just have a few of those heart friends to live life with. The thing I liked the most was when she said that we really only have 2 kinds of relationships that we can control - our relationship with God and our relationships with friends. We can't control the romantic relationships but we can control the other two! And how those 2 kinds of relationships FAR outlive other tangibles in our lives like what kind of job we have, the kind of house we live in, etc.

She talked about John 15:12-15 where Jesus calls the disciples His friends, and how He has called you and me His friends, how He has invited us into friendship with Him, the Creator of the universe!! Jesus chose to get involved in our lives and we need to choose the same with the relationships that He has given us now.

Then after Mary spoke we decoupaged picture frames!! It was so super much fun and I definitely want to do it again in the future!!


so pretty right? well, I was pleased with it, it came out a lot better than I thought!! We laid out all the frames and it was really cool to see all the different styles of the girls come out in how they decorated their frames!

Then we mingled some more, snacked on veggies, pita chips and hummus, then heard from our second speaker, Stacey Klepzig. She graduated in the early 90's and now has 2 kids and we wanted 2 different ages and stages of our speakers so that the girls could see people putting God's Word into action a few years removed from college and then decades later too! She was fantastic and brought props too! She said that God's design for us as we relate is to give our lives away and ask Him for His heart for people. She talked about some of the obstacles we face in doing that (our lack of prayer, "not enough time," lack of forgiveness, faulty concept of God and/or people among others) and the blessings we get when we decide to open ourselves up to people. It certainly gave me a lot to think about! Then we had mini discussions with the other alumni who were there and it was great to see the girls opening up with each other!! :)

Then more mingling and then it was time for dinner! We all made it together - pork, chicken and veggie kababs, rice pilaf (I was the leader of that team seeing as how I think I was the only one who had ever had it!!) and fatoosh salad!! It was stinkin' delicious and fun to kick back with the girls!!

Then some of the girls left early and we also had fruit salsa and tortilla chips that we made which were dusted with cinnamon sugar - ridiculously good!! Then we made fun headbands or hair clips, and one of our girls brought henna so we got tattoos :)


The flower is mine and the other is Jessyka, one of our freshmen :)


Melinda even got one!! A heart with a flag inside waving the name "Neil" - so cute and hilarious!!!

We left Melinda's place at 10:30pm, then slept and my roomie Erin and I had breakfast with Melinda and the girls who slept over at her place - waffles!! It was a crazy fun weekend but I am also glad to have a night off tonight and recouperate!!

Hope you're having a great Valentine's Day!!!

Superbowl sadness :(

So it has now been one week and a day since the bad guys (aka the Green Bay Packers) won the Superbowl and I am still upset. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it or anything, because I'm sure my boys will be back soon, but it is still annoying. More so because when I came to USC for work the next day I saw no less than 4 Packers jerseys AND a girl wearing a cheesehead!!! She was going into Starbucks and as hilarious as that is, I do have to tip my hat to her for actually wearing that embarrassing thing on her head (it looked really old and beaten up too...)


GROSS. The only good thing is that Clay Matthews now has a ring...


This is me with my friend Jimmy who is a HUGE Packers fan - notice the cheesehead AND jersey - yes his team won the game on the field, but I'd still rather be a Steelers fan than a Packers fan :)

Steelers! Steelers! Steelers!!!!

In case you are not a football fan, you might not know the match-up of the Superbowl this year. Next Sunday, Feb. 6th, is the showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. The Packers are a good team, they have a great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, he is ridiculously good. He played an almost perfect game against USC in 2004 and they really outplayed us, but with some luck we won out. I knew he was going to be good in the pros...

Another reason the Packers got this far is this guy right here:



That crazy long-haired man is Clay Matthews, who was also a Trojan, which is probably why he is so good. He is crazy, and his hair is even crazier, as proven by this:



BUT

the Packers are playing a little-known team known as the Steelers, which basically means they'll lose. The Steelers are the best team in NFL history. How can I possibly say that? Well, let me put it this way. They are the only team that needs TWO FISTS in order to show off all their Superbowl rings. They have 6 rings, soon to be 7 (hopefully) and they also have a guy named TROY POLAMALU:



And yes, again he is a Trojan :)



That man is a BEAST and will take down anyone and anything in his way. So go Steelers and go Troy!!!

I really should be better at this by now

Hello again,

I just want to start off by saying I'm sorry. I'm sorry I don't update this as much as I said I would and that the layout is laughingly bare...still. I aim to do better this semester and post a couple times a week so check back for my progress. I cannot promise that it will always make you smile, or giggle, or marvel at my non-existent writing skills, but I shall post! It might just be a picture, but hey, pictures are cool right so that will be okay.

Anyhoo - to re-cap winter break, it went like this:

GO GO GO PARTY GO GO GO FOOD GO GO TOO MUCH FOOD GO GO PARTY GO GO STOP! relax, rest, sleep, repeat and finally feel refres-START SEMESTER AGAIN!

That is honestly how it went, and it usually does that too - with tons of things to do before Christmas, fun things like parties with Challenge and family, and then driving all around LA delivering gifts for my Dad (in the RAIN - 9 hours, I counted) and then it was blissfully over after Christmas and I got to relax, shop and sleep which was pretty much the best part.

How did God work in my life during the aforementioned break? Well, He first made me continue to lean on Him as my rheumatoid arthritis (doesn't that sound like a great evil doctor genius name? "Oh NO!! Here comes the evil doctor genius Dr. Rheumatoid-Arthritis!!") came back sooner than last time, and this *after* we had increased my medication dosage!



It has been slowly but steadily coming back now since August of last year, showing signs at 6 weeks, 5.5 weeks and then 4 weeks this past break. I checked the calendar when I was starting to feel more signs and I thought surely it must be at least 6 weeks by now, but nope! Exactly at the 4 week mark, the Wednesday before Christmas. So that has been another intense lesson in leaning on God 100% because I literally cannot get through a day on my own strength and energy. Like the title of this blog, His strength is my strength and He gave me what I needed when I needed it! Yes, there were and are still times of pain and wondering "why God? why now? Why is this stupid thing back??" but the thing is, I trust that God knows *exactly* what He is doing. That even though I do not understand it or like it, I have 2 choices: 1) get increasingly bitter and angry over my lot in life and thus give up on God because what kind of god allows this OR 2) continue to walk with God because I know that He will give me what I need and the tools to deal with this thing in the best way. No-brainer really. Yes, I'd like to be all Wonder-Woman (or old-school Batman, because Batman is amazing) and just KA-POW this evil doctor genius in the face and watch it die, but I can't really do that, with or without God's help because that is UNREALISTIC. Fun to think about though...there could be a short comic series in that.



+



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Oh, so how about right now? What is God teaching me? So glad you asked! He is teaching me about faithfulness and diligence through one of my newest favorite characters in the Bible - Joshua. I am reading through Joshua right now and holy MOLY that guy is awesome!!! He does what is asked of him, he obeys completely and does not question God's orders, even and especially when they are super weird. Example of this is when God tells Joshua to overthrow the city of Jericho, but not the normal "fight! fight! fight!" way, but by marching around the city walls once a day for six days, and on the 7th day to walk around it 7 times, have their priests blow their trumpets and the walls will miraculously fall down and they'll be able to waltz right into the city and take it. Now, Joshua is a fighting man, and this seems pretty ODD instructions, but he doesn't question it nor does he delay in obeying it! He does everything *exactly* as God told him and VOILA!! the walls came down and they took the city!! You can read more about it in Joshua 5-6, it's pretty awesome.

In fact, the verse I'm memorizing this week is Joshua 11:15 which says, "As the Lord commanded His servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did it; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses."

He did everything he was asked, and did it with excellence. That is why he is fastly becoming one of my favorite characters in the Bible - he knows what needs to be done and he does it, with excellence. That is a pretty good example to follow.

Hokay, my hands are a little sore from all this writing, but I shall leave you with this, the funny of the day to make you laugh, because laughing is awesome and extends your life right?

Holiday season!

It's here, it's finally here!! It's the Holiday Season!!!! Christmas music, Christmas goodies, Christmas desserts, Christmas colors and scents and yet it's still about a month away. Thanksgiving is here though, and it can't come fast enough! I am super looking forward to the delectable food, the couple days off and and then the rush to Christmas!

In my last post I discussed Harry Potter and I saw it at 12:20am on Thursday night/Friday morning. We had our large group Christian Challenge meeting that night, so my friend and fellow staffer Lindsay left right away with a couple students to save us seats in line while I and another girl stayed behind because I had to tear down my area. So we left and got to L.A. Live at about 9:30 and had a looooooong time to wait!! The girls we took were seeing the 12:10am showing, so they were in a different line. Lindsay and I just chilled for a good while, chatting with all the other Potter nerds around us, I was falling asleep, then it was time to go in!


I wore my Harry Potter Griffyndor/USC scarf :)

Thankfully Lindsay was a forward-thinker and got us a diet coke and sour patch kids to keep our sugar up and our eyes open! I was fine during and even after the film, was wide awake at 3am, but before the movie I was fading fast.


We were in line for a long time - we took to making faces for the camera to pass the time :)

It was amazing though and I am definitely going to see it again!! I think the most fun part came from driving home at 3:30am, because the freeways were CLEAR!! As in, no cars in front of me on the 10 freeway at all - which of course only happens at that time, so that was pretty fun.

Saturday was USC's community service day called Friends & Neighbors Day. You can sign up to help out local non-profits and some of my friends from Challenge did one that was feeding the homeless, and at first I was scheduled to do that one with them, but it was like 7 Challenge peeps and I thought that was quite enough, seeing as how the whole idea for us doing it is to spread ourselves thin and meet new students. It wasn't their fault either. It was 2 small groups that chose the same one independently! So I changed to walking dogs at a place called Bark Avenue :) I went with a freshman in Challenge and got to meet a couple new people so it was really fun! It was just a LOT of walking. We walked to the place which was pretty close, but then we walked dogs for about 2.5 hours! They needed help because they're under-staffed and they want to make sure all the dogs get enough exercise so we helped out :)


Maddie with Othello, the dog I spent the most time with, although he also had some digestive issues....


Adorable pic of one of my favorites, Hollister - he was a bit tired by this point :)

So this weekend was really fun, and I cannot wait until tomorrow because that will mean just ONE more day until Turkey Day!!! As for me, I'm most looking forward to the stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie! I love all things pumpkin and I made pumpkin brownies the other night and they were delicious - YUM!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!


just had to show another photo of Hollister - I mean, just look at this face!!! so much cuteness here, I can't help but smile when I see this one

HP7.1

It's here. It's now. This is it. It is finally opening weekend of HP7.1. For those of you not in the know (which you should be because, let's face it, HP is flippin' awesome), "HP7.1" refers to "Harry Potter 7, part 1" because TOMORROW is the day when it comes out!!! It is currently 1:53pm in Cali, and I'm seeing it at 12:20am, so basically I have less than 12 hours, LESS THAN 12 HOURS PEOPLE!!!! Holy moly I am getting so excited I almost can't take it. I might have to stupefy myself to contain myself. Why Potter you ask? Well, firstly, because it's awesome. Secondly, it's really awesome. Thirdly, it's a great story. No, really. I know it was originally for kids, but by about book 4 the author J.K.Rowling goes all crazy and kills someone, and she never looked back. If you try reading book 6 to a 10 year old they'll probably be traumatized. She kills off about half the Potter universe in the last book, and not just the peripheral characters either. She goes big so she doesn't have to go home. But in all seriousness, Potter has to be good quality to engage the world right?? Well, okay, that same argument could be made for "Twilight" but I haven't read the books and I don't plan on it - I read the synopsis on Wikipedia so I know what people were talking about, but that's it. Most of my friends who have read it concede that yes, while it is an addicting story, it is by no means Shakespeare. Heck, they didn't even say it was Dan Brown level. One of my good friends was an English major and she said it was just horribly written. Another friend of mine (AKJackso shout out!) told me that if I was ever depressed I should read those books because they're so badly written I will start laughing as I'm reading and thus put me in a better mood :)

No, Potter is well-written and it gets better as she goes along. The first 2 books are my least favorites because they tend to be slow and plodding and repeat a lot. But trudge through those books and you won't be able to put them down. My mom convinced me to read the first 3 books while we were looking at colleges for a week my senior year. I shrugged her off because I said they were kid's books and I am by no means a kid anymore. She then said she had read them and my oldest sister too, and how they both enjoyed them. Ok fine, just to placate my mom I bought the first 3 in paperback and in about 4 days they were all read. Yeah. So from them on I was hopelessly addicted. Book 5 came out when I was a sophomore in college, and I had to force myself to do homework instead of read Potter. I would "reward" myself by working for a good hour, then reading a chapter, then working for an hour and reading a chapter and then I'd stay up later at night reading a few chapters at a time. So it both helped and hindered my studies :)

But I have also really enjoyed the movies. Films 3 and 6 are my current favorites. I know some people hate the fact that the movies tweak or leave out parts of the books, but let's be honest, if they included everything in their right order then the movie would be like 6 hours long. I love Potter but my rear would not. I really enjoy the liberties they take because it keeps it fresh. Plus the music in film 6 is awesome, like woah.

SO, all of that to say that I am SUPER PUMPED for Potter 7 tonight/tomorrow morning. The only thing I am not looking forward to is the pain factor because my rheumatoid arthritis has come back and it gets wicked bad the later it gets, like at 10pm it's horrible, so 4am should be interesting :)

Now, while I am indeed pumped to see it, I am not as bad as this guy:



Harry Potter is cool and all, but it's not LIFE. Sheesh. That should be left to Calvin and Hobbes. ha haaa, just kidding. But take a look at the trailer!!!



a-MAZE-ing right?!?! oh man, just get goosebumps watching it :) cannot WAIT until tonight!!

And until then, this is pretty funny too:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

T-minus 10 hours and counting...