Breaking News!

Justin Bieber will be appearing on tonights season premiere of CSI, and rumor has it his character will be appearing on several episodes this season!
Breaking News Installment Number 2: Justin Bieber will be performing live, in concert at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, SC on Dec. 16th!!!!

Crunch Time Part 2 (Sort Of)

So bloggers, if you have been faithfully following and reading my blog, you might remember a little self help post back at Easter time. A little how-to, if you will, about tips to making that 2.5 page paper hit the 3 page mark your professor wants. Don't remember? Never read it? Well then, refer to my first 10 tips here, then see a couple of new tips I have discovered just recently!

1. Remember the old trick of increasing your period sizes? Well, in addition to this, increase the size of your commas and other punctuation marks. You may not think changing the size of your commas from 12 to 14 will help much but trust me, the little things add up!
2. Increase your character spacing just slightly. Format, Paragraph, Character Spacing tab. Again, please go with the idea that less is more. If you change it drastically your professor will obviously notice. But if you change it slightly, it looks off somehow but you just cannot figure out why!

As I Procrastinate

It is now 2:20 pm on Saturday and I have been procrastinating on finishing a history paper for, oohhh about a whole day. I find myself a champion at reasoning myself out of things. Yesterday I told myself, "You have all day tomorrow to work on your paper" which is, in fact true. I thought it a perfect solution. I felt like doing nothing after a whole week of school work, my roommate is leaving today to go home so I'll have the room to myself, a perfect time to work on my paper, no distractions. No distractions? Little did I know there would be a great movie marathon on ABC family. Sixteen Candles, (although I don't know of too many I like 80s movies and Molly Ringwald is just too presh! I have a Breakfast Club poster up in my room!) Blue Crush (I actually do not know of this movie but it looks interesting. as far as i can tell it's about a group of girls and guys that like to surf), The Wedding Date, and the temptation of the two movies my roommates and I Redboxed last night, Letters to Juliet and Sunday School Musical. Oh yes, Sunday School Musical. We rented Letters to Juliet and then discovered we received a credit for another free movie rental! As we searched through the listings we found it, and it just sounded so funny we had to rent it. I must say the movie was cute. Not the best made, not the best acting, not the best singing either, but it was great entertainment especially for free! We also had fun reading old copes of Seventeen Magazine, the drama, the beauty tips, the boy advice, and the embarrassing stories, we are just suckers for it all!
On the ministry side of things, God has shown me that although I have been here for a month or so my heart really has not been here with the girls I am sharing with. Not that I haven't wanted to share with them or enjoyed sharing with them, but where my heart has really felt burdened is still with my coworkers from this summer. It is hard for me not to still feel burdened for them as I spent so much time with them and all of them do not know the Lord. But my heart needs to be here at PC, where God has me now, where I am spending my time, where I am laboring. How can I truly be fully laboring and feeling burdened for my friends here if my heart is still at the beach? The hard thing for me is thinking that this does not mean that I should completely forget about my coworkers. That is not it at all. It's ok to still have a burden for them, to still pray for them, to still talk with them when I get the chance, but my focus, my attention, and my heart needs to be where God has me right now, where He is going to use me right now, and that's here at PC.

It Starts With Him

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15:13

"Although I am the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me that I might preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Christ Jesus." Ephesians 3:8-9

"But the wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere."     James 3:13-18 

"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord...But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him." Jeremiah 17:5-7

"Trust in Him at all times, you people; Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us." Psalm 62:8

"My soul finds rest in God alone;  my salvation comes from Him." Psalm 62:1 

So bloggers, once again I realize how far I fall from glory. So my ministry thus far has been unexplainable. I never realized that it would actually be challenging, why I thought it would be a piece of cake I'll never know. At times I want to pull my hair out, scream, yell, it becomes so very frustrating, but then there are the times when I see that God is doing WORK in these girls and it brings me sooo much joy! To see these girls realizing that they are not finding satisfaction in the temporal things of this world, the things they thought were bringing them happiness and satisfaction is totally from the Lord and the joy it brings me to see God revealing this to them brings me and unexplainable joy, it is so incomparable to anything else! It makes me seriously consider a ministry path after college. But one things I wasn't seeing was my own sin in the situation, which I never even thought about. I struggle so much with pride that I tried to focus on not letting this ministry feed my pride but recognizing that whatever happens is totally from the Lord, I am simply a tool used by Him and HE is the one who is completely sovereign. So I failed to realize that while trying not to let my ministry on my part be all about me, that I didn't know it could be all about them. Yeah, all about them. But wait, isn't that what it is supposed to be about, about them coming to know the Lord and his love, grace, mercy, sovereignty, how He is the only one that can satisfy them and give them hope? That's the thing, it's about them coming to know the LORD, therefore, it's about the LORD. not me. not them. HIM. seems so simple yet so hard to grasp and implement at the same time. just another reason why I need His grace every day, showing me that salvation is a lifetime process not a one time thing.


God revealed this to me the other night during FCA, which may I pause to say is gonna be tot legit this year. I just know God is already doing BIG things through FCA this year, which is so great because sometimes we get comfortable in our committed ministry thinking that it is the only one or the best one on campus. Not true. God can do GREAT and BIG things through BOTH co and fca. This girl talked about God's love basically. One thing she talked about was that the bible says that God is jealous for us (Ezk 34:14, Dt 4:24, Js 24:19). Now my concept of jealousy is anger driven by a coveting for something we do not have i.e. sin. Now God's jealous is an angry jealousy, God is wrathful, He can be angry, He does get angry. But what was this anger driven by? I think it's driven by a deep hurt, like a pain because He created us and He knows what we need and He knows that He is the only one who can give us what we seek in other things! He has a desperate desire to be the one who is comforting us, who is satisfying us, who is loving us, who is giving us hope. He is pained that we are running to other things to try and find it rather than running to Him! Think of how deeply God must love us to be deeply pained by the fact that we are running to other things and not to Him!


So that was a pro to the talk. I heard another friend of mine talking about it and I asked him what he thought. He saw the con in the talk. Now something I tend to forget is that we are all human, just because this person is speaking about the gospel and seeking the Lord does not mean that they are completely right about everything. She talked to the whole group as if we were all believers, i.e. calling us all children of God and really loving us. Now granted God desires a relationship with all that He created, those that follow Him he calls his children, those that reject Him are subject to his judgement and His wrath. My friend feared that there were unbelievers there leaving thinking that they were children of God when in fact if they do not accept Him they will one day be subject to His wrath. This just reminded me of another reason for community, because we all perceive things differently and he saw something I didn't and vice versa. So cool!

"...Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name."

"Teach me your way, O Lord,

and I will walk in your truth;

give me an undivided heart,

that I may fear your name.

I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart;

I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your love towards me;

you have delivered me from the depths of the grave."

Psalm 86:11-13 (NIV)

Many times today I heard the phrase "follow your heart". Although none of these times was it directed towards me or even indirectly towards me, I thought about that common phrase. Today in Sunday School God revealed so much more to me about a huge idol in my life, one that I had not been taking seriously at all before until today when I realized that it was much bigger than I thought; and that I had somewhere in the back of my mind thought I had it under control. Yeah right, I have fooled myself again. As a pursuer of the Lord, I know that at my deepest core I am sinful. My heart's deepest desires are sinful. Jeremiah 17:9 says, 'The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" Although this idol was revealed to me back on project, I did not want to consider the seriousness of this idol. I simply tried to fight it with a half-hearted attempt, not really desiring to fight it with my whole heart, and not realizing how much of God's grace I could see on the other side knowing that my battle has already been won. And so of course, today God really revealed to me how serious this is, that putting someone above my Lord is not ok. God is jealous for me, and it is astounding to me that after all He has done for me and in me, I continue to sin against Him. So obviously, I am so much more spiritual now and my heart desires only the Lord a.k.a. I am the perfect Christian. Such lies. I hope you could note the sarcasm in that statement. I desire so much to worship my Lord with an undivided heart but at the same time I am so terribly scared to pray for that out of fear of what that might mean. I do NOT want to completely give up my idol and I am so afraid of God calling me to do exactly that.

Another Year Older...

Ah yes. The big 2-0. no longer a teenager so it seems! Where does the time go? Sometimes I feel like I just started kindergarten yesterday and already I'm in college! But nonetheless, I am enjoying it so much. This weekend was a great birthday! My brother was visiting from New York City, and it was so great to see him for the first time since last Christmas and the last time probably until next Christmas. So, I spent the weekend with my whole family, and shared it of course with my twin sister, Katherine. I got back to PC this afternoon and had a day full of lovely surprises. My roommates got me a great present with lots of goodies I wanted and nothing I was expecting! Other friends made me lovely signs and posted them on my door to surprise me, and I got to see several friends from this summer that were visiting this weekend including one my roommates, Katlyn! I couldn't have asked for a better birthday weekend, God has blessed me so much! Here are few pictures from my fun filled weekend.

my roomies got be Breakfast at Tiffany's, which most of us had never seen, a cute new picture frame and adorable stationary since I love to write all of my loves love notes! :)

A candle and candle warmer! Open flames aren't allowed in the dorm and this candle warmer is much safer. It warms the candle from the bottom still leaving the room smelling deliciously like Hazelnut Cream! This present is good for both me and my roommate!

my new friend molly made me this!

Love, only the best RA ever and a good friend, Amanda!

and of course, blowing out the candles for the 20th time with my twin!