Home

I'm leaving tomorrow for Denver, CO for yet another semester of school at the lovely, tiny campus of Colorado Christian University. Moving into an apartment requires even more packing than moving into a dorm.

All the stuffing of clothes, books, bedding, cookery, etc. into boxes is one of the hardest parts of college, because you have to do it almost every year until you move somewhere off campus. I should be a packing pro by now, and I definintely know by now that rolling is better than folding.

Although all the packing and moving is annoying and exhausting, it has reminded me that nowhere on this Earth is truly my 'home'. My home is in Heaven, with the Lord, and how grateful I am that he wants me to live with him forever! I am so excited to taste the food that will be better than anything on this earth, hear music that brings tears of joy to my face, and ultimately dance in the prescence of my King!

But it is so easy to forget that this Earth is not our home. It is, after all, where we are living now, and everything in it yaps and yells at us to buy more, relax more, and make ourselves comfortable here. I definitely follow the world and listen to it more than I should. But thank the Lord Jesus that he won't stop pursuing me!! So world, flesh, and Satan, I have a few words for you: YOU ARE NOT MY LOVER, JESUS CHRIST IS, AND HE WILL BRING INTO HIS EMBRACE SOMEDAY. UNTIL THEN, I WILL FIGHT YOU IN HIS STRENGTH. So there! :) Let us gaze on Jesus, and be so in love with him that the darkness in this earth flees from us and people flock to his light in our souls.

Colossians 3:1-2 "Therfore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your heart on things above, not on things that are on earth."

Akiane: Child Prodigy

I first heard about Akiane this last semester in my Creative Writing class. My teacher said she was a child prodigy and showed us some of her paintings, and I was so intrigued I went home and looked her up online.

 

What I saw blew me away. She is a self-taught artist who started painting by the age of around four. And even then, her paintings were far, far above her age. Some of her paintings are from visions she has about God and Heaven, like the one below on the left, others are just about life and people she has met. She explains the meanings behind some of her paintings and the visions on her website and in her biography. 

 

Her family was athiest until one day, when she was four, Akiane came up to her mother and said she had met God. Her parents had never talked about God before, so they were surprised she knew what that word even met. All of her family now believes in God and his son, Jesus Christ.

 

Although her paintings are amazing and beautiful, Akiane also writes poetry, which she also began to write when she was very young. Many of them, if not all, are like the visions because she sees the words in her head and they come out perfect the first time she writes the poem out. The poems are lovely, but hard for me to understand. They are on her website with her paintings.

 

Akiane has donated and sold many of her paintings. She has been on many T.V. shows (including Oprah) and has met many famous people. God is using her in incredible ways, even though we probably do not understand them all.

 

The story of this child prodigy raises many questions in my mind. Why did God give her such talent? Why does he allow some people to see visions and not others? This makes me think of the prophets back in the Old Testament. Why did he choose some and not others? The workings of the Lord will always be a mystery to us, but I still can't help wrestling with these questions.

 

If you would like to learn more about Akiane and see more of her works, you can visit her at: http://www.artakiane.com/

 

(Most of my information was from her biography, Akiane: her life, her art, her poetry and her webstite)  

 

She painted this when she was 11                                                                 15 years old

 

                                                                     12 years old

Uglies, Pretties, Specials by Scott Westerfeld

This series is about a girl named Tally who lives in a world where everyone has an operation at the age of 16 to make them 'pretty'. Tally can't wait for the operation and for the fun to begin. But Tally's friend, Shay, doesn't want to be pretty and thirsts for a life where she is valued for what she looks like as she is. Shay does something unexpected, and Tally must find her friend or never be pretty. But the operation is not what it seems, and Tally must decide if being pretty is worth the cost she would have to pay to be like everyone else.  

 

The next two books in the series, Pretties and Specials, follow Tally as she fights to keep her identity in this futuristic, controlling world and remembers that who you are is more than what you look like.



These dystopian novels are intriguing and exciting. The first one was a bit slow and the plot obvious at some points. But the pace picks up in Pretties and Specials and these latter books have more twists and turns so that you are always wondering what will happen next. They are great books with thought-provoking ideas and some romance, but not so much that I wanted to throw up :).

Scott Westerfeld's Website

Poetry, Anyone?

I do not have anything exciting to say today (haven't visited any foreign countries in the last week), and am not ready to post a book review. So how about some lovely poetry? This is the sonnet I wrote in Creative Writing last semester. I thought writing a sonnet would be hard, and it was, but it was more fun and easier than I originally believed it'd be.

Sick
My roomate has a forest in her room,
tons of plants that sway, hang and respirate.
Gnats will bring a slender plant to its doom;
the tiny creatures have planted its fate.
The sick stalk now sits in a paper bag,
awaiting the young doctor's prognosis.
Its complaints go unheard and its leaves sag;
my friend's anger, like bubbles, starts to fizz.
I watch all this with humor from my perch,
amazed at the power the small gnats hold,
when a random, clanging thouht makes me lurch,
its clarity ringing like a bell tolled.
     I'm sick, not from gnats, but from hidden sin,
     and who will cure me and the rest of men?

Is anyone brave enough to admit they write poetry? I wish I wrote it more often; it can be so beautiful.

Left My Heart in Mongolia...

This is a picture of the crazy highschool students I taught at the second half of camp. The first half of camp I taught middle schoolers, and they were not as crazy, but still fun. Each camp was about two weeks long. In-between the two camps, we went back to UB and experienced the Mongolian holiday, Naadam. It was awesome, as the whole trip was. During Naadam, we got to see horse races in the country (they were all 5-10 year olds riding a several kilometer race!), see big, fat men wrestling, and some archery.

Some of the highlights of the trip: seeing some of the students become interested in God and want a relationship with Him, washing my clothes and hair in the freezing river, my highschool students singing me a song at the end of class after I wanted to pummel all of them for talking, and living life with my teammates. It was an awesome trip, and most of me wants to still be in that vast, mountainous country. I'm still adjusting to being surrounded by white people :)

Sorry that I didn't blog very much over there, but we didn't have wifi out in the country, and in the city I was too busy. I can't wait to talk to you more about the trip, and let me know if you have any questions about it! God did some awesome things over there, and I can't wait to see what He has in store for the future of that country.

This is a typical ger that a family lives in out in the country. This one was on the outskirts of our camp and lived in, as you can see by the laundry. I didn't go in it, but some of my teammates got to teach in a ger, and we had several team meetings in one.