These Days

I don't really have anything profound to blog about.

It's thundering out. I love thunderstorms! It's my dream to see a tornado up close. I know, I'm weird.

I love the weather we're having. It makes me happy.

I'm trying to work on a 10 page essay of which I know nothing about. I've even read the book I'm supposed to be writing it on and I have to look up every fifth word in the dictionary. I wish my vocabulary was bigger. I'm just not interested in this class at all (liberation Theology). I literally leave every class pissed off because I feel like I've been ripped apart of every belief I have. Oh well. It's a taste of the real world.

I am trying to beat Lord of the Rings on Gamecube. So far, it's not working. I almost beat it last year when I rented it and played three days straight, but I had to return it before I could finish. Now Nathan's bought it and I'm trying to beat it again, but I'm stuck on this one level and it's driving me nuts! I spent 2 hours on it today and then my parents kicked me off the TV :P

I'm going to C4C banquet tomorrow. I'm pretty indifferent about the whole event. I could go and be happy; and I could stay home and be as equally happy. So we'll see how it goes.

We have new neighbours moving in next door. I thought I'd welcome them by playing music really loudly :D Welcome to the neighbourhood!

Lastly, I'm learning that life is too precious to worry about the little things, or even the big things. I'm beginning to realize that my time is better spent with a couple good friends, than with mediocre relationships with many people. Don't worry, you all are still really important to me :)

Anyways, see you all!

This is why I hate computers!

I'm sorry I haven't been commenting on peoples blogs recently. I actually haven't read anyone's from a little while. So I finally had a little bit of time to read them all, and I did, but when I went to comment and do the whole word verification thing, it kept telling me I was wrong. But I KNOW I was typing the right thing! So my apologies to people.

Also, crappy computers....I don't know how people can stand them! So I bought a DVD drive the other day, and I was so excited to use it and what not. I hooked it up myself and had my dad check it, and I did everything right except had to switch it to master instead of select. Anyways, I get the thing up and running, but it's not working properly! My audio is slow and messed up and it won't really play my Linkin Park DVD at all. You know how sound can be slow and kinda sound staticky? That's what it's like. I'm thoroughly frustrated. I'm going to have to ask my dad to see if he can fix it because I've spent hours and am out of ideas.

Anyways, that's all for today folks!

Change is Inevitable

*sigh*

I miss Faith.

I babysit for S. Clarke occasionally on Thursday nights where he plays the piano at the London Outreach Center (LOC), which is now in Faith's old building. It's weird being in there, let me tell you. It's funny how every church I've ever known who has worship practice is always held on Thursday. Just an interesting note. Anyways, it's funny because LOC took over Faith's building, but they also bought the place next door to Faith as well in order to expand their building. It's much different when you walk in for sure, but if you look closely, you'll find evidence of Faith. Now I just want to make something clear here and say that in no way am I going to be bashing LOC at all. I think it's neat, though, walking around and seeing some of the stuff from Faith. Things that I've noticed are the same are just little things, like the cupboards and everything in the kitchen is the same....that's pretty much the only major thing left in tack, but even the little labels under the kitchen cupboards are the ones that we wrote down so many years ago, as well as the slidy thing we used so that we didn't kill the people in the kitchen with our hockey playing, or hurt ball! There are also the wall lamps from the old sanctuary now in the nursery's backroom; the bathroom doors and signs are the same, as well as the paper towel holders in the bathrooms; the carpet from our old sanctuary is the same, but it is now a youth room; it looks like they took part of our old stage as well, but rearranged it a little differently; the storage room is the same (including the mops!); the front foyer tiles are the same; the exit signs are still on all the doors, and that's all I can think of for now. In order for you to really understand what they changed and how they changed it, you'd have to go see for yourself because it's way too much to explain on here. Yes, I admit it, I was snooping around a bit, but I just couldn't help myself!

Sometimes going there is hard because lately I've just really felt like I want to feel home again. I don't feel at home at New Hope and probably never will. The other time I babysat I came a bit early so I was sitting in the sanctuary waiting for Mr. C. and I was watching everyone set up their stuff and I wanted so badly to just climb on stage, pick up a guitar or something, and just hack around. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss singing and worship practice so much. I want to feel a part of a team like that again. I loved our worship and felt like it was actual worship and not just a performance. It's funny how much you can take something for granted, something that was such a huge part of my life, and then once it's gone, that's when you realize its significance. I wish now that I could have realized how amazing our church family really was when I was actually a part of it. But on the brightside, getting together with everyone always seems just like it did back then and I never feel awkward or like I don't know everyone.

Even though change is inevitable, it doesn't mean all change is bad. Looking back at this I know that it was for the best and the leaders were following God, and I know it was a very difficult decision to make because I know how difficult it was to hear. But God does have different plans for all of us, and I can already see how changes are being made in peoples lives, as well as my own. I've just been thinking a lot about this lately and even now, it's hard to let go, especially when pretty much once a week I'm reminded of it. Anyways, I just needed to clear my head. Just to let you know, this wasn't meant as any sort of depressing thing. I'm not depressed at all, more like daydreaming and reminiscing. I'm actually really tired because I've barely slept the past three nights, so I'm downing the caffeine and plugging away on my essays and things.

I'm going to end this thing by referring to the story of Job because Job had all sorts of changes made to his life and he had no clue why, but through it all, through the hard times and the darkness, he never once cursed God. I think it's applicable here because even though, to me at least, this was an extremely difficult thing to deal with, I want to know and understand that God is bigger than it all, and that He has plans for me that I can't even begin to ever dream of.

Follow the leada leada leada....

I remember we did this song during O-week....ANYways.....

I do not know what I've gotten myself into. Remember how I was talking about my d-group (discipleship group)? Well, my d-group leader approached me a couple weeks ago and said she had to talk to me. My first thought is always, "uh oh". And "uh oh" is right! Her and another girl part of Campus for Christ sat down with me and asked me if I was interested in leading a d-group myself next year. I'm still in shock! It honestly caught me completely off-guard. The reason it caught me off-guard is because for one, my d-group leader doesn't really know me. She knows me within our little d-group and my answering questions about God, but she knows nothing about the Aleah outside of that. Also, I am very quiet and don't talk much anyways, which by the way is progressively changing and I'm not so afraid to speak to people I don't know. So this little meeting thingy we had was a fairly quick get-to-know-what-Aleah-believes session. I did have to admit some things that I've been struggling with lately and that was pretty difficult because I don't like telling people I've just met about my problems! The decision was left up to me to think and pray about. After some prayer and thinking I told my d-group leader that I would do it. So lo! and behold, I'm going to be leading my own d-group next school year, which means I have to go through a bunch of leadership/evangelism training. It'll be fun to get to know other Christians on campus and be able to influence others to deepen their relationship with God, but it's still frightening. They estimated that this'll take up approximately 10 hours a week of my time, so for me, that's a huge commitment since I'm terrible with time management to begin with!

I'm still left wondering, "why me?" Those of you that know me know that I'm not too partial to leadership. I'd rather be the follower. I'd much prefer being told what to do and doing it when it comes to these sorts of situations, because I'm also very indecisive. Also, this will be a lot of responsibility and accountability on my part because I have to set an example for the girls I will be leading. On the upside, it will definitely help me stay on track with God and with the decisions I make because I will be accountable to these people. If it was just me I was being accountable towards, then I'm much more likely to make the wrong choice. But if it's someone else, I'm more likely to remain strong and do what's right since I hate disappointing people. I know that sounds sad, but right now it's the truth. So all in all I'm excited about this, but also at the same time terrified to death! If you can remember, please pray that I'll be strong enough to do this and that God will work through me to reach others.

The Week of Death

Reading week. It sucked. Darn.

I don't have much to post about and I'm bored waiting for my dinner (yes, I'm spoiled, my mother makes my food). I had reading week this past week. It was not very fun I must say. From the Tuesday before reading week, allll the way 'till the Tuesday during reading week I was confined to my house except for one doctor's trip for sweet, juicy meds. I had a sinus infection and it sucked. Actually, it didn't suck, it was painful, that's what. Because of this, I missed a whole lot of class and didn't get any work done. Even after I got better, I still didn't get much work done. Why? Because a friend introduced me to a computer game and I now spend my time doing that. Needless to say, I am behind in readings and have two papers to write for next week, which I haven't started yet.

In other news, I had "minor surgery" Thursday morning. It's not really surgery at all actually, but for some reason, that's what the doctor woman called it. Essentially what was done was I had three spots frozen and they burned holes into me. It was great! Esepcially when I could smell it burning.....sorry for the squimish, which includes myself. I am telling you I do NOT do well with medical things/blood/cuts/wounds. I almost fainted today. I had accidentally stuck the bandaid to the cut/hole on my lower back and my mom had to pull it off. Ouch! Even writing about it makes me weak! Anyways, my dinner's ready. Adios and happy hunting!