I went to Disneyland in June with my best friend who works there. In August I went again with my fam. And now in October, I get to take 23 college students to the Magic Kingdom! What what! Tomorrow morning, we set off early on our annual "college fall road trip". I am looking forward to getting out of town for awhile and spending some quality time with these students. I'll tell ya about it when we get back.
Mickey - BRING IT.
Back in June, I posted a "Before" and "After" picture of my new office at work. I have a new Before and After picture to post because....I got my queen bed! Tah-dah! It was a VERY exciting day when that bad boy arrived. I got to put together the frame myself, which made me feel very empowered and man-ly. I can't believe how much ROOM I have. For years I have been scrunched in tiny beds...and now I can spread out with room to spare. I absolutely love it. I look forward to bed more than ever now and I am always bummed when I have to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah for big beds. I definitely recommend them.
I went on a bike ride yesterday and got to take in all the beautiful sights of trees changing colors. Of course, living with the redwoods, there are many trees that stay green all year. But I caught glimpses of bright yellows, oranges, and reds as well. Gorgeous.
I was going up this one hill and I saw a brilliant pink and light orange tree ahead. Oooooo, I couldn't wait to get up closer. But when I got there, I realized it wasn't a tree at all...it was poison oak! The oak has climbed up a tree as a vine and its leaves were the prettiest out of all the trees I had seen (which I thought was really funny). I guess it's time for them to change colors, too.
I love autumn.
This morning I had the opportunity to speak at the junior high group at church. The Jr. High Pastor is on vacation so they've had guest speakers the past three weeks. The junior high group is going through Acts and I was going to talk about Acts 9, specifically Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus.
Can I just go ahead and say that junior highers are AWKWARD!?!??! I am so used to college students who can have real conversations at any time. Here's what a typical conversation looked like this morning:
Me: (walking up to a kid, with a big smile on my face) "Hi! How are you?"
Him: (quietly, looking at the ground) "Fine."
Me: "What's your name?"
Him: (still quietly) "Nick."
Me: Hi, Nick. I'm Sarah."
Nick: "Hi."
*pause*
Me: "So where do you go to school?"
Nick: "Um...Baymonte."
Me: "Do you like it there?"
Nick: "Yeah." (do these kids ever talk in more than one word?!?)
Me: Are you in any sports or clubs or anything?"
Nick: (pause) "No."
Me: "Oh. Um, how about after school stuff?"
Nick: "No."
Me: "So, you just chill at home and do homework and stuff?"
Nick: "....yeah."
Me: (pause) "Ok."
Take that, multiply it by 10, and that's how many awkward conversations I had with junior high students. Oh my word. It was like pulling teeth. I mean, I know it's a hard stage of life and everything; I'm sure I was just as uncomfortable when I was that age. God bless Steve, the junior high pastor - he really loves that age. Junior highers are fun and everything but I definitely prefer college students.
One of my college students works at the mall, selling calendars in one of those kiosk booths. I went to go visit her today and it was fun to see her all dressed up and helping customers. I was asking her about the kinds of people who come look at the calendars. She started telling me about men who come and pick up the "girl" calendars and spend, like, a HALF HOUR just staring at the back of them. Ewww!
As she was speaking, it happened! A guy walked up and went straight to that section, picked up a 2007 calendar with scantily-clad women on it and turned it around. He seriously stood there looking at it forever! At first my student and I got the giggles. And then the more he just stood there, the more dirty I felt. Like, ewwww for all women everywhere! I felt like I needed to take a cold shower just watching him stare at it. I was SO tempted to just walk up and stand RIGHT next to him, pretending to look at calendars, too...just to make him feel uncomfortable and put the dumb thing down.
There is a guy (I'll call him Joe) who has been coming to the college group the past month and a half. A friend invited him and he has been getting plugged in which is awesome. He came by my office last week and we had a chance to talk. I found out he is not a Christian, never went to church, and doesn't know anything about the Bible. And he was curious. He wanted to know things. He had questions.
During our conversation, I started thinking...most students I talk with are Christians and most have grown up going to church (like myself). So, here's an opportunity to share with this awesome college student who has tons of questions about Christianity and I was almost at a loss of where to start! It was an interesting experience.
He wanted to start at the beginning, so I grabbed a Bible and we started talking about Genesis: God creating everything, Adam and Eve, how sin entered the world, etc. I was sitting there sharing and feeling a bit of that out-of-body experience. I couldn't remember doing this before. If I have had conversations with kids or other friends who were not Christians, they usually had some knowledge about the Bible, God, etc. But we were literally starting from scratch. Joe was looking at me expectantly and excited to hear what this whole "Jesus-thing" was all about.
As we were talking, 2 things hit me:
1) dude, I totally speak "Christianese". Ya know, the language we believers use that other people have no idea about. I caught myself saying "repentence" and stuff like that and quickly stopped. Do we realize we have this Christian language/lingo? I think I knew it in the back of my head, but it never hit me as hard until I was talking with Joe.
2) We believe some crazy stuff! All my life it never hit me how strange things might sound to non-believers. But it's true. Wait a sec...a woman who had never been with a man had a baby?? A man who had never sinned took all the sins of the world upon himself and died on a cross? How could he take everyone's sins? This Jesus raised from the dead three days later and after awhile he rose into heaven in front of his disciples? What does it mean to have "Jesus come into your heart" when you become a Christian? A person's in your heart?? How do you explain the Trinity to someone who has never heard of it before?
My mind was in over-drive the whole time. He asked some really great, challenging questions. I asked him questions, too. I gave him a Bible and suggested Luke might be a cool place to start reading. He wants to be in a guys' small group, which I am stoked about. He wanted to pray after our convo. My mind was still reeling when he left. Ack! What did I just say? Did any of it make sense? God...did I do ok??
Joe's been on my mind a lot and I'm praying for him. And I'm realizing it's not up to me, or his friend, or the college group to convince him to be a Christian. We're there to plant seeds and encourage him. God is the One working and tugging at his heart. Wow.
Guess what, world?! I bought a bed! And not just any bed...a QUEEN size bed. Ooooooooh boy, I'll be sleeping like a baby every night. I have always had second-hand twin beds and my toes hang off the edge. Not anymore! For the first time in my life, I have bought a brand new bed and it will be at my house in a couple weeks.
I bought it off Costco.com. I also have purchased the frame, jersey sheets (so soft!) and a super fun comforter to put on top. It is going to rock my room and I can't wait! The pix is what the mattress looks like. I won't have the headboard or weird blanket thing draping off the bed. Oh no, it will look way better than that when I spruce it all up. I'll post a picture when it's all done.
My own queen bed! So much room! EXCITING!!!
A friend showed me this website about missionary dating. I almost died. Check out the T-shirt and poster I'm posting and then go to:
http://datetosave.com/
I'm so shocked, I couldn't help but laugh. Is this for REAL!?! I think this tops the "Armor of God" pj's.
So, the other night my roomies and I plus some friends all had dinner together and then we turned on the tube to see what was on. The new season of The Bachelor was on. I have only seen a few episodes of any Bachelor show and it annoys me to no end to see 25 women fight over this one dude. They get catty and gossipy and lame and I get over it really quickly. But we all decided to watch the season premiere which is in ROME. Oooooo, special location, this guy's GOTTA find love in this city, right?! Even though the previous 8 Bachelors have never had their final relationships work out. But I digress.
So we sat there and for TWO HOURS watched this show. We honestly made fun of it the whole time. And then the show ended and I had a revelation...WE should be the ones who are being made fun of. We seriously just sat for two hours on a perfectly good evening and watched The Bachleor. It was quite funny.
