some things i love...and dont like so much

yes i am so copying annie. I mean seriously, who wouldnt? but i cant commit to ten things i like cause its past ten and my bedtime was awhile ago, anyways
1. BLOGS
they are great. seriously, the first thing i do when i get home from school is check everyone's blogs. I also enjoy the fact that all the ones i check have links to the next ones i want to read. Its very convenient and it makes me happy that all my friends are friends with each other. so links make me happy...what can i say, im easy to please.
2. FUNNY FRIENDS
I have come to realize that i have a lot of very funny people in my life. And i really enjoy it. I love to laugh, and there are so many people around me who make me laugh. Im glad God made humor, and laughter. Its my fav when im with a group of people and we start laughing so hard we cant stop... and then you just feel so much better when youre done laughing. Its nice is all im sayin.
3. TECHNO MUSIC AT LUNCH WITH MORMONS
i mean you have to clarify something like that. Cause you cant just go around saying you really like techno music. at least i dont think i could. But at lunch, with the extremely funny (see # 2) mormon friends, its just so much more enjoyable. I mean have you ever seen several mormon guys dancing around picnic tables to techno songs. Its hilarious (really hilarious, since i am no longer able to use my previous adjective).
4. THE SCOOP VANILLA ICE CREAM WITH HARD CHOCOLATE ON TOP
for those of you who havent been to ghana and need yet another reason to come, this is a good one. Kinda superficial, yes, but still really good. This is non-dairy, non-sugar ice cream. It is made completely with honey and soy milk. I know that sounds nasty, but just ask our dear friends Ry and Annie and they can express to you just how not nasty it is. We've decided its addicting.
5. MY NEW DISCIPLESHIP GROUP GIRLS
Mrs. Nansie, our fearless youth group leader ( you have to be fearless to lead a youth group) has set up three discipleship groups led by the 17 and 18 year old girls in our youth group (there are three of us, hence the three groups. its late ok) And i have the most awesome girls in my group. Im so excited about this. Cause in all honesty they are prolly gonna teach me more than i can ever teach them. Its gonna be awesome, im excited.
6. POWER
so this is more a dislike, cause i dont have it right now. And its the fourth time tonight that i havent had it. So this post is going to keep going till we have it again. Cause the internet doesnt work when the power is off. And not only is this the fourth time tonight, we have it off all night tomorrow night. This is called load-shedding (code for ghana sells their electrical power to Togo and then tells Ghanaians that we have a water shortage and cant produce enough electricity) and it happens every five days for twelve hours. its my fav.
p.s. the power just came back on.
7. WATER
another kind of dislike cause for the past week and a half we havent had that. And i enjoy bucket baths (amazingly im serious, they are kinda fun) but a week is a long time. for not having a shower at least. And whats even more fun is when you are in the process of taking said bucket bath and the power goes off. Its awesome. Life is never boring here to say the least.
8. NOT COCKROACHES
um yeah i had to add this because as i was writing the previous one, a cockroach roughly the size of my thumb crawled up the back of my desk. My skin is still crawling. So just know that i had to pause in the middle of that last mini post and kill the cockroach (and in the process half the things on my desk). ew. those things dont die. And for those of you that will be discouraged from coming to visit because of that, i just want to say that that was a rare occurance, although they seem to like my room ( which is actually ok cause my mom and Mags hate them). ugh. sorry. im still grossed out. ok, moving on
9. BREAKFAST FOR DINNER
for those of you who havent tried this, it is a must. We had it tonight. One of the things that makes it so fun is that you feel like its saturday morning and you are making a big, stay-at-home-cause-you-have-nothing-to-do breakfast. Its great. And stress relieving. We had bacon, pancakes and hashbrowns. It was delicious.
10. DAVE BARRY
Hes funny. thats pretty much all there is to it
11. VERSES ABOUT THE LORD'S LOVE FOR ME
especially Zephaniah 3:14-17. "Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem...17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing" How good is that?? It gives me butterflies. Its just so beautiful. And i feel beautiful hearing it.
12. BED
which is where im heading right now. gnight my wonderful friends. i love yall!!

I love Matt Kearney

"Faith like a child from your first birth You left it in the dirt on your worst hurt And I see each tear in every scar The hands that have held you where you are And I can see we've strayed so far A king born under that morning star A crown of thorns that was placed to erace Each tear that touched your face His palms and sides were pierced with spears He hung in love just to draw you near My girl not of this world Can't you see this is where we started"

Does anything else really need to be said? After that, any words i write would be completely cliched and inadequate. I love how this man sings. His words are so big, so beautifully, scathingly sympathetic (that makes no sense unless youve listened to him. Its good stuff, thats all ive got to say

Sometimes i feel like a drowning grasshopper

I started swim team on Friday. And let me just tell you before hand that this story could be either very embarrassing or very funny and im really hoping itll be the second one. Cause the actual experience was plenty embarrassing thank you very much. Here's what i discovered on my way to start swim team: a) I dont know how to dive. Shocking i know. Im freaking 17 years old and i cant dive. b) i am very much out of shape. enough said there. c) i havent swum like strokes in probably at least five years. hah. i know.
So at this point yall are probably thinking and WHY did you sign up for swim team again?? that is a good question that i was very much asking myself. Well there are two good answers to that question. Or i guess i should say two answers to that question that at least make sense. The first is to fix fact b). I want to get in shape. The second answer is, in my opinion, much more frustrating and superficial. I need Action hours. For those of you who have not been sucked into the ridiculous world that is IB (I pray you stay ignorant in that department), all students are required to have 150 CAS hours. CAS stands for Creativity, Action and Service. its supposed to make us look like one of those dreaded "well rounded" students on our college applications. I mean seriously. So ill come back to ranting over well-rounded students in a minute. Dont worry, its a subject very close to my heart. For now i want to finish my swim team story.
So i get to swim team thinking that i am only doing this for the exercise and that ill just take it slow cause were not gonna be competing anyways(no other highschool in Ghana has a pool or a swim team). and then they hit me with this, "we are going to be having tryouts for varsity and jv". FOR SWIM TEAM??? Are they serious??? Ok see one of the main reasons i signed up for swim team was because there were no tryouts involved. Im just not a competitive, organised sports- type person. yall know me, im just not. So we start the warm up. and the warm up is a 400. Which means, you do two laps in each stroke. There are 4 strokes. hah. yeah. Now go back up and look over reason b) again and you can guess the outcome of this story. basically i ended up in the nurses office cause i couldnt see very well. I thought i was gonna drown a couple of times. it was bad guys. really bad.
So that explains the drowning part of the title. Now for the grasshopper part. it kinda ties into the well rounded student bit. Although im not very good at organising my thoughts especially when they make sense in my head. Thats always a bad sign. So this saturday at youth group we talked about the Israelites coming into the Promised Land and the story of Joshua and Caleb. Basically when the 12 spies were sent to see what the Promised Land was like, ten came back and said "we looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them" Numbers 13:33. Ok first of all, these are the same people who had just crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. And followed a freaking pillar of fire to where they were. And watched their God turn the River Nile to blood. grasshoppers? i think not. But they did. And i think too often i look at myself like that. Its like Lord, i cant do swim team or go to Lincoln or be a well rounded student cause i mean, face it, im a grasshopper. And then i read stuff about the Israelites and im like man were they ever clueless. And the Lord goes, SMACK. HELLO?? lol. Do you not see what im doing for you?? what ive already done! The Lord told the Israelites that He had already givent them the Promised Land. The battle was already over and they still didnt want to go fight. And i think thats what He's trying to tell me too. maybe swim team is kinda a lame example but when the two happened within a day of each other i was like yeaah. Theres something there.
So forget being a well-rounded student. I cant do that. He knows what He has called me to do and He's gonna do it whether i can dive or not. All i have to do is jump in and start swimming. And when i feel like im drowning, i hold on tighter to the hope He has promised me. Phil Wickham put it beautifully (thank you Annie!!) he said, "I need a hope thats louder than mine". Yep. nice. My hope whispers sometimes and when it does im gonna have to be like ok Lord start yelling. So im gonna go get my milk and honey, even if i get a little wet along the way. Thanks for listening you guys. It means a lot.

Im gonna drive

So at church yesterday Tonya spoke and she told this story. A little boy went up to his dad and said, "Dad, im gonna drive!" and the dad looked at his sweet little five year old son and said "YES! but lets wait till youre ready". Gosh. How often have i gone to the Lord and said "Dad, im gonna drive!" I want so desperately to do the "big" things, to go to the hard places, to be in the country and with the people that i know He has called me to. And He wants me there. But im not ready yet. If He gave me the keys now, i'd kill me and everyone around me. As much as i think im ready and as useless as i sometimes think these years of school and "mundane" life are, they are only preparing me for what He has called me to later. And that doesnt mean that this is a "break" and it doesnt mean that i just sit back and tell these years to hurry up and get over with cause i have bigger, better things to do. Im sure that little five year old boy played with lots of toy cars and pretended to "drive" for many years before he actually got behind the wheel. And i bet neither he nor his dad regretted those years of "play" and "training". I still have so much to learn. And ever so slowly the Lord is revealing the awesome opportunities and experiences He gives me every day. They are for a veyr specific person and i cannot allow myself to ignore them or blow them off even when they seem boring or useless. Thats it, i love blogs cause i needed to get this down somewhere and im not very good at journaling. the end

I dont feel like writing...

Cause its late and i have to go to school in the morning. But if i dont write now then my next blog will be forever long and we all know how that goes. Anyways.
So this past saturday(yesterday) me and my friends sabine and sophie went over to our mormon friend Kyles house and hung out with him and Dallin, Kip and Alistair(?) (three other mormon guys). oh my gosh yall it was such a blast. First we locked Kip in a closet and he reemerged a few minutes later wearing Kyles clothes. I have no idea. then we watched The President's Man. Ok seriously its one of my new fav movies. It has Chuck Norris. thats really all you need to know. Oh and the fact that it has a sequel. I kid you not. It was hilarious. I dont think we stopped laughing. then we played foozball(?) me and sabine only lost to Kip and Dallin by one point. Which, since yall know my sports abilities (even table sports, please dont underestimate my lack of skill) is pretty impressive. So yeah that was my saturday night. It was fun. Oh and i love the second season of The Office. thank you Downs family!! its hilarious. yeah thats all i got. gnight.

Hope

Ok this post will be quick (sorry about the last one, it was way too long) cause i have to go to school. But i was just listening to Misty Edwards. She inspires me. Man. My verse for this week and probably longer than that just cause its so good is Hebrews 10:23. read it its so good. Im finding a strength that is not my own simply because my Lord promised it. That amazes me. Blows my mind. Why would He give me the strength to get through each day when most of the time i drag myself out of bed. why does He give me these little blessings that are often barely noticeable and yet they keep me going. Even promises of things that may or may not happen in the much later future give me a hope that is not natural or even normal. And i love it.

That was my thought this morning. I love starting the day with worship music. it does great things to my mind. I also got a study hall at school yesterday so i now have three classes a week that i can sit in the library. Just an example of one of those seemingly "mundane" blessings that he keeps throwing at me. Yall life is not good right now But He is making it good in my heart. How cool is that?? anyways. I love all of yall. so much.

I live, I breathe

Wow. Life is weird. Not bad weird just weird. God does things in weird ways. My friends ( most of whom read this blog) just left. And life used to say i would be really depressed and just sad. And in many ways i am. I mean i still really wish they were here. I miss talking to them. But no longer will i let that sadness define what i do and how i view things. Before it was like i looked at everything in view of the fact that i lived thousands of miles away from my most wonderful friends. They were doing and having all kinds of experiences that i couldnt be a part of. And it hurt. NOW i look at it as, man, God gave me some amazing friends and yes i miss them and yes i wish i was with them. BUT He has also given me experiences to do and have here. Maybe theyre not fun in the way i would expect or like but they are still experiences that He has called me to have.

This weekend i went on a retreat with my youth group here. There were forty kids(teenagers, whatever) and like eight adults. Which in itself is pretty incredible because our youth group is not big. Lots of new people came and it was SO fun. Honestly, i wasnt expecting to have a great time. I mean the thing started the day all my friends left and i was not in the mood to have a good attitude. Sad yes but im being brutally honest here cause i can now. We had a speaker and a worship leader come from the States and both of them were incredible (deirdre and Tonya). I got the awesome opportunity to help on the worship team. Yall the worship on this trip was...i mean i dont even know how to describe it. Indescribable. All my life ive loved worship and what it means and the fact that we get to experience God through it and in some small, more than minute way, give something back to him. But this weekend i realized something. He doesnt have to always show up. We are still called to bless Him and worship Him, even when we dont FEEL anything. And not that He didnt show up this weekend cause He did in ways ive never seen before. ah. Its just that i realized that so much of my faith and worship was based on what i felt. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. We have to have feeling because this is after all the ultimate relationship. BUT feelings come and go. I realized this weekend that i need more than feeling to back up my faith and the truth of what i believe. Because honestly there are many many times that i have and will feel like giving up. hah, particularly lately as many of you know.

Ok so here's a specific example to hopefully make this make more sense. So throughout all her talks, Tonya talked about the Joy of the Lord. She kept saying that the Joy of the Lord is our Strength. And i was like yeah, i know that but what is wrong with me that i havent been able or willing to LIVE like i knew that these past few months. And then she said something that blew my mind and changed my life. literally. she said there are days where she has had to tell her body, mind and spirit that it is gonna be joyful if it kills her. That the joy of the Lord is her strength even when she feels as far away from joy as possible. The fact that the joy of the Lord is our strength is the truth, its God's word! And it doesnt change according to how WE feel. I was sitting there in complete amazement, What she was saying wasnt necessarily amazingly profound or complicated. It was simple and straightforward and yet it CHANGED my life. I realized that joy cant just be a feeling. Because if it is, its not constant. And the Lord has PROMISED that His joy is our strength. Period. Not just when we feel it. So joy has to be a mindset. And Tonya had this other phrase that i loved. She would say, SPeak it out your mouth!! She told us to speak truth over ourselves and to believe that truth and to walk in it. To SPEAK the joy of the Lord over ourselves. Yall, im a completely different person. He moved. Im still in amazement and awe. But the MOST amazing thing is that it didnt stop at the retreat. In fact its just beginning. Because at the retreat i felt a LOT. And that was awesome and i needed it. But now my mindset is based on the truths that were spoken. And those dont change or fade as the world closes in.

I could go on forever, and He did lots of other extremely cool things. But it will have to wait for the next blog. Cause i have to get ready for church. Oh but one last thing. We had teams at this retreat and lots of ridiculous relay competitions that im positive were created simply so the sponsors could laugh at us. Not that i blame them. So me and Conor were captains of the Sand Crabs. pretty sweet huh. So the first day we dominated at the games (go figure, we had a great team). The second day about twenty minutes before we started the games my co-captain managed to step on a sea urchin. I know, it was so sad. Im pretty sure he still has little black things in his foot. So he kindly promoted me to head captain (he had called me co-captain the whole time and insisted he was head captain). So me and Eric(the guy he named co-captain) now led the Sand crabs. Im not even sure why im telling this. it was funny then. We ended up winning which was pretty cool. yeah so that was pointless. Pray for Conor and his foot. i love yall!!!!