Beautiful

I think I must have missed part of my childhood. Either that, or it's in my personality, permanently. It's ok, whichever way works.  This morning, I spent a while sitting in the floor during math class, meticulously scraping old labels off children's books with my fingernails and putting our school's labels on.  Every once in a while I would come to a book that looked interesting, and get distracted reading it. The pull of a book, especially one with pictures and childlike whimsy, is almost irresistible to me.  I love children's books.  Now I will go on a short nostalgic tangent about childhood toys. Maybe you had some of them when you were a kid!  Growing up, I never liked baby dolls (or real babies), but I had a whole collection of Beany Baby animals and then Polly Pockets. My American Girl doll, Samantha, was too fragile for me to play with very often, and I got frustrated that her hair was so smooth and straight when mine was more like Shir...

What an occupational combination! Learning, yet imparting. But it's not really that unusual. Lots of people are learning while they teach, or teaching while they learn. Through a series of unforseen events, I have been placed in in the Faulkner Springs Christian School in McMinnville, TN. It wasn't my first choice for practicum - I had never been there or even heard of it - but it's turning out to be a beautiful situation. I probably couldn't have asked for a better location. It's near my grandparents' house, it's a two-room, two-teacher school with 12 students total, and I only have five of them. The students are all either Tennessean or Kentuckian, and as sweet and country-simple as can be. It really is a different culture over here in the near-Appalacian counties. There is a friendly, good natured spirit among most everyone, especially in a small town like McMinnville. The town is in a fairly flat land, split by a few little hollars and hills, with ...

I totally forgot about the New Year. I've had so much else going on in the past couple of weeks that it didn't even register as important. Of course, to be real, its kind of really similar to the switch from another month to the next. There's just a year change involved. But anyways, I will tell you the story of how I forgot. So, I've been traveling quite a lot, as usual. For a few days I was at my grandparents' house in Tennessee. Then I went down to Orlando area for a memorial service for my other grandmother, who died recently. Our Soler family side came down, and a few of us went in a fishing boat three miles to an old wreck site and cast her ashes on the ocean. It was a new experience; the sea was what the captain called "sloppy". I had never heard that term applied to the motion of the ocean, but it was accurate in what it did to our boat. It was much more exciting than a roller coaster, in my opinion. Of course, I think riding a swing on the play...

I must admit, I started this study about five days ago, got really involved, and then got distracted. My mom wanted me to go on a walk with her, so I did, and lost all my momentum. The loss of focus has also happened to other awesome studies I've started, unfortunately. I really do have a lot of ADHD tendencies, and I also get way more excitement out of starting something than finishing it. But I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here to show you all what I've found in regards to what God says about beauty and godliness. All that being said, I'll just show you the verses I found, give you my short and extremely stimulating commentary, and you can make your own conclusions about the topic! How about that? And I've always been pretty shy of sharing my opinions, lest anyone should feel pressured, so...don't go with what I say, but read the verses and ask God what He means. Alrighty! Let's go!                ...

So I've been moving around quite a lot lately, and will be for the next couple of weeks. I've been in Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee, and I'll soon be in Florida, Kentucky, back to Arkansas, and then Utah! Whew! That's a lot of riding in a car. It's ok; only bothers me when we are in the car past midnight. Then it's not fun anymore - it's torture. I should be sleeping and instead I'm folded up into interesting designs (because that's what happens when you are tall and can't sit still and are riding in a very packed minivan), my neck is crooked, and there is no relief. NONE. It becomes a challenge to stay positive. But it's better when you actually get where you're going and you can stretch your contortions out, lay down, and sleep until you want to get up again. I think my sleep time record was fifteen hours at one shot. I was back in Texas straight from three months in Thailand, and I slept from 10:00 pm to 1:00 pm the next day. It ...

Here's a scenario that I've often experienced during a canvassing program: Friend and I are together in the room or riding to territory some morning and suddenly one of us perks up, "Hey! It's already Tuesday!" The other one replies rather glumly, "Aww....it's only Tuesday...?" "Time is flying! The week is halfway over!" "The week is only half-finished? We still have two days left! Time is going so slowly." But time was passing at the same rate for both of us! We were doing the same job and had the same schedule, so why did we experience time at different rates? And the mystery will continue after a word from our sponsors -  ***************************** Just kidding. But really, I'm going to be changing the purpose of my blog from now on. I'll still give updates on what I'm doing (once I start doing something really interesting again) but other than that, I will be broadening my writing to include...

Old roads always lead to interesting places The long field and haybales It was a bright day Pink flowers Same flowers, just purple. I'm actually not sure what color they are.  The open field Little yellow flower The evening forest A ladybug on a plant Laying on a hay bale And in the grass Campus, near sunset