Trip to England Update

So I lied. I decided not to do the mini-series on what I learned on my summer vacation after all. Instead I have come up with a much better idea. I have created a new blog entirely devoted to our vacation. It will have photos and descriptions of our trip. It's quite the undertaking so it will take me some time, but I should have it up soon. If you want to check it out, here is a handy little link for you: EnglandSite. Also I am including a link for it on the sidebar. Enjoy.

Breath of fresh air

On Wednesday night I had a long meeting to plan out Bible studies at Grand Canyon for this coming year. I am working with 7 other students to coordinate Bible studies and help provide them with direction. Half of the team is out of town but I and three of the girls met at Canyon for three hours to discuss our plans. It was one of the most spiritually encouraging times of my life.

In my long life of 20 years, I have found very few girls who are godly and seem to take their faith seriously. In fact, I could probably count the one's I've met on my fingers. But Wednesday night gave me encouragement that there are still some girls out there who truly love God and want to obey him with their lives.

Their speech and lives really reflected their passion for their savior. They weren't flirty or shallow but their actions and conversations showed that they had depth of character rarely found in men or women. I went away from the meeting just praising God with all my heart. I was so encouraged that he had brought such godly women to GCU. I hope that he uses them to encourage other women at GCU to develop that sort of depth and passion for Him. I really feel that this is going to be a banner year for GCU as far as spiritual growth.

Urban Squirrels Strike Back

For those of you looking forward to my mini-series on my recent vacation, you are going to have to wait a little longer. I'm about to leave again on vacation to Colorado to see my girlfriend. While I'm gone I will be doing a lot of writing, I hope and should have everything ready for next week. But unless I can find a way to connect to the net this will be the last post for a few days. Enjoy.

I'm back and better than ever

Wow! Two whole weeks flew by while I was in London. This is just a little happy note to say that I'm home and incredibly tired. Tomorrow you can look forward to the start of a mini-series titled, "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation to Britain". Oh ya, it will be a page turner for sure.

[after defeating Fezzik, who lays on the ground unconscious]
Westley: I do not envy you the headache you will have when you awake. But for now, rest well and dream of large women.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

One down, two to go...

MY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED!!!

Yup, this news did actually come to light a while ago, but I just realized that I had yet to say anything about it. His name is Tom. He and I met through a discipleship group a couple of years ago and became friends. I introduced him to Laura. I got busy with college and lost track of him. Now he's going to be my new brother! Weird. Anyway, the wedding is in the middle of August and we are all so excited for them. Gratz Laura!

Dun-dun-dun. She's baaaaack

Emma's back from vacation. We have the next three days to really work hard on walking before I leave for England. She doesn't seem to have regressed too much by taking a week off, let's see what taking off three will do. The good news is while I'm gone she will be starting to work with an occupational therapist an hour or two a week as well as continuing her work with the other two women who are teaching her.

Once I come back, I will have about two weeks left of working with her before I head back to school. It seems like such a long time but I know it will go fast. I'm gonna miss working with her. She brings so much joy to my life and is such an interesting part of God's creation.

Her mom said that while on vacation, Emma said her own name once. Although I have yet to hear it, that is a pretty big deal for her. Before, she could recognize the spelling of her name and the sound of it and would pat her chest when she heard it. Her legs have lost some of their strength while she was gone, simply because she wasn't worked as hard. But she seems to be doing well. Hopefully we can make a little more progress with the walking before I leave, but the talking is a wonderful thing.

Next stop: ENGLAND

Wow. Our family vacation this summer is a biggy. The five of us, my parents, Matty, Laura and I, are going to England. It will be our first time traveling overseas. We leave Saturday morning a little before nine in the morning and fly to Orlando. From Orlando we fly all the way across the Atlantic (No stops!) and land in London. We will be there for about two weeks before flying home. But fear not faithful reader. I will make every effort to post at least once or twice while there to give small updates.

While on the island, we will be staying in the Lake District for a week before heading on to Wales for a couple of days and then London for a couple more. All in all we will be gone for 17 days. Although we will be doing some touristy stuff, we hope to mostly enjoy the scenery. We have a bunch of countryside hikes planned and have a couple of days for just relaxing and taking it all in. Of course, while in London, we will be doing the sight-seeing, annoying picture-taking, food-sampling stuff that tourists are supposed to do. We'll try not to enjoy it too much.

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I hope you have a wonderful holiday. God has blessed us with such a wonderful country to live in, be sure to thank Him for what he has done.

To celebrate 229 glorious years, take this little quiz on how much you know about this special day and the events surrounding it. Let me know if you beat my score of 90 points.

Part three: The rest of my life

After all of my classes have been accounted for, I still have a couple of major extra curricular activities on my plate. The first is my RA position. As a resident assistant it will be my role to monitor about 30 guys living in the dorms at GCU. I am on call 24-7. Mostly it is a supporting role: help the guys get in when they have locked themselves out, answer obvious questions, act as a mediator or counselor, that sort of thing. It shouldn't be too difficult. A lot of that stuff I did last year already on my own. The biggest changes are that now I have an official title and I answer to a specific person.

The other major activity I will be involved in is leading Bible studies. My first priority is always to please God and I think that by training other young men how to live Godly lives is an excellent way to serve Him. Besides being on the front lines doing active combat, I am also getting involved in some of the behind the scenes work. I will be part of a council of 5 or 6 students who coordinate the Bible studies on campus.

In addition to those two major activities, I will also continue to tutor students in writing at the GCU Learning Center. This is not a real time-consuming job however. I will only be working about 7 or 8 hours a week, just enough to provide me with some extra spending money. I love writing and reading, the hours are flexible, and it is on campus so it really is the perfect job for me.

That's about it. My weekends should be pretty light. Jamie and I are trying to find a church close to school so we won't have to do a lot of traveling. The weeks will be busy, but a good busy. I will be doing things I love to do (well, except school, and that's really not all that bad). All in all, God has really blessed me this year with a great life. Thankfully, things always turn out best when he's in control.

It's about time that boy got some class...

What's going on here? What is this post about? Where are the pictures? Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: I have a busy schedule next semester so I am taking a lighter course load, only 16 credits. Of those 16, three credits are taken by University Speech, and 3 are from General Chemistry, leaving 10 left unaccounted for. That's where we are picking up.

Of the 10 credits left, 5 are going to Genetics. I have never taken a strictly genetics class before so I am pretty excited. Three credits are for the lecture, one is for lab and one is for recitation. (Here's how I remember recitation: Recitation = regurgitation. The teacher takes the same material that was presented in class and spits it back out at us in a different form that is easier to swallow.)

The last class I will be taking is Calculus-based Physics. I like physics. I like Calculus. It should be a fun class. Again it is five credits split up the same way as Genetics. Three credits lecture, one for lab and one for recitation. (Remember Recitation = regurgitation)

So that's about it for classes at GCU. Four classes, 16 hours. Easy, shmeasy. Right? Not exactly. In addition, I am also going to be taking a class to prepare me for the MCAT (the medical school biggy test). This will be a grueling class where I will study my brains out so I can receive a high score on the MCAT and thus get into med school. It starts in October and goes through the end of April when I take my MCAT.

This ends the section on classes for next year. So this two part series will now magically become a three-parter. The last section will focus on what extra-curricular activities I will be involved in. So stay tuned 'till then. Same Bat channel, same Bat time.

Now what's he up to?

This is going to be quite the school year. I head back to school sometime in the middle of August. I think I'm supposed to be back the 20th, but it might be a bit sooner. Honestly, I'm not real sure. As an RA, I'm supposed to be back earlier than everyone else so I can do some planning and strategizing with the other RA's. But I'm not positive of the date yet, so stay tuned eager readers, that little easter egg will be hidden in another post. (Probably one titled "The date I go back to school is...")

Anyway, this semester, I decided not to overwhelm myself. What with taking on this RA thing, I figure that I could potentially stay quite busy. I will also be working part time again and helping to run some Bible studies on campus. Thus, I am only taking 16 hours this semester, which translates into 4 classes and only two of them should be nigh near impossible.

For a grand total of 3 credits, I will be taking University Speech. Basically, they will be teaching me how to give a speech. Thankfully I have never had to formally present my ideas and thoughts before a group of people, so I should have a lot to learn...

Another 3 credits are eaten up by General Chemistry, the first semester. Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Didn't he already take that course?" or better yet, "Didn't he also already take the second semester of that course and both semesters of Organic Chemistry? And didn't he pass those classes with flying colors?" All very good questions to be sure. And I think that I have a very good answer. Uh...well... the thing is, I didn't do so well the first time I took that course. In fact, I got a D. Yup. A big fat D. The good news is that I audited the course before my grade was published and so I have an S on my transcript for "Satisfactory". (Which directly translates into, "A mentally incompetent rock could have done just as well if it just sat in the class and gotten attendance points"...Oh well) The bad news is: I have to take the class all over again. Wahoo.

And since this is about to become the longest post on my site, I have decided to make this a two-parter. More to come tomorrow.