Today was a day of rest! Praise the Lord! Classes were canceled for assessment tests that the school gives once every year. Students are chosen at random to take tests that range from everything to how well we like the cafeteria here, to academic standardized tests, to computer tests. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t get chosen though, so I got the whole day off. Which I was so thankful for because I had so much catching up to do! I was in the library studying literally from 10:00am till about 12:30am…14 and a half hours!!! That’s just ridiculous, but I am happy to say I think I got a good head start on my crazy week I have coming up next week. I have a huge project and a big paper due both on Thursday. I definitely needed the extra studying time.

I took a break though to go and hear the Senate speeches that evening. I usually try to go to the speeches because it’s a lot of fun hearing what the students want to do with the school and I’m always so shocked about what amazing politicians we have here. I mean that in a good way too, a lot of them have really good ideas and present them very well. I ran for class president my freshman year here at Covenant and I quickly realized that i was not a politician. Although I had the right heart, I don’t think I could do have as well as the students that I saw giving their speeches tonight. I think it takes a special type of person to hold a senate office, someone who is goal directed, driven, and persistent. Someone who will work hard to accomplish things, big things. They have to be big dreamers. So anyways I left the elections happy with the people I saw running. Tomorrow is election day so we’ll see how it all turns out. I know who I’m voting for though! Oh and if you guys are in Student Council or involved in Senate in High School you should definitely think about doing Senate here at Covenant. It’s a great way to serve the school and your classmates!

So right now I’m in the library…i told you guys it’s my second home this semester. I am currently trying to find the power to write a paper that’s due on Wednesday…I just can’t find it though. So I thought I would take a break and write a post. I wanted to share with ya’ll something that we discussed in my Doctrine II class today. We are currently learning about Sanctification in class and my professor began to explain how we are to be imitators of God, Ephesians 5:1. He then started explaining what this looks like, how are we to be imitators of God? We went back to read The prior verses leading up to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 4:31-32 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Professor Kapic made the comment, “We are never more like God then when we extend forgiveness and grace as God in Christ has done.” I have three stars by that quote in my notes. Wow! It just reminded me of the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about forgiveness. I think it the word has now taken an even deeper level in me. To think that in forgiving others I am imitating God. I have heard that verse so many times, but has always seemed so big to me. I never even knew where to start. I Peter 2:21 says though, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” Imitating God means imitating Christ and his life as seen in the gospels. It means serving, loving, forgiving. I have the perfect example to follow! Wow! Isn’t that just so exciting to think that God has mirrored himself in Christ so that we might know how to imitate Him. He loves us so dearly! Anyways just wanted to share those thoughts from today’s class…

Aw yes, it’s that time of year again. The weather is warming, the flowers are blooming, and here at Covenant it’s banquet time! Spring Banquet is probably our largest dance of the year. It takes place down town at the Hunter’s Museum. It’s so much fun, theirs great food, great art, and of course dancing! I had so much fun this year. A group of girls from my hall actually ended up hooking up with a group of guys from another hall to all go to the banquet together. I didn’t know several of the people who were going so I really enjoyed getting to know them so much better. They were all real sweet and great dates! After the dance we all went to grab something to eat…it’s kind of a must do after such a night like this. Anyways, it’s kind of hard for me to describe everything but hopefully some pictures will help you guys get a little glimpse of the night.

Okay. So this morning, my room woke up around 10:30ish to the mountain fog. We were all just laying around – previewer included. Then we jumped up and strolled down to the Great Hall for the usual BLTs. That’s one thing you never get tired of here. Seriously, one swipe of the card and you can have all of the bacon, toasted bread and tomato you want. It’s great. So we skip back to our room, our home. Clothes and dresses are artistically strewn across the floor, just small reminders of all the fun and exciting things we’re going to do tonight. Yes, tonight is Spring Banquet and all of my girls are going. It’s an fun time to dress up, tour a museum and just have a night on the town. What’s even more amazing is seeing everyone all dressed up. BUT wait. This blog is about my lazy day Saturday… so let’s blog about spring banquet later.

So right now, we’re just casually trying on our dresses, laughing, waiting for tonight and playing lots and lots of girl music. It’s our lazy day Saturday…. and I love it.

No, no, no guys it’s not another Mountain Affair, but it is another Covenant event. :) This weekend was preview weekend so they decided that this spring instead of doing the Mountain Affair like they do for the fall preview weekend they would do a spin off of it and call it Mountain Air. Mountain Air is pretty much a lip singing competition. And it was quite funny! We saw people sing everything from High School Musical to “My Little Buttercup” to Coldplay. The acts not only included the people lip singing but many of the acts had some very creative dance moves to go with it.

My favorite act of the night was a group of girls who sang “Little Orphan Annie.” They were so cute!! The girls really got into their parts, I was very impressed. They ended up getting second place for the night and a $250 dollar prize! The winners of the evening got a $750 dollar prize…not a bad way for students who have a little talent to pick up some extra cash! I unfortunately am not one of those students.

This evening I sat by some parents who had come in to see their two sons who were actually performing in the show. They asked me why I wasn’t up there, I laughed and just said it may not take a lot of musical talent to be up there but it definitely takes some and I have none. Ha, I can’t believe I’m telling all you guys my shameful secret. Yes it is true, I am almost sure I am tone deaf. So don’t think that you have to be really musically inclined to enjoy these Covenant events, even us tone deaf individuals enjoy a song every once in a while sung in the right key.

It was a great night though, especially getting to spend it with my previewer Amanda. But I’m exhausted, it’s been raining the past few days and all I have wanted to all week is to crawl into bed and fall asleep to the raindrops pounding on my windows. Hopefully tomorrow I can sleep in a little bit though.

So I grew up in a house full of girls so I might just be naive about this whole issue, but I always thought that shopping for guys was suppose to take a lot less time then shopping for girls. I now think that I may have been wrong though. Today one of my guys friends asked me to go shopping with him to find something to wear for the spring banquet we have on Saturday. Woot Woot! We left after we both got out of classes, fully expecting to be back before dinner. So I get in the car and ask him if he knew what color his date’s dress was. He handed me a mug, which was supposedly the exact color of the dress. It was a bright green. A very pretty green, but I knew it would definitely be a hard green to find. When we get to the mall we begin going from store to store holding our mug up to shirts trying to find the right shade of green shirt. We were unsuccessful. We were getting very discouraged, and even ended up asking one of the sales clerks for suggestions. We decided that he would just have to wear a black shirt and we would try and find a green tie.

This too though, was almost impossible. After going back and forth across the mall into the same stores about 5 times we finally found our winner! It might have been the only right color green tie in that entire mall! He was happy, I was happy…we hurried up and bought it and got in the car to head back up to school. Our suspected hour and a half excursion ended up taking four hours! And all we had to show for it was one little tie. But you better believe that that tie is going to look good next to that green dress on Saturday. :)

So all this to say, I now have a new theory. This whole idea that girls take so much more time shopping then boys do is a myth it is quite the opposite in fact. And the only reason why this myth has been believed is because most men don’t even go to stores but have the ladies in their life do their shopping for them so that they don’t have to face the hard reality that they can spend more time in a mall then a girl can. I mean I’m just throwing it out there, let’s say it’s a theory in progress.

Yesterday was the first day of spring and boy can you tell. Today is an absolutely beautiful day. I’m sitting in my room right now with my windows down and I can hear people scurrying about outside. The lawn is sprinkled with students studying on blankets soaking up the rays. Both my room mates are on walks right now enjoying the day and a hall mate just came in to tell me she just got finished playing volley ball outside. Aw yes, spring is here and boy are Covenant students enjoying it.

Today was my dear room mate, Katja’s, birthday. She turned 21. Katja has been one of my closest friends since coming to Covenant and has been such a blessing in my life. So today we wanted to spend the day celebrating. We had her sign a contract in the morning saying that she entrusted her friends to decide on all the activities of the day. She cautiously signed it and the festivities began.

We first went down to grab some sonic, Katja’s favorite place to go on beautiful spring days.

After Sonic we went on a drive. Katja loves taking afternoon drives. We turned the music up, rolled the windows down and drove to our favorite spot. It’s a little lake we discovered on one of our drives. We hung out there for a while just taking pictures and hanging out.

And the girls made me do my traditional birthday dance for Katja.

Then that night we went out to a restaurant Katja’s been wanting to go to for a while called Ichibon. Boy was it good! It’s a Japanese steakhouse where they cook in front of you. We told the waitress that it was Katja’s birthday and she brought out a pineapple birthday cake and have everyone sing to her. It was great! We also did our traditional birthday game where we go around and tell what our favorite thing is about the birthday girl.

Lastly, we went to go see the movie bride wars. The perfect girl movie. :)

What a day! Katja’s now officially 21 and we had a great time celebrating her life.

For the past three years Covenant’s International Students have come together to put on an event called Culture Fest. This is an evening filled with a variety of cultures songs, dances, and much more. Tonight we saw a Chinese Duet, Arabic Belly Dancing, Martial Arts, a Fashion Show, and the list goes on. Goodness guys, I’m so passionate about things like this. It was so amazing seeing how many cultures we have even here at Covenant. Boy it just wets your appetite to get little pieces from other countries.

Have I ever told you of my heart for Africa? I went over to Africa as a foreign exchange student when I was a junior in high school. I was there for a semester, and now I tell people that ever since then I’ve been waiting for God to send me back there. God has definitely taught me patience the past four years of my life, and continues to do so as I wait on his timing of when I will be able to go back. My heart for Africa is still blazing though as I sat in culture fest tonight was given a little reminder of why I love it so.
But my passion for Africa goes far beyond the country. It’s finally seeing that the world is so much bigger then we could have ever imagined. It’s seeing God’s true creativity in how he made us. I just love this thought so much…anyways sorry about the tangent.

As I was saying, the night was wonderful. They had us up dancing with the Arabic Choir, singing with Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, and completely captured in every culture. The night ended in a feast. Food was prepared by students representing countries across the world. It was absolutely wonderful!

If any of you are international students or missionary kids and are interested in Covenant please come! Please, please come. I for one would love to have you here, I would love to talk with you about your experiences, thoughts, and passions. There are several teachers who have a passion for countries across the world as well. For example, Professor Haddad is from England and has a special interest in the middle east and has spent some time there, Dr. Ward’s used to be a missionary in Africa and loves to reminisce about his time there, and these are just some. Some of the professors prepare missions trips for students over the summers, others love just getting to spend time with the international students we have here and will invite them over to their houses.

Here are some pictures from Culture Fest and the promotional movie that was made for the evening.

Push link below to see video:
Culture Fest Video

I came across this today and was so encouraged by it especially in light of how overwhelmed I have been about the rest of the semester.

“Thou art the blessed God,
Happy in thyself,
source of happiness in thy creatures,
my Maker, Benefactor, Proprietor,
Upholder.
Thou hast produced and sustained me,
supported and indulged me,
saved and kept me;
Thou art in every situation able to meet
my needs and miseries.
May I live by thee,
live for thee,
never be satisfied with my Christian progress
but as I resemble Christ;
And may conformity to his principles, temper,
and conduct grow hourly in my life.
Let thy unexampled love constrain me into
holy obedience,
and render my duty my delight.
If others deem my faith folly,
my meekness infirmity,
my zeal madness
my hope delusion,
my actions hypocrisy,
may I rejoice to suffer for thy name.
Keep me walking steadfastly towards the country
of everlasting delights,
that paradise-land which is my true inheritance.
Support me by the strength of heaven
that I may never turn back,
o desire false pleasures
that wilt and disappear into nothing.
As I pursue my heavenly journey by thy grace
let me be known as a man with no aim
but that of a burning desire for thee,
and the good and salvation
of my fellow men.”