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| Hi Everyone,
2008 is going great. I got accepted into Wheaton College Graduate School last week!! I'm starting next week. :)
This year I will be learning about teaching English to high schoolers. A new adventure. | | |
| Class of 2007
I remember a few years ago thinking it would be neat to graduate in 2007. It is happening!
God is so faithful. In these three years since I graduated from community college, I have grown emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and even a bit physically. Three years ago I planned on attending North Central University, so I worked as a cook for a daycare for fifteen months to be able to attend NCU debt-free. (It worked!) In fall of 2005, I arrived in Minneapolis and dove into college life. Working in the library 10-12 hours a week has been interesting and enjoyable.
Both years I have lived in my own room, number 416, in Miller Hall with wonderful women living around me. I am learning how to go deeper into relationships—to share hopes, dreams, love, joy, pain, grief, and healing with wonderful friends.
My favorite parts of NCU are the people and the daily chapel services. The English professors are challenging and encouraging. Dr. Tennant’s class on C. S. Lewis and the Inklings and her “Christian English Scholar” class were my favorite English courses. Our college president, Dr. Gordon Anderson, leads this institution toward God. I am so glad I had the privilege of attending NCU at this point in time.
The altar in our chapel is a special place for me. I have met God there a lot. During the Friday afternoon prayer times I love taking communion and then laying on the ground praying. I feel God is pointing me toward the world of writing and teaching. I have tried to go to things that seem easier, but God keeps pointing me back toward writing. At times it seems scary, but God will be with me.
My writing has improved and expanded into genres I had hardly written in before, like fiction and poetry. (My poet friend Tiffany has helped me appreciate poetry more.) I have learned more about nonfiction, which I love to write. I have written a lot of devotionals. At the end of March I attended a convention of the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, in Pittsburgh, PA with seven other people from the communications department. Six of us read our writing at the convention. I had fun reading my fiction story, “Feathers of Ice.” (If you want to read it, let me know. ?)
During these two years at NCU, there have been lots of late nights writing, studying, and talking. I have loved serving my friends tea in my china teacups, playing in the snow at midnight, hearing the Lord of the Rings Symphony at Orchestra Hall, and making apple pies in my microwave. I will miss going to the ninth floor observation deck in the Guthrie Theatre to see the view, studying at the Open Book coffee shop, running in the morning sunlight to the Stone Arch Bridge that spans the Mississippi River, and praying with friends in my room. But now it is time to turn to the next chapter of my life.
I am planning to go home to Illinois and stay with my parents on the farm for a bit. I want to rest, write, and let God refocus and guide me to where He wants me next. I plan to work and eventually go to graduate school (I’m aiming at fall 2008) to study English to become an English/Writing professor, if marriage and a family do not come first. Whatever happens, I will always keep writing.
Thank you, dear family and friends, for speaking truth into my life, for your letters, encouragement, prayers, kindness, and love. This has been a wonderful portion of my life, but the best is yet to come.
The graduation ceremony was beautiful, touching, and inspiring. I'm going back to Illinois today. :)
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| Hi everyone,
I hope you are well. I am. Today I am going with some of my English/communication major friends to the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society Converntion in Pittsburgh, PA until Sunday. Six out of the eight of us will be reading some of our writing at the convention. On Friday, March 30th around 8:15am I will be reading a fiction story I wrote last semester called, "Feathers of Ice." If you would remember us in prayer, that would be wonderful.
I only have about five weeks of classes until I graduate! I still have a lot to do, but I am getting excited to graduate.
Have a wonderful day! | | |
| Happy Valentine’s Day!
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1 John 3:1
I hope you are doing well. I am. God is sure faithful. Life is good. I am in my last semester of college at North Central University in Minneapolis, MN. We have been having sub-zero weather the last few days. Recently the low was minus16 degrees! I have a down coat and stay quite warm when outside.
Right now the last classes I am taking before I graduate on May 4th are British Literature Two, Literary Theory (that is a hard one! It’s the different theories of how critics study literature), My Senior Project (it’s going to be 14 devotional readings and a 20 page paper on two books of Jewish American author Chaim Potok), Johannine Literature (a Bible class on the gospel of John and 1-3 John. It’s my favorite class right now because the teacher, Dr. Amy Anderson, knows John so well. She also knows ancient Greek so well and teaches it to us a bit.), and I am the Teacher’s Assistant to Gary Dop in the Nonfiction Writing class. (I took that class last Spring. It’s good to take it again.)
I’ve been going to two churches: On Sunday mornings I go to Bethlehem Baptist Church, which is only two blocks away. Author John Piper is the pastor. The services and Sunday School is so solid, Biblically based, and reverent that I have really enjoyed them. It is fun to be able to walk to church. Then on Sunday afternoons I go with my friends to The Church in Uptown. It’s a relaxed, Assembly of God based, relationship-nurturing church that is only a few years old. By attending both churches I am getting challenged, loved, and fed.
I am teaching a seven-year-old inner city boy piano through the program my college has called WOVEN. Right now he is learning “Ode to Joy”. Recently we had a lesson, and he gave me a “Best Teacher Award” and a picture of a grand piano that he had drawn!! I enjoy learning the basics of piano again along with him. In high school I had wanted to teach piano, but it didn’t seem right. Now it seems right. I love it. It makes me want to take piano lessons again. Maybe someday!
My Student Librarian job is going well. I help patrons, work with the books, and process inter-library loans. I work with some great guys and gals. 2.5.07
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| May you all have a blessed Chrsitmas and a hope-filled New Year!
Last night I saw the movie, The Nativity Story, with my Dad and it is beautiful. If you can see it, do, because it gave me a new insight into Jesus' birth. Amazing. | | |
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