Welcome all those who followed the link from my Xanga site. I do not anticipate updating this site, but you are more than welcome to peruse the archives of this blog.

I like Blogger... but I think Xanga has a bit more to offer. So, I've moved. I will begin posting my infrequent thoughts or reports on my life at

http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Theosebeia

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated….

Yes, I know that I have yet again there has been a long drought in posts to this blog. However, the school year has started back up and I need a dumping ground for my thoughts and experiences.

I just had a great experience today. One of the assignments for my Prayer class is to meet with someone to pray for an hour. Well, I met today and we prayed, and prayed and soon the hour was gone. I was absolutely amazed. I had thought that it would be a burden to spend a whole hour in prayer, but it wasn’t. It flew by. I was also worried that I might run out of things to pray about. But, you know what? When you pray with another person you find that you get ideas and they spur you on.

Reflecting on that time of prayer my thought no longer is look how much we fit in to that hour, but look how much I didn’t pray about. It’s exciting to me to have that hour in front of me for the remainder of the semester, and who knows, perhaps it will continue beyond the semester.

Well, I’m recovering from a cold and that kinda wiped out any completion of homework over the weekend, I guess I’d better get back to the grindstone.

It has been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. A lot has happened, but now, school is out and I’m back from a trip to Chicago, life is a little slower now. However, I’m certain that shortly it’ll pick right back up and it’ll be a full summer until I start my senior year of college!

The end of the semester went just about as well as could be expected. I was largely pleased with my finals. I pulled all A’s with the exception of a B+ in Greek. Yes, that’s an abysmal 3.88 GPA for the semester pulling my cumulative GPA to 3.94. I know some people will be disgusted that I want to do better, but oh, well. I have it figured that I can get one more A- and still graduated Summa Cum Laude… which works out because I still have one more Bateman class to get through (yes, Bateman is the Greek prof.)

After school let out I stuck out for home, dropped off my stuff and on Sunday left for Chicago for my “cross cultural field experience.” I went with two other guys from school and we strayed at the Sunshine Gospel Ministries near Moody Bible Institute.

During the days we volunteered at A.N. Pritzker middle school, a magnet school near Wicker Park. We were place there by Urban Encounter, a church planting effort. It was a bit difficult to realize that we were there more to build a relationship with the school’s front office rather than with the kids. But, we did get to impact some kids, I got to do some math tutoring in a Learning Disabled classroom, boy was that a challenge. I got to help out a substitute teaching in a classroom one day… neither of us knew what was going on, fun! We did other random things in the school, like sweeping and vacuuming the auditorium. All in all our ministry at the school was good. I hope that doors are open for other people to have a great impact on the people that go to school there and that work there.

Tuesday night we went to Malcolm X college to help with an ESL (English Second Language) program. We went in with the goal of giving these students (mostly adults who immigrated to the US) a native English speaker to practice with. The second classroom we visited was interesting. It was their last class period and they were having a party of sorts, there was food, salsa music (due to the class’ predominately Latino populace), and dancing. We introduced ourselves and started talking with the members of the class. I sat down and started talking with some people. After a while they started to want to know if I wanted to dance. I initially resisted, I don’t know how to salsa. But, they were persistent so, eventually I relented and learned the basic step and a couple other things. This went over very well with the Latinos, they had fun seeing a white guy like me make a fool of myself, it was fun. I then showed one off some of the swing moves that I did know, salsa is close enough to swing dancing that I had a hard time keeping my swing dancing out of the salsa step.

One of the guys in our group spent most of our time there talking with one guy. Afterwards he approached us as we left and invited us for dinner the next evening. We accepted. So on Wednesday we found his apartment. Including him there were 6 people that showed up from the ESL class. Mexico, Peru, and Chile were represented. We ate and looked at his picture albums. We talked a lot. There were frequent bursts of Spanish as they tried to figure out how to say different things. It was one of my first times with that kind of language barrier present, but we managed.

They of course had beer at this gathering. As good hosts they repeatedly offered us some, we refused. After a while this led to them asking our ages, when they realized that we were old enough to drink one of the ladies asked us what “religion” we were. This led to a good conversation about the differences between Christianity and Catholicism. We had the privilege of sharing the basic tenants of our faith. They were very receptive about what we had to say. Of course we tread lightly on the issues of praying to saints and Mary. It was a time for tact and not insulting them, I think we managed to put “we disagree” in a way that didn’t’ offend them.

It was an amazing evening of just being on their turf and learning about them and sharing what we believed. We ended up spending 4 ½ hours there, incredible. It was truly the highlight of the week.

More posts on Chicago to come.

Wow, it has been a while since I've taken the time to write in my blog. I've probably lost any readers that I have, Oh well. My room-mate situation has worked out and I'm going to live with Dave, who I lived with my first two years of college. Dave and I are very different but I think we get along splendidly. I'm looking forward to it very much.

The big news in my life right now (other than the last day of classes being tomorrow) is that I may end up filling a pulpit for the summer. Yes, I may be a preacher. I've been in dialogue with a church not too far from my home, about ten to fifteen minutes away. It's a slightly scary thing, but I'm excited about the doors that God seems to be opening. I guess I'll try to step through and see if the door stays open or slams in my face.

But, before I can get to that... finals next week, Greek will be tough.

The roommate search can be incredibly frustrating. I want to get into a four man apartment, but we need to get the fourth man. Most of the people that I would want to room with are involved with student leadership and they are locked into rooms as RAs or Growth Group Leaders, sigh.

So, do I really don't know where my head will rest next school year. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Just when I thought that I would not get involved with the spring musical, Oklahoma, I got asked to run sound for opening weekend. Of course I said yes. When I think about it, boy was that a close call, I almost had to pay to see the show, gasp!

Anyway I have enjoyed (more or less) the rehearsals. Oklahoma is like many other musicals in that it has a rather forgettable story, but fun music. There are some dance sequences that are fun and I imagine with a bigger cast and a bigger stage (Little Theatre is very small for a musical) they would be much better.

My role as a sound guy isn’t very demanding, it is fun, however to be around my theatre friends. I haven’t been able to hang out with them like usual this semester. Hmmm, I guess not being in the cast does that.

The only downside of agreeing to do this is that it has really screwed up this week as far as homework goes. It was supposed to be a relaxing week with lots of extra time to relax and work ahead. Spending 3 ½ to 4 hours in rehearsal sort of puts a crimp on everything else. Oh, well I’ll get it all done somehow.

So, I guess I’ll do some homework now.