Jetlag in Review

Dec 22: Leave Guam at 6am. Wake up at 4 something. Go to bed the night before at 1. Travel and sleep randomly for the next 24 hours. Arrive in Hawaii on the 21 and then in Newark on the 22.

Dec. 22: Sleep from 7:30-11:30. Wake up and hang out on Facebook all night and all morning, until everyone else gets up at 9 or so.  

Dec. 23: Nap from 1-3. 4. 5. wake up around 6 to eat. Go to bed at 4am and wake up at 8am.

Dec. 24: Nap from 1-4. to 5. to 5:30. OK finally up but halfway falling asleep. Christmas Eve, up until 2am. Wake up 6:30 for church.

Dec. 25. Bed at 4am. again.

Dec. 26. Bed at 10. Full night's sleep. Thank goodness!

Dec. 27. Did I sleep? Oh yeah 2am-6am

Dec. 28. Bed at 9:45 and wake up at 4am, won't go back to bed.

Dec. 29. Slept on my aunt's couch- 8 hours of sleep but on a couch.

Dec 30- tonight: my goal: 8 hours of sleep, but it's almost 1 and I have to wake up by 9. New goal: bed as late as possible and sleep as late as possible.

I am ready to achieve normalcy.

One Year

It's been one year since I last diet blogged.

One thing that living outside of the mainland USA is that I have really been able to kick a lot of weight hangups. And, I'm the same weight as when I left a year and a half ago.


Of course my New Year's resolution is to finally kick my last 10-15, and I will be doing this with the same formula I had when I was diet blogging: a good mind set + accountability partners + awesome gym and workout ops.

My goal: before March. And, this is the only blog you'll see about it.

blog resolution for 2011

I will blog a whole lot more in 2011.

So far in the past month I've lost my camera (probably died for good) and my computer (for a week or two) and then after finals and traveling, I finally have some down time to update everyone on stuff.

So, right now, I'm in New Jersey and I am so excited to be here! It's freezing and I am battling some crazy jet lag. I went to bed around 7, woke up around 10:45, and now it's almost 2 am and I can't sleep. I'm listening to Stephen Armstrong sermons and playing cityville to pass time. I am excited about the next three weeks. I have some decisions to pray over and I think that's why God put it so strongly on my heart to be off of Guam and on the mainland. First things first, though- spend time with family, adjust to the time and temp, and get some good food.

Merry Christmas!

I'm typing up a speech on the Anabaptists and the Schleitheim Confession, something I never knew about until taking a seminary class on "How to Write Papers" and of course the topic is seminary "stuff." I loved writing about Church History, surprisingly, and even though I went into this topic blindly I found out some very interesting things about the Schleitheim Confession and Anabaptist movements.

I struggle with legalistic practices in churches and sacraments that people do out of habit instead of recognizing what they are symbolic of in their own faith. The Anabaptists, from what I understand, although agreeing with the 95 Thesis, saw some problems in the Reformation and wanted to make an impact on Christian culture, not just church culture (even though they should be related, they sometimes are not). I am not going to go into the seven areas that they tackle, some of which I highly agree with, some that I am not sure about, but I will say that this group drafted a document that cost them their lives to take a stand for ministring as Christ had, and not how legal and church figures saw fit. I want to live my life that way- looking to the cross and to Christ as the basis of my ministry.

The Anabaptists were considered radicals in their day, just as Jesus was (it's interesting that the term "radical" when relating to Jesus means extreme when Jesus just did what was right, what God would do), and as I want to do. Learning about these people brought me back to the book I recently read by David Platt, in which I did a quick online search and found these two quotes from it. May we be like Jesus in what we do:


"As long as you and I understand salvation as checking off a box to get to God, we will find ourselves in the meaningless sea of world religions that actually condemn the human race by exalting our supposed ability to get to God. On the other hand, when you and I realize that we are morally evil, dead in sin and deserving of God's wrath with no way out on our own, we begin to discover our desperation for Christ."


"The modern-day gospel says, 'God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.' Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, 'You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do."
Both quotes by David Platt, Radical

staycation

 Steph, (myself), and Sarah got away for a night on a staycation- a vacation without really going anywhere. We stayed at the Nikko Hotel on Guam, which I highly recommend, for an evening which mainly meant that we took advantage of the beautiful pool for all of the hours we were there when the sun was out.

In the evening we had dinner at Outback (thanks to a gift of a giftcard) and were surprised by our friends with s'mores and a bonfire on the beach adjacent to our hotel.

We were able to get away from our work and ministry for long enough to feel slightly refreshed and feel "away." I don't know why we didn't do this sooner. I think all three of us are ready to face our last three weeks before the break. It was a beautiful 24 hours that I'll gladly and thankfully repeat.