Weekend Fun

So a few weeks back I had kept having the same conversation over and over in my head.....should I go to my church's women's retreat or go to Dallas for Student Life Conference there and hang with some dear friends who I miss a lot? You might ask why I just didn't go to both (since they weren't on the same weekend). The reason is it would have been too much...I know my limits and I needed at least ONE weekend where I didn't have anything.....plus I wound up with two babysitting jobs the weekend of the retreat.

So, this past friday I skipped both of my classes and headed for Dallas. On my way there I stopeed and suprised my mom. I then went to lunch with both her and my dad. Lunch was actually kind of sad because our favorite Tex-Mes resteraunt closed a few months ago with no warning. So we went to the eat at the resteranut that opened in the same building. It was lovely to spend time with my parents but that was by far some of the yuckiest mexican food I have ever had (my mom and I tried to convice my dad to leave the second we opened the menus but he wouldn't...oh well...now we know not to go there again).

I actually enjoyed my drive to Dallas. I listened to some great podcasts by Ben Stuart and just enjoyed being alone on a beautiful day.

When I finally got to DBU, I was greeted by Alyssa and Raychelle, both of whom I have not seen since AUGUST! Oh my goodness it was just LOVELY to see them. Dani got there about 30 minutes later and we were off to the church that the conference was at. While there we got to see the amazing Jessica Dodd! Oh how I have missed my hotel-roomie! (This summer, almost everytime we stopped at a hotel while traveling I roomed with Dodd....good times). While we were standing around talking with her one of the guys working Tour walked up to us. He told us they were short on staffers and were wondering if we wouldn't mind helping them out by working the Compassion table (Compassion International is a fantastic organization and Student Life has a booth for them at every event they do). Being the ever devoted (and crazy excited...I mean come on, we were part of OTOCHO) Student Life summer staff we were we said "sure! why not! can we have staffer shirts??" (cause it is not like we don't have enough SL shirts anyways). He then proceeded to ask us if we knew how to work the Compassion table. Our response was to look at him like he had a 2nd head.....we spent 12 weeks doing camp....yes, we know how to work the Compassion table. A bit later Ben Cranford and Maddie showed up....we also got to see Ross for a bit. Once tour started we got to enjoy the ever-so-amazing Kristian Stanfill lead worship.

The highlight of the evening took place after the event was over for the evening....we all go to hang out with Dodd. Let's just say, we had some very OTOCHO moments. (side note: for those of you who are wondering what in the world OTOCHO is, it stands for Orange (O) Team (T) 08 (OCHO).

The next day (of which I was running off of 4 hours of sleep...just like camp!) was great....friends interviewed for summer positions, saw some people we knew from the summer and just over all had a great time.

My drive home that night was the first time in my life I have ever wished that I went to Sam Houston University. My reason? Because my drive would have been 1 1/2 hrs shorter :-)

I have some observations I have made and been learning about worship but I must go study for a test so those will have to wait until another day.

Blessings

15 things about me

1) I don’t like “Care Bears.” I had a bad experience as a child. I will never buy my children a care bear movie or stuffed animal. If you love me, you won’t either
2) If you had told me 4 years ago that I would study languages in college, I would have laughed at you.
3) I prefer Hebrew over Greek (and think it is weird that I know which I prefer).
4) At some point in the near future I want to spend an extended period of time living and working at an orphanage. I don’t want to teach a VBS, paint, etc while there. I just want to sit on the floor, love on the kids and be a part of their daily life.
5) I get more homework done while sitting at Starbucks or Panera than I do in my own room.
6) I took piano lessons for about 10 years and ballet/pointe for about 12 years (it seems like at lot of people at HBU don’t know this).
7) I hate shopping for pants just as much (if not more than) as I hate shopping for swimsuits
8) My calendar on my computer (ical on my mac) is color coded, has EVERYTHING on it, and makes some of my friends want to throw up my at OCD-ness
9) I only like hugging people that I am very close to so when random people come up to me and try to give me hugs (ESPECIALLY frontal hugs) it kind of weirds me out.
10) I want to adopt at least 2 kids...
11) Certain phone rings and other noises make me jump because they sound like a fire alarm at first and fire alarms are WAY too common in all the dorms I have lived in the past 3 years.
12) I love driving long distances at dusk…sunset, good music, driving down the freeway, it doesn’t get much better than that.
13) I want to work in family ministries that help equip moms and dads to be better parents (i.e. crisis pregnancy center, etc) and am looking at pursuing a Master’s Degree that will better equip me for this ministry.
14) I didn’t think I was one of those girls who a really cute pair of shoes made her day better but a few weeks ago, I learned differently.
15) I tend to act like I am on “Mission Impossible” while I am on RA rounds in the dorms with Scott.

The Year of Prayer - A Disciple's Renewal

Hello my friends

Welcome to 2009 :-) As you might have gathered from the title of this blog, 2009 is a year of prayer for me. It is something that God has been laying on my heart and convicting me of : to be more spiritually disciplined and to me on my knees praying for my family, friends, and direction for my life. In all honesty, these first 11 days have not been the most successful but God is growing me and teaching me how to make prayer a part of my day-to-day life. Sometimes prayer is frustrating to me because I feel like I should know how to pray but then when I start my mind wanders, I don't know what to pray for/who to pray for etc etc. So I have been searching the scripture to see what God teaches about prayer (if you have any thoughts/scriptures, I would love to hear from you...lundlf@hbu.edu) and am learning much (i.e. sometimes, the best thing is just to "be still and listen"). But if you think of it, I would appreciate your prayers for my prayer journey.

There is a book called "The Valley of Vision" which is a collection of Puritan Prayers. I have wanted it for a very long and got it for Christmas. I wanted to share a prayer from this book that is a perfect expression of my heart right now.

A Disciple's Renewal
"O MY SAVIOR,
Help me, I am so slow to learn,
so prone to forget,
so weak to climb;
I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights;
I am pained by my graceless heart, my prayerless days,
my poverty of love,
my sloth in the heavenly race,
my sullied conscience,
my wasted hours,
my unspent opportunities.
I am blind while light shines around me:
take the scales from my eyes,
grind to dust the evil heart of unbelief.
Make it my chiefest joy to study thee,
meditate on thee, gaze on thee, sit like Mary at thy feet,
lean like John on thy breast,
appeal like Peter to thy love,
count like Paul all things dung.
Give me increase and progress in grace
so that there may be
more decision in my character,
more vigour in my purposes,
more elevation in my life,
more fervour in my devotion,
more constancy in my zeal.
As I have a position in the world,
keep me from making the world my position;
May I never seek in the creature
what can be found only in the Creator;
Let not faith cease from seeking thee
until it vanishes into sight.
Ride forth in me, thou King of kings
and Lord of lords,
that i may live victoriously,
and in victory attain my end."

And so it continues....

So there has been a request for me to update my blog so here it goes.....A lot of this you guys already know but I included a few stories that I don't know if I have told anyone.

Once the summer was over I had less than 24 hours until I headed back to school for RA Training. When I got to HBU, the RA's that work in my housing area were in the middle of a meeting with Erin (our RD) about programming. I sat right down, hadn't even brought in my stuff from the car yet and thus, my 2nd year as an RA had begun. :-)

The girls on my hall are fantastic. I decorated my hall in polka-dots and, I think it looked really cute if I may say so myself. I have about 33 girls (the number has gone up and down this semester).

For my birthday weekend I went to Birmingham, Alabama to see my friends from the summer (19 of the 24 of us were there). That saturday was my 20th b'day and my boss from this summer, Graham's wedding. The night before my b'day and the wedding, a bunch of us went to eat at a Mexican food restaurant. All summer long, everyone sang happy birthday to me most everytime went out to eat. Well, they actually got to sing happy birthday to me on my actual (well, the night before at least) birthday! Oh the irony.....

The next morning a few of us go up and went to Oak Mountain State Park. It was beautiful, fabulous and....actually fall!!! The leaves were beautiful colors and the weather was fantastic! What a perfect place to spend my 20th birthday!

That night was the wedding which was beautiful! Yummy food, fun dancing and just being with friends that I love and miss was great. At one point that night I was walking across the room with my friend Jessica and we both just looked at each other and smiled. Her and I both agreed that it was great to be just walking across the room with each other. It was also really fun just to get all dressed up....let's just say, after seeing everyone in shorts and camp t-shirts all summer, my team cleans up nice :-)

I'm really ready for Christmas break....I want to do lots of reading, movie watching and, of course, sleeping. If you guys have any suggestions on books that I should read (I'm up for anything except for a weird sci fi stuff). In fact, if you are reading a book, I would love to read it too and then get together for coffee/tea/pie with you and discuss it! One thing I really want to do is go see a movie alone while I am in Conroe....sounds like fun to me!!!

May Christ always be at the center of our mind and lives, especially during this holiday season.

Blessings.

California...

UPDATED LATER THAT DAY: 5.8 Earthquake today....wasn't too bad here but in some places it was pretty crazy....oh California

So....we, the orange team, have officially done at least one camp in every time zone in the US (besides Alaska and Hawaii).

We got here, Riverside, on Saturday and then went out to eat that night. It was really nice for all of us to spread out and eat where we wanted to (I ate with some of my team at California Pizza Kitchen). It was also nice to just wander around for a bit. I got to wander around Borders for a bit....it was amazing how many people from my team wound up in the history and religion sections. :-) The next day was our load in day. Typically, we load in at 1pm but, as it was Sunday and a church was meeting in the gym which was going to be our worship center we were not able to being load in until 9:30pm that night. So, that day we got to experience "real life" outside of the camp bubble! I ate my first In-and-Out burger and then headed to the mall and Target! (Found a really cute dress at Gap for really cheap for those of you that care :-) ) We then headed back and took naps (on command from our leadership because we were going to be up most of the night). Needless to say, the majority of my team was up until around 3:30am loading in.

Camp this week is a lot smaller than we are used to but it is going to be nice to be able to know Youth Pastor's and camper's names.

Well, I have more to tell but things are going to be slow in the office this week so I will save those stories for a later time.

Grace and peace!

The Promised Land?!?

Two camps in Durango, Colorado really skew your view of "good weather." Doing camp literally on top of a mountain is quite lovely. Doing camp in Shawnee, Oklahoma is....like doing any other camp, really hot. We got here on saturday, loaded in on sunday and started camp on monday.

A few things....

First of all, a funny (well, not so funny to me) story for all of your delight. On saturday, my team went out to eat Mexican food for supper. While there, I, of course, spilt my drink. Right after that, I felt something on my head....it turned out to be a large sombrero. At first I though "what is going on?!?! do they do something really cruel and mean to people who spill their drinks?!?) and then, I saw that a group of people were standing behind me. This guy asked my name and then how old I was turning. I wouldn't answer him so someone else did. They then proceeded to start singing happy birthday to me.  All I could do was repeatedly mouth to my team that I would kill them all. I, of course, turned as red as the salsa. Then the next day, at Chili's for lunch, I see all of the waiter's walking out and I was like "no way!" not again but...oh yes...they come over and sing happy birthday to me again. THEN! Yesterday! on Reg day (my stressful crazy day) while we are in line for supper they all start singing it again! and everyone in line joins in! The only problem is....MY BIRTHDAY IS IN NOVEMBER! So, I have come up with something.....they can sing happy birthday all that they want to but....they must start to give me presents! (Though, that does scare me just a bit :-)

So, we are now doing camp in Oklahoma. It is hot. My camp director, Graham, went to school at the campus we are on (Oklahoma Baptist University) and kept referring to it as "the promised land." Though we like where we are staying and the fact that there are comfy couches and a TV in our office, it is def. not the promised land.

Off I go.....grace and peace!

Welcome to Fort Lewis

9 states in 2 days
25 hours of traveling
2 dramamine

what does this add up to?

DURANGO, COLORADO!

So we finished up two camps at Lee University, celebrated the 4th of July, didn't sleep much, ate yucky food, loaded out and drove for two days. We spent the night at Fort Smith, Arkansas and then got up and drove some more. We got to Fort Lewis College around 11:30pm mountain time and started grabbing our blankets because....it was kinda chilly! That's right...after week after week of humidity, we are now going to do 2 camps on the top of a mountain. While waiting for our keys last night a bunch of us curled up in our blankets and lied down on the parking lot and looked at all the stars (thought of you mom....knew you would be proud). It was crazy how many we could see.

The dorms we are staying in don't have a/c which I have heard can be a bit of a drag during the day but that means at night we sleep with our windows open. I woke up this morning feeling like I was camping except my bed was comfortable and I didn't have any bug bites...it was glorious!

Well, I'm now off to straighten my hair (which will actually stay straight here!) and then off to eat lunch and begin load in.

Grace and peace!