A New Day

I did it. This is my first post-Japan blog. (We'll see how long this lasts). I have gotten a note that my blogs were perhaps a little long for the reading, so I will take that into consideration.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about some of my biggest weaknesses and taking steps to change them.

1) Procrastination

2) Attitude

3) Timidity

I am proud to say that, to combat procrastination, I started my papers earlier. I completed a ten page paper nearly 24 hours ahead of time. This is quite odd for me since all-nighters are no strangers to me. This will hopefully be carried over into my next 3 big assignments especially since they are all due about the same time :S. I'm getting books for a ten-pager due the 22nd today, so yay!

With regard to attitude, I think this may be the one I am struggling with the most. To me, especially as of late, work has been extremely bad-attitude enducing....not because of the actual work, but because of the contagious bad-attitudes of the co-workers mixed with a lonliness that somewhat carried over from Japan and some what was due to change in school. Val graduated last year, so she has disappated...I mean ....isn't at the school. To Japan, it is somewhat lonely not having anyone your own age to hang out with mainly because you can't speak hardly any of their language and they don't like using their english much because they don't think their's is very good. But I have been thinking mainly on God and being a good model at work. It's hard to be in a bad mood when you are thinking on good things :). I have also been taking initiative in asking friends over.

And in regards to timidness, i have put myself out of my comfort zone and made myself do things i have been terrified for one reason or another to do in my past years. Case and point, I signed myself up not only for being a prayer leader in regular chapel, but also being an mc and signed up to be a singer for chapel praise bands. I was quite scared to discover that my signiture to become an mc for chapel, just welcoming and introducing, was placed onto the duty of becoming this semester's first prayer chapel leader. I was so scared and uncomfortable with this.... I am uncomfortable praying out loud. But I took that and threw it into my prayer chapel mix.

I began by removing all of the chairs from the chapel, with permission of course. And then continued by making everyone take their shoes off before they came into chapel. Ther main purpose of the chapel was to challenge everyone to do something they were uncomfortable doing because being comfortable thwarts growth. The main prayer topics, though, were on missions. We started with a free for all prayer of praise to God. It was AMAZING hearing all of those voices joined in prayer bouncing off of the very nice acoustic-y walls in the chapel. It resonated. Then we split into 3 groups depending on mission experience and prayed over certain areas of the world where missions are taking place or need to take place. We then prayed over Summit's part in the mission. Followed by a different kind of free-for-all circle prayer where each class prayed over their underclassmen. Concluding with another free-for-all prayer for the individual, it was awesome. I loved the free-for-all prayers because you had to get out of your comfort zone to pray out loud while dozens of other voices are going out. You really had to focus on God.

But, there you go. It feels good to get that out there. :)