May The Words of My Mouth

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart bless your name
Bless your name, Jesus
And the deeds of the day and the truth in my ways speak of you speak of you, Jesus

For this is what I am glad to do
Its time to live a life of love that pleases you
And I will give my all to you
Surrender everything I have and follow you
I’ll follow you

Lord be my vision, Lord be my Guide
Be my hope
Be my hope in the way
And I’ll live not for riches nor praises on earth
Only you be the thirst of my heart

For this is what I am glad to do
Its time to live a life of love that pleases you
And I will give my all to you
Surrender everything I have and follow you
I’ll follow you
I’ll follow you

I will follow you
Follow you

For this is what I’m glad to do
Its time to live a life of love that pleases you
And I will give my all to you
Surrender everything I have and follow you

For this is what I am glad to do
Its time to live a life of love that pleases you
And I will give my all to you
Surrender everything I have and follow you

I will follow you
I will follow you

Christy Nockels and Jana Long from the Sing over Me: Worship Songs CD

My Life in Post It Notes

 

This weekend my cultural immersion class went on a "Life Processing" retreat. We went to an old farmhouse near WestPoint that is a retreat center. It was great time to get to know eachother and ourselves better. We mapped out our life with Post its on poster board and reflected on our life experiences. It was also an opportunity to bond with people that we are going to be spending a lot of time with in the coming months. One of the most memorable moments of the weekend was when some of us decided to hike up to the top of the mountain behind the house we were staying in. What should have only taken about an hour and a half ended up taking about 3 hours. The little girl from Alabama was a little out of her league when it came to hiking. I think it should have actually been called mountain climbing. It was beautiful and we had a lot of fun even though we got lost. I don't think we really followed a trail. That would be too easy. When we got to the top we couldn't go the same way we came because that would be too boring. So, we ended up on the other side of the mountain. We did get to see lots of deer though. They ran right out in front of us several times. I think deer in Alabama are more afraid of people than the ones here. Pa, this should just be more motivation for you to come visit. The biggest lesson I learned from the weekend was to never go hiking with missionaries as your leaders. You never know where you might end up. 

 

Can you tell who the trouble maker is? 

 
Amy and Me playing on the low ropes course that we found 

 

Chris, Abby, Me, and Amy at the entrance of Camp Olmstead. 

 

"Nah, we don't need to stay on the trail. This way will be much faster and easier." Famous last words. 3 hours later we came out on the other side of the mountain and had to ask directions back to our house. 

 

Dr. Baily and Chris felt bad for me and stayed back to keep me company as I huffed and puffed my way up the mountain. 

 

AHH...We finally made it to the top! If only the bama kicker had worked as hard as I did they would have won! 

 

The boys trying very hard to look serious. 

 

Abby and Me at the top. 

And the learning continues...

Today as I was doing some reading for one of my classes I came across a quote that really struck me. The book is Anthropology for Christian Witness by Charles Kraft. Now, sometimes I am a little bit behind so if you have already thought about this then just excuse me but I thought it was a really good point.

God has buried so much treasure in the Scriptures that we will never find it all until the interperetive perspectives of each of the languages and societies of the world have been applied to them. As we work with different languages and peoples, we find that each perspective asks different questions of the scriptural data. When we can see the questions that African and Asian and Latin American people ask of the Scriptures and see the tremendous comprehensiveness of the revelation, then we can enter into a grander understanding of God then we ever could when we simply asked the questions of that datea that our one cultural perspective brought to our attention.

It is awesome that I actually enjoy everything that I have to read and I can see its relevence to my life and what I have been called to do.

9/11 5 years later

 

Last night we drove about 40 minutes down the NJ turnpike to a lookout point that had a wonderful view of the city so that we could see the lights where the World Trade center was. We could see the World Trade Center lights from Nyack but they were very faint. 

 

Ok go...our version

 
Katie and Sarah are the girls in the front. Me and Amy are in the back. Abby is taking the picture.

This picture makes me smile. We took this in the city on Saturday. Ok Go has provided us with mucho laughs since we have been here so we just had to take a picture with these posters. It was a perfect day to play in the city. The weather was great and there was lots going on. We came up on a farmer's market which had apple cider donuts. I had never heard of such a thing but everybody raved about them so I bought some for us. Wow, they were awesome. I think I need to learn how to make them. There was also a street fair just below Time Square with lots of cheap stuff to buy. After the street fair we went to Dylan's Candy Bar. It is every child's(and aparently 20 somethings)dream come true. It was very exciting for Katie(my roommate) because she found some candy bars from the UK that she can't get anywhere else in the states. We also went into the famous Bloomingdales for Abby to buy something. Amy found a huge Japanese book store to play in as well. Katie, Sarah, and I found out that it is not so easy to find flip flops in NYC in September. Sarah's flip flop broke as we were walking down the street so we proceeded to try to find flip flops. Sounds easy right? It wasn't. We checked about 10 different places before Sarah decided to just tape the flip flop to her foot. It worked out pretty well. It got her all the way back to the car with no problem. All in All it was a great day. 

Instructions included...

...the ability to follow the instructions are not. We were pretty proud of ourselves until we actually put the bookshelves up and realized that we put several pieces upside down. I could not be mad about it b/c we shared so many laughs while putting it together.

 
Putting things together is not my gift. Everyone should notice my cute black and pink tool set. I think it was a very smart purchase.

 
As you can see, Sarah was a big help. No, she really was.

 
"Maybe if I stare at it long enough I will understand." 

Top 10 Things I Learned on My First Day in Seminary...

 

10. My Theology in Global Context prof is an Asian Dr. Williams who talks like Robin Leach. Now is that a mix or what?

9. I have to go to class with Boys...and lots of them.

8. I'm not the only one with an accent, but I am the only one with a southern one.

7. Theology class with the Asian Dr. Williams/Robin Leach is a good place to make out a to do list for the rest of the afternoon.

6. Alliance people study about Lottie Moon. I am not taking that class this semester but I am sure I will before I am done here. For all of those out there who don't know anything about the Alliance, I say anybody who studies Lottie Moon is ok in my book.

5. When The Graduate School of Mission says that they concentrate on spiritual formation, they really mean it. We are actually doing a devotional book as part of the class. I am pretty sure that I am going to be spiritually stretched further than I knew I could be. This is good though. That is why I chose ATS.

4. At ATS you begin class in prayer and sometimes end in it as well.

3. I am going to be reading ALOT. I already knew this but I was happy to discover that 80% of it looks very interesting.

2. A seminary student should have a Bible with them at all times. Apparently I did not get the memo. I won't make that mistake again.

1. I AM EXACTLY WHERE I AM SUPPOSED TO BE! 

1200 miles, 2 books on cd, and 2 days later...

 

Well...as much as I would like to think that I don't sound that southern, I can't hide it. As soon as I introduce myself to someone they immediately feel the need to tell me I am from the south and ask which state I am from. I guess I should get used to it since I have only met a few people so far. I guess if you are reading this you are at least slightly interested in my life so I will tell you a little bit about our trip up here. (See the above pictures for visual references) Bekah and I left a little bit before 5am last Monday morning. After discovering that we could not pick Rick and Bubba up in GA, we decided to stop and get a book on CD at Cracker Barrel. If anyone does now know you can get an audio book there and trade it in at any of the Cracker Barrels. It is a wonderful system. They were even so kind as to give us a map of the U.S. that showed ever single Cracker Barrel on it. If you are ever on the road and need to know where one is you know who to call. Anyway...we chose a novel and we were on our way. We saw lots of funny road signs which kept us amused. One time we were in tears from laughing so hard. We made it into Newport News in time to have dinner with Laura,Ryan, and baby Grace. After dinner we went back to thier house to visit for awhile. I got to hold Grace for the first time, which was very exciting. It was great to visit with them and we could have talked all night but we knew that we had to get up early so we could not stay all night.
The next morning our first stop was Cracker Barrel. The exits in Virginia are very misleading. They tell you that there is a Cracker Barrel on the exit but they don't tell you that you have to go about 2 miles and make several turns to get there. This was only the beginning of our troubles with getting to the Cracker Barrels. When we finally got to the store they did not have the next book in the series on CD, although they had 3 on tape(which I can't play in my car.) So, we just skipped a book and got another book in the series. We ended up having to stop the cd several times becouse of crazy roads. Washington D.C. was insane. I did get to see the top of the capital though so that was kind of cool. Next we decided that if we were driving through Philedelphia we should have a philly cheese steak sandwich. After enlisting the help of Tom(Bekah's brother)we found a place known for thier sandwiches. It was a nice little pit stop for lunch but now I was ready to get to Nyack. Once we got into New Jersy it started pouring down rain. Not to mention it was rush hour. The combination made a very stressful rest of the trip. As we drove into Nyack a funny thing happend. Sweet Home Alabama started playing on the radio. It is not really a song that I usually turn the radio up to hear it better but it just somehow seemed appropriate at the time. My roommates family was there when we arrived and immediately started helping us unload the car. Thank you God for providing me with a roommate who has a strong Dad and brother who were willing to help after they had already unloaded all of her stuff up two flights of stairs. By this time Bekah and I were exhausted but we had to go to Target to get some essentials for the night. I decided to drive Bekah around Nyack for a little bit before it got dark. Downtown Nyack is so cute we decided that we just had to eat there. From there we went to Target where we had to hurry before they closed. I had to get towels, shampoo, conditioner, and an air mattress for Bekah to sleep on. Now, why am I telling you what I had to get? Well, because there are a couple of funny stories to go along with that. When Bekah went to take a shower, she discovered that in my haste to get out of the store before it closed I picked up 2 conditioners instead of shampoo. Luckily I had a sample of shampoo for us to use for the night. Next, Bekah discovered that the air pump for the air mattress had to charge for 4 hours before it could be used. It was already late and we could not wait on that. I got the bright idea to use a hair dryer. I was pretty proud of myself for thinking of that until we realized that part of the air mattress had melted from the heat. Bekah patched it but still ended up sleeping on the floor before the end of the night.
The next morning we went into the city. It took us a little longer than we anticipated to get there but we still go to see most of the things on Bekah's list. We went to Chinatown and Central Park. We had frozen hot chocolate at Serenipity, and huge sandwiches at Carnegie Deli. We tried to win lottery tickets for Wicked but were unsuccessful. We did have some darn good pizza though. We saw alot but I think we decided that there was alot more that we will do next time.
Well, I guess that was a clasic Marie story but now you know all about our trip to Nyack. I will post again soon to update you about my first week here.