Faith, and Talking with God

The last few days have been an interesting few days. I spent a large part of last week looking for a job for next semester, and on Thursday, was offered a job. I accepted, and started training on Friday. That night, I had my past come back to haunt me, and got majorly depressed. Saturday, I spent a large portion of the day talking with God. He gave me an answer that I wasnt happy with, but had come to accept. The answer He seemed to give was in the form of a song. It is a song I am only vaguely famliar with, but was able to think of the first line of the song. It is called Consider the Lilies, based on a scripture found in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount. The basis of the scripture (and song) is that the flowers can't cloth themselves, and that God will provide for them, and take care of them. I am in a tight spot for next semester, and barely have enough for tuition, and so I thought a job was the right answer (especially since I don't qualify for financial aid exept for loans). Now, God seems to be telling me otherwise. This is where faith kicks in, and I have to trust. I havent completely made up my mind as to what I plan on doing, but I have to exercise faith. God will provide a way. I just need to figure out what that way is. I think I'll be doing a lot of talking with God over the next few days.

Parenting

In one of my classes today, we talked about parenting, and dealing with children's emotions. As part of it, we watched these two videos. I enjoyed them a lot, so I hope you enjoy!

Video One

Video Two

Possibe Dish-Strike

Every semester, I somehow end up with the same problem. I end up doing all the dishes in the aprtment all the time. I don't mind, in fact I actually like doing dishes; I find it to be theraputic. The only problem lies in the fact that if I have a busy week, and don't have time to do any dishes except for the ones I just used to make/eat a meal, then we end up with a sink full of dishes that just sit there for days on end. I was talking it over with a friend yesterday, and they suggested going on strike, and just not doing any dishes except for my own any more. one problem with that is that we just use each others dishes, so I cant exactly just do my dishes, because other people will just use the clean dishes, and not do any. I really don't mind doing dishes, and I really don't want to sound like I'm complaining, I just want to know if there is a way to un-do what I tend to do every semester (namely spoiling my roomates and doing all the dishes), and help my roomates learn responsibility in this small way.
Any suggestions?

Lessons in Fencing

Today I was preparing a lesson for our FHE (a night students get together and have a spiritual thought and activity), based on the thought of scripture study. I found a talk that brought up some very valid points, and found some suggestions to give to the other students on how to tailor their scripture study to themselves. One of the ideas that was given was to define the unknown terms, so you understand what the scripture is saying.

In fencing, we recently learned a lot of different attacks, parries, and defences. The first day of class, she had some of the TA's demonstrate what we would be learning, and called out moves for them to do, and I sat back and wondered "will I ever get it all strait?" Today in class, I was thinking "I should find someone to practice with that can help me." I thought about it and realized that I don't know anyone who could help me practice. No one knows how to do anything I would need practice with. I could go up to my good friend SG and say "Hey, I need help with practicing fencing, so do an advance, and then feint four to six, then do a ballestra, and I'm going to retreat, then parry 4 and 6, and to a Passata-sotto. Ready, go!" but he would have no idea what any of that was, and no idea how to help me out. Even just a basic idea of what the term meant wouldn't be any help.

And then I put the two together.

Fencing can be like scripture study. There are a lot of terms in both that people might not understand. those people who have more practice with scriptural terms understand more of what is going on, and don't need to learn as much. similarly, I have a friend L (she got married recently, and I don't know her new last name), who has been fencing from the dawn of time, and understands what a passata-sotto, a bellestra, and many other things that I've never heard of are. As we get more practiced, we understand more, and can do more without help.

Carnivorous Plants

A friend introduced me today to the National Geographic Magazine online (not for the sake of introducing it, but to use it to show me about El nino years). I should have guessed that it would be online, since everything else is online, but I never looked into it. One of the things they had in there (I think it was for this months magazine) was all about carnivorous plants. Now, I learned a little bit about them in my ecology class, but one detail that slipped by me without noticing it was that these plants eat insects (and sometimes small animals) so that they can not get the carbon to create more mass that way. No, they use the animals in a different way. They use the animals and insects so that they can get nitrogen and phosphorus to be able to photosynthisise. How interesting! A Carnivorous plant who eats to photosynthesise! Now, if only those plants could teach me how to photosynthesise...

for some really cool pictures of these plants, go here