Week 26: Tests, Tours, and Tea

This is from last week! Sorry about being lazy in getting these up on time!

Tests, tests, and more tests! This week we had “finals week.” Monday was our Pauline Epistles: Corinthians test. I got a 96%, whoop whoop! Only missed 2! Then on Tuesday we had our Israel Prep final, which I got a 167/163 on! Extra credit for the win! And then on Thursday we had our final Philippians test on chapter 4, which I also passed! It was definitely a stressful but very rewarding week.

On Wednesday, the staff took us all down to Fresno for the day. Of course I got in Bretts van, it’s the best van. We drove to Fresno Pacific University to tour the campus. This is the first year that they are doing a scholarship for Joshua students taking classes for credit through Moody Bible Institute (like me!) They’re giving an $8000 scholarship ($2000/per year) to those going to FPU after Joshua. They are also taking most of our credits as class credits instead of elective credits. That would be super awesome if I end up going there. After the tour, we all got to hang out at Riverpark for a few hours. Kelsey met me at Teazers (world market teahouse) after her last exam. I miss her a lot. It’s nice though that she lives so close to me right now. I can go see her on my weekends off and such. She might come up here and stay for a couple days after Israel (which by the way, is in a week!!!!)

The Hume Variety Show was Thursday night, and my pause dad, Scott, and brothers, Dylan and Dayton, were in it. We went for pause night to watch. It was so cute! The show was a fundraiser for the Hume Charter School. Dylan played Mr. Tumnus in a Narnia skit, and Dayton and Scott did a stomp routine. There were also a few Le Mis songs, a scene from The Hunger Games, and a song from my favorite movie, Moulin Rouge! It was a great talent filled night plus I got to try Turkish delight! When the show ended, we went back to the house and played games until it was time to go back to the building.

I finally get to go home this week! I’m stoked to see my family! But first Lem Usita and Fred Blackburn are coming up from San Diego Christian College to run a scholarship thing for us. Usually you have to go the SDCC to be eligible for the scholarship, but Joshua has really good connections with them so they are coming here so that we don’t have to miss it due to school. So this weekend I’m doing that, and it pretty much guarantees a $1000 scholarship but I have a chance of up to a full ride scholarship, too! Afterwards, I’ll drive to Thousand Oaks with Stephen and Sara where we will spend the night at Stephen’s house before I drive home Sunday morning! I can’t wait! I’m ready for some down time after a long week. I haven’t seen my family since before New Year’s. Then I’ll be hopping on a 16 hour plane ride to the Holy Land! It still doesn’t seem real to me that I will be in Jesus land in just over a week. It’s so weird to think about. We’ll get to hike Masada, float in the Dead Sea, and (hopefully) ride Gamlas! Or “camels” in English!

Shalom!

Week 25: Princess for a Day

Monday marked the start of our third, and last, preview. Our preview’s name is Lacey and I found out she lives like an hour away from me! She was super awesome, asked lots of questions and she and I had a lot in common. I really hope she gets accepted into the next Joshua class! We even talked about hanging out sometime!

Tuesday I spent the afternoon playing football down on the lower lawn with some Joshua students and a couple preview students. At one point, Hedi and Bella tried to tackle me and I ended up landing on my head and doing a summersault . I had an amazing bruise on my forehead for a couple days. Thank God it was a bruise and not a concussion!  For girls night we had a ton of fun doing a Paula Abdul workout video. It was great and super funny as some of us are a bit more coordinated than others.

Wednesday night was spent at the ice rink playing broom hockey for the last time this year. It was fun playing with only Joshua students. Apparently I fall down a lot in broom hockey, although I’ve never really noticed! But it was a lot of fun. Bummers that it’s over.

Thursday we celebrated Purim so all the girls dressed up like princesses and the boys dressed up in crazy outfits. Everything from Frodo to mimes! I dressed up as an African princess. We ate dinner and then changed into nice clothes to do a Passover Seder. It’s like a really extensive and symbolic communion. I enjoyed it a lot and want to do it over Easter break with my family!

So this weekend nobody worked, so what did I do? I spent my time, like a good student, studying for the 3 major tests I have coming up next week…. HAHA just kidding! Friday I spent playing board games and trolling around on the computers for the most part. Saturday was super awesome though. I slept in until 11. After lunch in Pondy, I came back up and played a little dress up. I’m trying to figure out different things to do with my hair now that it’s getting longer and I’m really into ‘40’s rockabilly looks right now so I pinned my hair up. Having the whole day to myself, I did my makeup and dressed the part too and did a little photo shoot with Shiloh. Afterwards I changed to go down for dinner, but kept my hair and makeup. When I got back to the building, I took it all off and changed into hiking clothes. Then Stephen, Sara, Shelby, Morgan, and I hiked down to the tree house (three story tree house with rope bridges to 2 different decks!) and played Shadows Over Camelot, a super nerdy board game. We also played a round of Magic, to teach Shelby how to play. It was such a great day!

Sunday was more of a lazy day. I went to lunch and came up to my pause families house where I sat and studied for 4 ½ hours (with a Facebook distraction every now and then). After dinner, we went to church which was just worship and communion. It was a nice change. Tomorrow kicks off the final week before break and ISRAEL!!!! I seriously can’t believe it’s coming up so fast! This is ridiculous, I’ve been in Joshua for nearly 7 months. Time is flying by and incredible speeds, but at the same time this week isn’t going fast enough!

Week 24: A Spot of Tea

Sorry this is late. Been busy! This is from March 4 to March 10.

This week was a pretty normal, chill week. I can’t believe we only have like 5 weeks left in the building total. One week we’ll be on Esther break, two weeks we’ll be in Israel, and one week we’ll be at Hartland. Speaking of which I am going to be in Israel in less than 3 weeks! 20 days from tomorrow (Mar 11)! This is ridiculous! Not exactly looking forward to the 16 hour flight, but it gets me where I need to go ha ha!

But like I said, it was a pretty normal week. Our speaker was Brad Bell, the senior pastor at the Well in Fresno. He went over the book of Song of Solomon. That was interesting…. But I did learn a lot about relationships and it is getting to that point in Joshua when people start thinking about relationships again because summer is coming soon and that’s usually when the Joshua covenant drops. I missed out on Wednesday though, because I was sick. Tuesday for girls night, we had had a tea party which was awesome. I had spent the day before and all that day helping Sara bake cookies and cakes and scones and make tea sandwiches. It was so much fun. But I ended up eating after 9 and for some reason I get really bad stomach aches at night if I eat after a certain time. That night I woke up several times with stomach aches and was taking Tums almost every hour from 2am to 6am. Not fun. So I got to stay in my room all day. Bleh.

SWEEPs on Thursday was spent washing windows. We didn’t really have anything to do since camp turnover was done on Tuesday. After SWEEPs, I went back up to the building to change for Pause night. Scott is in Hawaii for HIM (Hawaiian Islands Ministry) where they are going to start a Hume Hawaii. It’s really awesome to see Hume grow and reach out everywhere from Hume San Diego to Hume New England to travel camps all over the world for missionary and military kids. For Pause, we went down to the ice rink and played broom hockey with a few other pause families. Afterwards, we headed up to the house and played hide & go seek, which was so much fun (even for college students!) Friday was the start of Unite, the college camps, and also the Joshua Reunion was going on, so a bunch of past students came up and hung out at the building for a while.  We did an Old vs. New Israel knowledge review where we battled it out against the past students to see who knew their Israel stuff better. We ended up losing by one or two points. They had the advantage of actually having been to Israel already. But it was fun. I definitely need to study for the big test next week though.

So after finding out that I’m hired in SS for the summer (YAY!!!!), I finally got to work concessions for the very last camp! I was in the OK Chalet taking orders, scooping ice cream, and ,making milkshakes. It was great but I’m definitely glad that I’m not in the Snack Shop during summer. I don’t know if I could handle being sticky from ice cream all the time. And there are other people who could do that job a lot better than I can. Plus I hear SS is the job to have. It’s like a big party! Haha! Looking forward to it.

Week 23: Street Lights, People, Looking Just to Find Emotion

The LA trip was probably the best, yet most frustrating trip I’ve been on. Going into it, I absolutely hated the idea of being forced to evangelize. I mean, why would I want to do something to someone else that I hate when people do it to me? I had pre conceptions of how it was going to be; that it would be like standing on the sidewalk trying to hand out flyers to people and getting shut down constantly. But what I found was that it’s just talking to people. That’s it. Just having conversations. “Seriously? It’s that easy? Am I being punked right now? All I have to do is talk about adoption with this lady? Or books with this man?” It came ridiculously easy once I was out there. I actually met a guy the first night after we had gone to the Buddhist temple (I’ll get to that in a minute). His name was Erik, and it started out with him asking us to buy a piece of our pizza. It was me, Bella, Tim, and Dylan. We just gave him some pizza and breadsticks too, and it just opened up a conversation. He told us about how he had been in the foster care system his whole life and was on the streets, looking for a job to make ends meet. He and I talk about our birth dads. We told him about Joshua and he told us about his studies on ancient African religions. It was really awesome.

Back to the Buddhist temple. So cool! It had been the last day of Chinese New Year, so it was all decorated with paper lanterns and snakes for the year of the snake. We took a tour of the temple and learned about the culture and the different figures in Buddhism, since they don’t have a “god.” One of the frustrating things, though, was our tour guide, Don. He was an older white man. He told us a bit of his testimony, which consisted of him being a pastor when he was 16 and converting to a Buddhist later in life. But what bothered me was that when he talked about Christianity and why it wasn’t right for him, he used a ton on verses out of context and it honestly didn’t sound like he knew a lot about the gospel for being a pastor. A lot of what he said sounded a lot like some of the things I read in the book Love Wins. But it definitely was not my place to argue faith in a Buddhist temple.

Buddhist Temple

Midnight Mission

Cracking eggs, 3600 of them!

On Tuesday, half of us got up at 4am to go and help out and Midnight Mission. We served breakfast there to people who are homeless. About 900 people were served which is awesome and saddening at the same time. Great that they got fed but sad that there are so many of them. Afterwards, we walked through Skid Row to downtown LA. It’s crazy to go from hundreds of homeless people lining the streets, to skyscrapers and business suits in less than 10 blocks. When we got to downtown, our mission was to get with our evangelism partners and team up with one other group, get $10 each, and bless someone in need with a meal. Logan was my partner and we teamed up with Sara and Brandon. We walked around for a while before coming across a couple. They asked for spare change and we too them out to eat instead. Their names were Lorenzo and Nay-Nay. We bought them a meal at McDonald’s and I got the opportunity to talk to Nay-Nay about her life. She talked to me about how she got on the streets and what she wants to do with her life. They had just lost their apartment a few months before. She told me about her kids, how she adopted some of them and how one of her daughters is going to play for the Sparks next year. It was awesome to hear her story and talk about God a little bit. She said she was a Christian but I hope I opened the door for her to seek a deeper relationship with Christ. Later in the day, we met up with the other half of the class and went to the Self Realization temple. Self Realization is basically a western version of Hinduism.  To me it seemed exactly like Buddhism, but with a “god.” They believe that everyone can achieve a sort of “deity” when they become enlightened after reincarnation through karma. Once you are enlightened, you become a saint and therefore “one with God.” There was a lot of theology I did not understand, like the guy said that there is absolute truth, but you have to find it for yourself (hence enlightenment), but once you find it, it’s the same as everyone else. So it’s personal but it’s not at the same time. Confusing.

Eating at an Indian restaurant.

That night we did street evangelism at night on Hollywood Boulevard. I did not enjoy that. I was feeling off all day. I really didn’t want to talk to anyone at that point. Also, it was dark and there were a bunch of sketchy people out. At one point, we were talking to a girl handing out flyers for the Church of Scientology, and I witnessed a guy try to mug a lady. He was on a skateboard and tried to take her purse. She held on, screaming bloody murder while he dragged her across the ground. He ended up making a run for it when people started rushing over. It put me on edge all night, paranoid that I was going to get mugged or stabbed or something. We didn’t really have any goo conversations besides with the Scientology lady who didn’t really seem like she knew what she was talking about even after claiming she’d been a member for 8 years. It was really frustrating and scary, just being out there at night.

On Hollywood Boulevard.

Wednesday, we went to the Museum of Tolerance, which is mainly about the Holocaust. I had been there before of a field trip, but it was cool to go again with more knowledge about the Jewish culture.  That night we went out to evangelize near the UCLA campus. That night was hard trying to find someone willing to talk. A lot of the students were in the gyms or in big groups or had earbuds in to tune everyone out. It wasn’t an easy night.

Later we headed for Santa Monica to do some evangelism there. Logan and I walk out to the Santa Monica pier which was fun. When walking around the city, we stopped at the Coffee Bean to take a break. Logan and I were feeling kind of spiritually down so we had some Jesus time which really helped. I found some awesome encouraging quotes, like one from C.S. Lewis that said “Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’” And Leonard who said “Any method of evangelism will work if God is in it.” That made me feel a lot better about knowing I’m doing the right thing and that as long as God is with me, I can do this. Just as we were about to leave, and older man sits next to Logan. Logan asked him about his book and that sparked one of the best conversations we had all week. His name is Jack, and we talked a lot about great books and traveling. We had the awesome opportunity to share with him about Joshua and how we are using our studies at Joshua in our lives. We also got to talk about kids with special needs, which allowed me to share with him my God moment in the Dominican at Genesis and all about finding how to trust God with my future. It was an amazing conversation that came from God’s awesome timing.

The Grove

Friday we got to go to the Getty Museum. We walked around for a while and looked at everything from paintings, to sculptures, to historic French décor. I bought like $10 worth of postcards!  That evening we drove to The Grove where we did some more evangelism. Logan and I had a great talk with a couple from Montreal. They were super interested in what Joshua was and why 56 college kids would want to live on a mountain for a year. It was a lot of fun. Later, I totally saw Rebecca Black, and on a Friday of all days! We ended our night with a freeze mob, where we all froze around the fountain. It was a lot of fun!

Painting a school in Compton.

Sunday we got up and went to church, but not just any church. We went to a black church! Amen, Halleluiah! It was so exciting! I wish church was like that every Sunday. Gospel music is so great, and all the people were so nice and friendly. I found it a lot easier to focus too, compared to a normal church service. After church, we ate at Souplantation before heading back up the hill. The LA trip was great. It gave me a lot more confidence in sharing my faith and being a light unto others. I’m still trying to figure my faith out but talking it out helps. God calls all of us to go out and evangelize, even if we don’t want to or if it puts us out of our comfort zone. I realized this week that my life should be evangelism. All day, every day. Even when I’m exhausted. Lee Strobel said, “Let me be the first to confess: there are times when I suffer from evangelism fatigue. I know I should care, I know I should reach out to them, I know I should talk to them about Jesus – but my motivation meter is hovering at low voltage.” I definitely felt that this week, but I realized sometimes all I need is a little Jesus time to recharge me and get out ther again.

#hottubbingonalatenightvan!

#brettsvanjams

All in all, a fantastic, overwhelming week. On to Israel!