Highlights thus far

Kyle: You are moving stuff in on the 23rd, and then going home for two weeks... Classes start September 1st. Something about the math does not add up to me...

I will be moving in at the latest by the 27th or 28th, because I have to be 'on campus' for a Koinonia retreat the 29th. I may come in a little earlier than that, depending on other plans in the Keystone state.

I suppose I don't have any strong preference as to room assignments, but would point out that one of the rooms is only the size of a normal dorm room. Throw that into your calculations, however you think about things. I'm all in favor of having a couch. I don't think that we'll have any kind of problem finding a place for it if the Parletts don't just keep it.


In local news, I may not graduate with you all! I've had two classes pulled on me now, and at present I'm not even a full-time student. I'm trying to juggle classes and get substitutions made and maybe add and independent study so that I'm not taking 18 credits second semester... Yuck.
Note: I will actually graduate. I will murder someone before paying thousands of dollars to take classes that they screwed me out of. And my department heads are taking care of me... I'm just bitter.

My summer's exciting events have been Kansas Wesleyan Kids Camp and visiting friends in PA. I'm the children's intern at my home church: for the most part, I just run the kids service every Sunday morning. But they also sent me to camp as a counselor, and it was a blast! I sprained my ankle in a soccer game 8 days before we left, so I was a much calmer camp counselor than I've been known to be, but that was a good thing.
I had the rebellious punk kids for the week, who varied between hating me and including me in everything - including the ritual of addressing them only by their first initial. I had some great times with the kids and some tough times having to discipline them a little bit, which is hard for me.
One of the highlights was that an OWU ministry team was there, including Ricky, a guy I'd met at Never the Same last year. They were a real blessing to me personally, helping me run some games and activities and then also helping me make up crazy motions for the silly songs during worship (keep in mind that it was 1st-6th graders).

I spent the last week in Pennsylvania visiting my friend Michelle and her family, as well as various other friends that I've made in her hometown from a semester I spent leading worship there. It was a good time that reminded me that there are people in the world outside my house, and how much more rewarding I find my life when I'm in contact with people more often as opposed to less often.

It reminded me of the prayer that Thryn wrote for Bread for the Journey: "Heavenly Father, Your word tells us that where two or three are gathered, You are there. We need you, and so we need each other..."

I bought the entirety of The Divine Comedy this week, hopefully to have finished by the end of the summer. That, along with three more books of the popular Twilight (vampire) series, 500 pages of an Anne Rice novel (my fourth for the summer, and I HIGHLY recommend her Christ the Lord books), The George R.R. Martin fantasy series, Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series (I have four to go)... I may have bigger eyes than stomach. Or more appetite than eyeball-endurance, we'll see.

What are you all reading?

And the words of the LORD are flawless,
like silver refined in a furnace of clay,
purified seven times. (Psalm 12:6)