Special Olympics Bowling!!!!

Okay, so yesterday we went to help with the Special Olympics Bowling. And i'm not gonna lie I was really REALLY scared at first because working with mentally handicapped people is so far out of my comfort zone and I was freaking out up until I met my people and they were so cute and nice. I had 4 girls. Carol Stansil, Helen Davis, Sheri Townsend, and Sherry Manthy. They were all business. They came to win! Helen would always ask me what place she's in and she was usually in first or second and when I told her that she'd always say something like "I'm knocking the socks off everyone else!" It was funny. I also got to talk to some of the people who were in other lanes around me and they all just thought it was so cool how we were from Oba and how we came out to help. Whenever they would get a strike or a spare it was funny how they would yell and dance. Two of the girls in my lane were kind of shy but it was really cool to see how excited they got when people cheered for them even if they got a gutter ball. Sheri Townsend's outfit must have been brand new or something because like every five minutes she was showing it off to someone and she wouldn't bowl unless everyone in her lane was watching. She would just stand there with her ball and point at anyone who wasn't looking until they looked at her. Well, it was really fun to get to go and help yesterday and meet everyone. They are so thankful and joyful all the time no matter what. And they all love kids everyone I made eye contact with wanted to know my name and would ask me random questions like where I ate for lunch that day. So yeah, I went in there afraid but I came through and had a great time. It would be fun to do stuff like that more often.

Spiritual Emphasis Week

This week Andy Braner came to school to be our speaker in chapel for the week. He's pretty good. He keeps it interesting and says some really cool stuff! On Monday he basically just introduced his family and what he does. It's cool how he has his own camp called Camp Kivu and has adopted two kids. On Tuesday his main focus was BELIEVE?  He was challenging us with what we believe and how we can stand firm in what we believe. He talked about the two kinds of truth, Subjective Truth and Objective Truth. Subjective Truth is what we decide for ourselves that we believe is true like he used the example of ice cream. Everyone thinks their favorite kind is the best, so therefore everyone's personal truth varies.  Objective truth is what we know is true or not. Like we know that if you eat alot of ice cream then you're not going to lose weight, you are most likely gonna gain some. How can we prove that Christianity is 100% true? He said that we can't and that it is impossible to totally prove the bible is true is true there is proof, but you can't totally convince someone on the facts part of it just has to be faith. He explained that the basic foundation of our whole religion of Christianity is based on Genesis 1:1. If God didn't create the world then God couldn't have created Adam and Eve, then there wouldn't have been The Fall, then Jesus wouldn't have had to come and so on. Which was really interesting to me because i'd never heard that before. One Wednesday his main focus was BEHAVE? Ideas have consequences. He emphasized that what you put in is what you get out and gave up 5 points to write down he said:
1. You are what you eat
           -What you put in your body is what your body becomes
           -Same is true for your spiritual life
2. Junk food changes your physical shape just like thoughts change your behavior
           -What you spend your time thinking about is what you become
3. Junk food causes heart problems and confuses your body's natural function, just like unhealthy spiritual things can confuse your spiritual life
           -What you put in is what you get out
4. Junk food tastes great in the short term, but in the long term leads to adverse side effects
           -Watch what you put in your head
5. An apple a day keeps the doctor away
           -Put good spiritual things in your body at least once everyday

On thursday he talked about how the media affects our dating like how Facebook has given us the dating "status" and commercials use sexual ploys to get teenagers to use their products. He told us how music reflects some dating patterns he used Bruno Mars song Just the way you are to show a good relationship then went on to see how it can turn bad with Katy Perry's teenage dream. He showed how relationships can get obsessive with Rihanna's song Rehab and then showed us the extreme of people hating each other but not being able to force themselves to leave each other with Eminem's love the way you lie. Which I thought was a very good and interesting way to illustrate that subject. He showed us that what we put in our body, what kind of music we listen to, will ultimately start having effects on our lives.
Friday he wrapped everything up with BELONG? We want to be with other people. Three things we need to keep in mind as teenagers in this world is
1. We gotta know what we believe
2. We gotta know how to act in the world
3. We gotta know how to relate to people

Over all, I really really enjoyed have Andy come and talk to us.

Friends!:)

I think that friends are great! They are there for you when you need them and are fun to be around. In the bible it tells us it is important to have friends. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says, "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work:  If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." Clearly God is telling us that we need friends. Some qualities I look for in friends are:

1.) Honesty
2.) Trustworthiness
3.) Good sense of humor
4.) Common interests
5.) Someone who will build me up and support me
6.) Someone who will tell me when I'm doing something wrong

And more. I want my friends to be honest and trustworthy, because I want to be able to tell them things I'm going through and have them help me without having to worry about them telling other people my personal struggles. I want them to have a good sense of humor because I love to laugh and if you never make any jokes or think anything is funny, then I'm just not gonna want to be around you! We need common interests so that we can have something to talk about. I don't want someone who is always rude and tearing me down, that would just get old and annoying after a while. Especially if they are trying to make jokes all the time about me. The bible says we need to build each other up in love and not tear each other down. (1 Thessalonians 5:11) I want a friends who will tell me when I'm doing something wrong and not be afraid of me. Who will care enough about me so that they will tell me to stop doing something that could hurt me. One thing I don't think that is necessarily for someone to be my friend is the Christian quality. Yeah, yeah the bible says not to be unequally yoked and my best friend isn't gonna be an atheist, but how are you supposed to reach out to people and talk to them about God if you're not their friend? Jesus' friends were sinners also. He has his main circle of good friends, but he almost never hung out with priests.

I definitely need to get better about gossipping and talking about people behind their backs. Sometimes people will tell me their secrets and I'll tell someone else which is terrible and I need to stop, so basically I need to get better at being trustworthy. Also, I need to be nicer. I can get pretty mean sometimes. Especially if I'm tired or hungry or something, which isn't an excuse but I can have a bad attitude about things sometimes.

One of my best friends goes to Enid High, her name is Kylie Castillo. She is the grade above me and I've known her since I was little. We go to the same church and she's my neighbor. She's super funny and nice and I look up to her alot and she helps me through my problems and gives me good, christian advice! We talk about everything, it's pretty nice.