In Retrospect

Well, Alyssa moved back to her home. I dont really know where she's at but I do know she needs prayer. So if yall remember during your prayers, please lift her up. Also, my mom finally moved. She had the movers come today and she is now moved in; with the exception of her cats who wont come out of hiding at her old place. Crystal's graduation is tomorrow but I think the majority of the time I will be studying for my vocabulary final which is Wednesday. The ceremony is going to last forever! but I think I will manage. A really cool idea that the security guard from The Rock gave us was to pray for each individual as they get called up, so maybe I will do that. My Dad is doing pretty good. I think he is slowly becoming more willing to go to church; I say this because this week he offered to drive me but my Mom was already there to pick me up.

As for me, there is sort of a lot going on. School is coming to a close and I find myself questioning whether or not I really did much for the Lord in school. I can definitely thank God for Tiffany's coming to Roots and things such as that, but have I honestly done as much as I could in respect to being an example or putting myself out there to declare His Word? I think that in the first half of the year, the fire was there in my heart but the oppurtunities weren't there (Or most accurately, I wasnt finding the oppurtunities) And the second half of the year it seems like I grew tired of trying to reach out to people who didnt care and didnt strive to bring God up in conversations; yet I feel like the most lasting impressions I made were in the second half of the year. I got the oppurtunity to give my good friend, Saloni, a bible for her birthday, and another good friend, Sancha, a Matthew West CD for hers. I got to layout the New Testament in the form of a storyboard for my entire English class to see and read them a short plot teaser about the New Testament. I was given the chance to talk to a girl in my P.E. class named Nazree (sp?) who is from Pakistan and is a really nice person. She graduated this year but we are keeping in touch through email and hopefully, finding a witnessing oppurtunity in the little girl that my ma' and I are sponsoring from India.

Then, I found myself looking inward. Another assignment for English class was to give a speach on someone who influenced our life. I decided to do the speech on my cousin, Julia, and the writing of the speech was simple. It was the actual delivery of the speech that got my tongue tied; literally. When I got up in front of the class, I was fine, up until the point where I started talking I was fine. But when the oxygen reverberated against my lungs and the noise came from my mouth, it was all shakey. I was shaking! I have NEVER shaken in giving a speech. It may have been too personal a thing for me to tell the class, but I think it had potential to spur peoples thoughts on God and is even one person considered Christ due to that speech, I praise God! Also, I found I had gained a crush on a guy! This is so far from anything I ever wanted to do and Im in the process of convinving myself (along with praying about it) that Satan is just trying to distract me from Summer of Love and all the other projects I have planned for the summer. FYI: If you want to pray for me about that, that would be great, thanks! lol

For now though, I am off to finish the study guide for Consumers Ed. SPEAKING OF WHICH, here is a short snip it of a short essay I wrote for Consumers Ed yesterday.

"I learned, secondly, that I could donate more of my money to the church. Ultimately, I want to be giving up to 75% [if not more] of my income to the church, but after this project I am seeing how hard that may become. I think it is important to give money to the church because, I think, the purpose of even being here on earth is to further the Kingdom of Heaven and one way to help further that is to grow the church up. I know that my church would definitely need that sort of financial support because we just bought an old bowling alley to revamp into our church home. The work that is needed to be put into it is a lot but so far, God has provided every bit of finances we need to continue along our ventures. Not to mention what God told us: to give until it hurts. Overall, I think that without giving to the church – as we are commanded to do in the bible – we can not truly be rewarded; though maybe on earth but not in Heaven."

>>>>> Signing Out: Nanomi Star