Let's Try This Again...

Okay! Leaving for Cadillac tomorrow! Hopefully!

I definitely need prayer, I'm feeling alot more unprepared than I was last week. And on top of that I just found out that I have to drive tomorrow too. SO, pray for good weather tomorrow & next wednesday, & that I get enough rest tonight & I'm not exhausted driving tomorrow. It's about a 6-hour drive.

School was alright today. We had Humility with Teresa, & I'm really liking that book, even though it's totally challenging on so many levels. I found out today that Sam is recording all of the teachings on his Mac & he's going to make a DVD for everyone at the end of the year. SUPER excited about that, it will be great to be able to hear them again once I'm out of school & have a new perspective on some things.

So...yeah, that's about it. Pray for me. I feel like God is testing me alot right now. I hope I'm passing. Like I said before, dunno if I'll have internet while I'm up there, but if I do I'll write. If I don't, have a lovely weekend, & hopefully you won't miss my ramblings too much. Ha.

Headache.

I came home early from school today...missed Keyboarding class. I've had a pounding headache since last night, so I came home after lunch & took a nap. It helped, a little.

Yesterday was a good day. Really busy...I had a great chat with Kal after Pursuit of God class, it was really encouraging. After school Stef & John & I worked on the song I (they) wrote. Haha. I took a poem I wrote a few years ago & rewrote it into a song with a TON of help from Stef. John helped us put down a melody, & now I just have to present it & notate it. Oy. Haha. After we finished up I met Heidi for dinner, & straight from dinner to Serita's house. It was a really good time, she shared her testimony with me & it was great to get to know her a little more rather than talking about myself all the time. By the time I got home I was shattered, but I hadn't seen Kate all day so we stayed up & talked a little while.

Today...well, it was pretty uneventful since I missed half of school. But we had Pursuit of God with Kal again, & Bible Review with Tim. I'm really getting alot out of Kal's class...actually, all of the books we've been going through. So amazing.

Okay...dinner time...then Ear Training homework, then a new episode of Psych. Yessss.

I'm Motivated!

I ran 2 miles on the treadmill on saturday & just finished up another 2 a few minutes ago. So luckily you can't smell me through this blog. Ha. But really, I'm pretty proud of myself. Now that I actually have motivation AND time to do it, hopefully it will become a habit & I'll look great by summer.

It's snowing again.

Typical monday...we discussed The Spark worship concert & how our weekend went instead of having formal worship time. Alot of people had a really major experience friday night at the concert, & it was cool to hear how everyone was affected differently. We had Exploring Worship with Kim & talked about what it means to be prophetic. Good class. Then JL did his class out of God's Lavish Grace & totally blew my mind, as always. I've been getting so much revelation in that class it's insane. I just love it. We are so undeserving of ANY grace, & God just completely pours it out on us all the time. Totally amazing. I definitely recommend this book.

Theory & Ear were same as usual. After school Lydia & I went to Walgreens to get sunflower seeds & they didn't have any. Sad day. (Note to Mom - You could send some in my next box if you wanted to...lol.) Now I'm watching Psych while Lydia takes her turn on the treadmill. Can't wait for the season premiere on wednesday!

Okay I'm done.

So...Funny Story...

In all of our excitement to leave for Cadillac today, a bunch of us posted statuses on our Facebook about going up there. Apparently one of the elders of the church there saw Kate's status this morning & called Kal because he planned for us to come NEXT WEEK. Hahahaha. So no school today, we'll leave next friday!

I'm going back to sleep for a bit. Then to see Avatar in 3D with school people & a Spark concert later tonight. I finally get to see Serita play! That will be fun. So at least there's that.

Crazy Busy!

These last few days have been insane! We've spent alot of time in prayer & preparation to go visit the church in Cadillac this weekend. We're all totally excited for the opportunity to go & serve one of our sister churches & I, for one, am excited with how God has been speaking to us for them. He's given us specific words for specific people we've never even met, & the idea that we might be able to impact some of their lives is just awesome. I'm not sure if I'll have internet up there or not (apparently it's kind of in the middle of nowhere haha), but if I do I will definitely be posting daily, as there is apparently not much to do there. Hahaha. We leave tomorrow morning.

I got some more of my results for finals! I got a 99% on my Scripture Memorization, a 74% on my Songwriting (the exam, not the song I wrote), & 98% on my Keyboarding. Just waiting now to hear the combined scores of Ear Training & Sight-Singing. Little nervous on those...but I'm pretty sure I at least passed, which is all I can hope for, right?

It's been a pretty intense few days in preparation to leave town, but God has also been speaking to me alot, & it's been a little emotional too...but the Lord has been faithful in guarding my heart from a potentially really hurtful situation, & He has definitely been my strength. I've been getting so much more revelation on His grace, & it's totally opening my eyes to a whole new side of Him I've never seen. So, crazy emotional rollercoaster that it's been, I can honestly say I'm pretty happy with where I'm at now. I know He's got some awesome stuff planned for me!

Packing & then bedtime! If I don't have internet I'll post next week when I get back. Here are some things you can pray for us for...

-Safe travel

-Worship teams

-Homegroups we will be leading

-Kal as he brings the message on sunday

-Good health; the enemy has been working hard to attack us in this area...about half of us have been sick this week

-That God continues to speak to us for the church as a whole & specific people there

Oh Monday...

Today has been...interesting, to say the least.

Our team decided to lead worship this morning. It seemed like a good idea at the time...but when we got there at 7am & the doors were still locked & we were all tired, we started second-guessing our "good idea." Filip went to Teresa's to get the key to the building, & by the time we got in it was about 7:20. As if being locked out wasn't bad enough, NOTHING seemed to be working right with the sound system. It took us till about 7:45 to work all that out, & then we decided to play through Greatest One & see how it sounded. It was not good. To say the least. We spent the next 15 minutes praying, & then decided quickly on our second song (To You Alone) & started worship time. To say it was stressful is an understatement, but God totally used us & everything sounded great (in spite of the fact that my monitor never actually started working, so I couldn't hear anything but my cymbals the whole time). It's really cool when you KNOW that something like that isn't your own doing.

We started a new class with JL on friday going through the book God's Lavish Grace by Terry Virgo. Let me tell you, when I first looked at this book I was like, "This is going to be SO cheesy." The cover is like, purple with a picture of sunlight shining off a mountain, & it says "God's LAVISH Grace" in huge letters. Oy. I was skeptical. Haha. I read through the first two chapters last week, & while it was good didn't think it was anything outstanding. But chapters 3 & 4, combined with JL's class...wow. Mind-blowing. Seriously. It seems so elementary, but have you ever THOUGHT about the grace of God? I mean, we strive SO hard to be pleasing to God...but when He looks at us, He doesn't see US, He sees Christ. It doesn't matter how bad our mood is or how depressed we are, to think that God loves us any less during those times is to suggest that His love is not absolute. And on the other hand, to think that God loves us MORE after we do like a 40-day fast or something is out of line! Jesus Christ is always the same, yesterday, today, & forever...therefore His love for us NEVER changes, even when we screw everything up & sin & act like idiots! Amazing. Completely ridiculous.

After lunch we had Theory & Ear, which were fine...same old music stuff. Haha. I'm finding it much harder to be motivated to want to go to those classes when I'm getting such great revelation out of all of the others.

Kal talked to us more about what our Cadillac trip is going to look like. They split us off into two teams, one of the teams will lead worship on sunday while we're there & the other will be like a prayer group, sort of. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed I didn't get picked to play drums on the worship team. I would have loved to do that...but oh well. I'm sure that just means God wants to use me in other areas while we're there.

Okay, time to go do Bible reading & Theory homework.

DONE!

Midterms complete! Today we had Scripture Memorization, which I know I nailed, then in the afternoon we had Sight-Singing, which I don't think I did that great on because I can't read musical notation worth crap...but if that's the only midterm I didn't do so great on, I can live with that.

We got our Music Theory tests back & I got a 92%! So excited! I haven't found out how I did on anything else yet but I feel pretty good about everything. And it's so nice not to have homework to do tonight! So much extra time, what am I going to do with myself?! Haha.

We read chapter 1 of Humility today in Teresa's class. Man. Challenging book. I have the feeling it's definitely going to change me...not sure how that will look just yet, but I know it's coming. Dunno if I'm ready for it, but I'm not so sure you ever can be ready for that sort of thing. Prayer would be appreciated, I think.

Let's seeee...not too much else to report I guess! I'm alot more relaxed now that tests are over! One more week of school & then it's off to Cadillac next weekend, which everyone tells me will be really relaxing & fun, so I'm looking forward to that.

And now I'm going to do some Bible reading & watch a movie, because I have nothing else to do tonight. :o)

Only Two More!

Today was pretty uneventful, actually. We had Bible Review with Gary in the morning (Colossians, today) & then our Music Theory midterm in the afternoon. I was really nervous about that one too, but I went through it really thoroughly & took time to write out all my key signatures & my interval diagram & everything. I didn't even look up once until I had completely finished. When I was done, I realized not even an hour had passed & NO ONE else had finished yet. I got really nervous that maybe I had rushed through too quickly & done some things wrong, so I looked over all of it again. Everything seemed right, so I handed it in to Kal, he flipped through it & said, "Wow, this looks really good Cara. Good job!" Yay! So now the two scariest midterms are over, & I think I did alright on both of them!

Tomorrow we have our Sight-Singing midterm (how do you even study for that) & our Scripture Memorization midterm. We have to write out Psalm 23 & Ephesians 1:17-23. Psalm 23 is no big deal, but I'm having a hard time with the Ephesians one still. So for practice I'm going to type it out here right now.

Ephesians 1:17-23 : "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom & revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, & His incomparably great power for those who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised him from the dead & seated him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule & authority, power & dominion, & every title which can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet & appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."

GAH! Paul is like the KING of run-on sentences. I swear. Pray that I remember all that tomorrow. I feel like I'm in AWANA again. Oy.

We have a ladies' prayer meeting tonight at the beach house instead of homegroup. Should be good, I think. I'm off to study Ephesians some more.

Midterms...Continued.

I didn't have to be at school till 11 today. It was great, I slept till 9 & still got to school in plenty of time to practice for my Keyboarding midterm. I think it went really well! For some reason I wasn't really nervous about that one...though it WAS a little intimidating to walk into Kal's office to him & Teresa & Kim all sitting behind this big table with notes & grading sheets. Haha. I had to play the G major scale, inversions in D major & D minor, a chord progression (I-IV-V-IV), & Revelation Song in D. It took me a minute to transpose the song from G to D, but everything else went pretty smoothly I think.

Songwriting had me stressing more than any other midterms, & we had that one this afternoon. It was like 4 pages long & we had to do phrasing & roman numerals for 2 songs. I used almost the entire two hours & was still freaking nervous about it, but I finished the whole thing & turned it into Kal...when he looked through it before I left he said it looked good, so I'm going to assume that I didn't fail. Haha. I'm guessing he would've mentioned if it was totally wrong, so I feel pretty good about it.

After school Hanna & I went to Common Grounds to study for Music Theory, which is tomorrow. After some review I feel pretty confident...that's our only midterm tomorrow so I'll have plenty of time to study. Thursday is our Scripture Memorization midterm, & then Sight-Singing midterm, & then we're done! I'll be so happy when this week is over.

Tonight I'm going out with Serita, & then home to study some more.

But first, Law & Order with Roommate. :o)

And So Begins Midterms Week...

Got to sleep till 9:00 this morning! Amazing. Haha. Today we had our first midterm in Ear Training...wasn't so bad, actually! I feel like I did pretty well, which gives me confidence for the rest of the week. The melodic dictation part wasn't even so hard!

Tomorrow we have Keyboarding & Songwriting midterms, & I'm definitely the most worried about the Songwriting midterm. But then Sam pointed out that it is only 10% of our total grade, whereas our actual SONG is worth 35%. I'm feeling pretty good about my song, Stef helped me put music to a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, & she helped me write a chorus. She is AMAZINGLY talented, & she's really made it sound great, so I'm not too worried about that part. So now I'm not as scared of failing the actual midterm...hopefully I won't, but you get it. Keyboarding should be a cinch, scales & chords & inversions are old hat for me. A little nervous about having to play a song in different keys, but overall I think I'll do fine.

Yesterday all the girls met at me & Kate's house & started reading a book called "Hinds Feet On High Places." It's an allegory, & it reminds me alot of Pilgrim's Progress. I'm trying to decide if I've read it before...the story feels familiar, but I didn't recognize the title at all. Either way, it's a really great book & I know God is going to speak to me alot through it.

Okay, time to go study for Songwriting some more. Pray for me. I'm only halfway joking.

Week One Back, Complete.

Well, all things considered, the first week back went by pretty quickly. If it keeps going like this it's going to be May in no time.

Worship this morning was really great...God was really speaking to me through Psalm 86, it was incredible. Then Kal brought a word about how we are all in the place that we're supposed to be right now, even if it feels really restrictive. He used the example of getting stuck driving behind a snow plow (something that's happened to a few of us the last couple of days); it's frustrating because you can't see around the thing because it's so huge, & it moves so slowly that all you want to do is go around it. But really, it's the safest place to be because if you're following the snow plow you're on the clearest part of the road. And that's where God wants us right now! He's going in front of us, clearing the way, & it might be slow moving, but even if you were to go around the freaking giant snow plow, you'd be in the middle of a blizzard & you couldn't see anything anyway. Wow...I definitely needed to hear that.

Stewardship In Life was with Carol today...she talked about eating healthy & exercising, which is something I could for sure do more of. Bleh. One of these days I will get motivated.

Drum lesson was good...we're learning odd time signatures. Suuuuck! Today we worked on 5/4 timing. What the crap. How does that even work. Definitely gotta practice this week.

Now I am hanging out with Stef, so this concludes this blog. Haha.

Humility.

Oy. Today should have been a snow day...all the public schools were out, but we still had school. Blech. Instead of Prophetic Worship today we started a new class with Tre called Personal Development. We started going through the book Humility by Andrew Murray, & Teresa shared some of her own testimony.

I have to be honest & say that I really didn't like what God was speaking to me in that class. Over the past year or so, I've gotten really prideful...especially since coming here. I always thought that pride was like...thinking you're better than everyone else or something. But really, insecurity is pride. Worry is pride. Comparing yourself to anyone (for better or worse) is pride. And God started showing me all these areas in my life that are totally prideful & that I'm totally missing the point in those areas. But humility in it's truest form is knowing who God is & who I am. I'm slowly learning what it means to die to myself every day. Nothing is about me. Nothing is about what I want. Nothing is even about what anyone else wants or expects...all that matters is that I am allowing myself to be an empty vessel that God can use to work through me. So going through this book should be interesting...I know I need to change some things...but now how do I do that?

We had reviews for Songwriting & Ear Training midterms today. I'm going to suck at the melodic dictation for Ear Training, & I'm pretty nervous about the Songwriting one...I'm not a musician, I don't know stuff about notation! I'm a little bit overwhelmed right now, so pray that I can relax enough to study & do well on all my tests next week.

Also pray that it keeps snowing so we won't have school tomorrow. Haha.

Songwriting With John Cooper.

AMAZING DAY.

Leading worship was incredible this morning. It was so anointed, & Trefor brought a word about how the students of this school year are going to be different than students of past years. We are going to be tall towers in our cities & we will have firm foundations & do amazing things for God that we can't even imagine yet. Our year is to be unified & grow more than any previous year has. Wow. SO encouraging.

Keyboarding today was good, & I feel confident about the midterm.

I read through chapter 2 of Pursuit of God & WHOA it totally rang true for me. It talked about Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, & Tozer made the point that God asked him to sacrifice his son because Abraham was in danger of loving Isaac MORE than he loved God. But God never wanted Abraham to ACTUALLY kill Isaac, He wanted him to be WILLING to give everything up to Him so that there was no question of Lordship in Abraham's life. Mind=Blown. It was completely eye-opening to look at it that way! This book is going to change my life. READ IT.

John & Korey came in for Songwriting today...3 hours with John Cooper = nearly 8 pages of notes & sore abs from laughing so hard. It was hilarious & fun, but SO practical & helpful too. He gave us each printouts of the lyrics to the songs One Day Too Late & Monster (both off of Skillet's latest album Awake), played them for us on his iPod, & then broke each song down line by line & explained his thought process for why he changed certain words or where he wanted to rhyme, or how he decided what the chorus should sound like compared to the verse. I have to have a Panhead moment & say that it was really hard to keep from having a stupid smile on my face as he was going through all of that...how many people get to hear all the details of how their favorite songwriter from their favorite band writes his songs? It was an incredible experience & he gave us some really practical advice for writing. Fastest 3 hours of my life, no joke.

I went to Common Grounds with Lydia after school, & it was so great to just talk about what God's been speaking to us since we've been back at school. God has been speaking to me more about getting involved in the fight against trafficking, & Lydia encouraged me to be in prayer for those that are enslaved & just really intercede for them. I had never thought of it that way, but it totally makes sense.

Time for Bible reading & then bed. This day has been too exciting for my own good.

Long Day...Short Post.

I feel like so much happens in one day I can't even keep up.

We started reading Pursuit of God by Tozer today. Wow. How much more simple & honest can you get, really? It's going to be really challenging, but it will be an awesome read, I can just tell.

Today we had class with Teresa & she just talked to us about really getting into the Bible & memorizing Scripture. I need to do this. Like seriously...I hate memorizing, but I love it when I'm in a situation & the perfect verse just pops into my head. If you were stranded on an island with no Bible, how would you read it? You have to know it.

My team leads worship tomorrow, then we have Keyboarding in the morning & John Cooper in the afternoon! So excited!

1st Day Back.

Today was actually a really good day. After worship we had about an hour where we just each talked about what God was speaking to us over the break, & it was amazing how He was speaking to me about at least ONE thing that each of the other students said. We followed up with more prayer time & it was actually just really refreshing, & a good reminder of why I'm here to begin with.

Scott continued his eschatology teaching today. Holy crap. I never knew there were so many end times theories. I can see alot of things I agree with & don't in each one...I grew up on more of a dispensationalism background, so I tend to lean more towards that, even though there are some things in the true dispensationalist theory that don't really line up to me. But the amillennialism makes sense in some ways too...it all comes down to rapture or not. I think that there could be a rapture, but it's not like I'm expecting it every day when I wake up. God can do what He wants. Technically no one will really know until Christ returns anyway.

After lunch we had midterm reviews in Ear Training & Theory. Ugh. I'm nervous. But we don't have to be at school till 9:45 monday, tuesday, & wednesday of next week, & we get out at 2:30 every day, so that will help ALOT. ALSO! Found out today that John Cooper is coming in to teach our Songwriting class on wednesday! Awweessoome! Guess which day I'M looking forward to most this week? Haha.

Worship Teams were actually not bad considering I haven't practiced in two weeks. We started learning Greatest One by The Spark (which you can hear on their Myspace, second song on the playlist)...pretty sure they could have picked an easier one to start off with, but hey. Haha. It's kind of hard to play, but really fun when I get it down.

Umm...I think that about wraps it up! I'm glad I came back, after all.

I'm Going To Be Honest.

I don't want to go back.

I don't feel like anyone there cares if I'm there or not, & that it wouldn't affect anyone if I decided not to go back. Maybe this is just the enemy trying to get in my head, but I just don't see the point. When I get back I face midterms, which I don't think I'll be able to do that well on, plus I have to write an entire song, which I've tried to start a hundred times...I'm not a musician. I'm not a songwriter. I don't understand notation, I play drums! And not even that well!

I guess it doesn't matter. I leave tomorrow at 6am, whether I like it or not.

I need prayer. I can't do this on my own.