93%!!!!!

Yep! That's what I got on my Music Theory test! I'm pretty excited. I think I jumped up & down. I definitely said something like, "93%?!?! On something I wasn't even sure if I knew?!?!" Kal looked at me all wide-eyed & said, "As teacher of this class, that is definitely NOT something I want to hear." Hahaha. Oops. But YAY! I was expecting MAYBE 80%...an A is good with me!

Worship was great. I felt like God was giving me a word about peace, but I was kind of nervous to actually bring it...finally I did & then right after JL spoke up & brought a word, which was actually kind of intimidating to know that our apostle heard the word I brought. Haha. But it was good. We're always talking in class about how if we want to become more prophetic we have to just go for it when we feel we get a word. So I went for it, & I know it will help me grow.

Today we had more Q&A time with JL. It's been really cool to hear some of the questions people have, & to hear what he has to say. He's great for Scriptural questions, & usually in his tangents he answers the questions I wouldn't have even thought to ask. It's definitely been a learning experience.

Worship team practice was good...we lead with our full band for the first time on wednesday! I'm so excited & so terrified at the same time. But it will be great!

Kal & Teresa are amazing & they are giving us tomorrow morning off of school. We don't have to be at class till 11:45! So amazing!

CBC tonight. Pray for me to have a good attitude.

Taken.

A bunch of SOW people came over on friday to watch movies. We ended up watching Taken. If you haven't seen it, DO IT. Basically this girl goes on vacation & ends up getting taken & sold into sex slavery. Her dad is ex-secret service or something to that effect, & goes across the world to find her & try to save her. All I could think of the entire movie was that it's completely sick what these girls are put through. They spend their lives chained up like animals so that they can be used for someone else's income. And I just felt so convicted...the entire movie my mind was just SCREAMING "STOP THIS!!!!" It needs to be put to an end. It's a common practice in Europe...& it's becoming more common here in the States. Craiglist.com has an entire classified section for "erotic services," & many of the ads are selling girls that aren't even 18 years old yet. This needs to end. I want to get involved, so I'm starting with this blog post to help raise awareness. I'm not sure how many people actually even read my blog, but please take it seriously.

Joelle turned me on to an organization called Love146 that's out to put an end to child trafficking, & I encourage you to look into it & donate, if you feel led. Even just buying a t-shirt...everything helps.

www.love146.org

Djembe.

Yes, that's a word.

Today Shanon & Larry taught on finances again in Stewardship In Life. It was good...but money stresses me out. I'm doing okay, & really I've always done okay for myself...but today I realized I have to start preparing for the next couple of years & I don't want to. Haha. Bible Review with Tim was good, as always...we're in Deuteronomy now.

Back to the djembe. Kelly & I had our drum lesson together today, & it was awesome! He taught us about hand drums, like the congas & the djembe & other percussion instruments. We spent an hour just drumming & kind of grooving together, it was so fun! My hands are all blistered now & my wrists & forearms are sore, but I don't even care. I kind of want to go buy one now. It would be great for when we lead worship acoustically. But I don't suppose that fits with the first paragraph about saving money, does it? Haha.

TGIF. This week went by pretty quickly though..oh! I forgot to post yesterday about my Theory test! I'm not sure of my score yet, but I feel like I did well & when Kal glanced over it before I left class he said it looked good...so here's hoping! I felt pretty confident about it, & thanks for your prayers!

I'm hungry. Going to find food...for once. Haha.

Spiritual Gifts.

Man, I LOVE Prophetic Worship.

Today we talked about spiritual gifts, like word of knowledge/wisdom (when God shows you something about someone that there is no way you could naturally know), discernment, healing, prophecy...Teresa told us some crazy cool stories. Like, in the first year on the school there was a girl that actually physically SAW Jesus during one of their worship times. She saw him praying over certain people, saw him singing with them...like, with her own eyes, as if he were a physical person like anyone else in the room. That's AMAZING. There were stories of people seeing angels, people doing/witnessing miracles...Teresa always says we are naturally supernatural. I think it's true, God does such amazing things through us...Teresa once went to a prayer meeting & there was a guy that had severe burns on his arm from an accident he had had while working with tar that week. She prayed over him & he was completely healed. She said the guy was so excited that all he could do was jump up & down & yell & praise God. She didn't even get to talk to him. At one point while she was talking about healing, she looked at me & said, "Actually, while you were giving your testimony I prayed & asked God if he wanted to do a miracle, like a restorative miracle...He answered right away & said, 'No.' No explanation, just very clearly, 'No.' " That made my day. I like my scar. I think God likes it too. :o)

The whole class was amazing. One of the girls on the school is almost completely deaf, & several of us have had words that God is going to heal her. I felt really strongly that we should pray for her yesterday, so those that wanted to receive the gift of healing or have already moved in that gift laid hands on her & prayed. I went up behind Bethany & Lydia & put one hand on each of their shoulders & began to pray. Bethany was praying out loud at the time, & almost as soon as I put my hand on her shoulder I got the most intense pain in my right ear...it literally brought me to tears, but I kept praying, & I kept my hand on Bethany's shoulder. After we finished praying, we asked her how she felt. She was kind of shaken, & sadly admitted that she couldn't hear any better. I told her about the pain I had, & she said, "Did you say your right ear? While everyone was praying for me, my ears were hurting, & they felt really hot...but my right ear was hurting worse than my left one." I don't know what exactly happened, but I completely believe that God is going to heal her this year. I don't know when, but I know it's going to happen. I don't know why my ear was hurting...but I know the Lord was moving, & I can't wait for her to get healed.

Maybe I sound like I've gone off the deep end. I don't really care. All I know is what God has showed me, & that's good enough for me.

Homegroup.

School today was pretty chill. I always love Gary's Bible Review class. Right now we are in 1 Corinthians. Good stuff. Keyboarding is going well...it's coming back alot faster than I thought it would.

Homegroup tonight was really great. We just had worship time, & Heather gave us each a verse to read out during worship. I had a Psalm that was only 2 lines, & I started feeling like it needed to be sung. I don't have a great voice. I was not about to just sing out this Psalm. Not happening. But then every time I opened my mouth to try & just READ it, it was like I got all tongue-tied & couldn't! I could hear it as a melody in my head...& Teresa is always saying that if you can hear the notes in your head, you WILL hit them. So I closed my eyes & just sang it out as loud as I could. And then a really cool thing happened...everyone else started singing it with me! So it really wasn't as scary as I thought...& I still don't care for my voice...but it wasn't about that! It was about being obedient to God's prompting & doing something that I really didn't care to do in order to praise Him. And I know if I hadn't sang it out I would have regretted it. It NEEDED to be sung. I don't know why, but I was glad that I was able to make myself step out in faith. It was a great worship time overall, focusing on the joy of the Lord. I even had a word for Stef...it was definitely a really anointed time & even in my tiredness of the week I felt really sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

I'm exhausted now. So I think it's bed time. Goodnight.

Random.

Oh tuesday...I might not like you anymore.

Exploring Worship is such an amazing class. I've only said it about a hundred times. But it's true. Did you know that an "altar call" after a worship time is totally not in the Bible? Worship time is designed for GOD, not for us to respond to our problems. Not to say that there aren't appropriate times for those things to be addressed, especially in times of outreach...but I found that interesting. The moment you have people come forward, you've taken the focus off of God & put it onto yourself. There's some food for thought.

Teresa gave us a singing lesson today to help with Carols by Candlelight. It actually did help, & maybe it will keep me from getting so lightheaded when I'm singing notes that high for that long.

Songwriting class was good...but we started in on more Theory-related stuff today, so I got a bit lost. But Hanna & I went to Dairy Queen after school to get ice cream & study for thursday's test, so I'm feeling much more confident about it now. Stupid key signatures...haha.

Worship teams are going great!! I can feel SUCH an improvement, it's absolutely amazing. I'm actually starting to be pretty confident about my playing...Tom came up to me the other day & was like, "You know what I like about your drumming, Cara? You hit HARD." I love that. I want to be a hard drummer, people tend to think girls can't hit as hard because we aren't as strong, but I'm going to prove them wrong.

I found out today that Serita is going to be my discipler! Pretty excited about that, actually...& then when I got home I found out she is coming over for dinner tonight. Ironic. Haha. Actually, I think I hear her upstairs now...

Oh, PS, I don't have a black eye! Thank God!

Questions, Tests...& a Black Eye?

For a monday, today wasn't bad! Worship time was awesome. But really it always is...I dunno why I think it won't be. Because I'm human & stupid, maybe? Who knows. Anyway, it was a really great time, & Sam brought a word about starting the week kneeling in the presence of the Lord. Pretty amazing, actually. And God gave me a song today, as well, kind of from Serita's prophecy...I think it might actually turn into a legit song, not just a few bars. So we'll see how that turns out.

Exploring Worship is always great. We looked at Abraham, Job, & David, & how their response in times of trouble was to worship the Lord. They just completely trusted Him to take care of them in really difficult times. I want that to be my response as well. It's easy to worship when we have the "warm fuzzy feelings" towards God, but how about when our faith is being tested? Definitely alot to chew on. Good stuff.

Kal had to leave class early today because he got braces. Haha. So JL came in & we got to basically have a Q&A time with him for a couple of hours. We haven't really had him in class since V&C ended, so it was really great to hear some valid questions answered. Kelly asked a really good question, when God tells you to be patient, how active can you be in that patience before becoming impatient? Faith & patience are ACTIVE, just because God tells you to be patient doesn't mean you can just sit around & do nothing. Our primary active response to patience should be PRAYER. Sometimes I kind of think God wants to test how badly we really want something. Are we going to pursue it, or just drop it after He tells us to wait? And when is it appropriate to stop praying & really just wait? John's answer was that right now, all of our primary focus should be deeper intimacy with God. Anything else is secondary in this season of life. Which is good...I have potential to be distracted in more than one area right now, but JL pointed out that patience is often the antidote to worry or distress, & I'm finding that to be dead on in my own experience. I'm still impatient about some things that I'd like to see fulfilled sooner than later, but it isn't about me, it's about God's timing. Back before school I prayed that I would learn patience, & God definitely gave me something to wait on. But He is faithful to those who wait on Him, & for once in my life, I'm actually not worried about the future. I know He's got it under control, & it's a good feeling.

Theory was hard today...we have a test on thursday. I NEED prayer for that, I'm really nervous! Ear wasn't so bad today, though we will have a test a week from today in THAT class too. Oy.

We finally got assigned worship teams. I'm pretty pleased with mine, actually, though there is definitely one factor of our team that will, again, constantly be trying my patience. But it's okay, I'll grow.

Funny story, before I end this...Tim was feeling sick today, so we all went down the hall to his office & prayed over him. As we were walking back down the hallway, I looked down for one second & as I looked up again I walked RIGHT into the corner of the coat rack. The thing hit me right in the corner of my left eye & holy crap it hurt. My eye's been pretty red all day, & it's really sore & tender, but there's no significant bruising...yet. I'll be pretty upset if I wake up with a black eye. I'm so clumsy. The end.