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)