Heather’s Blog

So really my title says it all. Today we went to Caesarea, it was really neat to see all the ruins and hear about what happened there (such as Herod Agrippa being eaten by worms) or what it would have been like in the days that it was in its prime. While we were learning about Caesarea... me and several of my friends may have gotten a little distracted and then lost our group. Oh yeah, and at this point I was getting sick and had a fever... So then we are running all over the ruins of Caesarea looking for our group or our bus. We finally found our group at the site of the ancient chariot races. Here is a picture of where we finally found our group... they are that group standing in the middle of the chariot race arena

We also stopped and saw an ancient aquaduct, it was really cool. The people of that day were so creative and made were really good at using what they had and making the most of it. Below is a picture of the aquaduct.

Posted by Heather at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I am on this trip in Israel, it will count for class credit for me. It is 12 days long, (today is the first!). The trip is with a program at our school called the Institute of Jewish Studies, most commonly referred to as IJS. It is a really great one year program, my room mate actually went through the program as her first year at PBU. Every year the group take a trip to Israel as part of their class, non-IJS students can go as well.

Today we arrivied in Tel-Aviv around 4:00 in the afternoon, we left around 11pm from the USA. It was one of the longest flights I have ever been on... and I don't know if you ever tried to sleep on a plane through the night... but it is rather hard. I had a window seat and therefore had to do a little seat jumping a couple times in the night - I'll explain. The guy sitting next to me was a sleep almost the whole flight, good for him right??? But then when ever I had to go to the bathroom I was faced with a dilemma, I could wake him up, I could try to sqeeze past him and hope he didn't wake up, or I could jump over him in hopes of not disturbing him. Well, I chose jumping, so I stood up on my seat, waited for the lady in the aisle seat to leave, and jumped onto her seat over our sleeping friend. It worked out well the first time, the second time it did not work so well because he woke up while I was in mid-jump and that was rather awkward.

Below is a picture of me and Abby (my room mate at the hotels for the trip) once we had gotten our luggage in Tel-Aviv. We were both a little exhausted..

Posted by Heather at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are many things that we find beautiful, and here at PBU I have found many beautiful things. You're probably going to have to be sentimental with me for this blog! Let me tell you about some of the beautiful things that I have discovered here...
1) the silly ducks who have incredibly adorable personalities and reflect our Creator's tender heart
2) the way the light used to shine over the marsh grasses next to the pond around 4ish which is right around the time I am walking back to my dorm from work. This reminds me that no matter what kind of day I may have had that God is still in control and that He surrounds me with little encouragements all the time.
3) the "ah" or "I get it" moments in class, when something finally clicks and you have learned something new about God that fires you up for the whole day
4) the times that you see the whole campus caught up in thinking and processing some idea, this reminds me that we are all a community, and when one of us gets fired up it is sure to spread like wild fire through hay or dried brush
5) the blue jays that linger everywhere on campus when it is warm outside. Everytime I see one I feel like it is a little surprise from God just for me... even though I know it is a blessing for all of us to share :)
6) walking down from the Smith Administration Building at night and seeing the giant trees and there looming shadow in the dark blue sky, it feels Edgar Allen Poe-ish.
7) random times when you can get together with your friends and simply worship our Creator, not planned, not rehearsed or perfect, no technology, perhaps even in the laundry room. Just lifting our voices up to God in some form of sweet simple unity.
8) learning that you don't need to ask your parents' or RA's permission to leave the dorm, you can just leave as long as you are back by curfew.
9) playing Hide and Seek in Target... because everyone knows it is way more fun than doing homework
10) procrastinating like I am doing right now and write a blog instead of starting a paper.
11) the moments when all you can do is rely on God because there is nothing else you can do
12)

13) becoming a grown up and trying to learn about balancing checkbooks and obtaining some form of a school loan (a beautiful thing? the memories of learning it are!)
14) having big ideas and being excited about them
15) trying to explain what predestination, election, and Sovereign Grace are to Middle Schoolers who expected a simple answer and hoping that your explanation doesn't mess with their minds too much

I could probably keep writing about beautiful things I have found on campus, like having conversations with your room mate in the middle of the night and finding out the next morning that she was sleep talking to you and has no recollection of that conversation. But I think out of all of the beautiful things I have found, one strikes me as particularily beautiful today and that is have friends with whom you can be completely honest, who you know will not judge you and you can tell them anything about what is happening in your life and you know that they will try to spur you on to have a more Christ-like attitude and a deeper relationship with Him. Having friends you can pray with and be accountable with... but also still have a lot of fun with. That is one of the things I am very thankful for today, and I just wanted to share it!

Posted by Heather at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guess what? Today is my half-birthday! But that is not what I am writing about... although thank you Rudy for helping me finally learn when it is! Rudy's half-birthday was yesterday. But I am actually writing about Greek today.
If you haven't guessed, I am taking a Greek class right now, it is actually the second semester of Greek for me. I think you could classify my relationship with Greek as a love/hate relationship... I really enjoy it, at the same time though, it is one of the most time consuming things I have ever done. The class itself is awesome, my professor has set up the class so that we have groups of 5-6 people who keep each other accountable with translating and homework and on every Monday and Wednesday we meet in our groups in class and work on learning Greek together while the professor goes around to each group. On Fridays it is one big class time when we all "parse" our verbs and participles together.
The reason I thought to write about Greek today, was only because I find my translating group somewhat hilarious, and it makes my day every day we translate together. We have 5 people in our group, Neil, Bean, Brittany, Brittany and myself. I compared us to a group of people who have to go through a cave, the cave represents Greek class. Getting out of the cave successfully represents successfully completing the class. Neil is the one with the map, he has to know where he is going and it has to be done in an efficient manner, he is the one you would want to stick with to get out of the cave. Bean is that person with the flashlight who gets really distracted and shines the light everywhere but where it needs to be, therefore you learn a lot about the cave...about its little hidden mysteries and the little crevices and stalactites (did I spell that right?) but you aren't really going anywhere because you can't see the map, the light isn't on it. Britt and Britt are diligent and try to help Neil and Bean work together and bring us back on track. Me, I am the person who sits there and makes analogies :) and studies people because I am a counseling major... I prefer to watch the group dynamics and I do work... It is a stressful language to learn and thankfully we can laugh about it, laughing relieves stress you know? My friend Austin said the other day that "This class gives him acid-reflux." it might, but I think that as a group we are getting through it. It is so rewarding when we can finally translate a verse or see a word in English version and think "Well, in the Greek it means this which seems to indicate that the author meant something along these lines." That is when you become excited and love that you are learning Greek, it inspires you to learn more.

Posted by Heather at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jess is my room mate, she has put up with quite a lot these past two years. For one I stay ip late, she goes to bed at a reasonable hour, I am very disorganized, she is organized, I never do the dished... and well, she doesn't either :) So yesterday was her birthday and about a week ago I decided that we should throw her a surprise birthday party for her at Applebee's. Me and some friends got together and discussed and tonight we had surprise partied. We had a little under 20 people, she was so surprised! It was a lot of fun and really neat to see everyone get together and just enjoy each other's company and celebrate our friendship's with Jess.

above is a picture of me and Jess

Posted by Heather at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I titled this blog "Growing Pains" for several different reason. As I am writing this I am in the car on my way back from a youth retreat with my church. I am a youth leader with the Middle School youth group. (I actually wrote it in my journal and now I am typing it up, just for clarification). So the first reason that I am titling this blog "Growing Pains" is because it was something I was thinking about when I was on this retreat and spending so much time with Middle schoolers this last weekend. So many of the kids have gone through such tough times, either with family or friends, and through that, they grow... and are still growing from it, and it hurts, and you can see them hurting and aching from it. The need God. They need His love and His grace so desperately. We have all been there I think... broken over a broken relationship, or dreams that would never come true, friends talking behind our back or feeling lonely from a lack of friends. We all have been there, and at least for me, those are the times that I draw closest to God. I don't have much life experience, but from what I've seen growth is often accompanied with pain and brokenness, it brings us closer to God. And so I saw "growing pains" in many of the kids this weekend, and the leaders as well, who were suffering from growing pains as well (myself especially) they were minor growing pains though, such as learning to love the kids who keep us awake until 3 in the morning and then wake us up around 8, or learning patience through difficult and awkward situations.

the above is a picture of me and Robbie, one of the boys in the youth group, we were practicing our air band. yeah, we go platinum this month...keep an eye out for our album :)

and below is a picture of my messy messy cabin and the girls who occupied it with me

The main reason that I thought to write this blog... was not because of what I observed in other people, but because I got a little homesick this weekend. It is my 3rd year here at PBU, I can't picture myself being at any other school or becoming a part of any other school more that I have at PBU, it has become my home, I spend most of my time here. So watching the dynamics between leaders and students, students and students, leaders and leaders, I thought a lot about when I was a middle school student and high school student, and how I also used to invoke the wrath of my youth leaders because I was too loud at too late an hour, or because i would wake up too early to get ready for camp so that maybe I would look decent for the day and preferrably attractive. And I remember sitting with my friends at meals, struggling with reaching outside of my circle and the little dramas that happened in my life. Or how I would get in trouble with my best friend for our mashed potato wars or shaving cream wars that tended to spread indoors from the outdoors. It all made me miss home and my home church. So I guess you could say I became home-church-sick, I missed the youth leaders who had spurred me on to growth, who had taught me to look to God in my pain, who did their best to show my CHrist's love through their own love... and now here I am, a youth leader to these kids, trying to show them love and trying to spur them on towards spiritual maturity. I can never go back to being that junior high girl who didn't mind only getting 3-4 hours of sleep at night, because it meant I was spending those awake hours with my friends. I am experiencing "growing pains" myself, because I am growing up, and I don't always know what that means, and I am not sure that I am ready, or that the world is ready for me and my large, idealistic ideas. I do know, that I am continuing in my growth with Christ, and that as long as I rely on Him, I will be ok, and better than ok. Growing up is not such a bad thing.

here is a picture from one of the snow camps I went to when I was in youth group...one of those nights we stayed up very very late

So summary... you are growing up... we all are, we can't stop it no matter how much we try. It isn't always fun, and you know what else? Sometimes it will be bittersweet when you see the roldes reversed, when you become the youth leader and when they don't know the music that you loved when you were in youth group (like Audio Adrenaline and DC Talk). Sometimes it will just hurt. At least we can hurt with the confidence that through it God is with us always, and that it is after the growing pains we can look on the wall that we have marked our height on for the last 20 years and see how much taller we've grown!

Posted by Heather at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was the Inauguration of our 5th president at PBU, Dr. Todd J. Williams. It was a really great ceremony (although it was a bit long, Dr. Williams even said that it would be like a wedding on steroids). I am thankful that anyone who wanted to go to the Inauguration could, it was an open event, it was nice to be able to show our appreciation for both Dr. Babb and Dr. Williams and to show our support for them by being there.

One of my favorite parts of watching "ceremonies" at school, such as graduations and now the inauguration, is seeing all of the professors coming in during the Processional.they all wear the robes they wore when they graduated with their degrees and all the colors on the robes mean different things. The professors are a huge part of making our school what it is. They care so much about the students, they create a family-like atmosphere on campus and challenge us to be mature christians and live God-honoring and God-dependent lives. I am very thankful for the professors that God has blessed us with at PBU.

Posted by Heather at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go Eagles! Yesterday me and some of my friends went to the men's volleyball game. Some of our friends are on the team, so its fun to go support them. I never watched a guys volleyball game before coming to college, and if you haven't see any guys volleyball either, let me tell you, it is kind of intense! Needless to say, they won the game, right now they are undefeated! It will be fun to see where this season takes them!

Below is a picture of me and my friend Brittany cheering on our friends playing volleyball...

Funny story though...while we were at the game, my friend Gaynell had brought me some tea, our favorite tea which is from Zebra Striped Whale which also has great ice cream! So I was drinking this fantastic tea, and I lost balance (while sitting) and I almost fell down the bleachers... it was embarrassing at the time, but now it is just funny...Well, I need to go clean my room, it is rather messy right now and beginning to drive me crazy!

Posted by Heather at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)