Spring 2010

So this is my last semester of college! :) It's going to be a pretty cool semester. I'm taking the following courses:

1. Racism & Prejudice
2. Judaism
3. Teaching the Exceptional Learner
4. Child Development

All these classes are so interesting. They bring so much color into my college life! :) I'm really looking forward to ending this semester strong! Aiming for straight As this semester! haha! :) Have a good one yall! :)

IBIQ Campaign..

Posting this for my sister Reesa! :)

Urbana 2009

Last week, the band that I'm in (Tipping Point) went to a missions conference in St. Louis, Missouri called Urbana. This conference happens once every three years and is mainly focused on global missions. When I went to the conference, I was excited about what I was going to learn, but really didn't know what to expect. God met me in so many different ways.

I went to a Jewish seminar where I learned how to witness to Jewish people about Christ. The person who spoke in this seminar was a Jew who didn't believe in Jesus, until a friend of hers showed her the passage in Isaiah, and had her read it in her own language from the Torah. It was awesome to hear her story on how she came to know the Lord!

I also attended two music seminars. I learned about the business of music and how I should act when going to gigs and how to look. So yeah, I've heard it before, but it was good to hear it from a person who plays both in the church and outside as well. The other seminar was mainly for the theatre, but I still learned. I learned that a lot can be revealed through acting, and you can still portray Christ even without mentioning the name of Jesus. Theatre is a totally different world. The speaker said "If you want to preach, then preach. Because acting is a totally different thing" I thought that was cool. It showed that God can be revealed through everything.

I then went to another seminar that talked about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I thought it was very good. It broke my heart seeing and hearing about the things that were going on in Israel and Palestine. The man that spoke there was a Palestinian Christian and he told us about the different things that happened as he was growing up in the Holy City.

Then I went to a prayer seminar where they were talking about the roots of our sins. A lot of the sins that we struggle with deals with a lot of things that we've encountered in our pasts. And the speaker encouraged us to gather with other believers and try to find the root of those things that we struggle with and pray against those things and that God would uproot them and cut them off from us. A lot of the things we struggle with are also generational. Those things do not belong to us, and we should pray to God to cut that from us as well. I learned a lot from this seminar and it totally changed a lot about how I view certain things.

The speakers at this conference were amazing. One of the speakers spoke about prayer, and it totally changed my perspective on how I should pray. Of course, God hears our prayers, but being bold and being specific is something we usually don't do in our prayers. And so, it challenged me to try to pray more specific instead of generally. I also learned not to be critical. When the music team started singing, I was very critical about the vocals. But then God convicted me and he asked "Did you meet me? Did you encounter me during worship?" I was so busy being critical about the music that I totally lost my focus on God! So, I prayed for forgiveness and just worshiped him.

God did such an amazing thing at Urbana. I learned so much and I just pray that I didn't leave that conference on just adrenaline alone, but I left knowing that God was going to continue to sustain me and continue to feed that fire that was ignited in me from Urbana. God moved in so many ways, and I look forward to what he has in store for 2010. I'm thinking about going on a short-term missions trip to Israel, but I'm still praying about it.

If 2013 comes around, you should definitely go to Urbana! :) It'll change the way you view the things around you as well as the world! God bless!!!!