Nope, not Arnold.

Like most tuesday's I went to the rec center to work out with Noah. My regular scheduled body sections to lift was chest and triceps. I stuck to the plan and everything was going swell until I decided to take a closer look at an ab workout that some fellas were doing on the decline bench. These guys were no arnold schwarzaneggers, so I figured I might as well try it with them. Brett Kroeze, one of the non-arnolds, warned me that my abs would hurt for a week, but I figured I could take the pain. So I did the work out with them which didn't hurt all that bad at the time. Basically we took a 6 pound ball...leaned our backs parallel with the ground....swung the ball to the left and to the right 6 times....went all the way down on the bench and then all the way back up, then repeated. You probably would need to see it. We finished three sets and called it good.


Yesterday *wednesday* I felt a bit of the sting in my abs. They hurt quite a bit, but it was bearible. It helped that I didn't lift any weights because it was my day off, but I did play an intense intermural basketball game at night. However, the pain increased today...which I really did not expect....and when Noah woke me up to go to my Coaching track and field class....I yawned and tried to get up at the same time....and I cramped up something fierce. I have not been able to walk straight up, laugh, sleep, or do anything normal with out my lower left pelvic ab hurting like hell. I couln't even go to track class....


I guess it just goes to show that I am no arnold either.

Byahhhh Birmingham

Last week thursday 9 students from Dordt including myself headed to Birmingham, Alabama to Put Love Into Action at New City Church and the Center for Urban Missions.



We left around 2 in the afternoon and got in about 8 in the morning, slept until noon. For some reason most of us forgot that we were going to be in the city, but as it turns out 1 million people (suburbs included) is a lot of people. Only a few blocks down was the campus of UAB (University of Alabama Birmingham) which was very nice, and the skyscrapers were pretty much right next door to the church. We slept on the third floor of the church which was the dining/kitchen/youth group/ sweating in the spirit area.

Saturday we started work on the lower level of the church which had a bunch of flood damage and was a big mess. The girls did most of that and the guys moved furniture out of a room and prepped it for painting. The only thing that took a long time was the big hole in the wall from the door. Other than that I drove to Home Depot a couple of times to get supplies. Venessa Brown, a church staff member and amazing women, took us to the five points starbucks (no, I didn't drink any coffee - tea instead) then drove around UAB's campus. After staying up really late and having some good conversation about Soulforce we finally went to bed. Waking up was a lot harder to do.

I went to the mens Bible study at 9 with two other group dudes. We were the majority of the people for the first 45 minutes. Guys trickled in until 1030 when the actual church service started. I was taken back by the wisdom by many of the men. It wasn't just a formal meeting, guys opened up and shared many stories where God showed them many things. Unfortunatly i was not completely tuned in because of the lack of sleep from the night before. Its a good thing the service was extremely charasmatic (by Sioux Centers standards). I had no problem staying awake with all of the crowd participation either.... AMEN!!! Preach it brother!!! Say that!!! Hallelujah!! It was nice. Also, to my suprise the pastor used TULIP in the sermon. There denomination is Evangelical Covenant which I do not know anything about, but honestly, I thought there would be more differences in doctrine just because the church is inner city and African-American. I'm glad I now know how dumb that thinking is.

Our work stayed the same most of the week....except the guys took out some cinderblocks and moved a bunch of dirdt (thats the Dordt kind) that surrounded the church. We ran into afew problems moving it, but we got the job done.


^ Inspecting the questionable tire.


^ Finding out we were wrong



^ Movin Dirdt and bricks


^ the new trailer we got! much better.



^The civil rights museum.



^ Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (which was bombed, killed four little girls, and made people really feel empathy towards racism.



^ This is a statue of "nigger" Bull Conners mean dog that liked to bite people.


^ The park where the Childrens March took place in 1963.

Hotlanta (actually Atlanta, but many people call it that (not pictured). We drove by Talledega speedway. Ohh yah and somewhere in there I shaved...then turned 22.....then got asked if I turned 18 or 19.


^The team in front of the church right before we left. (Andrew, Rachel, Adrianna, Avery, jon, sara, me, ashley, and jimmy.

"I am - Here I am"

Another thought provoking contemporary philosphy class prompted me to blog. So here it goes....

I keep hearing in church/chapel that we need to be agents of change in the world. This is one of the foundational missions of Dordt itself...to prepare people to change the world. Don't get me wrong... I think this idea is a good one as long as we do not let oursleves think along the lines I am going to describe.
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When we understand ourselves as the "agents" of change it tends to make ourselves the center of the idea. It can be seen as thinking---"what I recieve I redirect to others". To put it simply we have talents and we can use them or we can not use them. Honestly, I find myself thinking this way quite often. It really doesn't sound all that bad. I mean God gives us gifts and we share those with others right?
or...
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We can understand that "I can only recieve what I recieve for others". In this way there is a proir devotedness to others. That makes things a lot clearer to me because before we are anything..... we are called to responsiblity. We are not just recievers and redirecters, but recievers. A qoute that quarelates nicely is "To find yourself is to find yourself devoted" (Levinas) Well, Once again my pride takes a hit...its not me...God is setting things in motion.

Interestingly all this stuff stemmed from a conversation about prayer which is equally fastinating.
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We read an article that examined prayer as the posture of a decentralized self. One part of the article talks about how hard it is to praise in prayer; the other 4 types - thanksgiving, confession, petition, and intercession (for others) - are not as hard because they involve using "I" "Me" or "We". These are much easier to pray because we can benefit from them. Especially in public it seems like we have a hard time praising and adoring God...because we do not want to feel arrogant. Basically what I took out of the article so far is that the real test of prayer is when I am in my room alone with God. From there I can have a stronger sense of peace about praising God in front of other people.

Sorry, this is a long post.

One more thing....I was searching some blogs the other day and I ran into something that struck a chord with me. Travis Burgers wrote (after you click scroll down to july23 04 "givin it my all") this....
Ok Im done now. good night

Man Im restless...good wedding though.

It always seems like the beautiful weather comes right at the times when I have the most stuff to get done. Today is the perfect example...65 degrees, no wind, clearly the nicest day of 07' and what am I up to>>>Writing a major history paper and studying for a Veenstra test on wednesday. All day I just felt pent up...and I feel as though the majority of Dordts campus is Longing for Spring Break! Its all the more powerful now that there are only 3 days left til we get out of school. arggg...I need to get away from this campus! So soon yet..so far away.

On a similar topic, Dan and Steph tied the knot last weekend. It was a very nice wedding, but it made me feel old. Those dang videos with pictures of them growing up and comming together seem to make life seem so short though. Either way..... good people - good times.

Hindsight

I had some good reflection time sitting in the History of American Evangelicalism class today . Krygsman was talking about how people during the beginning of the second great awakening read the Bible basically using reason and even moreso common sense philosophy. I'm not sure what he said about that sparked my thought, but I remembered back in late high school when I started reading the Bible on my own. I kind of told myself that I would not read any commentary or the life application stuff the first time I read it...as to not add outside influence to my understanding of the scripture.

I sat there and kind of smirked as I thought about how rediculous that sounds to me now. Its funny that I didn't realize how deeply my Calvinist/ CRC roots effected my thought and my perception of scripture. Even something as simple as "Jesus loves me..the Bible tells me so"(not distinctly crc) has a message that effects the way I think, live, and believe. Most of the things I learned growing up came from a distinct perspective that influences my "glasses" to seeing the world. (friken even that idea is calvinist).

Moral o story is: To think I could read the Bible with out outside influence was crazy...Ive been raised to read it (and everything) a certain way...Calvin/Kuyper/a host of theologians/Christian Reformed Church/Dordt College/ Nibbelink Family....you get the point.

Just a little muse from class.

Birmingham, Alabama

Its official, Birmingham Alabama is the destination for our PLIA group this spring break. Already next week the 11 of us will take off from Dordt and drive 16 1/2 hours to The New City Church in downtown Birmingham (I have not even talked to the contact, but I googled her and I am pretty sure this is accurate). I am not sure what we are going to do, but I am confident that this is the place our group is suppose to be. Situations like this (going from brooklyn to rehoboth to birmingham) don't just happen. I am getting really excited to see what God has for us there!


on a completely different topic:
I took some photos of the Blizzard effects.

Snow much fun!

Last night my roomate noah and i went over to our neighbors in southview (darren, daniel, and chris) to play pictionary with the other neighbor girls (abbie, jill, and brittney). We played men vs women and almost got into a fight between the sexes...this is pretty funny to me now, but last night I was PISSED. It didn't help that we had a great combination of the most competitive and most stubborn people in our class. Anyways, after we got done playing we went tubing behind westra's truck in the all seasons center parking lot and had a blast doing it. He had his tahoe full of people in the seats and in the back..with the back window open so we could see the tubers. As he wipped around the lot the people in the tube got snow pretty much everywhere, but it was definately worth it. When we finally decided to back inside everyone was frozen from the snow and sore from the windburn.


It was definatly worth it though....who says blizzards are all bad. No school for everyone but Dordt college, yet..we still manage to find the joy in the massive amount of snow.