Höst

Lessons Through Pain

2012-01-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in our lives, we are faced with incredibly painful experiences. Ones that can really shake us to our core. It is easy to ask ourselves why we have to go through things like this and what God is trying to teach us by allowing us to go through that experience. This past weekend, God showed me three very crucial reasons why.

The first came on Sabbath through a sermon I heard by Dwight Nelson that spoke directly to my heart. His passage was John 11 and the story of Lazarus. He spoke about Jesus’ delay in coming to Lazarus’ home. He specifically waited until Lazarus died, and had been dead for four days before making the journey to Bethany. Elizabeth Talbot makes an interesting statement: “How strange! It doesn’t make sense to say, ‘He loved—so He delayed.’ Or does it? Obviously it isn’t the lack of affection that delayed the Son of God. So what was it? I have come to trust God’s timing even though I usually don’t understand it. I have a motto that has helped countless times: Delays are designed to show the magnitude of the miracle.”

Then it struck me. Sometimes God allows us to go through incredible pain to reveal the magnitude of the miracle God is going to perform for us THROUGH this tragedy. If Lazarus’ sister had not experienced the death of their brother Lazarus, then Christ healing Lazarus from his illness would not have been nearly as magnificent as Christ raising him from the dead. Sometimes, God allows us to go through severe trials because His love for us is shown in an even more powerful way in the end.

As Mrs. White says in Desire of Ages, pg. 528, “To all who are reaching out to feel the guiding hand of God, the moment of greatest discouragement is the time when divine help is the nearest. They will look back with thankfulness upon the darkest part of their way.”

Pastor Nelson made another interesting observation: What if what we have been hoping would be resurrected isn’t what needs to be? What if Jesus has stayed away long enough for that very thing to die completely so that in that dying, I might turn to Him as I never would have if that thing had not died in me? Maybe God wants that very thing to die since this is the only way to resurrect in me the greatest sense of my need to trust God and to build a deeper relationship with Him. Maybe only through that death can He raise me to live a new life with Him. And the promise in the story of Lazarus is that if Jesus is in my story, there will be a miracle in store for me.

The second reason came through something my sister shared with me. She took me to Isaiah 6. Mrs. White talks about the dreadful condition of the people of Judah during this time as they strayed away from God. It was into this mess that Isaiah found himself. And then with the death of King Uzziah, the outlook was bleak. But this crisis for Isaiah sent him to the temple, and it was there that God revealed to Isaiah His will. It was in this state of confusion, perplexity, and crisis for Isaiah that he heard God’s call for his life. When God asked, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”, Isaiah immediately answered the call and said, “Here I am! Send me.” It was through this crisis and his time with God in the temple, that he felt God’s call on his life and responded to be used by God.

In the book My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers make an interesting statement. He says, “The call of God is not the echo of my nature; my affinities and personal temperament are not considered. As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shall never hear the call of God. But when I am brought into relationship with God, I am in the condition Isaiah was in. Isaiah’s soul was so attuned to God by the tremendous crisis he had gone through that he recorded the call of God to his amazed soul. The majority of us have no ear of anything but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. To be brought into the zone of the call of God is to be profoundly altered.”

Chambers also writes, “God did not lay a strong compulsion on Isaiah; Isaiah was in the presence of God and he overheard the call, and realized there was nothing else for him but to say, in conscious freedom, ‘Here am I, send me.’…If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something akin to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, ‘Here am I; send me.’”

Sometimes in life, we are so in tune with our desires and wishes, what we think is best for ourselves, or what we think we are best fitted for. But going through a crisis, we instead sense God's call in our lives, often in a greater way then we have ever experienced it before. By coming face to face with God in the temple as a result of a crisis, God reveals HIS will, HIS call, and HIS leading. And being in the center of God’s will, not our own, is exactly where we should want to be!

The third reason is that sometimes God needs to get us alone with Him so he can speak to our hearts. It is only then that He can explain to us His will, His reasoning, His leading. In another section of Oswald Chamber’s book, he writes: “When God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship—when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are dumbfounded, and cannot ask one question, then He begins to expound… Are we alone with Him now?... Jesus can expound nothing until we get through all the noisy questions of the head and are alone with Him.”

Maybe our trials and pain are designed to get us alone with God. And in the stillness, the quietness, we can hear God speaking to our hearts, saying, ‘My child, just trust me. My hand will uphold you, My spirit will guide you, and lead you into paths you do not know.”

Is. 42:16—“I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them.”

Going Beyond the Command of “GO!”

2011-01-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

When it comes to reaching lost souls, many of us refer to the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20. We say that we seek to reach lost souls because God commanded us to do so. And while that is true, do we merely go just because of a command? Or is there a deeper purpose beyond that command that compels us to go. If there wasn't a command, would we still have the urgency to spread the good news of Christ's love to a dying world?

Of course, I could list a whole bunch of reasons why, but I merely want to list five.

1. The Crisis of a Christless Humanity
The Bible paints for us a very real dilemma facing the human race.

Act. 4:13—“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which they must be saved.”

John 14:6—“Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The Bible makes it clear that Jesus is the only means of salvation. Without Him, this Christless humanity is faced with a looming crisis--absolutely no hope of salvation. Without this hope of salvation, the only option they have is to be lost—not just a temporary, transitory loss, but an eternal lost. The loss of an infinite life—a life for which Christ sacrificed His own—is not just a trite loss. It is an immeasurably and inconceivably great or extensive loss.

Notice Paul's motivating factor for sharing Christ. 2 Cor. 5:10-11—“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men...” Paul knew that for the wicked who do not know Jesus, His coming would be a sheer terror. Paul said this fact was what drove him to share Jesus with others. He didn't want to see a Christless humanity that had no hope of salvation. And note the urgency by which he states this...he was persuaded to tell others. This is not a casual, nonchalant telling of the gospel. When people are seeking to persuade someone, they pull out every possible argument and reason to convince the other person. This is the urgency Paul felt. He did not want a Christless humanity to experience the crisis of an eternal loss.

We should have this same passion for lost souls.

2. We cannot assume that people will be saved.
In Zech. 13:6, we are given an account of individuals in heaven that will be perplexed about the nail prints in Jesus’ hands. They will inquire into the meaning behind them and it is then that Christ will be able to unfold to them the plan of salvation and how His death on the cross was the means of their salvation.

Some will use this passage to say that reaching lost souls for Christ is really not that necessary then since some will be saved never hearing the name of Jesus. Although it is possible for those who have not had direct instruction about Christ to listen to the wooing of the Holy Spirit through their quickened conscious, nature, or some other means, as followers of Christ, we must never take for granted that this is likely to occur. While we can hope that the world will hear about Jesus Christ, we must act and work as if they would not unless we directly told them.

Also, consider how we would feel if we were in their shoes. If we were them, wouldn't we wish that someone would tell us about the love of Jesus so that we would have the opportunity to be saved? This is a deeper application of the Golden Rule. We should do unto others as we would want them to do to us.

3. Reaching lost souls places us right in the center of God's work.
Have you ever wished you could have worked alongside Christ when He was on earth, to witness His teaching or experience His miracles? Just because we didn't live back then, doesn't mean we can't work alongside Him now. God's business is saving souls. Luke 19:10—“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” If we want to be in the direct center of God's will and His work, we will find ourselves reaching souls.

4. Reaching lost souls brings joy to the heart of God.
When you kneel to pray at night, have you ever thought about asking God how His day went? Can you imagine how He would answer? “My child, I witnessed over 100,000 deaths today. I wrapped my arms around a lot of hurting people. I shed tears with them as they hurt. I saw crime, violence, pain, and suffering. It was a rough day.” And then you ask Him, “But God, was there anything today that made you happy.” “Oh, yes,” He says, “I saw this couple give a Bible study to an individual and that person accepted Jesus Christ into their life. And let me tell you, all heaven started rejoicing over that one sinner that repented! That brought Me joy.’

Imagine that we can be instruments to help bring joy to the heart of God! That is an awesome thought!

5. Reaching lost souls brings us into harmony with Christ.
Notice this statement...“God could have reached His object in saving sinners without our aid, but in order for us to develop a character like Christ's, we must share in His work. In order to enter into His joy,—the joy of seeing souls redeemed by His sacrifice,—we must participate in His labors for their redemption.” (DA 142)

Reaching others does something in our own lives. It teaches selflessness, humility, love, compassion, sensitivity, and develops in us a character like Christ’s. And notice as well, that we can experience some of that same joy that Christ experiences by seeing souls won to Him.

So do we reach out to others merely because we are commanded to go? Oh, no! It goes way beyond the command. It should stem from a heart of love that realizes the crisis of those who don't have Christ. It should stem from a sense that we cannot assume a person will hear about Jesus and we must act as if they won't. It should come from a desire to be yoked with Christ in His work of reaching the lost. It should be driven by our desire to bring joy to the heart of God. And finally, it should be driven by our own longing to have a character more like Christ's and to experience His joy.

And that goes a whole lot deeper than a mere command to “Go”!

A little taste of our experiences here...

2010-03-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have the best job here! While the other staff are busy with the logistics of buying food, renting cars, etc. I get to sit down with the students everyday and review their sermons and help them edit their talks. And then I get to go in the evening and listen to them preach and hear the powerful testimonies that are coming from their sites. I have been wanting to post some updates on what is happening here for several days, and have tried several times, but the internet is the worst thing ever! So I am not going to be able to put up any pictures here... But here are a few stories...

Story #1:

A few nights ago, I went to this mountain village to visit one of my students sites. This little village is so quaint! To get to it, you have to cross this extremely long suspension bridge that is the most rickety bridge ever! There are a lot of extension bridges around here, but this was by far the worst with a bunch of missing planks and pieces of plywood just laid in place.

The village itself is really cute. There are a total of 200-300 people in this village and the village has three different churches—an Adventist church, a mosque, and a Catholic Church.

There are a total of about 65-70 people coming and 19 of them are non-Adventist. There is a whole group of Catholic young people that are coming to the meetings. One of the Catholic girls is the youth leader at her church. But she has chosen to come to the Adventist church for Bible studies since they actually study the Bible and they don’t in her church. That's pretty cool!

Here it is very difficult to evangelize Muslims due to very strict government laws. It is illegal to evangelize Muslims. If you were to invite a Muslim to your church, you could face imprisonment. So in this little village, the mosque is directly across the large field from the Adventist church. The two houses right around the church are both Muslim families. But even though they can’t invite them to the meetings, I think the sound is loud enough coming out of the church that they are probably hearing the meetings anyway.

Even here, we see the great controversy playing out. At this site, there is a former Muslim lady who was demon possessed. The Muslims tried to get the demons out of her, but failed. The Adventist pastor prayed for her and they immediately left. She has since become an Adventist. But she is going through new battles now. At work, she desperately wants to tell her Muslim friends about Jesus but every time she goes to say something, she cannot speak. Also when she prays, she hears these voices in her head that distract her from praying. The great controversy is real and there is definitely a fight of who will conquer. But we all know that God is more powerful and will be the victor. Wonderful thought!

Story #2:

The population of Adventists at these sites is very high. In fact, some of the sites have had no visitors at all. Unfortunately, some of the churches say it isn't their culture to invite non-Adventists to their meetings. And perhaps some of it is the trouble they could get into for evangelizing. Some of my students were discouraged to have no visitors at their sites. So I told them to ask if they could go door knocking in their village and personally invite people to come to their meetings. Two students went to their site early one night and invited people to come.

They weren’t sure what kind of success they would have, but they were excited to see what would happen that evening. Just as the meeting was supposed to start, all the electricity went off in the church and it was pitch black. My students started to wonder if people would even still come with all the power off, but they looked across the little extension bridge and saw all the little flashlights coming across. They started to get really excited. By the time the lights came on a while later, the church had the most people it has had since the meetings started. And within the crowd were 4 Catholics and 3 Muslims that had come from the personal invitation. They were some pretty excited kids!

Story #3:

On the way to one of his sites, a student saw two people walking along the road and felt impressed to invite them to his meetings. When the turned around to find the people, they weren’t there, but the driver knew where they lived. But they weren’t home. The neighbor lady took them to a house where they had gone to visit. This family were Catholics. He found out the two people he was looking for were already going to the meetings, but he took the opportunity to invite the Catholic family to the meetings. He didn’t see them once the meeting started, but after the meeting, a church member told him that they had indeed shown up that night. He was very excited about that!

Story #4:

Two nights ago, a student prayed that at least 5 people that were non-members would come to his site. Last night, he prayed that he wanted at least 3 of those non-members to be Catholics. Tonight he had 4 Catholics and 2 additional non-members come to his site. And the night was on the Sabbath. He was so excited that God answered a very direct prayer he had prayed just the night before.

Story #5:

The other night, one student was preaching and indicated afterward that this was the absolute worst sermon he thought he had preached. His words were all scrambled, he couldn’t think of what to say, and it was all choppy. After the meeting, the translator told him that was the easiest sermon he had translated yet. He said it was smooth, he knew exactly when to cut in and out, the message was clear and convincing, etc. I think the Holy Spirit must have been doing some translating between speaker to translator!

Story #6:

At one site, attendance numbers were starting to decline, so the students at that site began praying that more people would come. Three nights ago, they had 87 people and 2 non-Adventists. Last night they had 97 people and 5 non-Adventists, and tonight they had 100 people and 10 non-Adventists. They were pretty excited!

Also at that site, the speaker had eaten something funny for supper and right before getting up to speak, she began feeling extremely nauseous. She was sitting on the front row getting ready to speak and was thinking at any minute she was going to throw up. She and her partner prayed that they devil would not prevent them from speaking on the important topic of the Sabbath. During the song service, she said all the songs seemed to apply to her… ones like “God will take care of you.” Her partner prayed that at least the nausea would go away just for the time she was speaking. Just as she got up to preach, all the nausea left and she preached the whole sermon with no problem.

That is only a few of the stories here. I am excited to see how God will continue to bless!

2009-04-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

Two and a half weeks ago, our school began a three week long music filming tour of California and Utah. We are in the process of putting the book "Steps to Christ" to song. There will be three songs for every chapter interspersed with short speeches and testimonies from the students. God has richly been blessing our time. If you want to see what we have done on this trip, you can visit the school blog at http://blog.fountainviewacademy.ca.

We are currently in Utah and have been filming at several very beautiful locations in the area. There are so many cool things around here to see! On Friday, I went with some friends 4x4 off-roading and saw absolutely spectacular scenery through Canyonlands and the Needles District. We saw dinosaurs tracks and the fossilized bones of some very large creature. Each vertebrae was almost a foot long! They estimate the animal was about 30 feet long. We also saw fossilized clams, coral, and a sea urchin that would have had 1 foot long spines. It was pretty cool.

The past two days, we filmed at Arches Nat'l Park. Monday morning, we went out to the park at 5am in order to catch the sunrise. A camera was set on time lapse to catch the morning sunrise and just as it started to peak over the horizon, the camera panned onto the students who were sitting on the edge of a bluff singing the song "No More Night." It was really neat. But it was very cold as well! (In the 30s!)

On Sabbath, we went to the little church in town and I was absolutely shocked to see that one of my friends from Andrews University days was pastoring in this area. On Monday, I was able to catch up with him so while the students continued filming in Arches Nat'l Park, he took me to see some of the other famous arches in the park. They were incredible! Here are just a few photos.

Balanced Rock

South Window Arch

Turret Arch

Another view of Turret Arch

The La Salle Mountains in the distance. A monk was passing through Utah in the dead of summer and saw these mountains. He was sure there was no possibility of there being snow on any mountains in that type of heat, so he guessed the white on the mountains was really salt fields. Thus the name "La Salle"--the Salt Mountains.

The Double Arch.

Delicate Arch--one of the most famous in the park. I didn't hike up to it, so it is not the best picture.

The sunset that evening.

Yesterday, we went back to Double Arch and filmed several songs there. It was spectacular!

Honduras, part 2

2009-03-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from the cool airconditioning of my room. I was out in the town this morning trying to buy supper to feed all the kids. The sun is so hot and it is easy to get burned here. Going to the market is quite the task since you have to haggle with the local market vendors to see who gives the best prices for produce. Thankfully one of the staff guys loves to barter so it makes things much easier. I need to take pictures of the market though. There are some pretty nasty things around there. Today, we saw these bloody chuncks of meat laying in the back of an absolutley bloody truck bed. I couldn't even identify what part of the animal it was. And it just lays out in the sun and rots. So gross!

Please continue to pray for our meetings here. Blessings are still coming out of the work here. You can go to the students blog and read some of them there. Last night at one of the sites, the non-Adventist translator was really touched by the sermon on the law of God and was very convicted. He said he is bringing a lot of friends tonight to hear the message. Pray esp. this weekend since the topic is on Sabbath vs. Sunday.

In addition to the meetings, we are tyring to get out and see some of the Honduran country side. We went on an exucursion yesterday to a national park called Punta Sal. The beaches are amazing and the water nice and warm. We took a walk through a jungle path which was really neat. And we saw lots of monkeys. Here are just a few photos of our time.

One of the boats we rode to the island.

This island is called "Cocolito" or "Little Coconut" (I don't know if I spelled that right.)

These birds are called "Friggets." They have an incredible large wingspan and a very long tail.

This was the hike through the jungle.

This monkey looks like he wants to throw something on me. The tour guide said the monkeys do like to throw things.

Another monkey.

A banana flower.

A very poisonous banana spider. They can't kill you, but they make you very sick.

The beach where we spent three hours snorkling, swimming, exploring, and eating a picnic lunch.

A picnic lunch on the beach.

Two students and I.

Yours truly trying to not get burnt. I actually did very well.

I am in Honduras!

2009-03-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

Written Sabbath evening:
Well, we've been in Honduras now for four days and it has been a whirlwind! In just four days, I have seen the devil try to derail our work and discourage my students. But God always prevails. There are multiple areas around this part of Honduras that are holding campaigns, but this site seems to be one that has the least amount of ground work preparation. I cannot fault the pastors or leaders because each pastor here is responsible for many churches (13+) so they are running around trying to get everything worked out. There was aparently a lot of miscommunication with the pastors here about the students coming. Only about 4 of the 13 sites were able to be visited ahead of time. The rest of the sites, the students saw for the first time right before there meetings. Transporation was a huge issue since they didn't realize that most of the sites had two speakers. So last minute transportion had to be worked out. Some students didn't even get to their site until after they had already started Friday evening. And then there were so many issues with the translators... 13-15 year old kids who knew English well but didn't speak Spanish very well (odd problem, right?) and ones that didn't even know how to read Bible texts or translate words like 'Lord'. One site was so bad that the elder ended up preaching some random sermon because no one could understand the translator. Then at another site, there wasn't even a translator who showed up. So they just packed up and left. Then at another site, no one showed up so they canceled the crusade there. It was such a mess and students were all wondering what could be done. I kept encouraging them to have patience and flexiblilty. I just didn't want them to get discouraged since they have put there whole heart into preparing for these meetings. I have had to be in the middle of multiple meetings with the pastors, the union president, and our site coordinator for SHARE HIM just to try to make sense of what is happening here. The local people are swamped with 13 sites and didn't have the man power to run them. So we cut back from 13 to 7 sites and reorganized all the student teams and got new drivers and translators. It has been a lot of tedious details and has been a very exhausting past couple of days. But I do believe that God has big plans for these students and there must be miracles that are going to happen here considering the devil worked so hard at the onset. Tonight I got very good reports from most of the sites, so I think things are finally going to work out. Praise the Lord! So here are just a few pictures of some of the sites.

This last picture is of the site that was canceled Friday night because no one showed up. The pastor today in church pled with the people to bring friends to the meeting. This afternoon when they decided to cut sites, they again cut out this site. But the pastor had pled so hard with his congregation that morning and the church members went out to invite people, that they just couldn't cancel it. So one of my students agreed last minute to go preach at this site. There were quite a number of people there and God blessed my student so much as she preached the message. In the congregation is a Catholic gentlemen who goes to church on Sabbath because he is convinced the Catholic church changed the day of worship. My student commented that he is not going to be Catholic for long!

Please continue to pray for the meetings here. At one site we have a non-Adventist translator who is actually one of the drivers who was recruited to translate. He is actually doing quite well and the students are excited that he is hearing the messages as he is translating for them. They are praying that he will give his life to Christ as he helps them present the message each night.

Today was the first time I have had time to go to the beach. It was really nice. Here are just a few photos.

Some random funny things:

Some in our group are still getting used to the new fruit down here. They went shopping the other day and bought a "papaya". When I got it out for breakfast, I thought it looked kinda strange. But I cut it anyway. I laughed when we opened it. It turned out to be a squash instead. I think we need to teach some people in our group how to tell different foods apart!!

The first night we are in our hotel, my student was just getting ready to walk down the stairs from the second floor of the hotel and all of a sudden she screamed at the top of her lungs and began dancing around at the top of the stairs. All of us wondered if she saw a rat or snake or what. We laughed when this is what we saw. Up on the second floor is an area that has a lot of plants. This toad must live in the plants and eat the bugs there. He was a great big guy but so cute too!

If you want to keep up with the kids site, it is:
http://telagrams09.blogspot.com/

This and That...

2008-12-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

So much has happened in the past couple of weeks that I don't even know what I should write about. School let out on the 10th of December, and then I joined the entire student body for a week long choir tour all throughout California. It was the first choir trip I have been able to go on since I always had to stay home before to get caught up on grading and lesson planning. It was great fun, but by the time we all arrived in San Jose on the 17th for GYC, we were all ready to stay in one location for longer than a day. We performed twice at GYC--once for an evening special music and then three selections during a Friday afternoon musical concert. It was fun. Here is a video of one of our performances.

This is a photo of all of us on stage at GYC. Photo credit by Alden Ho.

The students even made up a performance of their own. My kids never cease to amaze me in coming up with creative ways to entertain themselves when they are bored. I thought I would include a little clip of what they do when they need something to do. This year, yodeling has become a fun past time at school and one of our students has gotten quite a number of the guys to join along. Saturday night after the last GYC meeting, I walked into a room to find my students giving a yodeling concert. We were all laughing so hard since it was so amusing. There was a huge Christmas gathering in a park directly across from the convention center and there were a lot of passersby in the downtown area. One of our students suggested that they go out onto the street and see if they could get people to stop by and listen to them. They even decided to open the accordion case and see if people would throw money into the case. They actually did have people stop by and several stayed for quite a while. They even got a few donations for their cause. As you will notice in the clip, they had no qualms about asking for donations! To say the least, I thought it was a clever way to pass the time!

Now I am finally back at home and am enjoying a wonderful time with my family. It feels really good to just sit around! But in reality, I brought a lot of work with me and eventually I will get some stuff done. But in the meantime, I am enjoying just spending time with the best family ever!!

In the beauty of this season, I hope you will remember what matters most--family, friends, and most importantly a Savior who loved us enough to give us a reason for the season. May you appreciate His sacrificial gift all the more this Christmas.

so cute!

2008-11-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

Canada is full of bears! Lots of bears! I have so wanted to get a picture of one to show everyone, but most of them have been out at night, but those don't make for good photos. (Besides the fact that I am not so fool-hardy as to run around at night trying to snap photos of bears!) Anyway, last month there was a little cub that decided Fountainview would make a great home. No one ever saw his mommy or daddy, but he loved making frequent stops on campus and grabbing a few bites to eat out of people's compost piles. And there was one tree on campus that was "his" tree. Here are just a few photos of him in his tree. I can't wait for Heaven where I can just cuddle with the little creature and give him a great big hug! That will be amazing!

International Supper

2008-10-27T16:23:00.001-07:00

Every year, Fountainview puts on an international supper for the surrounding communities. This time, it was combined with a program that honored each of the people that were involved in the rescue of our students/staff from the Mt. Askom back in September. It was a wonderful evening, but we were so exhausted at the end of it from all the cooking and decorating... and of course, EATING! I ate so much! We had booths represented from all over: Philippines, Mexico, Africa, Japan, Korea, Israel, Italy, Caribbean, Swiss Alps, Canada, Southern USA, Ireland, Holland, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Romania, and two others I can't remember. It was amazing food! The kids did a wonderful job. And of course, this year I helped with the Korean booth again, but thankfully this time I had another Caucasian to keep me company! Here are just a few photos.

The student in the middle and her mom have spent quite a bit of time in Africa doing missionary work.

My "Jewish" students.

The young man wearing the pharoah's hat is one of our students who is actually from Egypt.

This is the Swiss Alps booth. This student is an excellent yodeler. He's started a crazy trend in the guys dorm!

The Korean crew.

The Southern kids with good ol' Southern cookin'! Complete with greens and grits and sugared apples!

This is what happens when a Southern boy crosses the border into Mexico!

I have the greatest students!

2008-09-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

During my excursions on the mountain, I must have gotten myself into poison ivy or poison oak because on Tuesday, I had developed small rash like bumps on my wrist. I smeared Benadryl cream on it to alleviate the rash. Not wanting to get white cream all over my clothes, I rolled plastic seran wrap around my wrist. When I got to class, my chemistry students kept asking why I had plastic wrap on my wrist. Joking with them, I told them it was a new fashion statement and then of course I explained why I had it on.

Yesterday when I got to class, I found almost half my class wearing seran wrap on their wrists. I guess they wanted to be a part of the new fashion! I laughed so hard! It totally made my day! Here are seven of the nine that had it on.

The experience of a lifetime...

2008-09-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

...and one I don't think I ever want to do again!! Of course, not backpacking. I would love to try that again, but I don't think I ever want to climb Mt. Askom again. That was one grueling hike--both up and down. So this is the story...

We got off late to start with so we didn't start hiking until about 2:30pm. When we got to the "trailhead" (ya, right, there was no trail! It was authentic bush whacking and making your own trail!), I stared at it in disbelief. We had to scale hundreds of yards up the side of the mountain (which was nearly vertical) until we got onto the ridge and into the treeline. Climbing up that ledge was treacherous. We were using all fours to make our way up the side and had to grab onto bushes and shrubs to keep from sliding all the way down. With a 30 pound pack on your back, it makes it quite interesting. Here, my student Karen is looking back toward the way we just came. The picture doesn't do it justice, but right in front of her was the steep part we had to climb.

Once we made it into the tree line, things were better, but it was straight up the side of the mountain (at least we could stand on our feet though and not use all fours!). There were quite a few downed trees in the forest, so we were scrambling over logs and branches as we creeped along. Here Karen and Stephanie are tackling the mountain.

Our group of five (myself, Stephanie, Karen, Sondra Smith and Danny Houghten) got separated from the rest of the group so we trudged on alone for nearly 2 hours. I was leading the group and was doing my best to follow the footprints of those before us since there was no trail to follow and I wasn't too sure where we were going. At one point, the trail seem to split and both looked like they had been followed. We turned down one path but after about 30 feet, it disappeared. So we retraced our steps and proceeded up the other path. I yelled down to Sondra and Danny who had fallen way behind. Sondra had twisted her ankle and was having to go very slow. We put an ace bandage on it and proceeded on. After several hundreds of yards, we lost the trail again so we were on our own. We forged our own trail for a while, but I was growing more concerned that I really didn't know where we were going, so I was hestitant to keep going. We thought there was one group still behind us so we waited for them to catch up. Now with a group of 10 we continued on. With Sondra's ankle and our extreme tiredness, the going was slow. We came out of the tree line and faced a looming shale face right above us. It was a long hard hike and we kept dreaming about the top. Just when we crested one slope, we saw another in front of us. It was tough going. The view was spectacular though. If you look through the trees into the valley, you can see Fountainview way below. In the second photo, it is off to the left.

Along the way, my left eye clouded over and I couldn't see. I wiped my eye on my sleeve and saw blood. I couldn't tell exactly where the blood was coming from nor could I even figure our what had happened. I wasn't sure if a bug bit me or a tree branch scraped me, but I didn't feel any pain or itchiness or anything. It was weird. It took a while for it to stop bleeding but finally it did and we were able to move on. Karen, Stephanie, and myself paused for a picture before we moved on.

We were fast running out of daylight and were still about 4 hours from our destination. (They told us the hike would only be 3 hours long. Right! We had already hiked for 5 1/2 and had another 4 to go!) Sondra's ankle was getting more sore and we were all exhausted. We made it almost to the top of the first peak (still another 45 minutes to the summit) and decided to pitch camp. It was a precarious place to camp considering we were on a very steep part of the mountain, it was covered in slick shale, and the wind blasted across the top. But with no choice, we found the most level spot around and laid out our tarps and sleeping bags. We were all grateful for really warm clothes and the tarps which we wrapped around our bags. The gusts of wind that hit us that night were so strong and we kept rolling since we were on the slope. One person thankfully had put huge rocks along his bag and several times they prevented him from rolling down the slope. I do have to admit though that the view was spectacular. Here we were almost at the very top of the peak and all you could see was a panoramic view of a clear night sky. We saw the moon creep up over the mountain range on the other side of the valley and it was blood red. It was amazing. Here we were breaking camp in the morning. In the second photo, the black area is really way below us though the picture doesn't really show it.

The next morning I woke up with my left eye so swollen and crusty from drainage all night. I looked hideous! I still could detect no bite or scratch. Some in our group wondered if I was having a sensitivity to the altitude that was causing pressure behind my eye. I was sure it was related to the bleeding from the day before, but still wasn't sure of the cause. Not risking it, I decided to make my way down the mountain with Danny and Sondra and go to the hospital to get it checked out. If you look closely at the second picture, you can see my left eye is quite swollen. (The doctor who checked my eye was rather perplexed by my symptoms. He detected no severe problem. His best guess was that some weird bug must have bit me but left no bite mark and my body reacted to it later.)

The three of us left right after breakfast and were confident the trip down would only take about 2 hours. It ended up taking us as long to get down as it did up. Since we hadn't eaten much food, our packs were still enormously heavy. All that weight on our backs put a lot of pressure on our knees. After a while, we felt like our knees where jelly and it was hard to balance. We got to some severely steep inclines that were only passible by rear--meaning you sat on your rear and slid on the way down. We had to dig our heels into the slope and grab plants and bushes on the way down just to prevent sliding off the ledge. At other times, we had to walk sideways and lean into the slope to prevent a head over heel tumble down the mountain side. It was insane! All we could think about was getting back to the car! This is a view on the way down.

At one point, we could actually see the cars way below along the logging road. While we were dreaming about being there, we looked way up the road and saw this huge bear lumbering his way down to the car. We kept musing to ourselves that we would probably make it to the car the same time he did and after all our effort on the mountain would just become bear meat. Thankfully that didn't happen!

Sabbath evening we were so grateful to be back at home esp. when it started raining and snowing on the mountain. The rest of the group on the mountain had a very snowy, chilly night. (One students thermometer registered -10C or 14F.) Most of them made it back by 5pm Sunday evening except for one group of 10 that got disoriented in the thick fog. They proceeded down the wrong ridge and found themselves all turned around. By Sunday evening, helicopters started searching for them, but saw no trace of them. Several search and rescue ground teams were dispatched Monday morning including two helicopters and a surveillance airplane. At noon, one of the helicopters spotted the group and they were airvaced to the hospital. All of us here on campus were fervently praying for them knowing that the weather was getting colder (it snowed again Sunday night) and their food and water supply was small. Thankfully, they had been able to start a fire Sunday night, but with all their belongings and their clothes being completely soaked from the snow and rain, they were one cold group. We were concerned about hypothermia and dehydration. Thankfully, we only had one student that had dehydration.

Last night, we had a session of prayer and praise after the group arrived back from the hospital. Through the whole ordeal, they held up well, but upon arriving back to school and being able to finally mentally process the whole experience, the group broke down and cried. It was quite the experience for them all. Individuals got up and share what blessings they had experienced while stranded out there. They shared how the felt so sure that God would send help to them by noon. Miraculously, it was at 12:15, the helicopter spotted them. Another experience they related was that they kept praying that God would stop it from snowing. But instead, it snowed even more. They couldn't figure out why God kept letting it snow. When they were finally picked up in the helicopter, the pilot told them that if it hadn't been for the snow, she would have had a more difficult time finding them. As she was flying, she noticed a melted area and that alerted her of their possible location. (Due to the fire and the group staying in that one spot, the snow was more melted there than anywhere else.)

And looking back on the event, I have a blessing of my own. On the way up, Stephanie and Karen and I stayed together the whole time. I most likely would have decided to hike back with them down the mountain. And they were a part of the group that got stranded. If it hadn't been for an unknown issue with my eye, I would probably have to be recalling a rescue story myself... Maybe God send a bug to bite me to get me off the mountain!

Here is one last picture just to put the mountain in perspective... It is the one in the center.

If you want to read what the media had to say about the ordeal, you can go to these two sites...

Hikers rescued from Askom Mountain

Lost campers rescued from mountain near Lillooet

A Little of This and That...

2008-09-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

This post is about a little of this and a little of that since that is about what my life has been since I got back to Canada. I arrived home with the students on a late Wednesday night expecting to have two solid days to unpack my belongings I flew home with and organize a few last minute things for class. I was hoping to enter my school year with as little stress as possible... Well, things were not to be that way. When I arrived home, this is what I found...

When I left for the summer, I had white walls and carpeted floors and everything was nicely straight and in order. I came back and my entire room had been boxed up and was laying in a heap in the corner of my room. My white walls where now tan and my carpeted floor was now wood. I was in shock! I had no idea they were going to do anything to my room over the summer. (I knew they were remodeling the rest of the house, but they weren't supposed to touch the back rooms. Well, there was a slight miscommunication and well, my room was done too.) I was exhausted from a long day of travel and nearly wanted to cry when I saw my room in such disarray. I just stood in the corner and kept muttering to myself, I can't believe this. I really can't believe this. I couldn't not find a single thing in my room--my school books for school, my car keys, and not even a towel. It was awful.

So instead of having a peaceful entry into a new school year, it became a stressful nightmare to try to get my room back in order. It took me two solid days to be able to unpack everything and make it look presentable. Here is the result.

So that was the start...And then I found out we had a overload of chemistry students this year. I have 20 of the 26 juniors in my class. (The other 6 opted to take biology.) We didn't have enough of the old textbooks, so I had to make a last minute decision to switch to a new one. That meant laying out the entire year all over and organizing all new reading and homework assignments. That was another thing I was not anticipating. So I must admit, it was not a relaxing start, but I guess God knew I needed some major character development.

And then for some other random events. Here is a Sabbath afternoon hike I took with some of the kids. It is a really beautiful place called Botany Valley.

Here is a little visitor who keeps coming into my backyard to catch frogs and whatnot. I've seen him about 4 or 5 times in the past few days.

And finally, a little guessing game for you. There are four of these in my house. What do you think they are? (Unless you can't see well, it is a bucket with water in the bottom, a floating bowl with a piece of bread and peanut butter and honey, and a little ramp leading up to the bucket...Use your imagination!)

Come Apart and Rest Awhile

2008-08-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

My dad showed me this little story the other day that really got me thinking...

"An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard; I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.

He calmly came over to me. I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: 'I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.'

The next day he arrived for his nap with a different note pinned to his collar: 'He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3--he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?'"

In the hustle and bustle of the world around you, are you finding a quiet place where you can come apart and rest awhile? Are you finding a place that you can spend that quiet time alone with God to hear His still small voice? If not, maybe you should find some quiet hall and curl up in the corner and rest awhile.

Essence of pussy cat...

2008-07-30T06:40:00.001-07:00

What is black and white and stinks all over? If you are thinking of the creature that chatters its teeth, stamps its little feet, and hikes its tail, then you are wrong.... Well, sort of wrong. I had in mind a creature that looks more like this....

Yes, black and white and stinks all over. But to give you credit for your answer, he does smell like skunk. And you wonder why we have him in the house! Ya, I have been wondering the same thing! :)... No, really he is in here for a good reason, but he sure doesn't think so. He has been bemoaning all night and this morning begging to either be let outside or to be petted--both of which we are reluctant to do. So instead he stares out the window hoping for the day he can finally go back outside. And trust me, we are looking forward to that day as well. (Or at least I should say our noses are!)

So this is the deal. Our backyard has become a zoo for all kinds of wild creatures this summer. Since I took Shanuk with me to Canada, there is no longer a dog presence in the backyard which makes these wild creatures think they have a right to enter the yard. When I first got home this summer, my dad caught a family of 5 raccoons and released them in an open fields miles from our home. We thought that was the end of our visitors until lo and behold, one morning we smelled that distinct odor of skunk. Great! Now just how are you supposed to catch a skunk. Well, I guess the catching part is not so hard, but the releasing part? Ya, that could pose a problem! Well, pest control finally told us they would get rid of it if we caught it. (I wonder if they wear gas masks!)

So last night, we had to bring in Tuxedo just so we didn't end up catching him in the trap instead. Poor cat and poor us! We saw two skunks last night--a really big one and a baby. We were hoping to catch the big one this morning, but only managed to get the baby. Lovely...I guess that means Tuxedo will have to stay another night inside while we attempt to catch the big one. Ughh... Here is the little guy...

Camping Trip

2008-06-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

I love camping...I just don't get a chance to do it very often. A few weeks ago, I was asked to join the junior-senior campout at the lake. Amazingly, it was the one weekend I didn't have tons of school work to do, so I was able to go. It was so much fun. We took a 1 1/2 hour pontoon boat road out to a secluded spot on the lake and pitched our tents. It was absolutely wonderful to spend the weekend in such a peaceful place. Here are just a few pictures of the campout...

Here we are hauling all of the canoes behind the pontoon boat.

My student Cassie and I enjoying our ride on the boat.

Sabbath service at the lake.

Isn't the view just spectacular! On Sabbath afternoon, we took the boat to the farthermost end of the lake and hiked through a little town to another lake.

Another spectacular view of the BC countryside.

Keeping ourselves entertained on the ride.

My student Laura and I decided to take the inner tube out and try to steer it with paddles. All we managed to do was go around in circles... and get our rears wet from a leaking tube (as shown in the video clip at the end).

Not eating marshmallows growing up, I am very unfamiliar with what you do with them. My student Jordan capitalized on this fact by asking me if I knew how to make "ghost cheese." Indicating I had never heard of the stuff, he gave me a marshmallow and showed me how to squish it and knead it until my fingers turned into an absolute sticky mess. I kept asking him what I was supposed to be making and when I could stop kneading the goo in my hands. He kept telling me I was almost there but not quite. The more I kneaded it, the stickier it got. After I while, I realized he was just messing with me and that it was a joke! Oh, well! I fell for that one! Here is a picture of our little "ghost cheese" creations.

On Sunday morning, the guys decided to play a practical joke on Ingi (one of the assistant deans) and I. I heard all this scrambling around our tent and this was the result. Thanks guys! (or not!)

Here is our wonderful group of juniors and seniors. I love these guys! We just had graduation yesterday and I miss the seniors already! (I will post some pictures soon.) Anyway, I will always remember the fun times we had this past year!

The first segment on this video is of Laura and I and our little raft that didn't work so well. The second clip is when I was trying to tell two of my students how to do a rescue move with a canoe when you have no paddles. Here they are practicing. I thought the third clip was pretty cute. How many people does it take to play a guitar?

2008-05-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

A couple weekends ago, the whole school went away on a music tour, so that gave me 4 1/2 days off from school. Wanting to desperately get away and get some R&R, two of my friends and I decided to go over to Vancouver Island. The only way to get there is to take a ferry out of Vancouver. Once on the island, we spent two days in Victoria, the capital of BC. It is a very quiant, nice town that sits along a harbor. There are so many cool places to see and lots to do. Here is just a few memories from the trip.

This is the ferry ride over. These ferries are nice! They have lounging areas, eating areas, gift shops, etc. The ride over was about an hour and a half.

The first place we went was to Chinatown. The first Chinese Immigrants came to Victoria in 1858. By 1880, it was the largest Chinese community in all of Canada. When you first walk into China town, you go through this enormous 38-ft ornamental gate which was modeled from similar gateways in China. It was erected by both Chinese and non-Chinese people and is called the Gate of Harmonious Interest. Two inscriptions elude to the joint effort of its erection. They say: "To work together with one heart" and "To help each other achieve harmony."

This is a school building in Chinatown.

The Chinese community wanted Chinatown to be their own little shelter away from the rest of Victoria, so they build a network of streets, allies, and courtyards that connected all of Chinatown. One of these allies is the narrowest street in all of Canada. It is called Fan Tan Alley and is only 3 feet across at its narrowest point. There are three-story-tall brick walls lining both sides of the alley and there are numerous little shops and restaurants whose doors open into the little alley. They say that this alley remains virtually unchanged since Chinatown's earliest times (with the exception that it is no longer an illegal gambling alley!)

We also saw the huge parliament building in downtown Victoria. We didn't get a chance to tour it, but I will just have to go again so I can see inside.

We went to the British Royal Wax Museum which was cool since I have never been to a wax museum before. We saw the royal family, numerous US presidents, King Henry VIII and his entourage of wives, and other famous people like Shakespeare, Dickens, Edison, Einstein, etc. The coolest I thought was Napoleon Bonaparte. Sources say he was somewhere around 5'2" to 5'6". I didn't realize he was that short! I guess he was trying to make up for his size!

While in downtown, we saw this cool bicycle rack.

We also found this huge mirror attached to a side of a building. It was fun to take pictures of ourselves there!

I think the best part of the trip was Buchart Gardens. Having once been a limestone quarry, the owners' wife decided to convert it to a botanical gardens after the quarry closed down. It is incredibly beautiful! Here are just a few shots...

It was a very relaxing and fun get-away trip. I so want to go back! So if any of you want to come visit BC, I'll try to arrange a trip to the Island!

This weekend...

2008-05-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend, the school went on a camping trip to Seaton Lake. I wasn't able to go for the whole time since I was swamped with lesson planning, but I was able to join them on Sabbath. It was the first time I have been to this lake, but it is amazing! I have never seen a fresh water lake with water that is that color. It is like a light emerald green/aqua color. Pictures don't even do it justice. The camp is about a 20 minute ride from the dock by speed boat and about 1 1/2 hours on the pontoon boat. It it such a beautiful place! Here are just two pictures.

I also this weekend found a pleasant surprise on my desk. I have been complaining in class that my markers are always going dry. My students delighted me with a new set--and neon colors too!

And I just had to also show some of the other things that have graced my office for the past two weeks. Every Friday, two senior students always stop by my office and chat for about an hour before they go up to the dorm. I had a package of balloons sitting on my desk that I was using for a chemistry project. They decided to blow them up and place them all around my office. Every time they came back in, they would add a few more balloons or write and draw on them. One of the guys decided it would be fun to write "Happy Birthday" on them. For two whole weeks, people kept trying to wish me a happy birthday. I always had to tell them thanks but it was really just a severe case of boredom from one of my students... So here is the result... but you don't have to wish me a happy birthday. I've already had enough of them this year!

The blessing of friends...

2008-04-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

I feel truly blessed to have such great friends here at school that I can hang out with, chat with, spend time with, and do photo shoots with. Today all the single staff got together so we could take pictures for the yearbook. We tried all kinds of crazy shots in crazy places... So here is a smattering of the whole bunch.

More thoughts on Revelation

2008-04-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have thoroughly been enjoying my studies on Revelation as I have been preparing for Bible class. Let me just share some more of the amazing things I am learning. We are in chapter 7 right now on the 144000. Vs. 3 says that it is the "servants" of God who are sealed. I had my students look up four passages that give insights into a qualification of a servant. Romans 6:22 says that a servant is "free from sin." But how are we free from sin? Romans 6:7 says that those who are dead are free from sin. So then, what needs to die? Romans 6:6 says that our old man needs to die. How does he die? Do we drown him? shoot him? strangle him? chop him? beat him? Galatians 2:20 says that we must crucify him. It is only through the power of the cross that the old man will be forever laid to rest. I then had the students string all the verses together to create one thought. Here was an example: "We must start at the foot of the cross. Seeing Christ on the cross helps us realize what our sins did to him. his love helps us crucify that old man of sin. Once the old man is crucified and is dead, then we are free from sin. When you are free from sin, we are a servant of God. When we are a servant of God, we can receive the seal of the living God. Then we will be able to stand when Jesus comes back the second time."

This thought that God will only seal his servants who are free from sin has really made me think. Right after the servants are sealed, we know probation closes. This means that Christ steps down from his meditorial work. There is no longer any forgiveness of sin because our intercessor has set aside his robes and stepped out of the sanctuary. The case of every person has been decided. God's sealed servants must go through this time of probation with no intercessor. Yesterday in class, we had an incredible discussion of what this really means. I asked the class that if Christ is no longer mediating for his people, then what does this mean about the lives of the 144000 after the close of probation? It means that their lives must be perfect before God during that time otherwise there is no forgiveness of sin after Jesus steps down. But then I asked the class if it is that they "cannot" sin or they "will not" sin. We talked about how God never takes away free choice, so it must not be that they cannot sin. But how is it then that they will not sin. One student asked how God can guarantee that after he seals them, they will not sin. It is not like God can deduct numbers from the 144000 if someone slips after they were sealed. In response, I asked how they were even sealed in the beginning. The only way they were sealed is that they had already shown in their lives prior to the sealing that they were living a life free from sin. They had already purposed in their hearts long before the sealing time that they would not sin against the God they loved. It was only because of this that God knew he could seal them and this is the guarantee he has that they will not sin after he has sealed them. (It is interesting that although God views them as sinless, they have such a distrust of themselves that they go through the time of Jacob's trouble pleading with God that their hearts are right before him.)

Then we talked about Satan's accusation that nobody can obey God's law and be sinless before God. He tried to prove his point when he tempted Adam and Eve and they fell into sin. God sought to disprove this by sending his Son with fallen nature. Satan hit hard on Christ to try to make him sin, but Jesus didn’t. So God said that it was possible for someone to obey the law even in human flesh if they trust in God.

But Satan tried to argue that this was because Jesus was God. He tried to argue that God didn’t really have a people that would stand. So God reminded him of Job, Enoch, Daniel, etc. But Satan said this was just isolated people. He tried to argue that there is not a whole group of people that can really obey God’s commandments. But God counters that by saying he will have a group of people called the 144000 that will be without fault, who will not have guile in their mouths, they will follow the Lamb wherever he goes, they are pure as virgins. But Satan says, that is not good enough. He asks God how he can be sure that these people will live as Jesus lived—without sin. He tries to argue that if they truly live like Jesus lived, then they would have to live without an intercessor pleading for them every time they sinned because, after all, Jesus never had an intercessor. He argues that the 144000 always have an intercessor so they always have a chance to come back to God if they sin.

God responds to Satan by saying, “Well, Satan, I am going to show you a time when the 144000 will live without an intercessor and you will see how they will still obey God and trust in me even though there is no intercessor. They have so determined in their minds to live just like Me in terms of character and obedience that they will not transgress My law. There is a people--a whole group of them--who will prove you wrong."

This thought has completely blown me away. It has made me do some serious soul searching as to whether God can look at me and say, "Autumn loves Me so much that she has determined that she will daily crucify the old man and will live a life free from sin. I will place my seal upon her and she will stand in that group of 144000 in the last days who will prove to the world that a soul that is washed in the blood of the Lamb is perfect before me and can keep my law." My friends, today God is looking for a group of people that can live through the time of trouble when there is no mediator and not sin. He is looking to see if in word, action, and character they are now reflecting him so that he can trust them to seal them with his seal and then step down from his meditorial work. Will he find you and me? That is a solemn thought.

Four Horses...

2008-04-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately...thinking about how to make Revelation more practical to my students and helping them see the significance of what the prophecies mean to us as SDAs. We just finished covering the seven seals of Revelation and the first four seals are the horses of Revelation. We spoke of the rapid decline of God's church from his pure church (the white horse) to a church in persecution (red horse) to a church in apostasy (black horse) to a church that was dead (pale horse). We spoke about God's viewpoint of his church and how he had to do some drastic measures to raise the church out of apostasy and restore it to the condition of his first church. He did this through each of the Reformers that presented a message that got the church back on track. Just as someone being in pitch darkness has to slowly be brought back into the light, God slowly brought his church out of error by introducing new messages through various people. Each message that the reformers preached was significant in both the message that was given and the order in which it was given. This is the sequence.

Waldenses -- The Bible and Bible Alone
Huss -- Obedience
Luther -- Righteousness by Faith/Grace
Calvin -- Spiritual Growth
Anabaptists -- Baptism
Wesley -- Holiness
Miller -- 2nd coming
God's Last Day church -- Sabbath, Sanctuary, Health, 2nd coming (deeper knowledge)

On a Bible test this week, I asked my students to string these messages together and show why the order in which they came was significant for God's church. Here is one student's response.

"The 1st message was the Bible and the Bible only. The Bible had to be the foundation of the church otherwise it could not grow. The 2nd message was obedience. You must obey what God says in His word. The 3rd message was salvation through faith. By having God's word you can see the sacrifice of Christ and that you do not have to earn your salvation but Christ paid for it. The 4th message is Christian growth. Once we have faith in Christ, we must continually walk with Him and we will grow close to Him. The 5th message was baptism. As we grow closer to Christ, we must make a public stand to show your allegiance to God. The 6th message is holiness. Once we make a stand for Christ and we continually grow, we will become like Christ. The 7th message is the second coming. Once God's people have become like Him, then He will come and take us home to live with Him forever. The 8th message is health, sanctuary, Sabbath, second coming, etc. This is the last truth. Now Christ can come as soon as His people are ready."

Another student concluded the last part by saying "...As it gets closer to the time when He will come, times will become harder and we need to have clear minds. Having a good diet will help with this. We have also been given a time of rest every week to focus on Jesus. We also have light as to how things will work and how things are going in the sanctuary. This progression helps paint a picture of a Christian walk. And shows how their messages, working together, help us to become the true church."

I love her last statement. All these work together to create God's last day church. God is so good to have used each of these Reformers and movements to bring His church around to the true message. One other question I asked on the test was why we see so many different denominations rising out of the Reformation period and what challenge this is to the SDA church. This was another student's response.

"What happened during the Reformation was that only so much light was given at a particular time to God's people. And what happened to many is that they would follow a new truth and go no farther. If later more truth was presented, they chose not to follow it. As was and is the case with the Lutherans. To Luther was revealed the truth of righteousness by faith and grace, not by works. This was revealed to Luther for him and for that time to reform the church as God saw fit in that period of time. Luther still kept to Sunday and many other Catholic beliefs only because at the time, light was not given to show those things were wrong. But when new light did come, the Lutherans decided it unnecessary I suppose to hold to that new light. This same type of thing happened with the sects that came out of John Calvin, Menno Simmons, and John & Charles Wesley's movements, which is how we ended up with so many different denominations. It's like the sun, if you stop moving with the light, you'll find yourself in darkness."

Another student concluded, "This can be a challenge for us today. God is still giving light to this world. His knowledge is unending. If we are not searching for his truths, the light will pass us by and we will only be pew warmers, not part of the remnant."

So my friends, are we as guilty as each of these different denominations that formed in the past? They became satisfied with the light they had and stopped progressing. But the light moved on and they were left in darkness. Jesus challenged his disciples in John 12:35, 36 "Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light."

I ran across a startling statement by Mrs. White while I was going over this topic with the seniors in the Philippines. She says:

"We shall not be held accountable for the light that has not reached our perception, but for that which we have resisted and refused. A man could not apprehend the truth which had never been presented to him, and therefore could not be condemned for light he had never had. But if he had opportunity to hear the message, and to become acquainted with the truth, and yet refused to improve his opportunity, he will be among the number of whom Christ said, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." Those who deliberately place themselves where they will not have an opportunity of hearing the truth, will be reckoned among those who have heard the truth, and persistently resisted its evidences" (RH April 25, 1893). (emphasis supplied)

This is a solemn thought. Many choose not to place themselves where they will hear the truth because then that will require them to change. They say that ignorance is bliss--as long as they didn't know, God couldn't hold them accountable. But this statement says that if we had the opportunity to know the truth and chose not to, then it will be as if we persistently refused the truth. So my friends, my challenge to you is twofold: 1) are you walking in the light and 2) have you placed yourself where you will have the opportunity to be acquainted with truth? My prayer is that you will.

I want spring!!

2008-04-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

This winter seems like it has dragged on long enough! When I first came here to Canada, everyone assured me it does not snow in this valley or if it did, it would only be an inch or two and then it would melt right away. Ha! I am still trying to figure out if that was supposed to be a joke or not. Right from the start when I got stranded in the lower mainland for a week (read my archived post), I knew I was in for a long winter. From what I understand, they say this is one of the worst winters they have had in 30 years. We literally got dumped on this year and the snow stayed almost the entire winter.

It was such a welcomed relief to finally get away from it all and go to the Philippines for 3 1/2 weeks. When we returned, much of the snow was melted, but having tasted warmer weather, I was even more ready for spring. I wondered it it would ever come... Finally, last week, the weather spiked a warm streak and on Sabbath it was 77 degrees. It was amazing. I laid out in the sun with some friends, took a nice long walk, and enjoyed the taste of spring. All the fruit trees on campus began to bloom blanketing everything in white and pink blossoms. It was beautiful. Then on Thursday night, the wind started howling around my place. (It is so fitting that the place where I stay is called "Whistling Winds." Well, I guess it is not so fitting. It should be more like "Howling Winds." Anyway, I couldn't sleep much that night and wondered what was going on outside. When I woke up in the morning, there were nearly two inches of snow on the ground and it was coming down hard. Within an hour, there was another inch or so of snow on my car. Ugh... I only thought spring had come. It has been freezing the past two days and I don't foresee warmer weather any time soon...

I am starting to have an issue with this "global warming" business. Come to Canada and you will get "global freezing." Welcome to Canada everyone!! Doesn't it just make you want to come visit me in April? (Be sure to bring your ski pants... you may just need them!)

word confirmation...

2008-04-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

hey everyone, I have been getting quite a number of spam comments on my blogsite, so for a while I am just having everyone enter in a confirmation password that will appear when you leave a comment. I am sorry I have to do this (please don't let this hinder you from leaving comments!), but I just want to see if it helps...

A final update....

2008-03-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here is one final update of the Philippines trip...

God blessed so much in the final events of our meetings. Saying goodbye to all the people was hard. On the last night, most of the groups had a going away party. One site begged me to come back for their final night. We had a wonderful time with a sermon and then a social night with crazy Filipino games (some are rather unusual!). I had only been at this site one other time, but the people made me feel as though I had been there the whole time. They even gave me a going away present.

That night I met one little boy named Kenneth who was ten years old. He hung out with me the entire evening and always wanted to sit right next to me. When I said goodbye, he cried and cried. I felt terrible! The people have a way to just work themselves right into your heart. (Kenneth is the boy right next to me.)

The last Sabbath, there were over 1500-2000 baptisms (I didn't get the exact final count). It was amazing to stand by the edge of the pool and see so many commit their lives to Christ. It was so neat!!

After we were done in Manilla, we went down to the lower part of Luzon Island to a beach resort called Matabungkay. On the way down, we stopped to see Taal volcano, the world's smallest active volcano at only 406 meters high. It is described as a "crater within an island within a lake" because it stands as an island in Taal Lake. The lake was formed after the volcano, which used to be much larger, collapsed. It was really cool. The volcano is the tiny island in the forefront.

The final day in the Philippines, we took a boat to an absolutely beautiful island. It was a very tiny island, but it had cool things to see including an old ship and a type of Greek acropolis on the top that we climbed up to. The water around the island was absolutely amazing. It was emerald green in places and deep blue in others and it was so clear that you could see way below the surface. I went snorkeling for the first time and it was incredible. I saw so many different types of fish, star fish, coral, anenome, etc. I felt like I was looking down on an aquarium from the top. On the way back, we were blessed with a wonderful sunset.

The trip back was uneventful--unlike the trip there. It has been good to be back, but jet lag hit me once again. I came back to a full stack of grading, which was rather unpleasant, but I am slowly making my way along. This weekend we are at Puget Sound, so I will have to post about my time here in another post.

p.s. I meant to post a picture of the "demise of the star apple" since Paeter requested it (see comment on previous post), but I forgot that it is on a friends computer, so I may just have to post that one later...

Another update...

2008-03-09T00:58:00.001-08:00

It has been really hard for me to find time to post about all the things that are happening here. So once again, I'll include a lot of pictures to catch everyone up on the events of the past week. It is hard to believe that we have been here for a week and a half already. It seems like it has flown by already and at the same time, it seems that a lot has been packed into it as well.

On Tuesday, we went to the village of the staff member that is with us who is from the Philippines. It was so much fun to tour around his little village. We rode on motorbike tricycles from the main highway to his village because the road was too narrow for the bus. I think we were the amusement of the entire village seeing a bunch of white people riding around on the trikes. But it was fun! We took a long walk into the country side which is really pretty. They used to grow a lot of rice in the area but after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, the soil was too acidic from the volcanic ash. Now there are fish hatcheries all around. Notice the volcano in the background.

When the volcano erupted, it left so much volcanic ash in the area that some of the houses were completely buried. Others have only the roofs sticking out above the ground. This church used to be a lot taller than it is now. It was buried in 12 meters of ash. They have since just raised the floor in the inside of the church so the ceiling inside feels very low for it being a cathedral. The side windows are halfway sunk into the floor with only about 3-4 feet of the top of the window still exposed. It is really strange.

Out in the country, the fruit grows all over the trees there. We tried a new fruit there called a star apple (I can't remember what it is called in Tagalog) but it is so incredibly good. The fruit puts out a very sticky milky substance that makes your mouth feel really funny, but the inside of the fruit is almost like a jelly substance and is super sweet. I wish I could bring some back to the states.
This is one of my students and I eating a star apple. They are super messy to eat!

This is another fruit called a jack fruit. They are huge. I saw one cluster of jack fruit that had about 6 to 8 of these large fruits all growing together. I don't know how the branch can hold them up.

I haven't tried the star fruit when it is ripe, but I had it when it was green. They use it like a vegetable when it was green and cook it. It was really really good. The dish was called "come-and-see"... no, not really...:) I don't know how it is spelled in Tagalog, but that is how it is pronounced.

I don't think I have ever eaten as many different varieties of fruits as I have here in such a short amount of time. Most of them have been so good! We are in mango season right now so every day we eat tons of mangoes and since they are right of the tree, they are so good! Every day our meals consist of a large variety of mangoes, pineapples, papaya, bananas (they are wonderful here!), and a mixture of other fruits that I can't spell. I am getting spoiled!

While we were out in the country, I pet my first caribou and made friends with this cow. When I walked away, it tried to follow me.

We walked to this park in the village that had a lot of animal statues in it. Now I can say I have ridden a gorilla. He was a little harder than I expected and he didn't move... oh, well, maybe it is just a defective Filipino gorilla...

The other day, one of my students and I caught a gecko. I have been wanting to see one since I got here, so I was pretty excited to catch this one. His feet are super sticky so they can crawl across the ceiling.

In addition to all the fun things I have been doing here, I have been keeping busy with the evangelistic meetings. Every night, I go to a different site to watch each of my students preach. I am so proud of all of them. They are doing a wonderful job. One day last week, I reorganized their entire presentation for the 2300 days. The Share Him program was really confusing and the poor students were so frustrated that they couldn't understand it let alone preach it. I reorganized the entire presentation and then explained the entire 2300 days to the students who were going to preach. After that I worked individually with almost every speaker helping them tailor the sermon. At the conclusion of the day, I felt like I had prepared about 6 different sermons and was exhausted. But I am glad I was here to help them out of their pickle.

Some amazing things have been coming out of some of the sights. At one site, a woman came to the meeting one night after she had been randomly invited by one of the elders. She is not a religious person, but decided to accept his invitation to come. The night she came, they show the part of the Jesus video about Christ's baptism. She said she started to get goose bumps up here arms. Then one my students got up to preach. This lady was in absolute shock. She later explained to me what had happened. In December of 2001, she was sitting on her couch, when this being appeared in the room. This being told here that he would lead her to the true church. Being from a Catholic background, she asked the being if the Catholic church was the true church. He told her no... that it was corrupt and didn't teach the Bible. He then went on to explain that she would know the true church when she saw a video of Jesus baptism and then a American girl with long hair would begin to speak (a perfect description of the girl who spoke that night). In fact, (from what I understood) she was told there would be two or three American girls who would be preaching about the Bible (this is our only site with three girls). They being told here that when she saw this, this would be the true church. She told me that just three months ago, she moved to this province and when she moved, the being told her that it would be in this new location that the fulfillment of her dream would come. That night, she said she was overjoyed because she realized that what the being had told here 7 years ago actually happened. I wish you could have heard her express her story. She was so excited. Two days after this experience is when I met her and spoke with her. She told me that she felt this church was God's gift to her. I agree!

Today, I went with one of my students to a local radio station here in town. Every Sunday afternoon, Adventist laymen have a two hour radio timeslot. They asked my student to give a presentation on prophecy, so she preached about the 2300 days and the investigative judgment. for the first 35-40 minutes of the broadcast and then for the remaining 1 1/2 hours, we discussed the assurance we have in the judgment, the purpose of the investigative judgment, etc. Then callers called into the station and we answered live questions on the air. It was so much fun and a challenge to be able to answer questions like how we can prove there is a sanctuary in heaven, how we know the cleansing began in 1844, how to explain what the sanctuary is being cleansed from , how it got defiled in the first place, and how symbolically Christ can cleanse a sanctary in heaven. Thankfully we had two other laymen there that were helping us with the answers just in case we got stuck. It was a first time experience for me to be on a radio station, but it was such a blessing to share God with the people of the Philippines. They say that most of the their 3 millions listeners are non-Adventists. So I pray that God spoke through us today to teach people of the investigative judgment that is now happening on this earth.
It is late here...almost midnight. So I am headed to bed. Please continue to pray for our work here. We have 6 meetings left. God is still working on people's hearts.

a view of the Philippines...

2008-03-02T00:19:00.001-08:00

This is the flight from Seattle to Toyko Japan. It was a great flight. All the seats have monitors in front that have games, flight info (maps of where the plane is, how fast it is traveling), etc. The best part was that we could play games with multiple partners so we would play with various people in our group. It kept us well entertained on the 11 hour flight.

I hadn't realized it until we got to the Philippines that they are celebrating their 100th year of Adventism in the Philippines. Their first converts were in 1908. It is really neat to be here 100 years later and be preaching the gospel message so more people can hear. All throughout this year there are major events, rallies, conferences, etc. This past Sabbath, we went to a huge event in a auditorium that seats thousands of people. There were so many Adventists there celebrating the events. Don Schneider gave the sermon. It was neat to be surrounded by so many Filipino Adventists.

The people here are absolutely amazing. They are so incredibly friendly. They open heart and home to you and welcome you right into their lives. We almost feel like celebrities in the way they treat us. It is humbling. They have a wonderful sense of humor too and make us laugh all the time!

I have been traveling around to all the different sites to hear each of my students preach. One site I went to last night was so nice with all the children and young people. Here are just a few pictures of the group.

Two of my students are co-preaching at this site. They are doing a wonderful job! The man on the far right is Benny Moore, the Share Him coordinator.

This morning, one of the pastors picked up my two students that are speaking at his church and myself and took us with his family to the park. It was wonderful to get "out of the city" (it is still in the city but at least it is away from the houses, markets, etc. and the air is cleaner to breathe). I had my first green coconut. (It is call buko here.) It is so amazing to watch them cut the thing! They are so skilled with the machete. The buko is really interesting to eat. It has a layer of thin meat on the top that you poke through, then you drink all the liquid out of the shell. Then you eat the meat that is really soft. It tastes good. Here are just a few pictures of our time out this morning. (Oh, ya, they do things early around here. We got ready to leave for the park at 6:30 am!)

This is the pastor, his wife, son and daughter, and grand daughter as well as my two students.

This is his grand daughter Keesha. She is only two. But she was so cute!

This is the little shop where we got the buko.

I wish I could post the video of this guy chopping the buko.

This is the inside of the buko...

Then we ate it on the hood of the car. It was fun...

This was a memorial at the park to Manuel Louis Quezon, a previous president of the Republic of the Philippines.

Here are just two other random photos of a jeepney ride we took It was fun, but the jeepney's here put out such pollution that it is hard to ride near the back. You about suffocate from exhaust fumes. It was funny watching all the locals being so amused with a bunch of Americans riding in a jeepney. They probably thought that was a funny sight. They kept waving and laughing. So we would wave and laugh back. It was rather entertaining.

Please continue to pray for the work here. God is doing amazing things I know. I will keep you posted.

Off to the Philippines...

2008-02-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

I am writing this from the lobby of our Philippines hotel. I honestly cannot believe I am here. But I am grateful to be here. I know God has some big things in store for us while we are here.

Here is just a recap of what has happened on our trip so far.

Got to Seattle airport around 10:30am on Monday. We boarded our flight to Tokyo Japan around 1 pm. It was a great flight. We had a lot of fun on the plane since our whole group of students and staff sat in the same area of the plane. I really thought I would sleep on the 11 hour flight. But I didn't. We were following the sun west so it never got dark. It was like a never ending day. It was really strange. We crossed the international date line and that threw everyone for a loop. We couldn't figure out what time it was or even what day it was. We actually skipped the remainder of Monday afternoon and picked up sometime around Tuesday afternoon. I guess that is a day that never existed. But for never existing, we sure had some crazy things happen (I'll talk about this later...)

We landed in Tokyo about 5pm Tuesday evening (about 2am Tuesday morning Canada time). We had an hour and a half lay over that gave us time to tour around the Tokyo airport. All of us really wished we could go out of the airport to say we had actually been in Japan, but the airport would have to suffice. Once we boarded the plane for the last 5 hour flight to Manila, we sat on the ground for about 45 minutes. I was so tired, I fell asleep before we took off. About half an hour after take off, I woke up to a frantic announcement from the pilot ordering all flight attendants to immediately go to their jumpseats and buckle up. I knew this never happens unless there is turbulence, but there was no turbulence, so I immediately suspected something was very wrong. Within minutes, the flight attendants started running up and down the aisles and where ordering everyone to stay in their upright seats and buckle up. I started to get really nervous. My heart started racing and I began praying...hard. I knew that with so many of us on board going to the Philippines to do a work for God that the devil was surely mad and would try to stop us. While praying, the emergency lights went on at all the emergency exits. I was just praying that we weren't going to have to do a water landing. Within about 15-20 minutes, I saw we were very low to the ground and realized we were making an emergency landing. When we touched down, I saw quite a number of fire trucks all along the run way anticipating our arrival. It was only after we landed that the captain explained they had smelled smoke (I had smelled something really strange earlier that smelled like something was burning) and immediately took precautions for an onboard fire. He radioed back to Tokyo requesting clearance for an emergency landing. The fire trucks met us at the end of the runway and followed us all the way to the terminal to make sure a fire didn't break out.

When we got off the plane, there were dozens of security agents in full Japanese uniform and men in firesuits and other safety people lining both sides of the walkway waiting for us to get off so they could investigate. It was an eery feeling...If it wasn't for the emergency, it would have felt like we were being royally welcomed into Japan. When we got off, we could see about 7 or 8 firetrucks right by the plane. Newscasters where there when we got off but it wasn't until later that I realized we had made national headline news. I understand CNN had a television report about the incident as well as Fox News. Here is just a link if you want to read about it. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332615,00.html

Since they couldn't get us another flight that night they put us into a hotel for the night. Japan has new regulations for letting people into their country so we had to go through the whole process of getting a visitors visa. By the time we got in it was about 1am.(We wanted to just sleep in the airport, but they wouldn't let us.) We ate supper when we got to the hotel and then slept for 2 1/2 hours before we headed back to the airport. Our flight to Manila was uneventful and we landed around noon. It was good to finally be here.

I don't even know how to describe what I am seeing here. There is such a contrast in how people live. There is a huge mall just down the road that has prices that are more expensive than the states. And then just down the street is the worst squaller, filth, and poverty you can imagine... It is really sad. In fact, we have been told that the average person makes about $7-$9 US dollars every day. I don't know how they afford to shop for things at the big mall...

Tonight the meetings start. I am so excited to see how diligent these young people are in getting their sermons ready to preach. I am eager to travel to each of the different sites to watch them all preach.

Please continue to pray for us that God will bless our work here. I know God will work in marvelous ways! (I will have to post some pictures later...)

God is good...

2008-02-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to update everyone on my last post. The more the story of Trevor's accident unfolded this week, the more we saw God's hand in protecting him. I really want to thank everyone for their prayers over the last week. I believe God heard each one and used them to do something great for Trevor this week.

Just an update on the accident itself. Trevor and his friend John went to the pond Sabbath night to go swimming. One part of the pond is quite deep while other parts are shallow. Trevor thought he remembered where the deep part was but misjudged and dove into the shallow part instead. His friend jumped in (he didn't dive in) right after Trevor and immediately popped up to the surface but it took Trevor a little while to surface. When he finally came to the surface, he yelled out to John and then went back under. John went down to get him and brought him up to the surface for air. He brought him over the bank and Trevor could hardly move. It is a good thing that John was there otherwise, who knows what might have happened.

The update on his injuries include a break at C4 and swelling in his spinal cord. He has no sensation of cold on his left side and still has tingling and numbness in both arms. He can't lift his arms very high either. Thankfully a lot of his pain has subsided and when I saw him yesterday, he hadn't taken any pain medication since the previous day.

Anyway, several of us went to the hospital yesterday morning to see him before he was discharged at noon. All the doctors have been amazed with his progress. They commented that they haven't seen anyone with his type of injuries leave the hospital so soon. They have warned him though that any further damage to the neck could be extremely serious. He will be going home for several weeks to give his neck time to heal and will have to wear a neck brace for nearly 6 weeks.

Here are just a few photos of us at the hospital... I have to explain about the "safety first" creatures. Trevor and John are always begging me to let them blow up something in the laboratory and I always have to caution them to be safe. We always use a slogan in the laboratory called "safety first." I had no idea where that came from until in church on Sabbath the speaker was talking about a chemist whose last name was First. He was always so concerned about being safe that he would wear lab glasses, coat, boots, safety belt, helmet, etc. His fellow associates nicknamed him "Safety First" and that name is now used all the time in the laboratory. So then it became a joke between Trevor and I about "safety first." After this whole pond incident, I thought Trevor needed to be reminded about that more often, so I made him something to always remember it. Also, as a little memento, each of us signed his neck brace... can't say I've ever done that before!

Then one of my other students decided he would try out Trevor's bed. And after all, since we were on the pediatrics floor, he thought a teddy bear and thumb would be a nice addition. (We all laughed when the nurse came in to get Trevor's breakfast tray. She looked right at Jerome in the bed and asked him if he was finished with it. Jerome played right along with it... I wonder if she finally realized he wasn't the one with the neck brace.)

Anyway, that is just the latest update. All in all, we see how God blessed through it all since it could have been much more serious than it was. Thank you again to all those who uplifted him in prayer.

The devil attacks once again...

2008-02-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

It seems that just in the past few months, there has been one accident after the other and one emergency after the other. In the past few months, the tally seems to be getting longer and longer: a death over Christmas, three friends admitted to the hospital (some with very serious, life-threatening conditions), at least three bad car accidents (all of which could have resulted in a death), in addition to several other incidents with people that I have heard about but don't know personally. And I know this isn't even the whole list. I think there have been more that I can't remember.

And then Sabbath night another one happened... One of my junior students went diving into the pond here on campus. It is quite deep and has been dove into before, but this time something went wrong and he hit his head on the bottom of the pond. (I am not sure if the pond is lower than normal or if he just dove into a more shallow part). Anyway, he fractured his neck in three places, traumatized his back, and inquired his wrist as well. The doctors are struggling to find where the numbness and pain is occurring in his arms. They can't trace it yet to the fractures in his neck and are trying to decide if it is nerve damage elsewhere in his body. Tomorrow he goes in for a MRI to see what trauma has occurred to his spinal cord.

Even in spite of it all, God has been good. They thought they were going to have to take him into surgery Sunday to repair the fractures in his neck, but decided that was not necessary. They thought he had severe back inquiry due to the pain he was experiencing, but realized it was a result of being strapped to the backboard for so long. Thankfully today he was able to get a little relief from the pain due to the high pain killers he is on.

Right now, it looks like he will be in the hospital for most of week. Then after that, none of us are sure what will happen. He will have to wear a neck brace for at least six weeks to allow the neck to heal properly. We are just praying that the recovery will not take too long.

Anyway, please keep Trevor in your prayers that he will have a complete recovery. As a teacher, it is difficult to see one of your students go through something like this and Trevor is one of the students here that is closest to me so it makes it really tough. I just thank God that he was not killed or completely paralyzed.

I am seeing more and more how real the great controversy between Christ and Satan really is. I believe the devil knows his time is short and he is doing his best to attack God's children and cause them suffering, pain, and heartache. But whatever he tries to do, let's not let him win! In the end, Christ will be victorious!

Placed on trial

2008-01-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

This past semester, I taught senior Bible--Defending Your Faith. During the course of the year, we studied how to defend that God exists, Jesus is divine, and the Bible is true. We then focused on studying some of our core doctrines and getting solid Biblical answers for what we believe as Seventh-day Adventists. We studied four major issues which were the Law and Sabbath, State of the Dead, Second Coming, and Millennium/Hell.

I divided the class into four groups and gave them one of these major doctrines to study and defend. I told them that for their final class project, they would be put on trial to defend their faith. I reminded them that in the end of times, all of us will have to stand up for our beliefs and we may be called to stand in a court to give a Biblical defense of the truths we hold dear. A court session would help them see what it would be like to defend their faith.

The students have been studying like crazy trying to understand their particular doctrine in depth and then answer challenging Bible texts that other denominations use to contradict these Biblical beliefs. They were nervous about the court session, but I assured them they would do great. So yesterday was their day in court. I rearranged the classroom and had a long table at the front of the room for the panel group on trial. To their side sat their defense attorney, one of the pastors on campus. In front sat three jurors consisting of the principal, and two teachers. And also in front of them was me--the prosecuting attorney. I had each group open their session with a Bible study on their topic and then I began challenging their responses. Taking the opposition side was somewhat difficult because I had to try to argue positions that I knew were totally incorrect. Even as I was presenting the arguments, I kept thinking how dumb they sounded and how easy they were to disprove, but I had to sound convincing so that my students could see that these are valid arguments that people will use against them.

I challenged them on verses that use "spirit" and "soul" in the Bible and made them prove why these cannot be conscious entities that live on after death. I made them respond to verse likes Phil. 1:21,23 or 2 Cor. 5:8 that other denominations use to prove that you go to heaven at death. I asked them about Col. 2:14-16 about the law being nailed to the cross or the apparent "first day" (Sunday) worship services in the New Testament and Romans 14:5,6 of not judging a person regarding what day they keep. I questioned them about the Sabbath and the mark of the beast in the end times. I challenged them on hell burning forever and 1000 years of peace on earth after Christ's coming. I challenged them on the secret rapture, the seven year tribulation, and the dangers of believing in such a thing.

The whole court session was 3 1/2 hours, but the students loved it. They said it was so real to them of how they may have to stand up for what they believe and they better have Biblical answers to back them up. It was a nice way to end the semester and I just hope it really challenges them to dig deeper to really know how to "be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason of the hope in you, with meekness and fear." (1 Pet. 3:15).

One thing that is nice too is that this whole semester goes right along with the senior class trip to the Philippines. In just one month, myself along with several other staff and the senior class will be spending three weeks there. The students are preaching evangelistic meetings at 8 different sites. I am so excited that now they have the opportunity to share with others what they have been studying this semester. I have included the senior promotional video for you to see. We are still trying to raise the remainder of the funds to go, so if you have a burden to help sponsor them to the Philippines, we would be very grateful!

A Brush with Death...Grateful to be Alive...

2008-01-14T21:15:00.001-08:00

When people say life is fragile, it is so true. But sometimes it is not until you come face to face with death that you realize just how fragile it is.

Yesterday was my birthday. I felt so grateful to God for giving me a new year of life to live for Him. I had hopeful dreams of what the new year would bring. Little did I know that just as I had started this new year of life, it almost ended as soon as it began.

In one of my very first entries regarding life in Canada, I took pictures of a section of road going to the nearest town called the “Big Slide.” It is a section of road that narrows from two lanes to one because there is a sheer cliff up the mountain on one side and then a sheer drop-off on the other side. The road is just carved along the cliff face. Periodically the slide is closed due to avalanches. Along other sections on the road to Lillooet, there are other avalanche slide areas that periodically have rocks the size of small pebbles to huge boulders come sliding down the mountain onto the road.

This morning, Shanuk ran out of food, so I had to take a trip into Lillooet. (Interesting side note here…Before I left on Christmas break, I had bought Shanuk 5 bags of dog food. I knew that should be plenty to last her through break and then some. But when I returned from Christmas break, she was on her last bag. I wondered at how much food she had been fed while I was gone and was shocked she had eaten so much… More on this later.) I really didn’t want to go to town since it had been raining all morning. But I knew I had to. I prayed earnestly before I left that God would keep me safe from falling rocks on my way into town. When I got to the slide, it was fairly bad. There were quite a few rocks on the road but at least it was passable. Small rocks and stones continued to fall from the cliff as I crept my way down the mountain. I got behind a snow blow along the way which was pushing huge fallen boulders off the road and into the ditch. I chuckled to myself that the snow plows here probably do more boulder pushing than snow plowing.

After running my errands in Lillooet, I once again prayed that God would keep me safe on my return. I had barely left Lillooet, when I came to a section of road that was literally covered with large rocks (6-12 inch boulders) all over the road. (They had fallen since I had driven through there a little while before.) I tried to go around them but there were too many so I drove slowly over them trying to not completely tear up the underside of my car. Then all of a sudden, I heard this absolutely horrifying blast right by my head and realized I was completely covered in glass. A large boulder (I am guessing it was anywhere from 6-12 inches across) fell from the cliff and completely shattered my driver’s side window. Knowing I couldn’t stop for fear more would come down, I crept through the remaining debris and kept driving towards home.

Since my windows have a darkened tinted film on the inside of the glass, it acted almost like tape on glass and kept part of the shattered window in the opening rather than all on my lap. (I really think this is one thing that protected me from getting more glass in the face. If that hadn’t been there, the impact most likely would have sent the entire window into my face.) To prevent it from all falling in on me, I had to hold what was left of the shattered window in place for the remaining 30+ km back home.

To make matters worse, I still hadn’t gotten to the Big Slide yet. When I got to it, larger boulders (these about 3 feet across) had fallen onto the road almost blocking the one lane. I was able to squeeze through them and prayed so hard all the way through that God would just at least get me home safe. (I am so grateful it wasn’t one of those boulders that hit me. I can almost guarantee it would have killed me.)

When I got home, I tried to shake the large quantities of glass off me (I had it all in my lap, my coat hood was filled with glass, it was down my sleeve from holding the window up, in my hair, in my shoes, and even in my mouth. Thankfully none in my eyes.) When I stepped out of the car, I realized then how God had spared my life. Along the top of the door frame was the huge dent that had taken the brunt of the boulder’s impact. Because it had hit partly on the frame and partly on the window, the boulder had bounced off the frame and back onto the road. If it had hit merely 3 inches lower, it would have come right through the window and hit me in the side of the head. Considering the size of the boulder, I either would have been dead, seriously injured, or had shards of glass all through the side of my face.

Though I tried to shake most of the glass off in the car, I kept dropping shards of glass all throughout the house. (The glass was so imbedded in my coat, I had to vacuum clean it to get it all off.) So I went to get the vacuum cleaner (in an obscure room of the house I never go to) and behind the door I saw the three left over bags of dog food from break. Someone had put them there and never told me they had done so. (So now I have six bags of dog food, a shattered window, and a very shook up psyche!)

I was very shaken by the event and when talking to my dad on the phone, I burst into tears. I realized that I very easily could have been dead after that event. It was only God’s mercy and protection that I am still here. I still am not sure what good God wants to come from this all. I know he must have some reason for allowing it to happen. If it is to help remind me of the fragility of life, it worked. If it was to challenge me to live for Christ more earnestly this next year of life, then I’m glad it happened. If it was to help my students realize that we have no guarantee about tomorrow, then it was worth it. If it was to help family and friends rededicate their lives to Christ and serve him more fully, then it was necessary. And most of all, if for some reason it was to bring glory to God in some way, then I will be grateful for it.

Whatever the reason is, I am just glad to be alive. A new year, a new lease on life. I pray I will live it for Christ.

Funny sayings...

2008-01-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

I always enjoy spending Christmas with my family and this year was extra special since we were able to spend it with my grandparents (we haven't had Christmas with them for four years). Whenever the extended family gets together, we always have loads of fun accompanied with tons of laughs. My grandfather usually takes the cake in getting the family to laugh. I've taken note of just a few of the things that made me laugh this break.

My grandfather ran into a friend at the grocery store last week. This individual asked how my grandmother was. My grandfather replied that he didn't know because he hadn't spoken to her in three weeks. His friend asked very seriously if they were having marriage problems. My grandfather replied nonchalantly, "No, I just didn't want to interrupt." (To which my grandmother replied later, "He is always picking on me!"
My grandfather was proudly showing me his Oklahoma University hat that he got a while back (he is a fan of OU). Then he showed me a second OU hat made for a lady. I asked him if that was for Grammy to wear. He replied, "Of course not! It is for me to wear when I feel like being a girl." (Right! I think not!)
My grandfather recounts a time when he was about to give a waitress a 50 dollar bill and asks her if she knows whose face is on the bill. She doesn't know so he offers her a hint: "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?" She answers, "Lincoln?" (I hope he somehow covered that with grace!)
One night, my grandfather randomly flings his dirty socks onto the floor. A few minutes later, my grandmother goes around trying to pick them up and chides him for doing it. Later, she asks him where he put his dress shirt that he had just taken off. He replies, "I threw it on the bathroom floor!" He was kidding of course, but my grandmother was ready to get after him big time!

He never ceases to amuse us! I love my grandfather! He is too much.

Overall, my Christmas break was wonderful! I spend five days in Michigan, then I flew to Minnesota for GYC, then flew to Arizona for Christmas and New Years. Went to the Grand Canyon with my family while there. It was all fun! I will have to post some pictures later, or better yet, you can just go to my sister's blog at http://resurrectiongirl.blogspot.com. She's given the full scoop there.

As this new year begins, we find ourselves one year closer to Christ's soon return. I pray that this year will find us preparing more than ever for that great event!

Snowbound... or is that Stranded??

2007-12-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

What was meant to be a quick jaunt down to the lower mainland to have a meeting with the Bible working team here and to do some Christmas shopping, has turned into the adventure of a lifetime. Let me explain...

Last Wednesday, the entire school left on a music tour to Oregon. That gave me the remainder of the week off from school. I came down to the lower mainland on Thursday to have a debriefing meeting with the Radiant Living Bible work team regarding the four-weekend training session we did with the seniors this fall. While down here, I thought I would get some Christmas shopping done since I wouldn't have much time once I got home for break. Everything went great until Sabbath afternoon when it started snowing hard. (That is a rare occurrence here in the lower mainland where all they get is tons of rain.) It snowed hard all throughout the night and by Sunday morning, we had 5-6 inches on the ground. (Another 2-3 inches accumulated through the remainder of the day.)

On Sunday, I was supposed to go the 3 1/2 hours back up the mountain to get to school, but realized the roads would probably be horrible the farther up the mountain I went. The bus was traveling up from Oregon so I thought I might catch up with them and follow them up just in case I needed help along the way.

When I called them to see if we could meet up, they were about a half hour away so I scrambled out of the house to meet them. After clearing my car of snow, getting onto the horribly slippery snow-covered road, nearly getting stuck in someone's driveway, and getting not more than a couple miles down the road, I had already used up about an hour or more of time. People from the bus called me to see were I was and then advised me not to even try go up the mountain since the roads were getting progressively worse. They thought they would just come get me, but then opted not to since they started sliding around in the parking lot.

So, I opted to stay in town for several more days to get some snow tires and then travel back up the mountains when the roads got better. (The whole ordeal in trying to find snow tires could be a blog all of its own!) Little did I know the roads would just get worse instead of better. By Monday, all roads going into the school were closed from all directions due to ice, snow, and avalanche warnings. So here it is Wednesday and the main roads are still closed up the mountain. I spoke to a friend at school last night and they have well over a foot of snow (she said nearly 2 feet) with 1 1/2 inches of ice on top. They said it is a mess there.

So in the mean time, I am stuck here at the Radiant Living home and it doesn't look like I will get back up to school until Sunday or Monday at the earliest. So my short weekend jaunt has turned into a week and a half adventure. It is pretty crazy! The school is snowbound in and I am snowbound out, so it makes it interesting to teach! I am so thankful I have an awesome sub at home who is taking my classes for the entire week. I email him all my lesson plans and then he teaches them for me.

All and all, it has been a rather relaxing week! I am hanging out with the totally awesome Bible workers on the Radiant Living team. It reminds me so much of living in Troy last year with all the Bible workers there. Brings back fond memories. So I am thankful that at least I was stranded here with wonderful friends, Christian fellowship, and a nice place to stay. I just hope I can get up the mountain early next week since I leave for Christmas break on the 13th and I need to pack for break! (All I have with me here is about 3-4 changes of clothes! Crazy!)

So that is my winter adventure stories...I just hope we don't get another round of this next week or else we aren't going anywhere for Christmas break!

Happy Thanksgiving from Canada...

2007-11-22T10:06:00.000-08:00

I do have much to be thankful for...so I am not complaining, but it really does feel terrible to have to work on Thanksgiving! This Canadian tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving in October just doesn't cut it for me. I am too American...Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving unless it is celebrated the end of November. But since I moved up to Canada, I did it to myself. So now I sit in my office and know that I will have to miss Thanksgiving with my family and friends back in the states. I feel just a bit sad....

But I do have much to be thankful for...life, health, family, friends, a job, a home, a dog, and most of all, a loving Saviour. So even though I can't celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, I will celebrate it in my heart because I have much to be thankful for...

Would Jesus really wash his feet?

2007-11-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

My principal caught me after class this morning and asked if I had known anything about the controversy that occurred in Seattle and Oregon the beginning of October regarding a painting by Lars Justinen that depicts several world leaders--and a world terriorist-- having their feet washed by Jesus. The painting was designed to advertise for a conference that was going to discuss the character of God. The enraged reaction from the public caused many to take down the posters and others to blog vehemently about the meaning presented in the poster. One man stated, "I guess the point is to show just how forgiving and loving Jesus is. He's so loving th[at] he'll even wash Osama bin Laden's feet! Sorry, I aint that kind of Christian. My Jesus would use nunchucks on Osama bin Laden. Or maybe rip his still beating heart out, Temple of Doom style. This is the South Park Jesus. The one who boxed Satan and only won because the Satan threw the fight..."

One of the leaders who commissioned the painting stated, "that the picture was meant to parallel the story of Jesus washing the feet of Judas. No one is Judas in the picture, but the meaning is that Jesus would stoop to wash the feet of his enemies. The meaning is that in that painting of powerful world leaders -- and one powerful terrorist -- the one with all the power is ultimately Jesus.”

This whole thing got me thinking... a lot of people are in a rage that people would kill others in the name of religion. They look with horror and disdain on these people yelling "how unChristian is that!" But then, they turn around and say that the Jesus they serve would not wash the feet of his enemies, but instead would annihilate them too. Sounds like what they accused the others of doing. My principal made the comment that there is only one false religion, but it takes on many different faces. Here, we see that both entities are wrong in their thinking. They are accusing each other of the very thing they themselves are guilty of.

And then I started thinking, Would Jesus really wash the feet of someone like bin Laden? Why not? Did he not wash the feet of his betrayer (Judas)? Did he not wash the feet of his denier (Peter)? Did he not wash the feet of the want-to-be annihilators (James and John referring to Luke 9:54))? I am confident that Jesus would. Granted Jesus wouldn't love the sin that is within the heart of the individual, but he would always love the sinner. That is why he chose to die--even for his enemies. Roman 5:8, 10 says that "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us...For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." And if Jesus would die for someone like bin Laden, why wouldn't he wash his feet too?

I don't think any of us can fully grasp the meaning of Christ's love. We view his love from a very selfish, human standpoint that holds grievances for wrong doing and that shows love only to the lovable. But Jesus demonstrated the very opposite in his life. His whole mission was to minister to the worst of society, to seek and save the lost of humanity.

And when I look at bin Laden or myself, what it all boils down to is that we are both sinners in need of a Savior. I am thankful that God is willing to stoop down to wash the feet of the worst of the worst. That's the type of God I serve!

Hurricane Force Winds...

2007-11-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

Headline News...

Storm Day in BC
"The BC coast will be battered with strong winds and heavy rain for most of today. Wind and rainfall warnings are in effect for large areas of the BC coast. Winds are expected to be from 70-90 km/h with up to 105 mm of rain forecasted for some areas."

This was the weather forecast for the events we experienced yesterday. And it was an accurate prediction. I don't recall ever being in a wind storm as bad as the one that hit here Sunday night/early Monday morning. Here is what happened.

Sunday night we arrived late back at school returning from our senior outing to Radiant Living in Vancouver. It was cold and slightly windy, but nothing serious. I went out to feed Shanuk and thought that I would bring her inside with me just so I could spend some time with her without having to stay in the cold. (I don't usually bring her inside except when the temperatures are extremely low or she is barking at the bears and keeping me awake.) As nightfall came, the winds started to pick up and Shanuk started to get really nervous. Because I have a corner bedroom, the wind rips around the outside corner and makes horrible groans and screeches. Shanuk didn't like it at all. Several times I thought she wanted to go back outside, but whenever I opened the front door and she saw how terrible the wind was outside, she would run back in. So I just let her spend the night with me.

It was an absolutely restless night. Shanuk kept pacing around and several times throughout the night, I tried to let her go outside, but she wouldn't. I don't think I have every heard the wind like it was that night. It almost sounded like the house was going to blow away. A loose board on the outside paneling right next to my bed kept clapping at the house. The wind blowing around the outside corner shrieked and hollered. It was horrific sounding. It lasted all night.

The next morning, I finally convinced Shanuk it was time to go outside so that I could get ready for class. I stepped outside and looked over toward her doghouse just to realize there was no longer any doghouse there. Instead it had been thrown a hundred some feet into the orchard. Don't ask me how considering that doghouse is extremely heavy (it took three of us to lift it onto a truck bed to haul it away) and there was a full bucket of water in it that made it heavy too. (I am really grateful it blew in the direction it went because my car is always parked right in front of the doghouse. If it had blown the other direction, my car would have been majorly damaged.)

Anyway, I cringe to think what would have happened to Shanuk if she would have been in the house. Since she is tied to a rope, she probably would have been strangled to death had she been thrown with the house. In addition, it would have just traumatized her to wind even more than she already is. (When she was a puppy, a tornado threw her about 100 yards against a tree while she was in her house). I am just so thankful I felt impressed to bring her inside and that she refused to go back out throughout the night.

So now she is staying in my room until I can get her house fixed. I spent nearly three hours yesterday working with the principal's son trying to get it all put back together. It was so torn up from the wind, we had to take it completely apart and start from the foundation up.

In addition to trees down on campus, one of the roofs on a staff house was raised two feet, then moved back one foot and dropped back down on the house. The ceiling collapsed in part of the house. Amazingly, the couple had just been in that room and felt impressed to move right before it collapsed.

All I can say is that God is good and he cares for those who love him. May we always be thankful for his watch care in our lives.

On a silver platter...

2007-11-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

What can I say? I just love my students! Especially when they come up with such creative ideas as the one that greeted me as I walked out of the café the other day. You see, my Bible 11 class has been working on a very large project where they are researching the events outlined in Daniel 2 from a purely historical viewpoint. I divided the class into the five different groups (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Pagan Rome, and Papal Rome) and had them see how history confirms the rise and fall of each of these world empires. My Grecian team was running into a fair bit of problems and begged for an extension in the due date of their project. Of course, being a softy to earnest pleas, I gave them an extension.

As I walked out of the café earlier this week, these four students met me in the doorway with their assignment. And I must say I have never had an assignment presented to me in that fashion. I laughed so hard! Here is how it came…

Yes, on a silver platter with rose petals. They insisted they wanted to put chocolate on the platter as well but couldn’t find any. They wanted to make sure that I would still forgive them for turning it in late and hoped that their elaborate presentation of the late document would help soften my heart! Of course it worked (although I never intended on penalizing them since I gave them an extension anyway). But still, I thought it was the most clever way to present a late paper. Most of the students in the café were so confused about what was happening… except for a fellow teacher. He picked up on it right away, and mentioned to one of my students, “I gather that was a late assignment?”

So for future reference, if you ever want a late paper forgiven, just submit it on a silver platter with rose petals!

______________
Oh, btw...did you know that a 2000 Nissan Altima can hold 18 people? Well, tonight I hauled 18 girls at once from the cafe to the dorm... Don't ask how we did it! But we all made it in once piece safe and sound!

"If I were a guy, I'd marry after 30..."

2007-11-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

These are the words of wisdom spoken by one of my 15-year old seniors. She has commented to me before that she is surprised that I am not married yet. She says she would think that I would have had many guys take an interest in me in the past and how have I just avoided getting married? I assured her I have never been desperate to get married and I enjoy waiting on God. Well this week, she announced to me that if she were a guy, she would most definitely wait until she was thirty to get married. Her rationale is that too many young guys are so desperate to get married that they just settle for anyone rather than being patient and waiting for the best. And then she said, "But then all the really nice quality girls are the older ones like you, Miss O. I think the guys should wait till they're 30 so they can get all the great girls like yourself." Well, Ellen, thanks for your words of encouragement! And so to all my single "older" friends, just remember that things get better with age!

My Season

2007-10-28T17:06:00.001-07:00

Yes, for everyone that ever wanted to know, this is my season! That is, the one that follows summer and precedes winter...AUTUMN! And with that comes all the changing colors of the leaves. Here at Fountainview, we have orchards all over the property and the leaves have slowly been changing colors from greens to yellows to oranges to pinks to reds. It is beautiful! Several students and I were in the orchards yesterday getting some last snapshots before they turn brown. Here is just a small selection of the photos... (I thought I would include some of Autumn and Autumn ;)...)

It is amazing to me that many of us think fall is one of the prettiest seasons of the year. But after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, that first fall was a devastating experience for Adam and Eve. Mrs White comments, "As Adam witnessed the first signs of decaying nature in the falling leaf and in the drooping flowers, he mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead. The drooping flowers were not so deep a cause of grief, because more tender and delicate; but the tall, noble, sturdy trees to cast off their leaves, to decay, presented before him the general dissolution of beautiful nature, which God had created for the special benefit of man." {SR 55.2} How is it that today we have come to think of it as such a beautiful time of year rather than a time of mourning. I can think of two things: 1) God brings beauty out of tragedy. Though it is a reminder of sin, God tries to still cover it with his grace and bring a beauty out of it instead. 2) Though it is the beginning of a bleak, barren, harsh, and long cold winter to come, the fall colors almost give us a foretaste and glimpse of the beauty that will come to the earth during the new birth of spring when God makes all things new again.

So in our own lives: when we are on the brink of a winter experience in our lives, he shows us two things: first, that He can bring beauty where their is pain and ugliness and second, He will takes us through that experience to enjoy the rebirth on the other side where he makes all things new. May you remember that this fall.

Show me a mission, then evidence

2007-10-18T22:06:00.001-07:00

Today we had a very interesting discussion in Bible class. We have been studying through the defense of the Christian faith and have finally progressed from the defense of God and the Bible to the defense of Jesus Christ. In class, we watched several news casts about Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda and his claim to be Jesus. This spurred an excellent discussion in class about the students' reactions to his claim. After analyzing different things he said that completely contradict what we know in the Bible, several students mentioned something very interesting. When the interviewer asked Miranda why he thinks he was chosen to be Jesus on earth, he says he doesn't know. The students commented that he seems to have no purpose, no mission, no goals. In fact, he doesn't even know why he is Jesus. We compared this with Jesus of Nazareth. He made it very clear from the very start of his ministry that he had a purpose, a mission, and a goal. He knew clearly why He was on this earth--to seek and save the lost. Everything in his ministry to others was with that mission in mind. He had focus and direction.

We then discussed that this man showed no evidence of his being Jesus. The interviewer asked him if he could perform miracles, walk on water, etc. He responded, "Not exactly." This launched us into a discussion of the role of evidence in proving a claim. One student said that if he didn't perform miracles then that proved that he wasn't from God. So I countered that with, "Then if he could do miracles, does that prove that He is divine? What about all the faith healers that perform all those so called 'miracles'? Just because they can do these things, does that prove that they are from God?" Of course they said no. So then I asked them where does "evidence" come into play and how can we know when that evidence confirms the divinity of the individual.

This led us to look to Jesus' example in how he used evidence in his ministry to prove his divine nature. We looked at Jesus standing before Herod. Mrs. White states that Herod was anxious to see Christ "prove His claims by working a miracle." While Jesus had done this on many other occasions, he refused to do it now. Herod insisted, "If Thou canst work miracles for others, work them now for Thine own good, and it will serve Thee a good purpose. Again he commanded, Show us a sign that Thou hast the power with which rumor hath accredited Thee. But Christ was as one who heard and saw not.... Herod promised that if Christ would perform some miracle in his presence, He should be released...." DA 729-730.

So here we see that Jesus refused to heal because it would only satisfy idle curiosity. In addition, it would prevent Him from fulfilling his mission to seek and save the lost because Herod would have released Him. Thus, any type of evidence shown would have gone against Christ's purpose--so he refused to do it.

Then we looked at the story of the man sick with the palsy in Matt. 9. I asked the class if Jesus' main goal was to heal the man physically or spiritually. Of course it was spiritually. So instead of healing the man, Jesus forgave his sins. But when the Pharisees cried blasphemy, Jesus knew he needed to give some evidence that he could indeed forgive. So he told them, "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." Notice why Jesus gave evidence in this circumstance and not in the one with Herod. Jesus had to emphasize his mission as one who could forgive sin. But since nobody can see whether sins are actually forgiven, Jesus then gave them proof that they could see--a healing miracle. We see this occurring over and over in Jesus' ministry: the evidence was always for one reason alone--to prove his mission, his goal, his purpose.

So that leads us back to the role of evidence. Evidence is never just for the sake of evidence--it is to prove mission. When you look at these faith healers, one must ask themselves "what is the mission? and how does this 'evidence' concur with the mission." The fact is that these healings seem to be for the sake of healings alone--not for the sake of the gospel message in healing the soul of sin.

So our class discussion concluded with one main idea that distinguishes Christ from all other so called 'Christs' and faith healers. He had a very clear-cut mission and purpose. And any evidence that he ever gave was only for the sake of proving that he could fulfill that mission.

Mrs. White sums it up beautifully in one final statement about Christ before Herod: "The mission of Christ in this world was not to gratify idle curiosity. He came to heal the brokenhearted. Could He have spoken any word to heal the bruises of sin-sick souls, He would not have kept silent. But He had no words for those who would but trample the truth under their unholy feet." DA 730

For myself, I am thankful that in the life of Jesus physical evidence was provided that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus could and did fulfill the mission that all this evidence pointed to--that He indeed can save and forgive my sin!

This Morning's Rat Race

2007-10-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

Some people have the boring, methodical way to wake up in the morning--their alarm clock. Well for those of you boring souls out there, you just need to come live with me for awhile and you can get all kinds of interesting wake up calls. At six this morning, I was still in bed when I had a light tap on my bedroom door. One of my suite mates tiptoed in and profusely apologized for waking me up and then pleaded and begged me to come to their aid... They had a visitor that morning--a pack rat. He had climbed up the bottom bunk and crawled across one of the girls. She flung him and the covers onto the floor and then started yelling at her roommate that there was a rat in their bedroom. Her roommate thought it was a big joke until they looked in the closet and saw this big rat hiding in the corner behind the shoes. Being the expert rat hunters that we are (ya right! like we've had lots of practice!), we first called one of the assistant boy's deans to come over to help us (poor guy, he had just woken up and then he is called to help some girls catch a rat!). So Johnny came over with an ax of all things (we thought he was going to kill it in the bedroom, but he said it was only so he could corner it...). Then we barricaded all the doors and stuffed sleeping backs under the doors to prevent him from escaping to another part of the house. We set about three rat traps and one live trap and then armed with a trusty trash can, we were ready to shew him out of the closet. We finally coaxed him out and then he ran helter skelter all over the floor nearly crawling up the legs of my friends. They screamed and hollered and danced around. We finally threw the trash can over him but then weren't sure what to do. I unloaded a three ring binder and then carefully slid it under the trash can. The rat jumped when we slid it under causing one of the girls to jump too. We carefully lifted the trash can and then slid the binder just enough for the rat to fall into the live trap. As soon as we dropped him in, he raced up the sides and nearly out the top, but thankfully Johnny closed the trap door just in time. Good thing or we would have had another rat race around the room. To say the least, it was a crazy way to start the morning! (This is the second one we caught in the house in the past week. The first one was three times this big!)

Krystal and I trying to decide how we are going to lift the trash can without the rat escaping. (She's sitting on the trash can to make sure he can't get out!)

Our weapons of mass destruction

Just to show how big he is in comparison with the trap

Cute...maybe, annoying...definitely!

Oh, yes, some of my other wake up calls at night have been for the bears... Many a night since I have been here in Canada, I have been awoken by my dog barking at some unknown thing outside. Nearly every time I look outside to see what it is, it is either a bear or coyote looming in the plum trees right outside my window. A couple nights ago, my suite mates and I heard Shanuk barking so we looked outside to see a huge bear in the orchard. Grabbing the flashlight, we tromped outside to see if we could get a better look. I laughed when I thought of the childhood game I used to play where one person hides and you all go marching around yelling "no bears out tonight, Daddy shot them all last night" and then they jump out of the dark and tag you. Well, I definitely cannot sing that song here! There is a bear out nearly every night. But the bear was shy and took off before we could get close...oh, well, maybe next time. (Just kidding! I have no intention on getting close to those guys! And don't worry, we were being careful when we went out to see it!)

The Novelty of Being a Teacher

2007-09-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Being a teacher is a fun job. You have all kinds of crazy things happen in a day. These are just a few in the last two days.

Yesterday morning: (After a student lost his glasses and can't hardly see a thing), "Miss O, I can't find my eye (a huge magnifying glass he's been lugging with him all week). Can you read this math problem to me cause I sure can't see it!" Poor guy! He can't ever figure out if his math homework is right or not cause he can't see what he is doing. Glasses should be arriving some time next week.

Yesterday evening: Since I arrived here two weeks after all the students did, they were all anticipating my arrival and were trying to imagine what the new teacher would be like. One senior was recounting what she thought I would be like. She knew I would be teaching the first half of senior Bible (Defending Your Faith) but not the second part on Marriage and Family (for obvious reasons!). Of course she gathered that I must not be married (and thus wouldn't know much on that topic), so she started conjuring up images of what I must be like--an old spinster with her hair always tied up in a bun. She declared to me yesterday that she was pleasantly surprised that her imaginings were completely wrong... In fact, at first they wondered if I was a new student on campus and then were surprised to find out I was the new "spinster" teacher they had all been waiting for...

Today: (Helping a student on their science lesson regarding the reproductive system), "Miss O, can you help me find three similarities between the male and female reproductive systems. I'm having a hard time..." Ya, I have to admit, that's not the easiest thing to find similarities with! I must have impressed them with at least some knowledge of A&P, so when I was finished helping them, the next question came: "Miss O, are you a doctor? Like, can you treat cancer and operate on people?" Emphatically no! That would definitely not be me!

It's the type of job that keeps you on your toes, gives you lots to smile and laugh about, and always keeps you busy with tons of grading and lesson planning... speaking of which, that's what I should be working on now rather than this post.

So here I sign out,
Yours truly,
Miss O

Ps. I had the most amazing thing happen in D&R class this week! God is really working on the hearts of some of my students. I will try to share that later on.

My New Home..

2007-09-09T11:19:00.001-07:00

Well, as most of you know, the border guards let me into Canada. In fact, the border guard I had was so nice, he was going to let me in without checking some of my crucial documents! So now that I have been here for a little over a week, I have to share with you some of the many things I have experienced so far.

Mom has been with me this whole week. That has been such a blessing! She has helped me get my room in order, my office set up, and has worked with several of my right brained students with their math skills. I will miss her so much when she leaves on Tuesday!

My classes are going well. I have great students and the staff are wonderful. It's been slightly difficult coming in 2 weeks late especially since I started teaching right when I got here... no time for a breather. But that's ok. Here are just a few pictures of my new home. The scenery is absolutely breaktaking!

The first picture is the main building on campus. Located inside is the chapel, the cafeteria, administration offices, classrooms, library, and computer lab. The mountains around it are just amazing! The second picture is the view that I have from my place. It sits up on a little ridge and looks down into the valley. All over the property are lots of fruit trees. There are apples, plums (both purple and green--which are so good, I must add), pears, apricots, cherries, grapes, and of course carrots! (They grow organic carrots for market.) It is so nice to have fresh fruit to eat every day!

I took a trip to the thriving "metropolis" of Lillooet (20 minutes away) last Sunday (population approx. 2700). Along the way, we saw a bald eagle and a black bear! That was so awesome to see!! I couldn't get a picture of the bear because he was shy and ran away before we could get close. But here is the bald eagle.

On the way down, we ran into this thing called the "Slide." Someone had mentioned it, but didn't tell us what it was. Man was I in for a surprise...I came around a bend on the steep mountain road, and the road went from two lane down to one. The one side was straight up, the other straight down to the valley floor. They had some type of land slide some time ago and it completely messed up the road. After much repair, they finally cleared one small lane. Periodically rocks still fall off the cliff onto the road and you can see them all piled up along the edge. (Several staff members here have had rocks fall into their windows from the ledge.) Most of that section of road has concrete barriers (a recent addition, thankfully!) but one spot still opens straight down to the valley floor beneath. What makes it interesting is when you have to pass other vehicles (especially logging trucks) when you are in the slide. So from what I have heard, Highway 12 is the worst in Canada. I don't doubt it!

It doesn't look that bad from this angle, but the sides are almost vertical with the little road along the edge.

Here is the section that has no barriers.

It is all one lane with potholes and fallen rocks along the edge.

From what I understand, many people have died over the slide. But I know I have angels that are looking out for me so I have no need to fear. "The angel of the Lord encamps round about them that fear him and deliveth them." I am so thankful that God delivers--not just from physical harm, but if we let him, he will deliver us from spiritual harm as well by delivering us from sin! Now that's a promise!

Oh, yes, today I had another new experience... something I had never seen before. About 200 feet from my house along the trail I walk down to school, I ran across this "pile" of stuff. Anyway, since I wasn't sure what it was, I had to do a google search to identify it! Can you figure it out? (Hint: I didn't get close enough to it to see if it smelled like pepper, but I didn't see any bells in it! Mom did say it had carrots in it though!)

Joy in the Journey

2007-08-30T23:26:00.001-07:00

Before I left Michigan, I was talking to my friend Michael about journeys and how some people are so anxious to get to their destination that they don’t enjoy the journey along the way. So I was determined that on my journey to Canada, I would try to find the little things to enjoy about the trip getting there. Wow! It has been crazy… but here is just a little recap about my journey…

Day 1:
Got off around 10am—later than planned, but I had to go to the post office and ship three large boxes to Canada that didn’t fit in my car.

Stopped near Berrien for about ½ hour. My friend Sedric met us at the interstate to say goodbye. That was a nice sendoff out of Michigan.

Minnesota has a 65 mph speed limit and is crawling with policemen. Passed maybe 20 along the road—almost all with a victim. Thankfully none were me…

Had a good travel day. Shanuk traveled well. I am pleased. She even loved her little “cave” in the backseat. She loves hiding in small places.She did freak out in the hotel, though, with all the new sounds of the TV, the toilet flushing, the blow dryer, etc. At one point, she tried to crawl into the night stand that sat in between the two beds. She’s way too big so only her head and shoulders fit in, but she would have stayed there a long time except that we finally coaxed her out. I wish I had my camera right then to catch the moment. I laughed so hard!

Day 2
Woke up with a super sore, swollen, red finger. (I cut it very deeply a week ago and then it developed a rash that spread down to my knuckle. My medical friend Albert said to just keep an eye on it and if it started to get painful and turn red, then I should probably have it checked. A bad infection could lead to a bone infection… not cool! So anyway, today it looked awful… Decided I should get it checked, but where?? Stopped at a medical clinic in Wisconsin and spoke to a nurse. She said to soak it in Epson salts. So thanks to Wendy’s and Starbucks for supplying the hot water, we had a little infirmary on the road. At night we wrapped it in charcoal.

Went through another new state—North Dakota. I had been to every state west of the Mississippi except this one, so that was fun. (My total number of states I have now seen is 47.) It is so flat though! But there are a lot of wetlands. It is neat. Speed limit—75 mph. Temperature slightly chilly at 65 degrees. The people here drive funny. I was ready to go straight through a green light and four cars turned left right in front of me as if they had the right of way. Good thing I stopped or there would have been a major accident. Later, I read the sign from the direction they came “Left turn yield on green.” I guess they don’t know how to read…

Got to the hotel and tried to start my computer. Dead… It freezes whenever I log on. Stressing out since none of my recent lesson plans have been backed up. I have a lot of files I need for school on Monday. I’ll figure it out in the morning.

Day 3
My finger looks and feels so much better. Another soak in Epson salts and another charcoal poultice. I’m turning black…

My computer was hijacked today!! Someone took it over—three times! I realized I needed to get some urgent care on my computer since there are no IT guys at the school and I really need my files for class on Monday. Besides since I can’t even log into my computer, I may be without a computer for months till I get it fixed and I just can’t afford that. So I called Microsoft tech support and spent four hours on the phone with them. The first guy helped me log back in (learned more about my systems configuration than I ever knew before!) and clean out all the spyware, adware, viruses, etc. He was so helpful. But after I finished with him, one particular virus that was logged in a windows system file was still there. So I was patched to another PC security guy who spent another two hours cleaning my computer some more. Craziness! I don’t know how I got all that junk, but I thank God that it is all off and my computer runs so well now! I am virus free!

Got off from the hotel around 2pm (had to stay at the hotel so the IT guys could access my computer through the internet, but it set us off so late in the day. Had an 11 hour drive in front of us, but dad set our reservations closer in so we didn’t have to drive so far…)

Yesterday I was telling mom how barren North Dakota and then she told me she had justs seen a commentary about a man who quit his teaching job to come back to his podunk little town in North Dakota and try to revive the dying town. He started making metal sculptures—some of the largest in the world. She couldn’t remember where in North Dakota they were. As we were traveling today, we passed on of the huge sculptures along the road and mom yelled out, “That’s one of those sculptures I was telling you about.” This man’s town was 15 miles off the interstate, so we took a side diversion to see them. They were so cool.

Got calls along the way from Adriana, Justin, and Joe. Oh, yes, and from Dr. Anonymous who called at 1:30 am his time while he was on call at the hospital. (He was paged while I was talking to him to check someone’s EKG so he had to run to see if his patient was ok. He called me back later to say the guy was fine…good thing or I would have felt terrible if someone had a heart attack while the doctor was talking to me in his on-call room!) Anyway, I am so thankful for all my friends who have called me along the way to say goodbye, see how I am doing as I travel, and wish me a great rest of the journey.

Day 4
Got off this morning in decent time. The first morning we have not had any major incidents. Good thing considering we have a thirteen hour day in front of us (because of all the craziness yesterday…) That should put us within two hours of the Canadian border. We are trying to get to the border with plenty of time tomorrow just in case I have trouble with my papers.

Traveled through the rest of North Dakota, then Montana, Idaho, and Washington. I think Shanuk really like the scenery today. She usually falls asleep in the back of the car, but today she was awake most of the day and just sat in the back seat looking around. I would have to agree it was very pretty.

Got to the hotel around 11:30. Exhausted.

To the border tomorrow…

Goin' Ridin'

2007-08-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today was a first for me...Going motorcycle riding. Responding to my previous post that my car still has a drinking problem, a friend recommended a solution... get a motorcycle. He says they drink a lot less. Well, I haven't gone so far as to get a bike, but today I did go riding. It was my first experience and it was sooooo much fun! My friend Justin came down for the evening and took me riding so that I could see what it was like. I had a blast! So here are just a few photos that say I actually tried it!

Oh, btw, for those who are wondering about my visa situation, it still hasn't come yet. So I haven't left for Canada yet like I had planned to on Monday. But I am not complaining. It gives me more time to spend with my wonderful family! I will treasure all the moments I can get!

I feel blessed...

2007-08-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday of last week, I was traveling down to Berrien Springs Michigan to deliver a bag to a friend who was taking it to Canada with her. On the way down, my turn signal started smoking on me! (Whoever heard of that!) Yes, I know, I have an apostate car... it smokes and drinks. But thankfully I took it through a stop smoking program and that is fixed, but I am still struggling with its drinking problem...sigh. Anyway, while I was at the dealer, I asked them to give my car a physical (after all, I had to go through a medical exam in order to go to Canada so I figured my car may need it as well.) They came back with this list that included changing my left front wheel bearings, engine gasket, and fuel filter, and flushing the transmission fluid and coolant. They wanted to charge me an outrageous amount of money. I about choked when I saw how much they wanted me to pay. But God has blessed me with many friends in many different professions, one of them being a mechanic (he was also a professional figure skater in Russia. I guess those type make the best mechanics since they are quick on their toes and get the job done faster! :)...). So I called up my trusty friend and he said he could do it at a vastly reduced cost. I went to his shop today and he saved me almost $730! Even at 134,500 miles, he says my engine looks terrific, shows almost no signs of rust (which he says is remarkable for a Michigan car), and should last me a very long time. In addition to all the work he did, he gave me a free engine cleaning so now it looks spic and span. On the way home, my car ran great--more power and smoother shifting. It runs as well as it did 60,000 miles ago when I got it! I feel very blessed.

Here is the fine specimen of my engine and my mechanic friend Vladimir Levchenkov...

Oh, btw, did you know that transmission fluid is pink? It is really quite beautiful. So for those of you guys who need to get in touch with your feminine side, just remember that your vehicle sports some lovely pink stuff!

Blessings and Friends!

2007-07-30T15:41:00.006-07:00

This past weekend was an amazing one--full of many blessings and friends. I went down to Berrien Springs to visit one of my best friends Melanie. It was a spiritually charged weekend and a fun one as well. On Sabbath, my friend Reuben preached. His sermon touched on the fact that it is our God-given commission to make disciples. But in order to make disciples, it is important to know what a disciple is. What are the characteristics of a disciple? He then took us to John 13:35 that says we will know a disciple by one main characteristic--love for one another. That love consists of being willing to give and receive reproof and correction that is intended to build up another person and help them in their quest to be more like Jesus. The motto that we each should have when a person shares with us our faults is to say, "Thank you for caring enough to share." It may not always be easy to take, but if it means having a character more like Christ's than it is more than worth it!

After church we had a young people's potluck during which I found a little bat drowning in the toilet! Poor thing! He was more than grateful to be rescued. (To say the least, he shocked me a great deal. That is not what you expect to find in the toilet!) Then after visiting and singing to several individuals in the community, we went to the beach to have sundown worship. It was amazing!! I miss the beach so much. Here are a few pictures...

Melanie and I. Melanie is one of the most awesome friends you could ask for! Thanks for letting me spend the weekend with you!

There were some awesome dunes that you could jump from. Here Melanie and I are trying pair jumping. Kyle says that we are so good we are on our way to Beijing for the Olympics. I do think our landing needs a bit more work!

Crazy friends are the best. Do we win the prize for cheeziness?

I had no idea Melanie was making a funny face and she had no idea I was. Well, here is the result. Great minds think alike!

On my way down! Thankfully Reuben caught me.

This is how people from Tennessee wear their pants. Or maybe it is how they keep their neck warm. We are still trying to figure it out. Maybe Kyle can help us understand the mind of a Tennessean...

Kyle's prized catch--fillet of sole.

These next four pictures are the artistic talent of Melanie. I think they are awesome and wanted to share them...

Great Bear Tips!

2007-07-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Today I was doing some research on the internet to learn more about my new home in Lillooet British Columbia. I came across a website for the District of Lillooet British Columbia that has tons of information about its history, things to do, places to see, etc. One of the sections had pictures of wildlife that live in the area including mountain goats, big horn sheep, cougars, and of course, bears. I was especially amused by the caption under the picture of the bear.

Wear small bells to warn bears you're coming and carry pepper spray. Black Bears are in the area if you see 'scat' with berries and rabbit fur in it. Grizzly Bears are in the area if you see 'scat' that smells like pepper and has small bells in it.

Wow! That's one important informational tip! I will have to remember that when I get to Canada. I think I'd rather look out for the bells though considering I don't treasure the thought of sniffing bear 'scat'! I'll let you know if I come across any when I am up there.

Musings About Brussel Sprouts

2007-07-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of serious thinking today...about brussel sprouts. (Ok, please don't laugh. I have been submerged up to my eyeballs in Algebra 1 preparation for next school year so I needed something a little less "brainy" to think about!) So if you care to know my deepest thoughts about brussel sprouts, then read on...

I can vividly remember my childhood exposure to those little round green things that my mom tried to convince me were little cabbages. All her prodding and coaxing never convinced me of that fact. Granted, I liked cabbage, but those little “look-a-likes”? Ugh, I just despised them. But none the less, my mom always insisted I had to eat at least one or two every time she served them. (She said they were good for me. Hmmm. Do all good things have to taste that bad?) No matter what I drowned them in—salt, salad dressing, etc.—I could never escape that unique brussel sprout flavor. It permeated through everything.

Well that was during my childhood. Thankfully now, mom doesn’t make me eat them. But they still frequent the dinner table. Especially in the last four months or so, my mom and sister have been having major cravings for brussel sprouts. (I know, I am still in shock and disbelief.) From what they have told me, they eat them at least once or more a week. But thankfully I haven’t been living at home to experience this latest craze at the Osterman house. But just in the nine days I have been home, they have already appeared on the table twice. Well, today, was one of those days. I decided to be brave and actually see if my childhood dislike has somehow morphed into at least a tolerance for the little “cabbages.” I had some leftover Italian dressing in my salad bowl, and thought that maybe it would help to at least drown out that brussel sprout flavor and make it somewhat tolerable. After making sure they were well drenched, I bravely faced the taste test. The result? Even after all that dressing, that pungent flavor still screamed at me—“I am a brussel sprout. You can’t get rid of me no matter how hard you try!” As I choked down the rest of the sprout in my bowl, the text came to mind, “Can a leopard change his spots or a brussel sprout its flavor.” (quoted from the Textus Autumnus)

My sister chided me and said that I should congratulate that sprout for maintaining its true identity and not letting anything change what it really is deep down inside. Well, I guess from that point of view, I will just have to concede that once a brussel sprout always a brussel sprout and I will just have to refrain from eating them.

Whirlwind!

2007-06-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

Life has been a whirlwind since I got back from Broadview Academy on June 7th. I left for Ann Arbor on the 8th for my friend's wedding. I was there till the 11th. I then spent two days in Troy visiting my Bible study contacts. I came home on the 13th to unpack, do laundry, and then repack to go to campmeeting on the 14th. We just got back Sunday night and I immediately started sorting through all my belongings trying to decide what I will be taking to Canada. In addition, I have been on the phone a lot with the principal at Fountainview Academy trying to work out next years course schedule, finalizing what classes I will be teaching, looking over all the course outlines, objectives, etc. of the classes I will be taking over from other teachers, reviewing the provincial requirements for the courses I will be teaching, and getting all the immigration stuff squared away. Whew! I think I could use a summer break in the midst of all of this!

But somehow, I have been able to snatch a few minutes to post some long overdue entries! So here is another one of my time at campmeeting.

It was a wonderful week and a half of spiritual upliftment, Christian fellowship, and challenging messages. I went to a series on the Old and New Covenants by Skip McCarty. It was a wonderful, insightful lecture that takes a look at this issue from a whole new perspective. Although I spent a great deal of time studying this topic when I was in Troy (since that seemed to be the big topic with a lot of my contacts), I liked the new insights I learned in these lectures. If you ever get the chance, pick up McCarty's book titled In Granite or Ingrained. You will enjoy the read!

I also ventured out on a limb this year at campmeeting. For years, Staci has tried to get me involved in some major public speaking endeavors, but for those of you who know me well, that has always frightened me. This year she couldn't be on the Sabbath School panel for campmeeting like she was last year. She asked me to fill her place. My first response, you have got to be kidding! But I promised to pray about it and ask God to give me the courage to do it if I felt he was leading that way. Well, I finally agreed to do it and God blessed so much! Of course I was so nervous at first but God was good. This is a picture of us on the panel before we got started. All the ones of us during the discussion were out of focus.

Both Sabbaths, we were blessed with some great company. The first Sabbath, Diana Santos, Kyle Allen, and Sedric Benson came over for lunch. And the last Sabbath, Kyle and Michael Goetz. It was all so much fun!

And no, it is not the traditional Adventist haystacks. We had Korean food instead!

btw, that is not a worm in Kyle's mouth!

Craziness!

Oh, thanks Michael for the grilling session! Hope your mind is at ease now!

The Joining of Two Lives

2007-06-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

On June 10, I had the awesome privilege of being in my friend Joe Lee's wedding. Joe has been a wonderful friend over the last several years. Some of my fond memories with him include hours spent at the registration table at the General Youth Conference, hours spent on the phone at all crazy hours of the night, long talks about his kids and my kids (students at our respective academies), and deep conversations about life, God, our respective plans and goals for the future, and a myriad of other things. When Joe asked me to be a part of his special day, I couldn't have been more excited! I have enjoyed getting to know Shannon through Joe and watch their friendship blossom and grow into a life-long love for one another. I couldn't wish a better partner for Joe. Shannon is wonderful for him.

To see two lives commit to one another is such an incredible event. To think that they will no longer go through life apart, but instead function as one unit with the same goals, thoughts, ideals, and aspirations is an amazing thing. It just shows the beauty of the institution God created in Eden. He saw that two lives knit together as one would be such a powerful, inspiring thing that together they could help one another grow in love, selfliness, and humility.

I remember having a conversation with a friend once and he told me something I don't think I will ever forget. In regards to lifelong singleness, he mentioned that it is one of those things that God calls only a few to take part in. He went on to explain that the development of a Christlike character is easier in a marriage setting because then you have two people rubbing against one another, softening and subduing each other's character and polishing each other's rough edges. But in singleness, you don't have all these encounters. Thus, it could be potentially more difficult to have your character brought to perfection. Thus, lifelong singleness is something that God only calls a few to share because he knows that for most of us, we need the love, affection, and yes, even correction that can be given through a spouse to help us have a character like Christ's. Interesting thought.

So, here are a few photos of my wonderful friends on their wedding day...

Joe and Shannon. Don't they look happy!

Joe and I. Joe, you have been such a great friend throughout the years!

Another one of Joe and I.

Shannon and I.

The newlyweds and I. I am so glad that now I have gained a new friend in Shannon. Shannon, I love you so much! You are awesome! I'm glad you married Joe!

And here are some other random pictures of the wedding party...

While the photographer was taking pictures of the bride and groom, we ladies were having fun posing the guys and taking our own photos! We are pretty good photographers, aren't we?
(From left to right: John Lee-Joe's brother and best man, Sebastien Braxton, Justin Prosser, and Albert Kim)

The three stooges--Albert, Sebastien, and Justin... these guys were having too much fun picking on me throughout the weekend! Thanks guys for making me laugh the entire time!

This was the ride in the limo with Shannon's brother, Justin--the mighty marine! Thanks, man, for being a great escort over the weekend! I don't think I have laughed that much in quite awhile!

The entire wedding party. It was such a fun weekend with everyone!

And then of course, my wonderful sister!

News Break! Bandits break into principal's attic

2007-06-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

Earlier this spring, a pair of masked bandits broke into the attic of Randy Siebold, principal of Broadview Academy. After hearing sounds of scurrying feet in the roof above their heads, he and his family decided to investigate. The identity of these masked bandits? A family of raccoons who had taken up residence in their attic. After the live capture and release of the mother, the Siebold's became the proud parents of a few squirming, screaming baby raccoons. Being very young, only one survived. Now a couple of months old, this little survivor has been given to a lady who has been raising another raccoon and will soon be transitioned to the wild.

Here are a few pictures of the little guy!

Isn't he cute!

This little guy started getting pretty frisky as he got older! He loved to explore your face with his hands. The bottoms of his feet felt so funny!

Holding this raccoon made me long for heaven when it won't be a novelty to hold a wild creature. Instead, all these wild creatures will be just like house pets! That will be so much fun! I think I might have my own zoo up there!

I still exist....!

2007-06-13T14:05:00.001-07:00

**updated on Jun 24**

Hear ye, hear ye, O ye from the outside world! I know it has been forever since I posted, but I have a good excuse for that one! The internet access at Broadview Academy was annoying! Half the time my account didn't work, the other half the time I was connected to the student network which blocked a myriad of different sites including my blogsite, and then spattered somewhere in the middle of that was a crazy schedule that didn't allow for activities such as keeping the outside world up-to-date with the occurrences in the life of Autumn Osterman. And so, lo and behold, here is the latest in my life. I may have to post several along the way to get you all caught up, but at least here is a start...

First, here are a few photos of my students. One of the senior sponsors wasn't able to go with the seniors on their senior trip, so I was elected to fill their spot. It was great fun! We stayed at a really nice lodge at the Adventist camp in Wisconsin. The seniors had a lot of different activities planned for the three-day-get-away. I think the best was the water park! I had such a blast! I also enjoyed the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum there. There were some pretty crazy things in there! Ok, so here are the photos...

Here are just a few other random photos of my Broadview days.

Some of my students

Dr. Siebold (my awesome principal), his wife Brenda, their son Fredy, and myself

A Starry Crown

2007-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

“Everyone they have been the means of saving, adds stars to their crown in glory, and increases their eternal reward.” 1T 197

“It is their privilege to have stars in their crown because of souls saved through their instrumentality.” 3T 94

“There will be no one saved in heaven with a starless crown. If you enter, there will be some soul in the courts of glory that has found an entrance there through your instrumentality.” ST June 6, 1892.

I vividly remember as a young child my parents telling me that when we get to heaven, each of us will have a crown. Some crowns would be heavy with stars and jewels while others would have just a few. They went on to explain that these stars represented each of the people we had brought to Jesus. I always thought, “Wow! I want a crown heavy with stars! I want lots and lots of them! I want it to have so many that it glistens brightly in the sunshine.” It might sound like a prideful wish from a little child. After all, it seems very “unheavenlike” to go around showing others all your stars and how many people you had won to Jesus. But it wasn’t the pride and glamour that was going through my head. I guess I just couldn’t bear the thought of getting to heaven and when looking at my crown with few or no stars realize that I had done so little for Christ and His kingdom. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to tell Christ that I never shared His love with anyone, that I never shared with others what He meant to me, and that I had never brought someone to know Him. How could I really enjoy heaven to its fullest when I realized that though I had gotten there myself, I had brought no one with me? I resolved in my mind that in light of all that He had done for me, I wanted to do something for Him and the least I could do was to tell someone else about Him. But I didn’t know where to begin. Of course, I could witness in my own childish way, but I wanted to do something bigger and better. I wanted to be able to see that I had made a difference in someone’s life.

As I grew older, the thought of wanting to win someone to Christ never left my mind. I remember when my sister began doing Bible work and told me that the absolute best experience one could ever have was seeing someone you had studied the Bible with and prayed for make the stand to follow Christ is baptism. Oh, how I wanted that, but being rather timid of meeting strangers, feeling that I didn’t have the talents and skills of some, and realizing I didn’t always know the “right thing” to say, I wondered if I would ever be able to experience that childhood dream.

As most of you know, after graduating from college, I went to ARISE to attend their 3 ½ month Bible worker training program. I was determined in my mind that I wanted to be used by Christ to win souls—even if it was just one—to Christ. It wasn’t easy knocking on stranger’s doors. I realized that I didn’t always have the “right things” to say and I often wished I had the knowledge and skills of others. But I was determined to use whatever talents and gifts God had given me to His glory for the salvation of souls. The results? Well, they would just be up to God.

After the 3 ½ month course, I stayed on for a year to continue doing Bible work. Throughout the year, God led me to study with so many wonderful people. I began seeing that while not everyone was at the point in their life to make the full surrender to Christ in baptism, the little decisions along the way were just as important and were what was needed for that larger step. With many of my contacts, I saw those little steps that daily reminded me that God was working and that as long as I continued to allow God to use me, then He would bring about the results. But in the back of mind, I still had that childish dream—I wanted to see one soul make that full surrender to Christ in baptism. But that was something only God could do. I would just have to be patient.

In my last post, I wrote a lengthy section about Anne who I had been studying with over the past year. While I didn’t know it at the time, Anne would be the answer to my longtime, childish dream. She was the soul God had in mind to be the first star in my crown. I can honestly take no credit for what God did in her life. It was all Him that did it. The only thing I did was allow Christ to use me. Oh, what an awesome privilege.

One week ago today, I went back to Troy to experience Anne’s baptism. As can be expected, the devil was mad and did what he could to prevent her baptism. Anne’s husband Jay had been struggling at first with her decision for baptism. We postponed her baptism a couple of months to give him time to accept her decision and support her in what she felt God was calling. God is good and Jay finally agreed for her to go through with it. He even agreed to support her by being there Sabbath morning. However, early that morning, he got seriously ill and had to check himself into the emergency room. When I got to church, Anne and her children where there in spite of all the morning’s events. Her faith was strong and she insisted that she was going through with her decision. We only prayed that Jay would be released from the hospital in time to make it back to her baptism. Miraculously, he showed up in time for it and was there to support her. God is amazing!

The baptism was beautiful…one of the most incredible ones I have experienced. The look on Anne’s face was radiant—one filled with peace and happiness. After her baptism she told me, “Autumn, this was one of the best days of my life. I will never forget this day. I cannot begin to describe to you what it felt like to be in that water. It was amazing!” And it was truly amazing —not just for her, but for me as well. The pastor asked me after the baptism what it felt like to see someone you had studied with and prayed for make that decision. I told him it was incredible, but also very humbling. I realize I am not the most qualified individual out there. I realize I make mistakes. I realize there is so much need of growth in my own personal walk with Christ. But in spite of all these limitations, God saw it fit to use me to share the love of Jesus with someone else. That indeed is humbling!

As I have been writing this whole account, my eyes are filled with tears—tears of happiness. My childhood dream of seeing just one person come to know Jesus as the result of God using little ol’ me has come true. But I guess the dream has not completely come true…I still want a crown that is packed full of stars. Not so that I can go around and show them off. Oh, no! It is because I realize that as Paul says, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” And as Mrs. White states, “To save souls should be the life work of every one who professes Christ. We are debtors to the world for the grace given us of God, for the light which has shone upon us, and for the discovered beauty and power of the truth.” Testimonies, vol. 4, p. 53. I owe it to the world to share the love of Jesus. I don’t want to get to heaven and realize I have done nothing for Christ for the salvation of souls. That would not be heaven! Instead, I want to be able to cast my crown, filled with stars and jewels, at Jesus’ feet, and exclaim, “Worthy, worthy, is the Lamb that was slain. You did all this for me. This was the least that I could do for you.”

In closing, I want to leave you with just a few quotes that have inspired me and challenged me to keep pressing forward in sharing Christ’s love with others.

“God could have reached His object in saving sinners without our aid; but in order for us to develop a character like Christ's, we must share in His work. In order to enter into His joy—the joy of seeing souls redeemed by His sacrifice—we must participate in His labors for their redemption.” —The Desire of Ages, p. 142.

“As His representatives among men, Christ does not choose angels who have never fallen, but human beings, men of like passions with those they seek to save. Christ took upon Himself humanity, that He might reach humanity. Divinity needed humanity; for it required both the divine and the human to bring salvation to the world. Divinity needed humanity, that humanity might afford a channel of communication between God and man.” —The Desire of Ages, p. 296.

“With almost impatient eagerness the angels wait for our co-operation; for man must be the channel to communicate with man. And when we give ourselves to Christ in whole-hearted devotion, angels rejoice that they may speak through our voices to reveal God's love.” —The Desire of Ages, p. 297.

“But those who live for God and heaven, pointing out the way of life to others, will find that the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. And they will hear by and by the welcome invitation, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." The joy of Christ was that of seeing souls saved in His glorious kingdom; and for this joy He "endured the cross, despising the shame." But soon "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied." How happy will those be, who, having shared in His work, are permitted to share in His joy! —R. & H., June 23, 1885.

2006 in Review

2007-01-12T16:25:00.000-08:00

It is hard to believe that 2006 is gone. It seems like it literally flew by. It was one filled with so many sweet memories. It will be one year I will never forget! After graduating from ARISE in December 2005, I agreed to join the Radiant Living team—a group of ARISE students that stayed in Troy to do Bible work for a year. Thinking I would start teaching in the fall of 2006, I intended to stay only through July. But when July came, I just couldn’t bear to leave. There were just too many drawing factors that enticed me to stay—wanting to continue studying with all the incredible individuals I met with on a weekly basis, anticipating the arrival of the new ARISE class that would come in the fall, wanting to be a part of the soon-to-be televised evangelistic meetings with David Asscherick and 3ABN—I just couldn’t say goodbye to it all. And so, I finished up the year there. I have absolutely no regrets! It was one of the best years of my life!

One major highlight of my year was the team that I lived with and worked with. Of the eight people on our team, five of us went through the ARISE program together the previous fall. It was really fun to come back together and work together for a year. I will always look fondly on the memories of our time with one another. We really became like family. We would pray together, cry together, study together, play together, encourage one another, challenge one another, and I guess like all families, we would occasionally annoy one another. But all that added to the bond that we feel with one another now. To say the least, I guess it is not surprising we had a crying session before we all parted. Here is a picture of the crew. Unfortunately, Sam is missing. He had to leave a day before the rest of us did.

The Gentlemen (l-r): Royce, Matt, Ezequiel, Dan

The Ladies: Chantelle, Sherise, and me

Another highlight of my time there included all the wonderful people I studied the Bible with. I felt so blessed every time I went to study the Bible with these people. Their dedication to God, their willingness to follow truth, their openness to follow what God revealed in his word was an inspiration to me in my own walk with Christ. One especially rich blessing for me was when one of them decided to make the step of baptism and give her life completely and fully to God. Let me just briefly recap the story…it still amazes me every time I tell it to see how God orchestrated the events.

I actually met Anne’s husband at the door in October 2005 during my studies at ARISE. He agreed to study the Bible indicating his wife would be very interested as well. Anne, having no idea her husband agreed to have studies with two complete strangers, was rather leery of us at our first meeting together. She drilled my partner and me with the all-so-familiar questions: who are you, who are you with, what is your purpose here, etc. But we soon built a strong friendship and began meeting together on a weekly basis to study the Bible. I was amazed at every study how Anne’s faith in the Bible began to grow and her desire to follow God became deeper and deeper. Due to her intense night work schedule as a paramedic, she was unable to attend the evangelistic meetings in the fall of 2005. We continued studying through 2006 and I kept hoping and praying that God would work something out for Anne to attend David’s meetings in the fall. God worked in an unusual and amazing way where Anne had to temporarily quit her job. Perfect, I thought, now she can come to the meetings! And come she did…missing only one or two nights from the whole series. As can be expected, some of the topics were very difficult for Anne to swallow. We sat together many late nights just going back to the Bible to answer the questions she had about what she was learning. But one thing Anne never wavered on—if the Bible said it, she would believe it no matter how difficult it was to accept. What faith! I was so encouraged every time we studied together! At the conclusion of the series, Anne told me she found what she had been looking for. She had never been happier in her life. In addition to her own growth in Christ, her two children loved the children’s meetings and began praying for the first time and singing Christian songs around the home. Anne was thrilled to see the impact the meetings made on her children as well. Anne has requested baptism and I plan to travel back to Troy in the next few months to experience her rebirth in Christ. I cannot express to you the joy of seeing someone make that decision for Christ. That is what made this past year all worth it!

Anne, Ben, Haley, and myself

After leaving Troy on Dec. 20, I came home and enjoyed a wonderful Christmas with my family. I love my family! Then on the 27th, we flew to GYC. It was a wonderful conference this year! I especially enjoyed Peter Gregory's morning worship talks and David Asscherick's evening devotionals. It was an incredible way to end a power packed, spirit-filled year. It was also a blessing to see friends from old times. Here are just a few photos of some of the people I saw there.

Claus and Theresa, two of my friends from Sweden

Staci, myself, Reuben (an ARISE 2006 graduate from Sweden), and Dan (Reuben's cousin from Norway)

Dan and I (one of my team mates over the past year). Am I short or what?

Staci, Melanie (one of my best friends from Andrews University days), and myself.

Joe and Shannon, the soon to be newly weds!

2007 and beyond
On January 2, I moved just west of Chicago to start teaching at Broadview Academy. Thankfully, the second semester doesn't start till the 17th, so it has given me about 2 weeks to lesson plan. I am so excited to see what this next year is going to bring. God worked it out that a whole team of Bible workers have come to work with Broadview Academy. In addition to teaching, I will also be working with the new team. God is so good! Now I can do both things I love--teach and do Bible work! I feel very blessed.

I would like to think I can keep you posted during the new year, but the internet access at Broadview is very frustrating!! Because of the proxy server for the campus, all blogsites are blocked when using the wireless internet. It's sometimes impossible to do anything on it. (While I am at my parent's home this weekend, I am taking advantage of their internet just so I can post something...) So if you don't hear from me in a while, that is most likely why. But I can check my email, so you can always send me a note. I would love it!

Well, I do pray that God blesses each of you in 2007. May it be a year of spiritual growth and deeper commitment to God and his work. Let's make sure we live the year in such a way that Jesus can come quickly!

Joining the club!

2006-12-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

Hear ye, hear ye, everyone. I have the most amazing, incredible, hard to believe news to tell you! I have actually created a blogspot. No kidding!! After all these months and years of reading and enjoying all my friends' online sites, I have finally decided to join the club and allow my voice to be heard along with the others. You're probably thinking...miracle of miracles, why didn't she do it sooner!

Now the next miracle will be whether I actually post any blogs here! Yes, I know, it shouldn't take too much time to occasionally say hi and write a short something about what is happening in my life. But for those of you who know me well know that I am one horrible communicator! And for those of you who don't know me that well, my lack of communication is probably the very reason why you don't know me very well!

Ok, before I sound like a bad person, I must say something in my defense. Maybe it is just that my modes of communication are very limited. Let me review the list with you...

Snail mail, who ever heard of that?...
Email, what is that again?...
Telephone calls, few cell minutes available...
Text messaging, get charged for everyone...
Posting blogs, now that's a novel idea! Maybe I should try that!

So here it goes... my new mode of communication. Only time will tell if it is any more effective than my other modes. Just one word of caution: Don't hold your breath while this experiment is in progress! It may be hazardous to your health!

Well, I really should end this post here. I have business that I really should attend to (like always!!). So perhaps in my NEXT post, I will give you the long awaited update on what has been happening in my life! Until then, take care and God bless!