May 1, 2011 - "How much can we squeeze into April?"

Wow, so I kind of missed my April update. that should say something about how crazy it's been lately. I'll try to recap as much of the last 6 weeks as I can remember in a few concise.... paragraphs.

Well, since my last update, in March I got the opportunity to mime at school for our Talent night (called "Hollywood's Got No Talent" Night) and that was a full night of fun. And consequently 3 pastors contacted me to see if I would do that mime at their churches for Easter. haha :) I was thrilled to oblige. The next week we had a team from the Missionary Training Center in MO come and speak in chapel for us for a whole day and then we had a day off. It was so encouraging, and I won't lie, being able to eat breakfast because it was a couple hours later for our day off was also a huge highlight. haha the little things I take for granted...

Then in April I had the pleasure of starting off the month by going home for spring break! I was able to catch my little brother's play, Nicholas Nickelby (it was phenomenal!), visit the DRAMA teams back home, catch up with all my sibs in PA and do my taxes with my Dad. :) It was SO good to be home and I loved getting more sleep in 10 days than I normally get in probably 2-3 weeks combined here at school. haha I joke (mostly). We came back to school and my RA got engaged, I turned 21, wrote the biggest paper of the semester and mimed at 3 different churches. Needless to say, it's been a busy month, but full of fun, exciting times and good memories. :)

The unexpected blessing I mentioned in my status was that the other day I went into the business office to talk to them about my school bill, which means: I went in to tell them that once again I would not be able to make the payment on time, and asked that if they could give me a few extra weeks I would be able to make it. I was speechless for a moment when they informed me that they actually had just received an anonymous donation of $275 for my school bill. I think I may have shed a few tears after I walked out of that meeting just realizing that God is so good to me. What a relief of pressure and anxiety. It just makes me feel like this must really be where God wants me, and all the work is worth the while to know that I am being obedient to the will of God for me and being taken care of by Him so faithfully.

The classes I went through over the last 6 weeks have been great. I'm currently in an elective on Psalms, and that's been super encouraging. The Life of Christ for 3 weeks followed by Christology was a great one-two punch I loved getting hit with. Hermenteutics II was full of all kinds of new information for me about dispensationalism and Covenant theology and pre-millenialism and all that. I can't say I particularly loved studying all of that, but I realize its value and impact on the way I interpret the Bible. And anytime I learn new things I'm pretty happy about it, so it was a good class. I also had a class on Acts while we went through Christology, and man, what an exciting book of the Bible! I loved going through Acts and reading about God's pursuit of bringing the gospel to the world and the way He used Peter and Paul and those with them. The rest of my current classes aside from Psalms, are the Biblical Basis of Missions and I Corinthians. These may end up being some of my most favorite classes of the semester, rivaled only by the Prophets class. :)

I would love for y'all to join me in praying and Praising God for these things:

- Praise! work has been going really well. The boys informed me that they've been going to church lately, and everyone has just been pretty well behaved and having a good time at Tee Tee's Place :) 

- Praise! Obviously, just prasing God for the donation I already mentioned. What a blessing.

- I would love prayer for my latest and last homework load of the semester. I want to be able to get on top of it enough to still get some sleep at night :)

- Youth group: I feel like I'm getting to know the girls and everyone really a lot better. One of the girls, Alyssa, was baptized last Sunday. SO cool. Another one of the girls has moved in with her boyfriend. So we have our praises and our requests, but over all I feel like God is doing good things.

- I'm looking for a job over the summer, and I'd really like to be home rather than here in Jackson. It's hard to look from such a long way away, but I'm doing what I can and just trusting God to help put things together. He has been so faithful in my life so far. :)

Sorry this is so long. I shouldn't type these when I'm feeling chatty. haha But thanks for reading and praying. I am learning so much, in and out of the classroom. Maybe I'll write more about those lessons in my next update. Thanks again, friends!

blessings,

Jessica King