Sunday, September 21, 2003

Wow, another week has zipped by. I think that writing once a week will work out better for all of us. You won't have to check back as often and I won't have to worry about making sure I have time to spend on the website everyday. The only downside is that I may forget some of the cool things that happen if I don't write them down right away.

Once again my classes are going well. This week I think I will go into a little detail about them so you can get an idea as to what is going on in my life. My physics class has been fairly easy so far. I like that we don't have to do lab reports, I just hope that I am learning all the material I need to so it doesn't come back to haunt me. Introduction to C++ has been going well. I was able to get my program to work this week with a minimal amount of time spent debugging. The program was something similar to a program that I wrote in high school but the C++ language is different so it made it a bit challenging. Differential equations is probably my hardest class and I am finally starting to understand it. For the first week, I thought that I would never understand how these techniques work but now that they are clicking it is actually kind of fun. Our teacher also gave us some encouragement in that the first three weeks are the hardest and it actually gets easier from there on. Statics has been a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Professor Tronca is such a funny guy and he can make even the most boring lesson lively enough that I don't fall asleep. My fifth class is website development. So far we really haven't had much homework but we have went over a lot of useful information. This has really got me thinking about my site and how I want to change it. I have so many ideas and I can feel a complete overhaul coming in the next few days.

This brings me to some of the important stuff that has been going on in my life this week. God has been working in so many ways and I am really starting to see how much he wants me to reach out and serve my floor. I am also once again seeing my homework become an idol and I am trying very hard to always put God first where he belongs.

Erich Musick, one of the awesome Christian freshman on the third floor has been helping me with the IVCF website. He had a great program for a photo album that we were going to use and then once he got started he made a completely new design of the page. He has had many more years of experience and I really won't mind if he just took over the whole site. I know that I can handle it with God's help but I also have a lot more on my plate then I thought I would when I agreed to do it.

We had our first floor study this Tuesday evening. We studied 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1. This was an awesome passage and talked about the people being know for their faith around the world. It also spoke as to the importance of knowing the word of God and not believing whatever is taught to you. We have the study in Gabe's room 314 and there ended up being 13 of us there. I am so thankful for God blessing us with so many interested people.

On Wednesday morning, it was SYATP, See You at the Pole. This is a national day of gathering at the flagpole and praying for our schools, country and world. We had a really great turnout as we gathered to pray from 7 to 8.

Friday evening, we had Outloud here at MSOE. This was an awesome time of worship with special guest Brad Pribbennow. It was so great to spend an hour and a half just worshipping God for he is so worthy. I think that this was one of my favorite Outlouds just because the message was so simple and so powerful. It is so amazing how you can often get more from worship than you can from a sermon. Not to say that we don't need sermons because they are important as well. God simply showed me that I need to put away all my idols and really worship him with all my heart and mind and soul at all times. This was almost identical to what I had been hearing from God through our floor study.

Afterwards we had AfterVarsity in the game room. I had a good time playing foosball and loser pool. After that, we went back to the dorms and Erich, Dave, Scott, and I played cards for a while. Then Scott and Dan started playing Madden and Dave went back to his room. So Erich and I decided to look around for something else to do. We ended up finding Adam on the second floor and talked to him for a while. Then the three of us went to play some cards in the lounge. After a while of this we decided to look around for something else to do. We ended up going to MLH and just walking around looking for people we knew. At around 2 AM we found Josh and ended up just sitting in his room and talking until almost 3. After this it was definitely time to get some sleep.

Saturday started off late at 11. I woke up and really didn't do much of anything for the first hour or so. I did read my bible some and started looking at the passage for this weeks Small Group study. Then at 12:30 we headed out for the annual InterVarsity Brewer's Picnic. This was a really awesome day as hundreds of Christians gathered together to hear the message and just have fun together. We played some Ultimate Frisbee and much of the afternoon was just spent talking. The actual Brewer's game was also a great time even though the Brewers lost. I really like Miller Park and it is a great atmosphere for the ballgame. Returning home, I actually wrote one of my articles for the Ingenium.

On Sunday morning, I awoke and went to Sunday school and church. We had a great discussion about the book of Ruth and Naomi's faith in God despite the circumstances that she was in. This made us think of the storms we have to weather as Christians and how God makes us stronger because of them. The Church service had a great time of worship. The sermon was about fasting and how to really become one with God. This is something that is hard to do in the world where there is so much knowledge that we often don't take the time to spend with God and really to have his heart in us.

In the afternoon, I wrote my other two Ingenium articles and did some homework. At work I also did more homework and did some planning for the IV website. When I returned to the room, my mom called so I ended up talking to her and my sister for almost an hour and a half. After this Jeff came up and we ended up solving the last part of our physics homework. This was a great accomplishment and I felt really good going to bed even if it was already 1 AM .