Hello!

So my last idea of updating my blog throughout the week was a total fail. Oh well!

This past Thursday I went on my first ORU weekly outreach to an emergency children's home in Tulsa, for children who are waiting to go back home or find a foster parent. We were there for three hours.
For the first hour I played with various musical toys and danced around with a group of toddlers. That entire hour the sound of an infant wailing blared through the room non stop.
After about an hour I sat down and one of the staff offered the crying baby to me. The pink cheeks, tiny fingers, and slobbery face girl was placed in my arms and stopped crying almost instantly. The staff all admired how quiet she was, and after a few minutes one staff mentioned that was the longest she'd been quiet since she'd gotten there.

I was told she was born addicted to drugs, and had just been released from the hospital after a couple months. The woman handed me a bottle of milk and said, "Since you seem to do so good, why do you try feeding her? We've hardly been able to get her to eat anything in 3 days. What she does eat, the throws up."
I gently put the bottle in the baby's mouth, and a few minutes later, she had gulped down all of it. I was so excited for her.
By the time we left, she had kept all of the milk down, and was starting a second bottle. It wasn't an earthshaking event, but it was still very exciting for me.

The next day I got on a bus and headed out of Tulsa. A two hours' drive later, a group of us 15 ORU students were at a luxurious log cabin in Kansas, Oklahoma. We were there for a retreat held by the writing department. We went on hikes, took a lot of prayer time, and mostly relaxed in writing. I was excited with how much writing I got done in two stories I am working on.

I had a riot of a laugh one night, when some of the city girls wanted to sleep under the stars. We laid down our sleeping bags on the dirt in the woods. Soon we were all a little spooked by all the sounds of nature, and I decided to have a little fun throwing rocks into the bushes and making people scream. Mwa ha ha, I'm so bad =)

In both events last week, I made great memories, and some new friends.

I have signed up for a VERY exciting new adventure, but will wait to share until all the details are certain. So be looking forward to that in the weeks to come!!
**love life**

Midweek update

I've had a thought on my mind this past week, as to how facebook and twitter have somewhat killed many good stories, or blog entries. How many times has something hilarious happened, and I just wrote a 2 or 3 sentence post on these websites, then forgotten about it? The same with pictures. All of these moments of the day and week add up to a great tale, which I fail to document on more than a little blurp. So I am trying something new here. When something funny happens, or I have a funny thought, or I do something fun, or see something cool, I will post it in a draft blog. Twice a week I will go through and add pictures, and more detail to what I have written, so down the road I can look back and fully appreciate my experience here. Every time I would update my facebook and twitter, I'll do it here instead. We'll see how this goes.

I went to church with friends Jessica, Anna, and Emilie at a great place called Church on the Move. Pastor Whitney George was filling in for his father Senior Pastor Willie George aka Gospel Bill. Whitney gave a great word on sacrificing what God is asking of us, in order for God to have total control. His emphasis was on how God will make challenging difficulties simple.

It was an eye opening experience for me when he spoke of the young, rich ruler who was asked to leave his possessions behind and become a disciple of Christ. He was to afraid to sacrifice his worldly possessions, and therefore missed out on being a key player in humanities greatest story. Made me realize just how much we give up when we are afraid to give up what God asks.
Monday started out with a good hard laugh. I had a class at 7 in the morning, so my sleepy self was running late and printing off my homework, when yes, my printer legitimately ATE MY HOMEWORK! It pushed the paper halfway out, then pulled it back in, then spit it out crumpled up. I was shocked, I could not believe my eyes. And my teacher had a similar expression when I handed in the wrinkled paper.
In Psychology class, my professor was speaking of the different parts of the brain and their function. He ended with saying, "Now, tonight be sure to pray and thank God for your frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, occipital lobe, brain stem, and cerebellum."..................so I did :)

Lately I have been using the ORU gym because they have really cool machines that work out muscles I didn't even knew I had. This week I have been forming somewhat of a recipe. 2 miles of walking outside to work on my tan, then 30 minutes on treadmill, 20 times legs weight, 20 times arms weights, and then 5 minutes on this awesome machine that is like a pedal bike for my arms(no clue what these last three are called). In my month in OK I've lost 8lbs. Now that it's in my mind, I am going to attempt weight loss by using the ORU gym daily. Super excited.

Tuesday night I had a blast being a part of a flash mob. We all met then started dancing a routine in the middle of the ORU campus. It was recorded to be used as an advertisement for the school. A funny part of the thing is that I met in person two people who I had accepted friend requests from on facebook.
After the flash mob, I went to my first Social Work Club meeting. The special guest was a woman from the Tulsa Jewish Federation who was speaking about the new community garden they are working on. 3 days into my week...this has been a pretty fun week!

My HOT week

This week has been HOTTTT! I have never been in such extreme heat! I was literally just sitting there in the shade, and sweat was running down my arms and legs. And guess what, I love it! Sure it's annoying that the school dress code says I can't wear shorts to class, and so the walk to class is killer...but when I'm in my tank top and shorts, just enjoying my afternoon, it's heavenly, ironically speaking since hell is the hot place. Gasp! At home, late in the evening I would get bursts of energy and want to go on walks. But it was too cold, no one would go with me, it was too dark, and there was the threat of hungry predators lurking in the woods around my house. Here, I feel like going for a walk around campus at midnight, they have a loop meant just for people to do that, and it's well lit, well secured, lots of others doing the same thing, and it's a pleasant 80 degrees. Did I say it already? I love it!

On Saturday, August 25, I went with ORU to provide disaster relief through Samaritan's Purse. Before I got there, there had been a morning shift of ORUers at the burned down house. All of the morning crew insisted we find the tin turtle. The homeowner told us it was her most treasured item in the house, and was left behind because they had only a matter of seconds to escape the house. She told us how her mother gave it to her, and it was so special. The entire house burned down, and we were there salvaging through to help them get what few belongings remained. We'd been told to clear out for the bull dozer to come through, but we pleaded for just a few more minutes; cause everyone was praying to find that turtle. We got the few extra minutes, then were told to clear again, and right then Paul announces, "I got it!"

Last Friday the sky was especially beautiful, but I couldn't grab my camera until the last little bit of it. Here's what I was able to capture though.



The rainstorms here are awesome. It comes fast and it come heavy. It's so warm and relaxing, yet it makes every one giddy and giggly. We all run out into instead of running inside to get away like I'd do in Oregon. I shot this picture of some of us. I thought it was pretty cool... They guy with the pink balloon tie added just the perfect touch of hilariousness.

Wednesday night, my roommate's friend Will Retherford was having an album release event at a local church. I had never heard him before, but I was more than a little impressed. The entire band sounded great. Here are some of the pics

Last night I went and got my hair cut at the beauty college a few blocks away. My appointment was too late in the evening for me to get it dyed, but I had decided hours before that I really wanted to dye my hair...of course, you say, that's what everyone does when they move away. So I got some hair color at Walmart and went over to a friend's house to do it ourselves. It turned out pretty well if you ask me.