"Interestings" of the past few days...

1. We are breaking records! We survived Chattanooga's driest month ever. And we are now experiencing Chattanooga's wettest day ever. Hurricane Lee decided to come pour water on us for a few days. It has been raining non-stop since Sunday night. Monday we got over 11 inches of rain. Craziness!

2. I got this in my mailbox yesterday. My application to student teach! Ah! Senior year is approaching faster than I'd like. 

3. Damarise is amazing! I came home out of the rain tonight to find a hot cup of decaf coffee waiting for me. She's great!

Because on Rainy Days...

I just feel like writing.

The rain is pounding on my window. Lightning is flashing. And supposedly bad weather is headed our direction. Bad weather complete with strong winds, hail, and a possibility of a tornado. What a perfect weekend to do it on too. This weekend is Campus Preview Weekend, and how fun would it be to be down in a basement with an additional 200+ high school students? Hm, yes, well... maybe not.

Besides the excitement of possible storms, I'm excited that it is the weekend! Ah, yes. And today was the last day of Friday classes. Only Good Friday and an exams Friday is left. Wow. Where oh where has this semester gone to?

In other news, today I found out I get to go to an opera while in Europe. One word: excitement! Seeing an opera is on my bucket list, and getting to see one in Europe, let's just say I'm excited. It'll be great.

And, because I'm just going to keep going off on random tangents if I don't close, I'm going to go and watch "Megamind" with Bethany, Damarise, and Janessa. Who knows, maybe that tornado they're predicting will end up coming and we'll be watching the movie from the comfort of the basement. Either way, this is the perfect ending to a rainy day.

So Far, So Great!

This week has been wonderful – marvelously, wonderful!  

Monday: Woke up to a humid day. Sun shining, clouds coming, 

and that icky-sticky air. (ew) But a thunderstorm was coming and I love thunderstorms. The hours passed, classes passed by, and still no thunderstorm. Then came time for my night class. It is usually a three hour class, but as soon as class started the thunderstorm arrived. Ah, nothing beats a good rainstorm complete with lightning, thunder, hail, and tornado watches. Our teacher didn't want to teach very long because of the storm, so our class lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. That was Monday's marvelous marvel. 

Tuesday: Woke up to a cool, brisk, sunny day. It was Assessment Day! It's like a holiday, basically. The college selects random students to be assessed on various things, while everyone else has a day free of classes. To celebrate this special day, Virginia (my amazing RA) and I went to breakfast together at Niedlov's. I had never been to Niedlov's before, and let me just say, it was amazing. They bake their own bread and yum! Virginia and I settled down with cinnamon rolls and piping hot coffee and talked for a few hours. Great way to start the day! The rest of my day was filled with work. And I learned, from my boss, that cleave is the only word that has itself as an antonym. (No, that didn't have anything to do with anything, but yes, that is a really cool fact!) To finish off the day a group of us went down the mountain to enjoy some icecream and each others' company. 

Wednesday: Beautiful weather! Just beautiful! It would have been the perfect day for Summer Salad. (As I realized yesterday when saying this to Janessa, not everyone knows what Summer Salad is. So, if you are one of these people, Summer Salad is basically Chef Salad, but we would have this salad in Arkansas as soon as the weather turned warm.) Anyways, Wednesday I found out who my O-Team partners were. And I am very excited! Also, one of my classes was canceled for the day due to a DVD not being available. So, I got to hang out with some friends, do homework, work out, and just have a relaxing day. 

Today: Today, oh! Just beautiful (again)! Sun shining, flowers blooming, ah, April is great! Today isn't even close to being over, but it has already been great. Why is that? Why, because I found out I have a Summer job! Woo hoo! I am very excited! Damarise and I will be working on Facility Services over the Summer, but it will be great, and we will have a job! I am definitely praising God for that! 

This week has been so far, so good great! 

Soccer+Sunburn+Storms=September Saturday

Yes, everything in the title starts with an "S". :) But all those S's describe my Saturday perfectly. So, here are the S's of my Saturday :)

Soccer

I went down to watch the Covenant Scots play soccer. It was an amazing game. The Scots one 3-0. Yay! It was so fun. The crowd did a lot of different cheers, we were clapping, and just having a great time. :) It was definitely a fun afternoon!

The stands were packed!

Haha, Kevin, Micah, and Jonny in their Sweden or Canadian apparel.

Emily, Megan, and I watching the game :)

Sunburn

So, I went to the soccer game and had a great time. It was hot, but I didn't really think anything of it... that is, until I came back to my room and looked at my arm. Oops. The sun definitely baked me a tad bit.

Definitely a farmer's tan...er um.. burn.

Storms

I love rain! And thunderstorms, ah! They're even better :) When we came back from the soccer game I got busy cleaning my room when all of a sudden it began pouring rain! It was great! I ran into Megan's room and we went out to play in the rain :) Brianna joined us and we had a blast! It was like playing in the rain in Mozambique. So fun!

The rain building up on my window. So pretty!

Getting drenched in the warm September rain. Lovely!

That is my Saturday in a nutshell–Soccer, Sunburn, and Storms. It was a really great day filled with fun, laughs, and adventures :) Definitely a good September Saturday.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday :)

Damarise had the camera out for most of Sunday, so I thought I'd post some pictures and tell about our Sunday :)

After church time we ate lunch... and filled out application stuff :P

After lunch we went to SIL to practice music :) Thomas was back from Norway! Yeah!! 

Kent and Andrew played guitar and bass.

Then Damarise and Esther went out looking for flowers to take pictures of. 

I love this picture of Esther smelling the flowers!!

One of God's beautiful flowers!

Haha, Esther and Elijah by Elijah's dirt bike. 

Ian, Elijah and Andrew by Elijah's dirt bike :)

Cool number thing on a car 

Damarise, Esther and I :D

Some lock thing on the office of SIL... don't worry we didn't mess with it :P 

Esther and I in Ms. Peggy's lawn. Her grass is SO green!!

Pretty yellow bushes. 

Esther was going all around SIL trying to find a tree to climb :) She did eventually find one :D

A cool nail shot :) Yah.... my sis is a great photographer! :D

Anywho, that's all the pics from my Sunday :) Later on that night we got rain!!! It hasn't rained here for over a week which has made everything very dry and HOT! So, last night, when it poured and got cold we were praising the Lord!!! Thank you for the rain!!! :D It was a wonderful way to end the day!

The First Rain!

In the States we have winter!  Cold, hot chocolate, and my personal favourite, snow! Here, on the other hand, we have the rainy season. Hot, humid and the best part of all, the rain! The rainy season is, like the name, the season where it rains. It hasn't rained for the last... I think it's been 6 months. So, Damarise, Sarah, Andrew, Ian and I said that when the first rain of the season came we would go out and play in it. The first rain came last night!! It was wonderful! It wasn't pouring, but it was rain! And it watered the dry ground and cooled down the hot temperatures! And of course we played in it! ... Well, all of us but Ian. He was hanging out with Oupa Mike. :P

Here's the four of us enjoying the nice rain! 

After a while we all went inside... but then it started raining harder. So Sarah, Andrew and I headed back out to enjoy the special treat! We had a blast singing, dancing, showing off our muscles :P (Haha!)  and just goofing off :D Thank you Lord for the rain!!!!

"Rain, rain, please stay here! Please don't leave for another year."

A Fantastic Friday!

Yesterday, Friday, was a wonderful day! A fabulous way to start August! (Yesterday was August 1st!! Happy August everyone!) So, yesterday the translation conference started up for our mission. We got to where we're having it at around 7:30am! Ate breakfast. The boys went to school. Mom and Dad went into the meeting. And as for Damarise, Sarah and myself we sat down to do school. And we sat... and sat... and sat, not getting any school done. It was so hard to concentrate outside! Around 8:30ish the Woodrow's minus Aunt Julie and Sarah Beth *Bethy* showed up! Yeah! Time for the fun to begin! We hung out with them for a lil' while just chit chattin' away, and then decided to go to the house next door and visit with the Maddux family.  They had just gotten their container in the day before! (We were thanking the Lord for that! They have been waiting for a couple of months now for their container to show up! Poor things!) Anyways, they had unpacked it all the day before, but they needed more stuff to go back into it and into other houses. So, we popped in and helped out! It was loads of fun! We moved stuff back and forth! (So nice! I think I've missed it! We haven't moved stuff like that in a while now.) And we had a snowball fight! :) Yes siree bob! A snowball fight in Mozambique, Africa! A place that doesn't even have mountains high enough to have snow on them. So, the question is, how did we get the snow to have the snowball fight? In their container (No, there wasn't snow in there;) ) they had a refrigerator. Which meant that we had to empty their other fridge and defrost the freezer, equalling loads of snow! :) (For those of you who don't know, I love snow!) It was a wonderful treat to have a snowball fight! Anyways, after all the fun of moving stuff back and forth we headed back to our conference for lunch. But since we got back early, we swung on the rope swing! It's the first time Damarise and I have done it! You have to climb up a tree, get the rope handed to you, hold on tight, jump, wrap your legs around a large knot and swing! SO fun! As long as you can stay on. Which I did the first time, but then next two times I just could not get my legs to wrap around! Oh well, lunch time came. And the special  Lasagna! Mmm! I haven't had a cheesy lasagna like that one in ages! It was delicious! After lunch, I went outside and Gracie called me over to see this humngo grasshopper! I wrote a post about a rather large grasshopper a while ago but this one topped the other by far! It was amazing and so intricately designed. It had beady red eyes, adorable, long antennas, green, perfectly arched legs. A beautiful green colour to cover the top of his body but, when his wings opened up, wow! It was a stunning red like his eyes and streaks of sunshine yellow every so often and, my favourite, lil' black feet. It looked like it was wearing slick, black, dress shoes. After admiring this lil creature and the amazing Creator, Damarise and I headed over to one of the houses on the compound where our conference is being held and sat in the living room while two kids had their nap times. It was nice to sit back and relax a little. Sarah and Gracie came and joined us for a bit. Then we had snack, hung out not doing anything. Had dinner and then a wonderful ending to a fantastic Friday, rain! Yes, Rain! Not a little drizzle or even a normal rain fall. Oh no, this was much greater! This was a downpour! It was beautiful! So much rain after not seeing rain like that in a couple months is a beautiful thing! Damarise and I ran out to stand under the pouring rain. Gracie came out for a little bit, so did Andrew W. And we all got soaked to the skin, but it felt wonderful! I love the rain!! It's so refreshing. ... When the rain died down a little bit we headed on home to a nice, long hot shower! So lovely!... After a movie, The Fantastic Four, I headed to bed, where a lovely sleep awaited me! ... And that, was my Fantastic Friday! 

"There's a hole in my backyard, Dear Liza, Dear Liza"

Yes, there is indeed a hole in our backyard! Or, was. Saturday morning, our sleep in morning, workers were in our yard at 7am! Wow! So much for sleeping in. :P Anyways, every time it rains, our drain backs up and goes into our neighbor's house. ew! So, she brought in a work crew to dig up our drain pipe. Wow, you wouldn't believe everything that was in there. There were soda bottles, cardboard boxes.... there was everything! Anyways, they got all of the junk out, and put back our "yard" to normal. And our neighbor is happy, not having her house flooded every time it rains :) Yeah!

Rain, rain, come again, please do stay every day!

Right now in Mozambique, it is the hot season. It is nearing the end, but it is hot! The hot season is the rainy season too, and when we get rain the temperature cools down about 5-10 degrees! So, yes, everyone loves the rain!! Last Wednesday, we got this huge rain storm! It was so weird/amazing, the wind was blowing at a perfectly horizontal line! it was amazing!!!! And it cooled down everything! lovely! :)

"He [God] makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth;He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses."-Psalm 135:7

God is truly amazing!

Grace Like Rain...

The sound of tiny raindrops hitting the roof makes beautiful music. Just to sit there and listen to water come crashing out of the sky one little bead at a time, is like a piano, each key makes a delightful sound the resonates throughout the music. Fact being without the one note, that played, the whole song wouldn't sound right. So it is with rain. God, the astounding Creator, places each rain drop where it should go. Making just the right sound, and together making stunning music.
God's grace is like those raindrops. Pouring down on us. For it is only by His mercy and grace that we are even called children of God. God is the grand conductor, bestowing His grace where and when He chooses so that it will make a beautiful sound. Glorifying Him in everything. It should put us in awe and gratitude and absolute astonishment that God being the sovereign, ever reigning King, would choose to bestow His grace on us. We who are sinners! And yet, because Christ loved us He poured out His love by dying a criminal's death on a cross, so that He could pour out His grace on us! That should blow us away!