struggling

Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in all the earth"

For a person who is a DOER and likes to fix things, this verse is one I struggle with incredibly.
I want to DO. I want to FIX. I want to RECONCILE.
I want to bend over backwards until everyone is pleased and feels better and likes me again.

And I pray and pray and sense the Lord telling me,
Be still.
Do what is in front of you.
Let me take care of it.

URGH! But God! I want to HELP!

And He graciously says, "Girl, I don't need your help honey. But you need Mine. Shouldn't you stop arguing with Me and start finishing those papers?"

Alright Lord.

But please please please fix it!!!

Very important lesson

So Amber and I have been trying to be very proactively healthy this semester. And so we've been trying new things in the line of healthiness (special thanks to Trader Joe's for moving into the city so we can play with various foods that have the words 'healthy' slapped on them. Just kidding, we're doing more research on it then that) Amber is a lot better about researching the stuff and I show moral support by eating it with her. So yesterday she found a recipe for brownies with black beans as substitution for flour. She whipped up a batch while I did research for my Theology 1 paper. She used stevia instead of sugar and put nutella swirled on the top for extra appetizing delightful visual effects. The smell of chocolate.nutella wafted around her cozy apartment while I researched various views on angels and demons throughout history.

Here are the scrumptious LOOKING results. Unfortunately we didn't get much past cutting it, because we tried the crumbs. Well she forgot to check the difference between stevia and sugar. So when you ate it, an overpowering taste of black beans hit, then a hint of chocolate, then an overpowering taste of stevia. So we decided not to eat it. :-) Oh well. Out of all our experiments, this is the first failure. So our ratio isn't so bad, but this was a definite, absolute failure :-)

Otherwise

It was nice being back in the English class today after two weeks of absence. However they all made me jealous, because last week they had everyone bring food from their home countries, and of course that was the week that I was gone in D.C.! However we decided that we will have another party in May the week of Graduation, and they said they would also celebrate my graduation with me! So pretty excited.

We were discussing the weather today, and were trying to communicate the concept of hot, dry, humid, cold, wet, etc. I wrote the word 'Umbrella' on the white board and drew a picture. Do you know how hard it is for Chinese and Koreans to pronounce the word umbrella? We had to spend a few minutes breaking down the syllables just so they could wrap their mouths around 'b,' 'r' and 'l', which just happen to be three of the four hardest consonants for Asians to say! Then I tried to communicate the concept of humidity. Ha! That one was a little easier because they are all from countries that have humidity. But then I made a mistake and wrote a sentence on the white board for us to all say together to practice pronunciation: If it is raining you will need an umbrella, otherwise you will get wet.' First mistake: What is the difference between 'will' and 'is'? Will is future tense of course and is = present tense. However when the majority of your communication is through hand signals and drawn pictures on the white board, how do you communicate this? So we kept saying, 'future,' 'to come,' and tossing our hands hopefully indicating future, and saying, 'is,' 'present' 'now,' and pointing to the ground or our wrists for time that is right now. They eventually got it.


But then all the Chinese began jabbering together and pointing to the white board, and finally one little old lady shuffled up to it and banged her finger on the word 'otherwise.'
Otherwise?
Now you don't think about 'otherwise' being such a profound word or concept, but try explaining it to a bunch of senior-adults whose vocabulary consists mainly of 'good morning teacher, how are you,' and a smattering of other off-the-wall vocabulary words and its quite the challenge!
We tried writing 'because,' and 'then' but they weren't satisfied until I just erased all of the words and wrote 'OR' in big letters.
Altogether it was really fun. However it never ceases to amaze me which words they comprehend immedietly, and which ones befuddle and baffle them endlessly :-)