Ramblings

Wow. That's all I can think when I look back at the past two weeks...has it been two weeks? I don't even know. 

Anywho, I am currently sitting in an apartment that is as dirty as it has ever been, eating a pb& honey, and drinking water out of a coffee mug because we haven't done the dishes in days. All my clothes are still packed up from the evacuation, but it's just good to be "home." Some of the other students headed to are in Breckenridge for the weekend, but I was one of few who choose to stay behind. I just needed a good weekend here. 

These past few weeks have just been a great time of growth in a really weird way. Last week we learned about other worldviews, and it was very interesting to see how other people view the world. It makes it easier to relate to them when we know where they are coming from. We had huge group projects where each group was in charge of accurately portraying different worldviews in comparison to Christianity such as Islam, Post Modernism, New Age, and Atheism. I have never heard of Post Modernism and New age before those classes, but we were given a ton of information on their worldview. The week was also about solidifying our worldview as Christians. We had to write a paper with the most broad topic I have ever attempted to write about; "What is your worldview?" I was overwhelmed to say the least. We all were. In The Universes Next Door, there are 8 solid questions the author, Sire, believes sum up everything you need to know about someone's worldview, and so I used those to make it a little more structured.  I got an A on the paper so you can stop stressing for me!

This week we started on discovering our identity. I am at a stage where I am just confused about everything, questioning everything, and affirming my faith, and then they bring up the question "who are you?" Thanks, guys. As if I wasn't confused enough. I don't know who I am! Great! Well, they begin to lay out God's design for us. We went back to the basic design of man and woman. It is incredible how He made us. It is so much deeper than the church today typically portrays it. We act as if certain characteristics should only be attribute to one or the other. The fact is that we possess everything that the other possess, but we were designed to be stronger in certain areas. 

We also took a strengths finder test to discover our strengths in leadership. It's the whole principle like if you judge a fish on it's ability to run it is going to feel like a failure the rest of it's life...I'm pretty sure I butchered that analogy, but I didn't feel like googling it to ensure my accuracy so deal with it. 

These are my top 5 strengths...I'm sure you will be able to agree that I am all of these.

 1. Harmony - meaning I like everyone to get along which can prevent me from always being honest with how I am feeling.

 2. Futurisitc- I like thinking about how certain situations may end up in the future.

 3. Maximizer - I enjoy making the most of what I have to work with. 

 4. Analytical - Duh. This one is super obvious. I can't even pick out my clothes in the morning without analyzing it. 

 5. Connectedness - I am able to see how all the little pieces will fit together to make a big picture. 

The main point they tried to get us to understand is that if we understand where we are strong we can work on that, and surround ourselves with people who have different strengths from us in order to have the most effective outcome. Our culture likes to focus on growing your weakness, but the reality is that working with our strengths will lead to a better outcome. Ultimately, not all of us lead the same, but we can lead with what we have. 

Oh gosh. I'm overwhelming myself just thinking about all I've learned...in a good way of course! 

We are also learning heavily about the lies that Satan tries to feed us, and often times we buy into them. It's because we don't understand how much value we have in Christ. It's about finding a balance of confidence in Him along with humility. I have always thought that to be humble I had to in some way think less of myself, but something that one of my professors said just hit me!

      "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's about thinking of yourself less." 

I find myself often walking around defeated just accepting every lie that Satan tells me. At the end of the day I lay down in my bed, and sometimes I just feel like complete crap and worthless. That would be most nights, but I am realizing that those thoughts are not of God. So I tell Satan to shut up and then fill my head with truths about who God says I am. It's that easy! :)

On a different topic:For those of you who know me, you know I hate driving. Well when my roommate broke her foot our second day that meant I would have to drive us everywhere. I hid my panic attack, and proceeded to go through the driving motions. Well guess what! I actually like driving a little bit now. I'm not about to say I love it by any means, but it doesn't make me want to throw up anymore. I drove in Denver yesterday and panicked once, but that is progress compared to the million times I usually freak out. I am also noticing that I have a little bit of aggressiveness in me that I haven't had before when driving. I don't want to say that Jesus made me aggressive, but I'm not gonna say He didn't if you know what I'm sayin :) But He has given me a confidence. I know it seems silly to some of you, but I'm telling you I have had such anxiety about driving for three years, and all it took was me coming to Colorado and my roommate breaking her foot to get me over that!

Update: Kayla washed the cups so I am no longer drinking out of a coffee mug. 

Miley Cyrus was Right

This weekend was action packed! 

Friday night of course we went to Olive Garden and had a little bit of fun. I think I already wrote about that, but the days tend to run together here. 

Saturday we went rafting! I have never been before, and thankfully we had the best guide ever! He was super relaxed and chill. Plus, he never got us stuck! 

Sunday we went to The Springs Church which I really enjoyed! It had a bit of a Hillsong feel to it! 

After that, I made the horribly optimistic decision to climb what is known as The Manitou Incline. It is a hike that rises 2000 feet within 3/4 of a mile. 

I normally don't do things like that because I always feel bad making people go slower than they want, but my group was so amazing and understanding. They told me they needed the breaks too, but I think they were just being nice. :) And I'm okay with that! There were several times that I wanted to quit, but I knew that I also wanted to make it to the top.

It took us about an hour and a half, but we did it. I sang The Climb by Miley Cyrus some of the way. She is so deep. 

"It's the climb."

(totally kidding)

In all seriousness that was a huge challenge for me. I definitely talked to God a lot on the way up. I think the idea of community became even more real to me. We were all taking the journey together, and it took us a little longer, but we all got there. 

Before we got started!

Like I said, we stopped frequently.

Somehow we had the energy to smile for this picture!

At the top!!!

This is my work space! I've never worked with two screens before, but I absolutely love it!

God has a sense of humor! The first assignment they gave me was a practice short over this story...Why yes. I will gladly right a short about Tim Tebow. 

I probably won't be blogging this week! Tons of work, but I will try to update as often as I can!

Oh and thanks Mom, Aunt Robin, Katie, and Lillie for the letters! I will have something coming your way soon! :)

Good Olives

Today was the last day of the Truth Project! It was an incredible week of revelation and conviction!

After lunch, we took a tour of Focus on the Family because most of us haven't actually been here before!

We got to see all the behind the scenes aspects of Adventures in Odyssey, but the main people involved weren't here today because they are doing a live recording in Dallas tomorrow! They would be in Texas when I'm here!

The group!

One of my apartment mates! We went to Olive Garden tonight to celebrate one of the girl's birthdays! 

Karsten, Lindsey, me, and Amanda again!

After, we went to Goodwill for some classy/cheap shopping, and I got some pretty good deals! 

Sorry my blogs are getting shorter! I just don't know how to squeeze everything in so I tend to leave a lot of stuff out! Does that make sense??? Ehh...

Maybe I'll have a bit more to write about tomorrow! We're going rafting!

What Happened to the Windex?

As the week goes on, my desire to blog is fading. I am so mentally exhausted by the end of the day, but here I am once again. :) 

Today we learned about work and how God has designed it to be beautiful and how the world has destroyed that idea. I honestly want to pour out everything I'm learning, but there's really no way to sum up the three hours I am in class. It's all great information! I don't want to leave anything out! If any of you have ever been through the TRUTH PROJECT then you know what I'm talking about. We have had the honor of experiencing it face to face with Dr. Tackett rather than through a TV screen. It's been absolutely incredible and life changing, and it's only the first week!

Tonight we had dessert at one of our professor's houses. There is such an emphasis on the dynamic of community here! I love it! This is just a few of us. :)

My car isn't taking this whole mountain thing too well. It sounds like it's in pain quite a bit, but I know the cruiser will catch up!

Oh and now to the Windex! My car is slowly giving up on me, and one of the things that doesn't work is my wiper fluid. SO....I carry paper towels and windex in the back of my car. (Go ahead and laugh. I don't care.) Well tonight I was routinely going to get the windex and the paper towels, and I happened upon a disturbing sight. The bottle was open, and there wasn't a trace of windex in the bottle or in the back of my car. I have no idea where it went. I refuse to believe that altitude could consume and entire bottle of windex. The mystery will always remain, and I need to buy more windex. 

I Could Get Used to This

TODAY WAS SO AWESOME! 

Our lesson this morning was about the design of authority, particularly dealing with government. It was absolutely incredible. Our Founding Father's were right. Duh. While we have some things right, our government reflects a lot of the attributes that God warns against when it comes to ruling. Tomorrow we are learning about God's design for community which I am also super excited about!

Today was our first day eating in the Focus cafeteria! I'm not in the picture so don't be confused! 

Today was my first day at my internship! I am working in the public policy department of Focus on the Family specifically with Family News in Focus. It's the 30 second to 5 minute news broadcast you hear on the radio! Today I just researched different topics for tomorrow's broadcast. In the future, I may  actually get to write a short or two for the program! I have my own cubicle which is super cool although it's kind of plain. Maybe I can add a nice homey touch to it next week!  

On the way home I was just in awe of the fact that I was sitting at a stoplight and looking out at something so awesome! 

God is so good! 

135 pages of reading tonight! I better get started! 

A Broken Foot

This morning I woke up to a crash around 6:00.  I was half asleep so it really didn't register that my room mate Kayla was the source of the noise and had  fallen until I woke up later. 

Turns out she just stepped wrong off the ladder from the bunk bed, and an x-ray showed she did quite a bit of damage. The doctor was amazed at the fact that she managed to break it that bad with just a step. So needless to say today has been a little rough for her, but she knows that this is apart of what God has been teaching her lately about trust. Just keep her in your prayers as she visits a specialist sometime this week to see how bad the damage really is. 

Today's class experience was pretty intense. We had a session from 8:20-11:30, then another from 12:00-3:00. 

Dr. Tackett was our speaker today, and let me tell you it is an honor to learn from him. Not once did my mind stray away. I barely took any notes because I was so focused on what he was saying. The first hour of class was spent on a devotion so you can imagine how incredible the rest of it was. I am so blessed to be here. It just blows me away how awesome this opportunity is! 

There is way too much stuff to try and write down, but my favorite part of today's lesson came in the last two hours. We examined relationships and how has designed them because that is a huge part of who He is. The trinity serves as a model for all of our relationships. I think the one thing that stuck out was the relationship between husband, wife, and the children. Lately, marriage has become less of an appealing idea to me mainly because of its inaccurate portrayal in society. However, I saw today how the marriage and family order was designed based off the relationship of the trinity. I can't even begin to try and type it all out for you because I just sat through a 2 hour explanation. ha. But I would love to talk to you about it sometime. I guess what I want to say is I am more excited about the idea of relationship in all its forms. The trinity, the church,and the family! When we follow God's design there is blessing, but if we stray away from that, and one part doesn't function properly everything will suffer. For that reason, I am even more serious about making sure that someday my husband is not what the world calls a man but what God calls a man. Yes, there is a huge difference. A man can't love you how God designed, if He does not model his love for you after God's example of love for the church and for His son. In the same way, women must understand how to respect and honor their husband which isn't a common value presented by the world today. Men are depicted as weak fools in most areas of media today which leads to the degrading of them by women. Even Christian women fall into this trap. I realize I'm not married and so therefore I don't get everything that there is to know, but I can see how I can better relationships with my guy friends in building them up in Christ because they live in a world that doesn't see them as much sometimes. I'm so glad God is teaching me these things early on! 

Anywho, we only have 82 pages of reading tonight so that will be a bit of a break from yesterday! And we are meeting at the park for dinner in a bit so it should be a pretty relaxing evening! Oh! And we're having Chipotle so it doesn't get much better than that! :)

Long Day

It has been such a long day. We had orientation all day today so it was mainly just getting all of the technical stuff out of the way! 

I had lunch with some of the other students here and Ken and Sarah Ogden. Dr. Ogden was one of the founders of the Institute along with Dr. Dobson so needless to say that was pretty cool! What's awesome is that to me they are some sort of celebrity, but they are the most genuine, humble people. They're real! I also got to meet Dr. Del Tackett, and he'll be teaching our class tomorrow so I'm super pumped about that opportunity! 

SOME OTHER STUFF THAT HAPPENED TODAY!

Official security badge! WHAT! WHAT!

The rest of the evening consisted of reading 200 pages for class tomorrow...yeah that's right. 200. 

I'm actually extremely embarrassed by this picture...more by the improper placement of my hood. Oh well. Figured my mom would get a kick out of it. 

"What is this?" 

Well, I'm glad you asked.

IT'S AN EMPTY MAIL BOX! 

I should never walk out to this again. Just sayin. :) Thanks much!

Text me if you'd like my address, or if you'd like it to be surprise just text my mom! 

Yay for Sundays!

I think it's going to be impossible to sleep past 6:00 here! The sun has no respect for our sleeping schedule, but it makes it much easier to wake up since it's light outside.

So this morning we went to a church called Living Hope. We decided to go to Sunday School because sometimes just showing up for church doesn't involve much interaction with other people. We made up half of the class this morning, but it was nice to meet people our own age from here. I had my first scone...is that even how you spell it? It seemed like a biscuit to me.

Anywho, the service was great! It wasn't quite what I was used to, but I observed a sort of freedom that I hadn't in other services. It was so structured. People just moved around freely and not everyone turned to stare at a person who choose to raise their hands in worship. It was nice :)

The Sunday School leaders invited us out to lunch at an Italian place called Zio's. It's a lot like Johnny Carino's. We had assumed it would be them, us, and some other girls from the Sunday School class, but it ended up being up us, the associate pastor and his wife, the pastor and his wife, a couple who was related to both of the other couples, and the youth pastor who happened to be from the same town as one of my room mates. Small world!

The afternoon was just one long nap. Three and half hours to be exact. It was incredible. (Just in case you were wondering.)

Later we all headed over to one of the girl apartments to play apples to apples, but once all 24 of us were in there that didn't seem possible. We ended up playing catch phrase instead which you can never go wrong with. After a couple rounds we just sat around and talked for a little bit...still trying to get to know each other better.

Tomorrow is a full day of orientation before we begin classes on Tuesday! So excited!

I keep forgetting to take pictures so this is all I got.

The beautiful view from our apartment tonight :)

 A group of us out on the stairs posing for sunset pictures :)

I'm Here!

Wow. I'm in Colorado. I never thought this day would actually get here. Since I was first accepted, it has felt like something far off in the future, and now that it's finally here I feel like I'm living some dream. In a way I know I am. 

My journey to Focus is pretty simple. I have always been pretty confident and sure of myself because my mom always made sure I knew how valuable God said I was. However, through different events and circumstances starting after high school graduation, my confidence slowly began to take a beating. Most recently this last semester, I was just struggling with feeling significant and finding my place in God's plan. I felt pretty much worthless and as if nothing I did mattered to anyone. I got annoyed with that feeling pretty quickly, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. I started thinking about my future and where I was going to go after college and basically being dramatic. I tend to over react a lot and act as if the world is coming to an end. This fortunately was another false alarm. I decided to go to take advantage of the career counseling services that Howard Payne offers because my room mate had such success with it. Turns out my counselor had been a student at Focus one summer and had an open chair to hand down to someone that came with a scholarship, and he really thought it would be perfect for me. I went straight to my room, printed out the application and turned it in about two weeks later. 

I didn't apply for anything else because I had a confidence that this is what God had for me. I was already telling people I was moving to Colorado and how awesome it would be if they would come and visit me!

Well a few days before my acceptance, I came across the verse in Proverbs 27

1 Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring forth. 

I PANICKED! I thought this was God's way of preparing me for denied acceptance. I immediately shut up about the entire summer and waited patiently for the call. Of course it came about a week later while I was in class and I couldn't even focus. That was around 10 and I had class until 3 so the whole day was just filled with anxiety. Well obviously I found out I was accepted, and now I'm here!

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Today, we spent a good portion of the day out in Black Forest National Park about 15 minutes away from our apartment. It was absolutely gorgeous. The whole idea of being outside and not breaking a sweat is so new to me. I expect to walk outside and be hit with an extreme wave of heat, but instead I get a cool pleasant breeze. 

The day consisted of team building activities and just getting to know one another. In these two short days I have already heard from God, and seen Him through the staff and students. It's hard leaving Howard Payne for the summers because you know you won't have those people to walk along side you and spur you towards righteousness, but God has filled that void this summer. These people are awesome. We are each so different and come from different places, but at this point, our paths have crossed. 

I have a lot of expectations for the summer, but more than anything I expect restoration. God is revealing to me how much a don't know. Because being a Christian is all I've ever known, I recently discovered I have a sort of pride that tells me I've got this down. Surely I know everything by know. WRONG. I am hearing messages I've heard tons of times and yet I'm hearing the for the first time. I am seeing how much I don't know, and how little I understand about God. I know that's why I am not able to love others and Him like I am called to. I don't know the designer and the creator of love. I have had a sort of complacent pride and apathy towards spiritual things, and I am broken in the revealing of that. Who am I to think that I understand God. Ha. I'm sure He's amused. 

But any who...I know I have a lot of things to work through. This summer is going to challenge me and force me to visit parts of my life that I prefer to not deal with. However, I'm stoked. 

I just ask for you prayers that I would take full advantage of this opportunity! 

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On a lighter note....

My hair doesn't frizz here, but I'm honestly having a harder time with it than I thought I would. For the first time in my entire life my hair knows no volume. So all of y'all who give me a hard time...your jokes aren't valid here. However, I looked in the mirror yesterday and some of my hair was straight. STRAIGHT! What is that?! I wasn't liking it at all. These big cheeks don't look good with flat hair. . . ehh . . . 

OH MY GOSH! There is literally every store and eating place a girl could want within a ten mile radius. Goodwill and Chick-fil-A are less than half a mile from where I live. WHAT! WHAT! God knows me. 

The weather is great as I mentioned earlier. I check the weather back home just to see what I'm "missing out on." And then I text my mom to boast about it. That's biblical...

Oh! I love my apartment! I feel like a grown up, even though I had a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a caprisun for dinner. Yeah...life's good here. The girls I live with are super awesome. We have already have such deep conversations. Tonight a good group of us just sat an apartment and talked for a good hour about embarrassing moments and funny things we've been through. It was awesome to see how God is present through those times and how He uses community and fellowship to bring glory to Himself. 

I'm sure there is tons I'm leaving out, but I see the reason why it's good to blog every day. I can't even remember or begin to type everything that happen yesterday and today. I'm gonna try by best to get to this everyday, and hopefully they won't be as long.

Y'all are awesome! Thank you for your prayers! 

-Gabi :)