So...

...until I can post about my nearly perfect day today...

what should I do for my 16th birthday? I want to do something when I get back from India...like end of February, but I'm not sure what. Maybe another cool sleepover like for Lucy's birthday? I don't know that I want to go anywhere, I just want to be with my friends. And 16 just seems so important.

Ideas?

So later on (prolly Monday) I'll post about the cat show and the symphony and my day and also the report I wrote on R.L.S. that I want some constructive criticism on.

Have a good Sunday - see you guys later!

to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

waaay overdue on making a new post, no? I think so, I think so.

I've discovered that I still know how to make origami frogs!!! oh, what a talent. So last Saturday my mom and I went to this mother/daughter tea thing in Olympia, and got all dressed up, and had high tea and that was pretty cool. But we were kind of waiting for everyone to get signed in and it to start, and I (being the only child that I am!) took our name tag papers (the part you pull the name tag off of) and rediscovered the art of making origami frogs. But mine seemed to only like going straight up or backwards…which was interesting to say the least. Mom's went more straight. So I organized the froggy Olympics and mine won –can you guess? – the high jump! while mom's won the long jump.

I know you just wish you were an only child too! You'd honestly never get bored…

I found this incredible song that I think Sam would like…I don't know, I don't really know his style, but the lyrics are pretty amazing. It's called "Our God Reigns" by Delirious:

Forty million babies, lost to God's great orphanage
It's a modern day genocide, and a modern day disgrace
If this is a human right then why aren’t we free?
The only freedom we have is in a man nailed to a tree.

100 million faces, staring at the sky,
Wondering if this HIV will ever pass us by.
The devil stole the rain and hope trickles down the plug,
But still my Chinese take away could pay for someone’s drugs.

Our God reigns, Our God reigns,
Forever your kingdom reigns.

The west has found a gun and it’s loaded with ‘unsure’
Nip and tuck if you have the bucks in a race to find a cure.
Psalm one hundred and thirty nine is the conscience to our selfish crime,
God didn’t screw up when he made you,
He’s a father who loves to parade you.

Yes he reigns, yes you reign, yes you reign,
For there is only one true God,
But we’ve lost the reins on this world,
Forgive us all, forgive us please,
As we fight for this broken world on our knees.









Golf season is over. Isaiah has amazing poetry – and amazing wisdom! Oh yes, and an old friend and I have gotten together and are kind of, well, rebuilding our relationship. She just got a blog too, and wants to join our community, if you're all cool with it. so speak now or forever hold your peace!

I went to this thing on Friday called Missions Fest Seattle, and I volunteered at the Operation Mobilization booktable for a couple hours, then I took two free workshops: Finding Your Place in God's Strategic Vision for the World, and The Range of Opportunities in Missions. It was really pretty amazing to be with hundreds of people who all share the same passion as you! And this was only the second time they've done it! Then they had this speaker in a plenary session who was also very amazing. It was all pretty inspiring. and I felt so grown up, there without my parents!!! ha-ha JK.

I'm working on some pretty amazing piano music right now – the cannibal song from Pirates 2, Tarantella for my recital next May, and Clair de Lune, plus I'm going to start playing for my youth group worship team this week! I made scones on Saturday that turned out really well.




So this morning my cat decided to go exploring – under my parents' bathtub. Apparently there's this way to get there if you're really small from a cupboard under the sink, and there's a tiny little tunnel that goes under/inside their jet-tub. So Lil thought it would be a good place to explore. I didn't think so. My mom and I are downstairs reading on the couch and we hear this tap-tap-tap-tap-tap! that keeps going off and on, and Comet is jumping around wondering what in the world is going on, and we figure it has to be Lil trapped behind a door somewhere. Mom finally found her behind their cupboard; she had decided she had enough exploring and wanted out. Oh yes, and she was covered in dust. pretty much she looked more gray than chocolate. oh dear…my cat is not very smart…

I got my flu shot today to go to India! It didn't hurt at all, but it did bleed, which surprised both me and the nurse! Then I thought I needed Typhoid, because we couldn't find a record of getting a vaccination anywhere, even though I must have had it last time I went. Then we discovered that I had taken it orally, which lasts for five years, so I don't even need it again! Mom needed three shots though, and they typhoid pills. ugh. :P

I think that's about all the news. Life goes on…sometimes slowly and sometimes too fast, but always moving on. It's a bummer – sometimes there are moments I want to keep, or pass by. guess it all evens out in the end. I'm babbling now.

As Sam would say, look at the clock at 11:11, and also read Leave it to Psmith if you haven't yet! Easy read, amazing book, lots (and lots and lots) of laughs!!

can I take your picture/put it in my billfold/you'll never believe where I will take you

*sigh*
I'm going to India.



i'm going to india


I'M GOING TO INDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's pretty much official now. Sorry I haven't been on much this last week either, but it's been very crazy trying to figure out whether I'm going or not, so I think that's a legit. excuse, haha. ;) so I'll be on the Visual Communications team, writing and taking pics for three weeks in India, and guess who my guardian is going to be?

my mom.

yep, my mom, who said she'd never go, didn't feel called to go, thought she was one of the "senders," is going with me for three weeks to India in January. I'll be spending my 16th birthday half way around the world in a foreign country with jet-lag. FUN!!!!!!!

So Mythraie called my mom on Wednesday and said, basically, the team had no person to handle logistics and administration (getting plane tickets, passports and visas, exchanging money, helping with reserving the hotel, etc....all the things that hold the team together basically). And it kind of caught my mom off-guard, because she didn't feel called to go. Two days earlier both people I had hopes of possibly being guardians said they couldn't go this year. I really didn't have any prospects left. BUT, Mythraie is a very persuasive talker. :) My mom thought about it for the whole evening and next day, and then said she would come to the first training, which took place today, then make up her mind completely. Somewhere between Thursday and today we have been looking at all these stories from Scripture...Moses, Jonah, Ananias (who gave Saul/Paul his sight back)...people who didn't really want to do what God called them to do, but knew God was telling them to do it. so she decided to move forward with it unless God decided that it's not time. But so far everything is going great, and I really feel that this is the year. and I couldn't possibly have a better guardian than my own parent!!

I'm so excited I just burst out laughing sometimes when I'm by myself, and then it turns into tears, tears of joy. She'll see Singapore, and all the kites in India from the kite festival...and taste the real Indian food (not American India, sometimes very very yuck! like dal...no comment), and hear the stupid elevator that plays Fur Elise mechanically all the way up to the fifth floor, and meet Mandolay, and see elephants and camels and dogs and goats and cows.....and smell the flowers, and eat milk bikis, and and and.....

can you tell I'm excited, just a little bit?

we got our notebooks and I'm already working on my support letter to send out, which all of you should get (Lindy and Lucy I want to send you guys one so I'll need an address as soon as you can give it to me...that'd be great!)

And Mike and Tom and Barbie and Mythraie and John are going....and Joe and Melissa are meeting us over there, and Ben and Libby too!!!! And Barbie has Libby's old clothes for me to wear again probably, which I'm totally in love with. and you all have no idea what I'm talking about, but you're smiling and nodding, and I know you're all very excited for me because I'm excited about it!!!

I'm going to India!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

praying for sunny days to return to me......(tomorrow please?)

Later I will write about the Sci-Fi symphony, but I don't have time to describe it all right now. Here's what I've been putting together the last coupla days…sorry there's not much interesting stuff, but for the next two weeks my life is still mostly only golf, then I'll be back!




Friday night we went up to my great-grandma's house in Mountlake Terrace and spent the night, and had Indian food for dinner, which was pretty cool. Then Saturday for WA state history we went to Whidbey Island, which included visiting Ft. Casey, this amazingly cool place where it gets very windy and very rainy and umbrellas have a tendancy of turning inside out when you need them to stay right side in most! The fort is all concrete and built into this hill though, and it's dark and echoey and spooky with stairs that only go to the ceiling and lots of dead ends. oh yeah - and cannons. and a lighthouse that's pretty cool too. then we made the long trek home and had banana splits. and I saw U.S. Marshalls for the first time last night. and Tommy Lee Jones has to be one of the best actors ever!!! he's soooo funny, always...always.

Dickens is the most amazing author ever. yes, even better than Stevenson. I mean, it's all in his characters – a coffin-builder who is extremely cheerful, twin brothers who are even more cheerful and have the name Cheeryble, a loyal devoted heart that has a tendancy to overflow – and turns out to be the son of the man who needed that love most, but found it too late. The humor in the drama. A gang of crooks and thieves who are all cowards in the face of the law, all brave in the face of danger, and can't seem to decide between love/trust and death. An irate aunt who won't forgive her nephew for being born, and certainly not after he has had a brother. a mad clerk with a good heart.

John Browdie

so on Sunday we went to some friends' house from church for lunch, and another family was there too, and we all start going on in this Scottish accent, and Tom is like "I'm from Scotland Yard," and we're all like that's not in Scotland, but it didn't matter. So later on, he's an Egyptian in Soviet Russia from Scotland Yard with a Scottish accent. but somehow it came out sounding exactly like John Browdie.

"I knew thee must not be alloowed to leeve…not wi'out me shakin' ye're 'and an sayin' to thee job weell doon!"

basically.

I went golfing yesterday. yes, really. yes, it was raining. No, it wasn't fun. but it was a match, and I had to. but we won anyway. However, I think I'm on JV again. only scored 4 points. it sucked. but I came home and had hot chocolate with whipped cream. there's just nothing like sipping steaming hot chocolate, nice and creamy, through a layer of cold, sweet cream that leaves a fine film on your upper lip, all snuggled up in a blanked wearing my favorite T-shirt and most comfortable sweats. a cat on each side, and a fire in front, and I'm in heaven!



I found someone to learn Hindi with this year!!! it's amazing – we both want to be missionaries to India, we're both homeschooled, we've been writing to each other for forever (like seven months or something, forever right?) and it just seems sooo perfect. I'm really excited! Now I can't wait for golf season to be over!!




Okay, so I really hated this song the first time I heard it; just didn't grab me really. Now I absolutely love it. It's really all in the lyrics, but it's a beautiful song too once you get used to it's being so quiet. It's called The Roses, by Caedmon's Call

High above the valley of Quito
An old man and his bride grow roses
Red and yellow, white and golden
To him they are precious as children

Their daughter, she moved to America
One more brick in the tower of Babel
She has a son that they've never seen at all
They're praying that they raised her well

And on the mountain high
They will live and die
As time just slips away…
And the children grow
In the God they know
As time just slips away…

A man, his bride, his children, and his roses
Planted in faith, and watered in tears
Honey that's all they have and they're happier here
Than any of our friends back home
They've met Jesus, and they really know him

And on the mountain high
They will live and die
As time just slips away…
And the children grow
In the God they know
As time just slips away…

Now I'm back at home/all alone
And I'm trying to find my thoughts
That old man's so inspiring
But the TV's always on
And the phone it won't stop ringing
And these bills they keep on screaming
To pay for all the things
That we've never really needed

I wonder what he's doing right now
Maybe walking through his simple field, and thinking about how
God has blessed him so
A man, his bride, his children, and his roses

And on the mountain high
They will live and die
As time just slips away…
And the children grow
In the God they know
As time just slips away…
On the mountain high
They will live and die
As time just slips away…
And the children grow
In the God they know
As time just slips away…
Just slips away…

slips away…