Week 13 Blog

God has gave me an amazing body to do physical labor and serve others. This intersects with my life of wanting to serve others. I have gone to Tennessee three times to help serve others and share God's love. I believe that God wants me to pursue a job that can help other people. So, I am going into education to teach little kids. As a teacher you provide a parent figure that some kids might not have. In today's age there are an increased amount of kids who are living in incomplete homes. As a teacher you can change people's lives and make them better. We can make people's lives better and begin to introduce them to God. Through service I feel fully alive in Christ and love what I do. As I work for these people I feel blessed with my life. I praise God with the life that I have been given. So often we overlook the little things and always want more. We have become so immune to what we have in our lives that we overlook it. So when we come across people who have nothing we begin to reflect on how awesome our lives are. It also happens that families with so little often have a stronger faith with God than people who have grown up with average lives.

Week 12 Blog

I believe that Christians should adopt success as a life principle. We should always try to do better in life and improve in whatever areas are lacking. So for me it would to be improve my worship. Success comes through being able to be a good Christian. We should strive to improve other people's lives. We should not settle for anything less than amazing. We should make changes to our lives that would please the Lord. When we sin enters our lives it the Lord is displeased with us and wants us to come back to us. From the point of view of God we should be successful just like Jesus. But, because of our sinful nature we are unable to be exactly like Jesus. So God wants us to be as close to Jesus as possible. God wants us to spread his word in whatever we do. As we share with more people than the Kingdom of God grows. Everyone has their own skills that they can use to introduce people to God. God does not say that we have to introduce people to the Kingdom of God but it makes him happy if you do. There are many ways to praise God such as singing, praying, physical labor, and athletic abilities.

Mark Charles Response

"Most Americans are not overtly racist, but we live in a systemically racist nation." this is how Mark Charles ended his speech on Monday. I agree with this statement for the most part. People themselves are not personally racist but the nation as a total is racist toward people that are not Caucasian. We see all the time in the news that White officers are seen beating or killing black people. This is often seen as racism because they don't give a reason for the abuse. I agree that racism has been around for a long time. I also agree that what we did to the Native Americans was wrong and that we should never let it happen again. But, at the same time Mark Charles did not seem to acknowledge when the Native Americans attacked American settlers. One example of this is the Spirit Lake massacre, which occurred on October 8-12, 1857. A Wahpekute band of Santee Sioux attack on scattered Iowa frontier settlements during a severe winter. Jesus says in the Bible to turn your other check to the enemy and not to fight back. I believe that we can change this system by talking and working together. We can learn from this experience and use it as an example so it doesn't happen again. We can come together as a community of Christians to learn how to better all of our lives. We need to learn how to reflect on our own lives truthfully and make changes after because of it.

Week 9 post

God is forming the person inside of me through many different ways. God has placed different people in my life to help me along in my spiritual walk. My youth group leader, Ryan, has been positively affecting my life for the last six years. He has always been willing to talk with me about things I was struggling with. He has helped me by praying for me during good and bad times, Ryan also provided me with a devotional book that I can learn new verses and reflect on. The second person that God put in my life to help me is my mother, Cindy. My mother has provided me with a good Christian background and has challenged me to grow in my faith. She has also provided me with my patience and interest to learn more. The third person who has influenced my Christian nature is my friend, Jordan Nomansen. He has always been confident in his faith which has caused me to demonstrate my faith more freely. I also feel comfortable to talk to Jordan about my faith or subjects that I don't feel comfortable talking to my parents about. I feel like God is forming my person by putting Dordt in my life. I could have gone to a large college but God made Dordt work for me and provide me with options to improve my spiritual life. I also believe that God provided me with a healthy body to serve God by doing physical labor. God has also given me a loving heart to care for others and share my faith with them.

Week 8 post

Sid Hielema stated that "all things we do is called to be an act of worship." For me this means that I should glorify God through the sports, my life, and my actions. When we play sports we should remember who gave us the ability to play. So often people only care about themselves when playing sports and don't think of what would happen if they didn't have their skills. Everyone's life should be worship to God, it shows how lucky we are to have healthy lives.When people see me, I want them to know that I am a Christian and my purpose in life is to glorify God. My actions also are important in worshiping God. There are days when my words worship God and put a positive influence on people. But, there are other days when my actions to not reflect my love to God and I am a bad influence on the people around me. As I begin my college experience I will learn how to worship God through my education. I am also going into an education major, so my job will be to teach other children new things. I hope that I can teach the kids how to live a Christian life and to worship God in the small things.

I believe that my Signature Theme that describes me the best is responsibility. I feel like I am very good at getting things done on time, and if someone wants me to do something I will it to the best of my ability. I think that I use the restorative Signature Theme the most out of the five. I like to try to find answers to problems. If the first idea doesn't work I want to find a different solution that will work. I feel upset that a problem is left unanswered or if I can't come up with the answer. All of my Signature Themes seems to fit me and I agree with them. I found this test to be interesting on how it was able to find qualities that fit me so well. I anticipate using my restorative or relator Signature Themes during college. I think that being restorative will be useful in college because it will help me solve new problems that I haven't faced yet. The relator quality would help in college because I will be able to work in groups with people close to me and complete harder projects. I believe that my high school did a test like this as well, some of my qualities might have changed but for the most part I stayed the same. My friend and I also did something like this for church to see how the best way was for us to serve God.

I agree with the author's statement "I wanted more for you". I think that God wants that from everyone. No matter who you are and what your faith is God is always willing to give you another chance. We should live to glorify God and teach others about him. I believe that this quote applies to me a lot. I feel like I should be working more to live a better life for God. I always say that I'm a good Christian and do the right thing when people are watching. But, when people aren't watching I slip up and do things that would not glorify God. I continue to fall into the same temptation and can't seem to break out of the cycle. I need to find out a way to break out of my habits and use my gifts to praise God. I hope that I can find a way to share my faith with new people. Hopefully through going to Dordt I can find my calling and develop it through the programs here. I also hope that through Dordt I can grow a better relationship with God. I feel like this chapter is calling out lots of people because there are many people who act differently around certain people.

I feel like I am adapting to college very well. I am getting use to my classes and growing more in my faith. I am enjoying chapel and G.I.F.T which is helping me find out more about my reason for living. I am enjoying trying out new churches each week and finding one that suits me the most. I am also enjoying meeting new people and reforming old relationships. Because I am from the public school there are not that many people here from my school. So, I was excited when I was able to make new friends from other schools so quickly. I am also enjoying my work study, which is working at the front desk of the Recreation Center. I hope that can become more active in intramural sports or watching more varsity sports. I do have a few question though, the first question being, what are some good clubs to join to meet new people? Another question I have is, how do I create my schedule for next semester or declare what major I want to go into? My third question is, how much time should I spend doing homework or studying for tests? Because right now I am spending most of my days after class studying or finishing homework. Even after studying for most of the day, I still feel like I am not spending my time right, but maybe that's just college stress.

When we look around the world or even just around our town we can see many different religions. When I look around I see a lot of people worshiping money or possessions to satisfy themselves. People think that lots of money will make their lives better because they will be able to buy anything they want. The same thing happens with possessions, a person will buy or keep more than they need just because they want to own lots of items. People usually worship things because they might not be religious or they might do it without even knowing. I would say that I personally worship athletes, and video games. I would say that I worship athletes because of how big of a fan I am good athletes. When I played sports I always tried to play like them and take all the glory for myself and not give it to God. I also praise video games in a way that keeps me from spending more time with God through reading the Bible or worship. Even if it doesn't seem like I am praising the video games it is taking time away from God and discover my meaning in God. I hope that through my years here at Dordt I can find more ways to worship God, and how to better spend my time. I can already feel myself growing closer to God just by going to chapel and through my classes.

Week 2 Core 100 Blog

The most significant event that changed my life was when my sister was diagnosed with Non Hodgkin's B lymphoma. It was like any other day in my life, my sister was complaining about something hurting in her stomach. This had been going on for five days, and she had been coming home early everyday. So, that day my parents decided to take her to the hospital during school to see if it was something more serious. That night I came home and my dad gave me the news. At first it was almost surreal, I had heard of little kids getting sick before, but I never thought that it would affect me personally. The surreal moment faded quickly to anger and devastation. I was quickly questioning God and why he would allow this to happen to someone so young and kind. I prayed to God a lot that night both for my sister's safety and calmness for myself. This is when I started to leave the future up to God. I remembered that sometimes God does things that we don't understand, but it is always for the best. My family and I were comforted by many people from the community and even people we didn't know that much. I feel that through this event I have become more mature, I am more thankful for the thing I have in life, and I feel like I have a new relationship with God.