Looking to please God, not man

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Graves Mountain Apple Festival

I had some fun playing with the PSPX2 and these pics. I took them yesterday at the apple harvest.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I've been rather contemplative lately. I just have a myriad of emotions flowing (I know, typical female). School has been going well. Nothing too major except the incident that occurred last week, but that has been addressed. I really like having Josh as the upper elementary supervisor even if he picks on me. Well, they all pick on me! :) Is it my fault they wait til the last minute to get things in? This week has been rough for a few of my students. Several have been absent because of sickness. I also have one who is going to be out for the next 15 days because her family (missionaries) are heading to Serbia (I keep wanting to say Siberia). I'm excited for her, but I did not enjoy trying to get all of her homework/make-up work together before she left.
My grandma recently had to have another surgery since the pin they put in popped out (when she broke her hip). My mom called me to tell me that it went well. I guess they re-adjusted the rod (to alleviate pain in her knee) and redid the pin and put a plate over it to keep it from popping out again.
I am concerned for my family. Please keep them in prayer. My dad especially for salvation. I need to talk to him. My sister is trying to "live it up" and finding it to be empty. So she keeps on searching. Fullness comes from the Lord. My brother is a carbon copy of my dad. I know he's doing things he shouldn't be doing (because my sister told me). I sometimes feel like I failed my family. As soon as my brother turned four, I had him at church with me on the church bus. Now he rarely attends. I know that the Word of the Lord will not return void, but its heart-breaking to see my family make the wrong decisions. Mom is just living day-to-day. I know she is fed up with the way things have been going. As far as I know, they are still in the process of finding a new place. From what I hear, Dad is starting to get things out, so that's a good thing.
Now, I don't say all this for pity. I am concerned for my family. I love them and I desire them to come to develop a relationship with the Lord and make the right choices in life. I just can't do it for them.
I really enjoy my Sunday School class. It has grown over the last few weeks and I am no longer the only female there. I think there are more females than males now, so that's great. :) I have been dubbed the class secretary and I'm not sure why. I don't know some of the people who are now coming to class. I hadn't seen some of them before and they've been attending the church here longer than I have. I did make a class website (that was interesting) and I do the upkeep on it. I am enjoying that part of my secretarial job.
Please keep me in prayer as I need wisdom in some areas I'm dealing with. I do hope that whoever reads this has a blessed day. :)

Monday, October 01, 2007

Old Rag Mountain hike

This past Saturday I went with 11 other people from church to hike Old Rag Mountain. We went some 3000 feet in elevation and it took us 6 hours to complete our hike: 4 to the summit, 2 to get back down. I am still stiff, but not as bad as I was yesterday! The hike was so beautiful and the weather was perfect.

Before the ascent

This was not the summit, but it was still beautiful!

Oh no! They're going to drop that rock on Abby's head!

We made it to the summit!!!!

Somewhere along the way up

Here's the info!

From the summit

At the summit!

On the way down

Saturday, September 08, 2007

God is Great!

I am thankful that God is in control. A situation arose yesterday that was pretty disturbing. I got up and got ready for work. As I normally do, I left the house around 7:15-7:30 am. I noticed my roommate's car was not next to mine. I thought it odd, but assumed she had to go to work early to catch up in the office since she had been out of town earlier in the week (she normally does not leave the house before I do). The day proceeds as normal. As I lead my class back to the room after school pictures are taken, we pass the principal and another teacher speaking to a police officer. How odd. As lunch ended and my class was lining up, my other roommate came to me and asked what time I left the house. So I told her and asked why. Our other roommate's car had been stolen. Her dad passed the house at 7am and it was there. So, in that 15-30 minutes before I left, it had been taken. I also find out that 3 laptops were also stolen from various teachers' rooms. This roommate's included. I was in disbelief. When school ended, I headed over to the other building to clean it up before evening classes, I find out the car had been found! Praise God!
The story of how the car was found was really interesting. A lady and her son were going to the house they are selling to feed their cat that had had kittens recently. I guess they left the garage door open 18 inches or so to allow the cat to get in from the elements. She opens the garage door to find a car inside of it! She calls the realtor to find out what she should do. The realtor advises her to call the police. She did and that was how the car was found. Both of my roommates go to that house and meet up with the detectives. The trunk had been cleaned out (it was in the garage) and there was something in the back seat. Once the police opened the car (had to use a Slim-Jim), they looked at the item in the back seat. It was a duffle bag and it was pretty heavy. They unzipped the bag and inside were the three stolen laptops! God is so good!
At this point, it is still unclear as to who committed this double felony, but it is being worked on.

Those special moments

Student: Teacher! [pointing to another student at a lunch table] He is going to tattle on me!
Teacher: And what are you doing?
Student: [mulling it over in his mind] Oh….wait….never mind… [returns to seat]
Aide: [hand over mouth and trying to contain herself] giggle…I couldn't have done that with out cracking a smile!

Students are telling a teacher some of their heritages (German, English, Irish, and such). One student pipes up: Teacher, I come from Arkansas!
Teacher: Oh, so you're Arkansese?
Student: Uh-huh!

These are true situations that occurred within the last two weeks! Lol! Again, there is never a dull moment as a teacher!

Monday, August 27, 2007

And life goes on. And on.

Things got quite hectic around here. In-service was nice, but there were many, many technical difficulties that occurred. In the end, all that could be done was laugh at it all. I just couldn’t believe all of that would happen in one week. It took me 3 days to print a couple small files. I'm still chuckling. My classroom is much smaller than the one I had last year, but I have 3 less students as well and no reading circle. So its ok. My room was used as the inventory room, so I had all the new books that came in and I had to work around them. There is also a small storage closet that holds the high school books as well. I really couldn’t get started setting up my room until Tuesday. Over the weekend, I don’t know how many times my room was unlocked by other people. I always locked it when I left. Sunday evening, I went into my room (I found it unlocked) and someone had turned off my computer. Then, when I went in this morning, there was a card on my desk. My first thought was "Now who was in my room?!?!?" The card was from my supervisor. Lol!
Today was the first day of school and it went very well. Time flew by so fast! My students seem to be pleasers, for the most part. They were ready to get started. There are some new things going on, such as elementary teachers not getting a break in the school day (8:15-3:15) since we already eat with our classes and now we have to go out for recess (instead of just an aide). It really wasn't too bad. I tried to get through my lesson plans today, but I just couldn’t fit history and science in today. We will get caught up, though. We don’t have all the elective classes this week, so that is a little extra time in which I can use.
I saw many of my kids from last year during lunch and was bombarded with hugs from my girls. It was nice to see them again. I pray that my class stays behaving well and desires to please God in their lives.
In non-school news, I do have some prayer requests. My grandma fell and broke her hip over the weekend and was supposed to have surgery today. I've not heard anything yet as to how it went. Also, my family could use your prayers as well. There have been many issues that came up recently and all I can do is pray, so I ask you to do the same. Thank you!
I've been busy with my Sunday school class. We just got a new teacher a few weeks ago and I believe that it is going to be a great class. Don't get me wrong, I do miss the other teacher and his family. I just haven't heard from them in several weeks. Not really sure what all happened, but the Lord knows.