Here is another mention of Gunner, the current Dean of Men at TMC. It seems that he is doing a series at Master's on college and real life. He says that many people view their college years as not counting towards the rest of life. Gunner says that many people live as if these years will not count, that God will not hold them accountable because these years aren't real life, they're just practice.
False.
God will hold us accountable for every day, which is a sobering thought, to say the least.
Gunner goes on to say that we need to be practicing now for real life. Even though I have graduated from college, I still am in this preparation period as I get my credential and am learning from others. Soon I will be responsible for my own students' education, but not quite yet.
Any way, Gunner made the point that the training is not any less real than the performance, it is only different. A person cannot leave college or a credential program and expect to be successful and effective if he or she has not be living with the real life mindset all along. The following quote really struck me:

"The best performers are the best practicers. The best presenters are the best preparers. The best competitors are the best conditioned. The best soldiers are the best boot-campers. Those who are diligent in private are influential in public."

I was convicted by these blog posts. I can't go back and change those 4 years, but I can change this semester as I teach 2 more weeks in high school and 8 in junior high. I can choose to live in the present while still looking to the future, and I can make decisions accordingly. I'll end with a few question I sometimes have in the back of my mind when I hear people talk about their future plans:

What are you doing now to prepare for that? How can you shape your character and your skills now for that future dream? It will be here before you know it; are you ready?

Yearly Tradition

It's my yearly tradition: Time to reference the fact that I was in Jericho, Israel/the West Bank on Valentine's Day 3 years ago now. Here are my other posts from 1 year ago and 2 years ago.
And of course, I have pictures to go with this. :)

The view of Jerusalem from the east from Nebi Samwil. You can tell it is Jerusalem because of the three towers on the horizon. They are located on the Mount of Olives and visible for miles.

Wheat growing in Benjamin

Drawing water out of a cistern at the entrance to Michmash and Geba, where Jonathan and his armor bearer climbed up and killed a lot of Philistines.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that dirt hill is Jericho. I was very disappointed when I saw it. It is a very small dirt hill. However, God really did bring it down, so that's cool.

When I think about how far I've come, how much I've done, how much I've grown in the last 3 years that passed like a nanosecond, I can't help but be grateful that God doesn't let His children stay stagnant. At times I get down about where I am in life and what is going to happen with my future, but since God was faithful to bring me to my today, He will be faithful to bring me to my future.

Rejoice always,

pray without ceasing,

in everything give thanks;

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

-I Thessalonians 5:16-18 NKJV

Adventure

In case you don't know, I'm a big fan of adventure. I love the definition: a wild and exciting undertaking (not necessarily lawful) . While my adventures don't usually ;) fall in the wild or unlawful categories, I still like doing things out of the ordinary. It's generally more fun with another person, even if that person thinks my ideas are a little too crazy. Oh well, God gave us friends for a reason! :)

Adventure in NorCal...

My poor shoes got very dirty...they're okay now, though...

In order to have a good adventure, you need the proper footwear...or no footwear... :)

Topanga Canyon Hike, looking down on Santa Monica

Trying to get to China through a pipe...didn't work too well

Hopping in fountains gets you some funny looks... ;)

Slumdog

So I went and saw "Slumdog Millionaire" with my friends Michelle, Jenni, and Mandy last night. It was awesome! For those of you who don't know about the movie, it is about a boy, Jamal, who grows up in the slums of Mumbai and eventually gets on the biggest game show in India, "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." He advances to the final round but is accused of cheating. However, he didn't cheat; he knows all the answers to the questions because of several isolated events in his past. You follow the events of his past and learn about his love, a girl named Latikah. I won't give away the ending. ;)
Any way, I really enjoyed it! I have to warn you that it was rated R for some language and some scenes of torture (not intense or bloody, though, thankfully).
I really enjoyed the cinematography with its portrayal of intense colors and many different classes of people in India. I thought it captured the dirtier side of a third-world country. And yes, I still want to go. One of my favorite parts was when Jamal and his brother Salim look up to see the Taj Mahal and think they have reached heaven, or at the least, a 5-star hotel!
I also caved in and bought the soundtrack on Amazon.com. Kat is already addicted, and I am so excited for it arrive on Wednesday! Oh, and if you want to listen to one of my favorite songs from the movie, click here to listen on youtube. :D

Mumbai. Taj Mahal. Agra. New Delhi. Varanasi. I can't wait for the day when I can visit and see these places for myself...

Plethora of Topics

I have a lot of things to say...Feel free to comment or just to read (since you, Reader, seem to do the latter on a consistently boring basis ;) ).

I like teaching, but I wish all students were at the Honors level. It is sad to me that American students can't even follow simple instructions and maintain the flow of ideas from day to day. "What is this again? Okay, so what is that?" Oh dear, you are going to be in serious trouble when you get to college.

Being in love and love are two different things. I think that being in love depends on feelings and day-to-day things. It is temperamental. Love, true love, is that state of being in which you care deeply for that other person and give yourself for him/her/them, no matter what. You may not always feel it, but it is a choice. "I am going to love this person, and that will never change." Both are necessary in a marriage, but being in love without actually loving the person will result in disappointments and disillusionment and possibly bitterness. Loving the person without being in love will result in toleration rather than enjoyment. At least in my opinion. It makes sense to me...hopefully it does to you as well. I'm trying to figure out a way to tell you, Reader, that I don't want this to be construed in any way to have some hidden message about my past. But maybe someone out there is wondering about the distinction between the two; this is just my opinion. Any thoughts?

I am really wondering what I should do next year. My school district has a hiring freeze, but I do not know about the school districts up north. I don't necessarily want to move north, even though I love it and my family is there. I have a few months to decide/figure it out/pray about it. We shall see.

I brought one of my professors to tears with a picture of my family (all thirteen of us!).

Photography is one of my favorite things. I am constantly noticing cool things and trying to think of ways to get good shots of them. This usually occurs while I'm driving. I have to restrain myself not to pull off the road to take pictures, though sometimes I give in, but not on the way to school. How would I explain that one?

Some day I WILL see the Taj Mahal in person. The trip might just have to be later rather than sooner. And I will post pictures to prove it.

Fam

I just remembered a quote from my dad!

"You have so much mud on your pants, you could plant flowers!"
(to the little kids after a particularly fun day)

Poetry

My sophomore classes are starting a poetry unit tomorrow, with the freshmen classes starting a different poetry unit the week after. I don't like poetry a whole lot, mostly because I haven't studied it and don't quite know what I'm looking for, plus it takes work! But I like this one by Emily Dickinson, #657 or "I dwell in possibility":

#657 ("I dwell in possibility")
I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--


I guess to me, this tells of my desire to be all that I can be and to experience life to the fullest, wherever God may lead me.

Sorry this article is so long, but I think it really illustrates Israel's position in the recent conflict with Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead. I do not think that Israel is immune from making mistakes simply because Jewish people are God's chosen, but who else puts up with hostility for years on end without serious reaction?


Tragedy is no crime
Unfortunately I could not find the name of this editorial's author, but it came from Jerusalem Post

You are a freshman university student on the first day of a philosophy course. Your professor poses this ethical dilemma: A devoutly religious man is shooting at you with an AK-47. He is determined to kill you and your family. Is it moral to shoot back? Before you answer; consider that he is shielded by his pregnant wife and three young children.
Ordinary Israelis know what any undergraduate not suffering from a death-wish intuitively appreciates - namely, that human beings should not intentionally injure other human beings but may sometimes need to resort to violence to keep themselves and others from harm.
We are sensitive to the heartrending loss of innocent life in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Arab and foreign press reports claim upwards of 1,300 Palestinians killed, including 300 children and 100 women. It will take Israeli experts time to accurately determine how many of the dead were truly non-combatants. For now, there are huge discrepancies.
Of the 900 enemy dead that Israeli intelligence had reportedly identified by last Thursday, about 250 were said to be non-combatants. The blame for their deaths rests solely with Hamas. Hamas provoked this war, and then fought it from behind Palestinian men, women and children.
Still, for some knee-jerk enemies of Israel like the 78-year-old British MP Gerald Kaufman, even the killing of "militants" is inexcusable. He's implied that Israel's shooting of a Hamas gunman is akin to the Nazis' murder of his grandmother during the Holocaust. We can have no common language with someone whose moral compass is so warped. Kaufman, like the mullahs in Iran, has convinced himself that Israel is exploiting the "continuing guilt from Gentiles" over the Holocaust "as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
That broken record won't play. Presumably, Kaufman means the "gentiles" who control the United Nations. But how sympathetic are they to Israel's right of self-defense? Or perhaps he means the "gentiles" in the international media? How convincing is it to suggest that they side with Israel in their Gaza coverage?
Even Kaufman's notoriety as a "Jewish critic" of Israel has lost its cachet - such critics are hardly a rare species.
And anyway, Kaufman has been siding with the Palestinians since 1988, when he endorsed the first intifada.
The Kaufmans of the world apart, Israel can also do no right in the eyes of those critics who believe that our existence here is an "original sin"; that since there were 600,000 Jews here in 1948 and, arguably, twice that number of Arabs, any partition of Palestine was inherently "theft." We have no claims on the hearts of those who embrace the Arab narrative so utterly.
BUT WE'VE also been let down by those who profess to believe that the Jewish people do have the right to a homeland. Why is it so hard for them to comprehend the nature of the enemy we're facing in Gaza? After all, the theology that motivates Hamas is analogous to the fanaticism that brought down the World Trade Center, exploded London's transport system, and continues to spill innocent blood from Bali to Mumbai.
Israelis are told that no matter the provocation, we are "too quick" to resort to force. As if negotiations with Hamas were an option; as if eight years was too quick.
And if we've acted so "disproportionately" in our brutal march to triumph, how come the enemy is still standing and declaring victory?
To the morally obscene charge that we've committed "genocide" in Gaza - does anyone seriously doubt that were genocide our goal, heaven forbid, there would be 500,000 dead Palestinians, and not 1,000?
What other army drops warning leaflets and makes automated warning calls prior to attacking? Why is it ethical for Hamas to fire from a mosque or over the walls of a UN facility, but unethical for our citizen-soldiers to save themselves by responding with heavy weapons?
The truth is that no Western country faced with a similar set of circumstances - fighting an enemy that principally targets non-combatants while hiding behind its own civilians - would comport itself with higher moral standards than the IDF.
Sophomoric ideals about wartime morality are barely tolerable in Philosophy 101. When mouthed by leaders and pundits who should know better, they reflect intellectual laziness and dishonesty.

Text Cloud

This is so small! But I found this link on Phil's blog, which I read a couple of times a year. But I've wanted to do this text-cloud-thing for a long time. I just wish it were bigger. If you click on it, you can see it better, and you can also go to the wordle site...Yea for text clouds!!!

Ahava Israel

I'm sure you get tired of looking at my Israel pictures. I admit, sometimes I get tired of them, too...but very rarely. ;) Here are some more pictures of my IBEX semester, 3 years ago this month.

Jezreel Valley, I believe

They have been married for almost 5 months!!! Heather & Austin Surls

Damascus Gate, one of the coolest gates of the Old City

Sunrise over Jerusalem, when a bunch of us spent the night on the roof of Petra Hostel during excavation weekend

Macalister and I. A few of us bought him for Todd, but the fish died. We replaced him with Jeroboam II, who also died. So we gave up and made Todd a book instead. ;)

B and I at the Herodian, where my home pastor, Todd Johnson, and his wife Sharon went in high school...and Todd fell down it. You can't see the Herodian in this picture, but it is big. And very rocky, just like the rest of Israel. (We didn't really get in trouble, we just posed with this IDF guy.)

Hike to the Aijalon Valley. It gets very muddy in the spring!

Meet Dr. Pleeplious Gooourdon

Brought home by Danielle and Sherrie
Kristened and kreated by Kat
Photographed by Jennica
Laughed at by Lester
Adored by all

What Gunner Learned

Gunner is the Dean of Men at The Master's College, which is where I graduated from in May and where I am currently getting my teaching credential. He used to be an RD of the off-campus guys' dorm, which was pretty cool, I hear. I know a bunch of the guys who lived there, and they are all cool, too. I actually stayed in that dorm for two weeks while taking 6 units of post-session classes after my freshman year of college. (The on-campus dorms were being worked on.) The dorm is now closed because Master's doesn't currenly need the space, since, unfortunately, attendance has been down. The guys from the dorm put on quite a good show of expressing their sadness over the closing. Think sackcloth, sad faces, and solidarity. ;)
One of my favorite professors at Master's was Todd Bolen. He was an IBEX prof and is now getting his doctorate at Dallas Theological Seminary in Texas. He posted this link to Gunner's blog, about what Gunner learned this year. I haven't really talked with Gunner (he played Frisbee a few times), but he seems to be a really cool, genuine, godly guy. I'm sure the people who actually know him would agree. Any way, here are a few things he learned last year that I thought I would post:

I learned that you don’t study for the major tests in life. They just arrive unannounced, and you realize that you were (supposed to be) preparing all along. So if you only study and train because you have scheduled tests approaching, you will be hopelessly unprepared for the unscheduled (and usually much more significant) tests in life.

I learned that you will never be a man of prayer unless you relentlessly and ruthlessly choose to be one.

I learned that self-perceived reputation tends to make you lazy, especially if you’re a man-fearer, because the goal of a man-fearer is a good reputation, and once you’ve achieved that, your only responsibility is maintenance.

I learned that complacency is encouraged by a challenge-free life.

I learned that putting things off only makes them harder, and that actually doing hard things is often easier than you expect.

I learned that I don’t get to choose all of my battles. I am responsible to fight the fights that God puts in front of me.

I learned that the search for contentment never ends, because contentment was never meant to be a search.