Monday, September 15, 2008

Senior Trip Runs Into Difficulties

Lets see if my memory can be jogged (sounds funny). Wednesday, I went to church (surprise, right?) and Pastor Nick asked me to film some parts of the service, so that's what I did the whole time. I also talked to Alex about the note I had written, and he admitted that he was out of line, and apologized. It was a late night, due to homework and things, but this is also typical of a wednesday night. The following day, if I remember correctly, I went home and slept for most of the day. It was a good day.

Friday, I bought my Government class doughnuts, simply 'cause I like it when we get to do special things, and this seemed special to me. We watched McCain's intro video and part of his speech. It was a wee bit annoying though, 'cause Mrs. Williams made assigned seating, and she, naturally, stuck the loudest and most obnoxious guy next to me, who explained to Mrs. Williams why the crowd was reacting during the speech, and he explained it loud enough that we couldn't hear the video. Since all of us ignore what he says, it ended up just being a blur of annoying sounds. I have a lot of patience with junior highers, because they're so young, but Caleob Taramona has no excuse. When I think of him, I think of a giant, flabby mouth. Mrs. Williams found the perfect person to put him next to, though, 'cause I disagree with almost everything he says. Jessica Rapascz (or however you spell it) came back from A&M to visit that day, so we talked for awhile, and she told me about the college life, and how you have to swear or they'll make you do push-ups. I told her that if I went, I simply wouldn't do it. I introduced to a few other seniors our idea of going to South Padre, and they seemed excited. Tyler was particularly excited about the prospect of boozing it up, but the rest of us were very much against such an idea. Later that night (nothing important enough for me to remember transpired in the afternoon), I decided that I wanted to go out and do something on a friday night. Since no good movies had come out in a month, and wouldn't for another two weeks, the only idea I had was to go to the Harbor. I texted some people, but they couldn't make it, so I went by myself and stared across the water, where some automobile was on fire, and the flames were great. I texted with Michelle the whole time (she was one of the people that I had not texted to invite), discussing various subjects. As I was leaving, I was asked if I had just broken up with my girlfriend, 'cause I was at the Harbor alone. I made a stupid answer then went home. Sitting and thinking for an hour and a half does clear your head quite a bit.

Saturday, Hurricane Ivan was tearing into our 'omes and everything we own. It stole my wallet, raised gas prices, and put Obama in the lead. I played Canasta with my mom for hours that evening, and found out from my sister that Lance Watson is leading Lauren Watson's discipleship group, 'cause Lauren has baby problems. I found this to be bad.

Sunday, I woke up (fancy that). I went to Sunday School, where Mr. Grice was teaching on his answersingenesis.com stuff, which was pretty good. He said that it answered any question you had about the Bible or anything. I looked it up and it didn't, but it did have answers for things in terms of defending your faith. Just not in-depth stuff. We had our SL meeting next, where a bunch of people bragged on me, but Cassie helped by disagreeing with them on every point, allowing me to look back at her with teary-eyed smiles, saying how funny she was. I went out to eat with Brett and Caleb (I forgot his last name, but he's younger and supposedly more annoying) at Joe Willy's, and that was a barrel of fun (more like a small canister, really). Then I went home and (SURPRISE) napped till the media meeting. Andrew had a real group that night, which he seemed surprised at, so we felt like we should undertake something larger. And undertake we did. We made a handy lil' music video. I can't judge it yet, but it didn't look like it met my incredibly, massively high standards. That night, I was up till 2:30-3:00 AM doing homework. During this time, I talked to a certain Sarah, and we talked through the problems she's having at school, and I came to the conclusion that if she was doing everything right and people still treated her like dirt, then there was only one solution. Take joy in it. be encouraged by it. James 1:2. I forgot to mention that I had forgotten both my Bible and my bandanna at school during the weekend, so if I don't sound as godly, that's why.

Today, I found out that it was my day for devotions. Fortunately, I still remembered James 1:2 and talked about that. Government was alright, but Mr. Taramona still annoys the (something...) out of me. I went to the office to get my honors class dropped, and Mrs. Horan reminded me of how I was neck-in-neck with Tyler, and my work load didn't seem like too much. So I felt guilty for dropping that class after that. I went to lunch, and Miss E suspected that I had ratted her out on her religious beliefs to Mr. Harber, but I denied this. Then, in Pre-Cal, she said to the class that I believed that she was going to Hell. I was quiet for the rest of the class, and struggled with trying to give it all over to God, but I kinda wanted to hold onto some of what I was feeling, 'cause Miss E was rejecting God, and I just felt that rejection, and I started to think that that's what Jesus must have felt. Anyway, I let go of it in Roots class (or at least made a good effort at it), then I had a study hall. It was fun, 'cause I was in the same room as the foreign exchange students, and their class was mostly English pronounciation, and I felt pretty advanced about it all. I had found out at lunch that Newman wouldn't be able to go on the senior trip, 'cause his dad found out that it was a party island. So I talked with Jordan, and we were thinking, why don't we make this ministry-focused? What if we went there, not out to fight temptation, but to fight back with evangelism? We'll see how that goes. Next, I had the Connect class, but today, the real teacher, Mr. Pryor, was there. I loved what he did. The whole class, all he did was question their religious beliefs, bring up verses that, in effect, could bring them to question what they believed about God. I talked to him afterwards, and now I'm pretty dern excited about all of it. For one thing, when he was doing this, I felt like I knew most of the answers for why I believed what I believed, and some of them were tricky. Everyone left the class questioning what they had been told by parents and sunday school, since Mr. Pryor would be waiting until next week to actually teach what was correct. I got home and, after eating a cookie with a Reeses cup in the middle (my mom learned from a friend), I slept for many hours, awaking to texts and blogs.

6 comments:

Alyssa Kay said...

Your days all seem to sound the same the second time through... Hm...

A poor white middle class soul said...

Duly corrected. Thank you, Miss Sortino.

Kate said...

Hmmm.
what a life you have there.
I have several comments:

1. You need a normal sleeping pattern. You will thank me later when you finally follow my advice. Take melatonin if you can't fall asleep before midnight.
2. I know it is hard to deal with people who reject Christ, keep up the work. If she's defensive rather than apathetic it's definitely saying that you've got her thinking. Your honesty with her in the fact that if she rejects Christ she will go to hell is admirable. And Elinor of all people needs to hear straight-up honesty. She certainly dishes it out.
3. Continue to be loving, but firm in your beliefs. I probably don't even need to tell you all this, i'm sure you've heard it many times. But it often helps me to hear encouragement when people get nasty.

Kate said...

btw,
that was not a reject cologne. It was the perfume of the same brand (MY perfume)

Kate said...

YES!!! Oh my gosh it's my absolute favorite! Stephen and Thomas wear it....that's how i discovered the perfume. (did i tell you i'm on my second bottle of it? Very rare for me, i usually switch perfumes very often.) Consequently, I was very excited to find out that Louie wears it too.

Rebekah Michaele said...

i also have multiple responses:

1) don't use chemical substances, medicinal or otherwise, to help you sleep. bad idea.

2) i remember having to do devotionals in bible class when i was in private school. totally didn't know how to go about it then...

3)i wish you were in my government class

4) here's a random question. if you had a best friend, who wold it be?