Hilton Head

Life is always busy. I hear it doesn't get any better from here on out. I have three weeks till graduation. This is my last full week of classes. Such a weird feeling. Moving on has never been a strong thing for me.

This past weekend my friend Ashley Spaulding got married. It is such a strange thing when all your friends start getting married. I honestly don't feel old enough to get married or to have friends of mine getting married.

Her wedding was in Hilton Head. Since Hotels are so expensive and none of my friends were going up a night early, I just decided to make a day trip out of it. It takes five hours to get there. So we left at 7:00 on Saturday morning and got there around 12:00 PM. We ate at Chik-Fil-A and then we got to the church by 1:30 (thirty minutes before the wedding started).

The wedding was really beautiful. It was one of the sweetest weddings I have been to. I really enjoyed it. Ashley looked beautiful! The reception was at a plantation nearby. It was on the bay. The location was really pretty with tons of palm trees and spanish moss trees. It was 80 degrees that afternoon so it was burning up!

The reception was over around 6:00 and me and Jonathan headed over to Hilton Head for a walk on the beach. I couldn't go all that way and be so close to the beach without actually enjoying it! So, we took a walk on the beach and I got to take some picture for my photography class. We ate dinner at a pizza place downtown. It was really good.

The ride home was excruciating. I was exhausted. And about one hour into it I just wanted to be back SO BADLY I couldn't stand it. We got back at 2:00 AM. It was a good but exhausting trip! I love South Carolina beaches!

This week is pretty busy. It seems like every class is trying to wrap up assignments.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

The Junior/Senior

The future is beginning to overwhelm me lately. Do you ever suddenly look around and go,"Is this really my life?" This isn't necessarily in a good way, but it also isn't necessarily in a bad way. As the end of college is in sight my life is starting to feel kind of weird to me. It doesn't feel like my life anymore. Nothing feels normal. I am not going to pretend, I am starting to get a little freaked out about the future and all that will come with it.

No one tells you growing up is weird and hard. My room mate, house mate and I went to eat at the BBQ Shack in Toccoa on Friday evening. I don't even like BBQ. But, it is a Toccoa staple and I have never been there my entire four years. So, I decided to try it out with my two friends. We sat down at our table and our waitress walked over and said,"I assume you will be having sweet tea". Only in Toccoa do they just assume you will be drinking sweet tea. It was pretty good though! I enjoyed it. We had a good time. We talked a lot about the future and how weird it was that we are graduating. I started getting a little sentimental. You know, a lot of times I am fine with moving on in life until moving on is staring me in the face. It is when the next step is looking me in the face that I begin to hold on for dear life to the phase I am currently experiencing. I have found myself wanting to hold on for dear life to college. These past four years have definitely be full of good memories and hard times. In fact, these past four years have been the hardest of my life. But, they have also been good in a lot of ways!

Yesterday was my last formal of college. It went by so fast I don't even feel like it really happened. It was my first/last Junior/Senior banquet of college. It was in downtown Greenville. It was down by the river there in a really cool pavilion. It was beautiful! I rode down with Jonathan, Amber and Charles. We sat at a table with two other couples. The dinner was BBQ (my luck that I would have my least favorite thing two nights in a row). The food was wonderful though. They showed a senior dvd. Since the person who made it didn't know everyone on a close level, they simply took pictures off of everyone's facebook profile for the video. It just so happened that they took my profile picture. Which, at the time wasn't the most flattering picture. Had I known, I definitely would've put up a better picture of myself.

After dinner we went downtown to the Underground Coffee shop for dessert and then we headed to a jazz club to listen to a jazz band play. It was amazing! I had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures:










There is a lot to do before I graduate. I am ready for the TON of homework to be done!

A weekend at Southeastern!

You know when you are trying to explain something to another person and all you get from them is a blank stare or a weird expression that states,"I don't get it". That's kind of how I feel it's been with me a lot when it comes to other people understanding my "heart" on things. Especially when it comes to missions. I have got lots of different responses when I tell people I want to be a missionary one day. One of the most common ones though, (even from fellow christian) is the same exact stare I was just talking about that says,"I don't get it". Once I even had a christian ask me this,"Why would you want to do that?" It's weird. I figured missions was something every christian understood pretty clearly.


I'm not one of those people who looks down on people who don't want to be a missionary. I am glad there are teachers, doctors, scientists, and even garbage men in this world! I am in no way better than they are. I don't get puzzled when someone chooses another career other than missions. I get puzzled when someone doesn't understand why I want to be missionary when they are a follower of Christ. I got this same blank expression from someone this weekend. It wasn't someone at the seminary, but it was a fellow Christian. I told them that I was coming to Southeastern to get a degree so I could be a missionary. They just gave me this weird expression and were confused as to why I would do such a thing.

My passion for things, and even my heart is often misunderstood by other people. Especially when it comes to missions. I figure it will always be that way with people who are passionate about something though. It doesn't matter what you are passionate about, if you show that passion to others at some point it will most likely puzzle them. Trying to make people understand why we are passionate is such a hard thing to do , isn't it? Trying to get another person to truly grasp our heart and our experiences is always a challenge. They will never see it fully from where we stand.

This weekend brought on these thoughts. THis weekend I went to Wake Forest, NC to tour Southeastern. It wasn't a formal tour since I went on the weekend (I couldn't find a time to go during the week). My friend from this summer, Cameron Liner, lives in Raleigh. She has a friend who goes to Southeastern, so he provided us with a tour. I personally though don't think I would've gotten a better tour guide. Brad is really funny and optimistic. And it was refreshing to be able to talk to someone like that about southeastern. Wake Forest is a small town that reminds me of Amory, MS (the town I grew up in). It has personality even though it is so small. IT is very quaint. We ate at a cute little sandwhich shop called "over the falls". The rest of the shops downtown are just as adorable. One of them is a ice cream/gellato shop that has horse saddles for seats. Everything has a creative name.

The campus is really pretty, though not as pretty as the Southwestern campus in Dallas. I got to see pretty much everything from the outside. The dorms were super depressing and weren't even as nice as the dorms we have at Toccoa. That was sad. But, Brad had a lot of good things to say about the school. ANd, I honestly trust his opinion. He went to christian highschool and christian college so he truly understood where I was coming from. He said he has learned a lot in about the Old Testament (which made me really excited because I felt like Toccoa was weak in that area). It was good to talk to him! He was helpful. I still have some questions but I have emailed the admissions counselor and will hopefully get those answered soon!

It took practically all day on Saturday to tour everything. The rest of the weekend I was hanging out with Cameron. She goes to NC State so she gave me a tour of their campus. She showed me downtown Raleigh. It seems the area has pretty much everything I could need! I really liked it. It's a neat city. And, the school seems really good. There were of course, some negatives. I think the positive outweighs the negative though.

Oh, and it took about 5 hours or so to get up there! I was very thankful for my GPS. IT was helpful this weekend. I had so many different places to go!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

My Busy Life...

This has been a pretty big week for me! I think the past two weeks have and will be the busiest weeks of the semester. I am very glad they are now behind me! It's about time! I have been too busy to even keep in mind what I needed to do next.I have had sticky notes all over my wall above my computer. Now I know how people feel when they write a to-do list and spend an entire day without even get one of the things fully accomplished! It's been exhausting. Too bad spring break isn't this week! That'd be nice! It is spring break for my room mate. So I will be all alone in our room next week, which isn't my favorite thing!

Graduation is in five weeks and I still won't let myself completely think about it. It's just too weird. I honestly can't believe I am done with college. I never thought I'd say this but I am honestly going to miss this place.

This past Monday I had my senior orals. That is pretty much where they ask you questions about all your classes at Toccoa. They also ask you about all the major doctrines. You have to give a statement about what you believe on each topic and then take them to multiple verses that back up each idea. I also had to give my testimony and my call to missions. It lasted three hours. I was SUPER nervous. But, overall it went well. I passed them. I got my letter in the mail today saying I had passed them.

My big senior project was due today! So, I have had a group meeting everyday this week for at least two hours each time. We presented it today. Now all we have to do is adjust the presentation based on the feedback we got and then present the final presentation. A lot of work has gone into this. I am looking forward to it being over!

I also finally got my acceptance to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. That is pretty exciting too! I am going to look at the campus this weekend. My friend Cameron (from this summer in the Philippines) lives close to the campus so I am going to be able to see her. I am staying with her! I can't wait! It should be really fun! I am going to have to make a decision about all of this real soon!

In the next month before school ends I have a lot to do. My former house mate is getting married in Hilton Head. So, my house is traveling up there to see the wedding. I also have a slumber party with all of the girl Mission majors. There is also Junior/Senior.

I have really been missing the Philippines lately and part of me is disappointed I didn't decide to go back this upcoming summer! Its just so expensive. I can't ask the same people for money every summer, you know? I guess I will have to settle with keeping in contact with the people there the best I can!

I hope you are all doing well!