Weekend Update: LAC Retreat

Driving Through Santa Barbara

Another weekend came and went too quickly! I swear there's never enough time in just two days for me to rest up, have fun, and get all the homework I need to get done, especially this one. But this was byfar one of my favorite weekends here at APU.

This weekend, the LAC (Living Area Council) from Trinity Hall went on a retreat to Santa Barbara! Our Community Advisor (CA), essentially my boss, hosted and planned the whole retreat. My CA's roommate is from Santa Barbara and her parents still live there so we got to stay at their house.

We left Azusa's campus Saturday morning after a quick Starbucks run, and started the 1.5 hour drive north to Santa Barbara. Once we got there, we started our planned service project for the weekend. Part of being on the LAC includes getting service credits, so clearly we need to serve and this was just one way we will be serving this year. For the project, earlier in the week we made 45 PB&J sandwiches to hand out to the the homeless people of downtown Santa Barbara. 

Service Project 

This was one of the most interesting, weird, funny, sad, reflective service projects I've ever done. We split up into groups and went to different areas of the city. My group was on State Street, and we just started walking down the sidewalk. The juxtaposition was insane. You could see well-dressed, wealthy people walking down the sidewalk past all the beautiful, expensive stores (Anthropology, Urban Outfitters, etc.) and you could see dirty, ragged homeless people digging through the trash and sitting against buildings with cardboard signs.

Essentially, for two hours, our role was to approach homeless people, ask them how they were doing, offer them a sandwich, and - if they were interested - start a conversation. We spoke with a couple of Christian homeless men and offered prayer for them. One of which, another man walking down the street broke off from his shopping and put his arm around us to pray with us. We ran into a family of a father, mother, and two young kids both under the age of three. We offered them four sandwiches and while we huddled over them to offer them prayer, a mother pushing her own child in a stroller veered off her shopping path to hand them a few dollar bills to help out. Most of the people we encountered we felt we made some sort of small impact.

Except for one. Charlie, Lauren and I approached one man and offered him a sandwich. No, I'm fine. Are you sure? Yes, I don't want it - I can't eat it without any teeth. Ok, well instead of a sandwich, can we offer you a word of prayer? Insert rant of how God doesn't love him and how essentially God's one goal in life is to make sure he lives a terrible life. None of us knew how to respond to that. In that case, we assumed that there was also a bit of mental instability involved. We couldn't argue, he was already yelling obscenities at passersby. We didn't want him to get more angry or frustrated with us. We left with a "May God bless you and know that He loves you," and scuttled off.

There were so many different people we encountered, nice people, humble people, scary people, who were all in the same circumstances and who had come to the wealthy Santa Barbara area to hopefully change their luck. It was incredible to see how little attention I had been paying to them. We were also thrown for another loop when Shayna, who had given us a letter before we parted groups, challenged us with a card that read: "You're probably pretty hungry. You can either choose to eat one of the sandwiches or to give it away." Of course, after watching all of that happen, we couldn't bring ourselves to eat one of the sandwiches when you could see a couple feet away a man eating out of the garbage.

The LAC! We couldn't take a functional picture if our lives depended on it.

We did also have one funny moment in our melancholy afternoon of passing out sandwiches. We approached one man who looked homeless, dirty, and was just sitting on a bench on State Street and offered a sandwich. He first unplugged his headphones that were plugged into a relatively broken and beat up media player that he kept inside a filthy Ziploc bag. "What do you want?" he asked in a gruff tone. We asked him if he wanted a sandwich. His response: "No thank you, I'm pretty full and I'm actually quite wealthy... I just look like shit." Yikes, that was awkward.

The Retreat

The rest of the retreat, we spent time as a group of the 11 of us at the beach and in downtown Santa Barbara. I'm in love with the LAC from Trinity. They're the greatest group of people I could ask to have around.

So, that was my weekend! 

Weekend Update: Homecoming and Parents' Weekend!

Watch out Azusa, James and Suze are coming in! 

I had the wonderful gift of having my parents here this last weekend for Homecoming/Parents' Weekend. It was so great to have a little piece of home here (plus, ok maybe possibly I might have kind of missed them a little bit). 

They arrived on Thursday where I went to go pick them up from LAX, a complete adventure in itself as their flight got in an hour late resulting in me circling the LAX arrival terminals for a full hour while listening to Taylor Swift. 

From there, we drove straight to their hotel in Pasadena (one of my new favorite cities), had a late lunch at Jonny Rockets (classy), went shopping in Old Colorado and headed back to Azusa for the Battle of the Bands event that was going on there, after a late-night snack of Applebee's (I know, also so classy), the parents went back to Pasadena while I stayed in my dorm to finish up on homework for my classes Friday.

On Friday, we met for chapel where the speaker was coincidentally from West Michigan, now living in California and a good friend of my home pastor. What a small world. In a pretty crazy day, we hit up Target, Chipotle, my trainer's house to bake cookies for the football players (the life of a cheerleader), and practice. After practice we went back out to Pasadena and had dinner at Trattoria Neopolis - delicious food, weird waiter. 

On Saturday, we woke up late and drove back into Azusa for lunch at a BBQ lunch and I spent the afternoon getting ready for the game and rallying through the Homecoming activities promoting the game. And then my parents finally got to see me be a college cheerleader! 

D-Group Dating Relfections

Here at APU, we have these wonderful things called D-Groups (or Discipleship Groups). It is essentially a bible study group that you meet with once a week to talk about your lives, sharing complaints, praises, blessings, problems, solutions, questions, answers, prayer requests and cookies.

I am blessed to have a D-Group consisting of 7 girls total - 3 cheerleaders (including myself), my roommate, a girl from my hall, and 2 other girls from Trinity. We meet Tuesdays and last night we had fantastic fellowship talking over what girls know best (and least) - boys and dating.

My D-Group leader Karli shared this link with us and it has some incredibly valuable advice and insight on the world of Christian dating. Number 2 really hit me, saying "True beauty emanates from a woman who boldly and unabashedly knows she is in Christ." Check it out, share your thoughts!

http://theresurgence.com/2012/03/19/for-the-gals-8-principles-for-dating

Sunshine Goldenrod, Turtles, and Querencia

Hello all! I'm going to tell a little bit about myself through a social "experiment" that was performed on me last week by Meika (my R.A.). If you are from 5th South - STOP READING! She wants to do this with you all individually as well! So don't ruin the pleasant surprise for yourselves!

Midday Tuesday of last week, Meika and I sat down on Cougar Walk for our regular (every other week) lunch date as LAC (Living Area Council) and RA (Resident Advisor). Typically, in this role we are supposed to talk about hall events and what she wants my role to look like on the hall, but we often get lost in getting to know each other because we are so similar in personality and experiences.

One way she decided to get to know me was by playing a question and answer game with me, a "social experiment," if you will. The game consists of three questions that you have to answer with descriptive words and describing how the thing you answered makes you feel. Then, there is meaning behind the questions and your answers, but you don't find out until after you answer! It will be more clear if you read on...

Do the game with me and find some things out about yourself! 

I would recommend at least three describing words for each question. Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite color and why? 

My favorite color is yellow - specifically what I like to call Sunshine Goldenrod - because it is bright, sunny and reminds me of being happy. It really reminds me of the sun, most of all, and reminds me of warm weather.

2. What is your favorite animal and why?

My favorite animal is a sea turtle because they are so cute! They remind me of being carefree, just swimming around in the ocean, but they also seem wise because they can grow so old.

3. Where is your favorite (specific or general) place in nature? (i.e. the ocean, mountains, etc.)

There is this one spot on Eleuthera in the Bahamas that I absolutely love. We had to find this spot for Island School and it's called a "querencia," which means where you feel the most connected to Earth, where you can be alone. My spot was in the middle of the Bahamian "jungle," if you will. There were these sink holes made from debris from a decayed golf course that palm trees had grown out of. It was the perfect spot to set up a hammock and just swing and be alone. I like the solitude of it because I like reflection in quiet places. I also love being in nature because it is calming and refreshing. 

What does this all mean?

Ready for some perspective? The adjectives I used to describe my favorite color are words that describe myself - bright, sunny, warm. The adjectives for my favorite animal are what I'm looking for in an ideal partner or future mate - a combination of carefree and wise. The adjectives used to describe your favorite place in nature are used to also describe your relationship with God - one on one, reflection, He's a calming/refreshing presence. 

Comment and tell me what things you said! 

LAC Goes to LA

On our Study Day at Azusa Pacific, the LAC (Living Area Council) decided to adventure to and explore LA! With our RD as our guide, we took the metro into Union Station and then the subway into downtown. We visited the town hall - LA's first "skyscraper" back in the day - and went to the top to take photos. Then journeyed to a water fountain to eat lunch, and then after another quick jump on the subway, went to the park where the "500 Days of Summer" bench was!

Blog Makeover!

Just a heads up on the face lift that my blog has gotten! I was really feeling unhappy about some of the aesthetics and design of my blog before. I felt incredibly limited with the style of it, and with the limited knowledge I have of html and CSS webpage design (I'm slowly learning! It's a little hard to find spare time in college, who knew?), I felt I needed to research into making a change.

I looked into Designer Blogs, which I noticed a couple other blogs have used. Through them, I'm able to have this cute blog template that I can still customize with my own personal flair and have better control over what I want my posts to look like! Thanks Designer Blogs!

A Day In The Life

Mondays are insane for me, but I am currently in one of my very few moments of down time that I have on Mondays and thought I'd share with you what my day looks like today.

7:40 - My first alarm goes off.

8:30 - I finally roll out of bed after my roommates play me pump up music to get me ready for the day.

9:30 - Chapel on East Campus. We have to go to 3 chapels a week and I have been bad about going to Monday's - hello, it's Monday - but actually managed to pull myself together before it started today. Loved the worship today, it was kind of gospel/soul music that you just wanted to sway to. So uplifting and calming.

10:40 - Today I had a journalism exam worth 15% of my grade. What. Welcome to college, folks. I love this class, and is in the running for my favorite. The professor is this really snarky, sarcastic woman (my absolute favorite kind of humor) and mostly shows us videos from the Daily Show to let us know what journalists are doing wrong.

Some of my favorite people on campus who are also
cheerleaders with me. Melanie, Shelbie and Madi.

LUNCH - This is my weird space part of the day where I get out of class at 11:35 and my next class starts at 1:05. So I eat lunch with my friend Madi, book it over to West campus and then sit and talk with my friend Melanie. Did I mention they're my two best friends here at Azusa??


1:05 - Christianity and the Creative Process class is probably my hardest mentally and spiritually. It's seriously a kick in the butt about how I need to start loving God with my mind and my vocation and with the things I create. It's incredible cool and perfect for an artsy fartsy. Today we talked about "Lord of the Rings." Just Lord of the Rings and how it applies to film.

4:00 - Practice with my favorite people in the world. My team is awesome. Sometimes we do cool things like a giant push-up...You will, I'm sure be hearing more about them.

Group push-up!

Dinner - Kind of a weird space of time for me, but I get food! YUM.

7:30 - Graphics class with the homies. I love this class because it's something I've only dabbled in and so far I'm really loving what I'm learning about and what I'm doing in design. I'm sure I'll be posting things about this as well.

This is my first project that I did for my graphics class. I had to design a graphic around the word "melodic."

LAC - Living Area Council

Hey! Great news! I made the LAC (Living Area Council) for Trinity Hall at Azusa. There's one member for each wing of Trinity, so 6 girls and 4 guys and we are essentially mini RA's that help plan events for Trinity Hall. Just wanted to share that bit of information with all of you, and you'll be seeing a lot of photos and things of events that we host! Feel free to throw out ideas of things (if you're in college) you've seen living areas do or you have done, or if you go to Azusa what you'd like to do!

Scavenger Hunt!

The LAC had a scavenger hunt for our first event with the ten of us, and it turned into chaos of running, someone jumping in a pool, and sweat everywhere. But, it ended with ice cream sandwiches and funny photos. 

We couldn't find the person we needed to find, so we figured if we at least looked confused, maybe it would count.

One of the things we had to do was order a drink for Lord Voldemort. So, there it is. That's Trent, Calvin, Hannah and I. 

We also had to make a pyramid. How happy they were to have a cheerleader on the team.........