I finally did it. I emailed my professor yesterday with my final paper which I did about Christianity. What a cool way to end college! The last question on my last test was "What do Christians Believe?" Can we say A+++? It was just a great way to end school talking about how Jesus came to earth and died on the cross for the sins of the world and by accepting Him as a payment for your sins you can go to heaven when you die. Although, I said all of that in a much more scholarly way.
I finished up my paper with some information about the emergent church (I'll spare you my own personal thoughts on that topic) and then I put in some really cool facts about martyrdom.
Did you know that there have been more than 45,000 Christian martyrs in the 20th century alone? That is more than all previous 19 centuries combined. An interesting thought.
Josef Ton is an amazing Romanian man who has dealt with it head on. Because of his beliefs, in the early 70's he felt God telling him to go back home to Romania but he knew that there were people waiting there to kill him for his faith. He had this to say:
"I saw how God always conquers by a love that is self-giving and self-sacrificing. It was there that I understood God’s method of sending His lamb into the world, followed by many thousands of other lambs, to overcome the world by proclaiming the love of God and by
dying for the sake of their proclamation. This astonishing biblical principle that God always conquers through people who will preach the gospel and then die for it helped me immeasurably to be able to go back to Romania" (Ton, xi).
I am personally amazed by this truth.
Anyway, on a funnier note
We went to Chickasha again and this year, to step it up a notch, Jenny decided to bring this snowman costume that our friend Megan bought at a garage sale. It was hilarious! Jenny wore it first and then when she got too hot I took a turn. The kids loved it...well...not the little bitty ones. They just screamed and tried to crawl onto their parents backs but the 3-7 year olds all wanted hugs and pictures. I wore it and got in line for Santa Claus. While I was waiting for my turn a group of carollers came near and started singing "Frosty the Snowman" so I ran off to dance for them and almost tripped over some lights that were strung along the sidewalk. Somewhere behind me, muffled through my furry exterior I could hear Dan laughing histerically while trying to get out a "watch out!"
I only had two little eye holes that were way too far apart to see out of at the same time so you were lucky to get an inch of view of the outside world and use the other one as a vent.
Santa thought it was hilarious too. He made me sit on his lap and told me I was a great frosty. I kissed him on the cheek...which actually meant that I just knocked him upside the head with my wobbling monstrosity of a head and poked him with my carrot nose. He didn't mind and just thanked me.
I was waving goodbye to some snotty little preteen when he said, "Bye you big, dumb, ugly snowman!" I pretended to rub my eyes (which were about 8 inches above my real eyes) and then sulk off. Man, that kid was a brat! :)
Okay. This post was crazy long but I wanted to say Merry Christmas to my friends. I'll try to keep posting over the break! You should too! I want to know what you got for Christmas!
