Day 99: Moving Forward and Looking Back

Today, as the title suggests, was a reflective day as well as an inspiring day. It started early (5:30 to be exact) because I was rostered for choir this morning at 6:30. After the rehearsal, we had Old Testament with Katy; she's one of THE best communicators in the City campus, I think. She just has this ability to really connect with each of us (not to mention she's an American with a hint of the Aussie accent). We talked about the development of worship throughout ancient Israel; a very educating and impacting lesson it was. It made me want to worship, which made it the perfect setup for chapel. I have to say that choir during chapel can be one of the absolute best experiences during the whole week. Since it's all college students, we can go crazy if we like, and we sure did. For example, we have a song from the A_Cross//The_Earth album called Yours Forever that has a part involving everyone freezing in place while the guitarists do solos. We were being told by our awesome choir directors to try and be exaggerated in our freeze positions, so I brought up YMCA for some reason. Everyone liked it so much, that's what we ended up doing! So during the freeze time, the choir made 2 rows of people forming the YMCA sign, and the second was us forming the word LOVE. It was a blast; I can't wait to do it again. We got to hear from guest speakers that run Operation Mobilization, an organization that started here in Australia and is now in 110 countries helping spread the Gospel however possible. They gave incredible testimonies from experiences in Burma, Malaysia, Turkey, and India; after each story we would pray for each country. It was a fantastic morning, no doubt. The afternoon was made up mostly of the Personal Leadership tutorial class, which is one of my favorite courses of the week. We spoke mainly on assessment things, which was actually very helpful; we even got a visit from the campus superintendent, Mark Hopkins. He is just filled with wisdom, I tell you; he just has this joyful atmosphere around him, it's awesome. When that class was finished I also finally got the DVD series I've been waiting on for weeks now: Robert Fergusson's My Patmos.com, a series on revelation. I'm sending this series to my family as soon as possible (maybe after I watch it first haha). The rest of the day was just relaxing and working on other small things; nothing as significant as the previous activities. I am very thankful to the Lord that He has blessed me with the privilege of being here; it's taught me so much on life and what I can do for the future. Can't wait to start the weekend.

God bless,
Steven