Wouldn't it be fascinating if life were a masquerade? If everyone just walked around in crazy masks and costumes trying to deceive one another all the time into believing that they really are more mysterious and exciting than they seem? Maybe we'd go home and look in the mirror, removing our mask hoping to see who we really are, only to find that we don't even recognize the face that we're looking at! Our masquerade would be so elaborate that even we would be fooled by the disguise we wear. Maybe life really is like that sometimes.

Well, this week has been quite interesting. For those of you who are dying to hear, I heard from Craig the other day! We got to talk on the phone for a good hour and a half and he is doing totally awesome! He loves it in Australia and he has already had some totally amazing experiences. He's been assigned to work in the high school ministry there, mostly working and building up the high school aged leaders of the ministry. There are about 60 high school leaders and about 1200 youth that attend this program...on Friday nights of all nights! The big crazy party nights and this church is just full of kids! Totally amazing. Craig's seeing like 100 people get saved at every service he attends and is just experiencing all kinds of blessings in his classrooms. He's taking a pastoral leadership class, a class that focuses on Thessalonians, a class that focuses on Corinthians, and a couple other classes and he is learning loads and loads. I'm really excited because Craig really encouraged me to stay in BSF this year, saying that it's a lot like Bible College! So hey, I'll be getting experience before I ever go! In addition to all of these cool things Craig's been involved in, he also got to pet a wild wallaby. haha! I think that's one of the coolest things I've ever heard.

As for me, I'm really diving in to Fusion over at Grand Rapids First. I've made so many new friends there and I'll be heading out to a demolition derby with many of them next weekend! I'm also gonna start getting plugged into doing some ministry there, probably something drama related and possibly some teaching and preaching (hopefully the teaching and preaching moreso). We played spoons again this week and so far I am the reigning champ, getting zero letters both times we've played. I was even holding on a conversation across the room while playing last night! haha! I was impressed with myself, but...I'm over it. I'm ultimately just super excited to have the opportunity to really grow in my spiritual gifts this year with some Christians who are totally on fire for the Lord. :o) I am psyched all over the place.

Tonight I'm headed home to C-town to hang out with the fam some this weekend and do my laundry for free. Somehow, I've managed to do my laundry for free pretty much since May...I don't know how it happened but it did. I think I've done my laundry once since I've been living in Grandville and I'm pretty amazed by that.

Well, I'm off to read some Mere Christianity by my man CS (you all should check out that book if you haven't already...his logically and philosophical explanation of Christianity really appeals to me). Rock out!

So this weekend was filled with attempts to salvage the limited activities I was able to pursue as a child. It started off by playing four square on the honors retreat. I think that living out in the country prevented me from ever really participating in that. I don't think I ever even knew it existed when I was on the playground as a North School Knight. But now, I have played and I have enjoyed it! I think we played for a solid two hours that night and it was absolutely amazing. :o) Tremendous amounts of joy were experienced by all who participated.

I also flew a kite for the first time ever. I think I failed at that due to lack of coordination and patience as a child. There is no way I would have been able to run around and get that thing up in the air quick enough to keep me entertained. I do remember laughing quite hard when my cat Tasha got tied up in a kite and went tearing down the hallway out of my brothers room. She was a little intimidated by the bright colors and loud noises it made as she ran. The kite I flew had Raphael from the Ninja Turtles on it (I had to specify just in case you mistook him for the Renaissance artist).'

In addition, I ate Count Chocula for the first time. A group of us had a cereal and vampire movie party at this guy Ryan's house. It was originally going to be just a Count Chocula party, hence the vampire movies, and we were going to dress up like our favorite cereal characters (Kevin gave me the brilliant idea of bypassing the whole cereal character thing and going straight for being a milk fairy...wearing my "Milk Cops" shirt and a set of wings. I thought it was quite a good plan). But in the end the whole dressing up got dropped out but the vampire movie stayed. We watched Dracula 3000 with Coolio and Casper Van Diem in it. It was quite as awful as it sounds, and ended with the big black man from "Friday" giving up all hope of surviving and having sex with a pleasure bot only to have the ship explode from getting to close to the twin suns. (Fortunately we never actually saw the pleasure bot sex scene, we just assumed it happened based on the dialogue and the scene prior to the twin sun explosion). Actually, there was only a half explosion in the end and it just stopped right there. It was quite awful but the ending made the whole rest of the movie totally worth it.

In other news, I've been attending a new church recently and have been loving every mintue of it. Grand Rapids First is the church and the people there are totally 100% awesome. I'm learning a lot while I'm there too! And I went out to their college-aged ministry on Thursday and had a total blast and a total spiritual uplifting. I think I met everyone in their program there and stayed after to play games with everyone. We got to talk about a lot of great stuff and I'm really hoping to get involved in a ministry there somehow.

Other than all of this, I've mostly just been reading the news about Hurricane Katrina and everything that's going along with it. Perhaps the most entertaining thing I've read on the whole thing is the claim that one german man made that the actual hurricane itself (especially it's ferocity) can be blamed on President Bush! All because he didn't join the Kyoto Protocol. I mean, I could understand giving Bush some if not most of the blame for the poor response and results achieved in the recovery effort...but blaming him for the actual hurricane?! I'm astounded.