promise scholarship

I've been praying about God's will for me for a long time. I was wavering back and forth about whether I should go to Bible college somewhere or if I should go to Fairmont State University. FSU is really close to my house, but I just wasn't completely sure I should go there. Anyways, there was this scholarship available in WV that would cover 2 to 4 years of schooling completely. I didn't think I could get it, but I applied anyways and prayed that if God wanted me to stay here in WV that he would provide that for me. Long story short---I ended up getting the scholarship! Of course this is a huge blessing to me. I haven't been able to work a job throughout high school so I was needing a miracle to pay for college...and God provided it!

"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Phil 4:19

national competition

The competition was incredible and very challenging. Over 2,000 kids were there from 37 states. No one from our school placed, but I think we were just all glad to be a part of the competition. After all the kids from our school had competed, we walked around campus and found things to do. I ended up going to an adolescent psychology class, which turned out to be somewhat interesting---I'd have to say that going to the snack shop was a better use of my time though. ;o)

here's a picture of me and some girls from my school that went...

senior trip

This week my class went on our senior trip to the Wilds. We had so much fun. The second day we were there my youth pastor's wife and I went down the huge water slide. It was crazy. I was shaking for like five minutes afterwards...it was incredibly fun, but it was really scary at the same time. :o) Then that same day we went tubing in the creek. I got on my tube and I was thinking, ok I can't get too wet because I don't want to have to change all of my clothes. So I thought I would only get my culottes wet. About 30 seconds after I thought that, I found my self completely soaked. I'm not sure how it happened exactly, all I know is that I got stuck on a rock and when I tried to get loose I somehow fell into the water---the only thing that was dry was my hair. But that wasn't dry for long either because when we got further downstream there were a ton of people at the water guns who thought it was fun to soak everyone who was tubing and they especially liked spraying us in the head. Then another day I went on the giant swing. It doesn't sound like that much fun, but it was. I went with another girl in my class and we were screaming before they even dropped us, and then when we got dropped we couldn't even scream---I think we got too scared to do anything. Something else that was really fun was the zipline. Anyways, I could keep going on and on about all the fun stuff we got to do, but another big part of our trip was the spiritual side of everything. I think I enjoyed the nightly devotionals with our cabin the most. Our cabin just had Miss Lauren (our youth pastor's wife) and us four senior girls in it. The devotionals were really appropriate and challenging for me. The messages throughout the week were also really great. I especially enjoyed listening to Rand Hummel preach. A few of his messages were: "offices in God's army", "leaving home with no regrets", and "the dark side of the internet". The one that spoke to me the most was the offices in God's army. It was basically about not just trying to fit in and conform, but instead he challenged us to be a strong Christian, and not to be ashamed of Christ. After the service we had time to get together with our class and sponsors and share testimonies and prayer requests. Overall the week was incredible, and I had a great time!