MiSURA

Holy, I want to be holy
Pure, I want to be pure
Untainted, I want to be clean
And Lord, I'm asking for Your help

Teach me the beauty of Your grace
Show me the beauty of Your love
Tell me that I'm a child of God
That You're holding my hand,
Leading the way till the end

Righteous, I want to be righteous
Courageoues, I want to be bold
And pleasing, in Your eyes
So Lord, I ask You once again...

=====================================

Fall Conference was good for a couple of reasons.
1. This is kind of a dumb reason, but there was so much diversity.. it wasn't just asians.
Therefore.. no loud music, no moshing, no off-the-charts hilarious pastor, not as loud and crazy....
verrrrrrrrry laid back. but i loved it. being with people with different races allowed me to see that... it's not just my world. i even got to talk w/ the worship leader, and i asked her what the point of multiethnic worship is for. i mean, we don't know what the song is, we can't pronounce these words.. what benefit do we get? we can't even worship God with that. She said it's because in the kingdom of God.. hahah it's not just one race ! DUHHHHH. O___o;; we have to have an eternal perspective. so even though we don't know the words or the meaning, the point is that we get a taste of how others worship our God.

2. Manuscript Studying...
is great when I'm doing it by myself. but SO much better when i'm doing it with others ! The passage for the weekend was Genesis 2-3. Whenever I read these two chapters.. i always thought of it as a story. Which it is.... but who knew that it would be so chockful of stuff about God, ourselves, culture, society, etc. !!! HUH? So many ideas thrown around. sometimes we digressed and pulled out far-fetched stuff from nowhere, but most of it was biblical and many of the same ideas echoed by the speakers.

3. THE SPEAKERS
oh wow. there were two of them : mindy & bill. they work @ u of i - urbana i believe. both of them.. so encouraging yet rebuking. they were incredibly honest, too. sharing about their family problems, and their own personal struggles. they shared a lot about their own marriage, too. a great example of a surviving marriage that is Christ-centered.


the lyrics in the beginning is a song that i wrote during the conference. for some reason, during free time, i didn't wanan talk to anyone, go to sleep, jam/sing, watever. i just wanted to spend time alone. even though i do plenty of that @ case. but i guess i never spend time alone just doing what i wanna do.. i just study. but that song is basically a cry to go back to the place where i was clean and on fire for Him. over and over, bill & mindy talked about guilt & shame. the difference between the two and how Jesus has already forgiven us for them both. guilt is something that points to a specific thing. shame covers a lot of things. i dunno exactly what they said, but that's all i remember. (how sad..) but i still feel shame for what i've done.. how dirty i feel.. etcetc. but the song's just crying out to God, b/c i know that i can't just wash myself of the guilt & shame by listening to songs, sleeping on it, crying about it, watever. i need Him to hold my hand and never let me go. b/c even when i hold another guy's hand with mine, when that hand lets go.. i'm still holding onto Jesus. ooo i should write a song about that. haha.

now... time for pictures ! =D


The tree of life.. =)

The tree of knowledge of good & evil.. nononononooooooo

Gerald ! AHHHHH this kid's good. real good. real awesome. =]

Kristin !!! Another awesome girl.

Playing with the random shakers shaped like fruits that really belong to the worship team.. oops.

And Case takes over the stage !

UHHH..

Girl talk. =]

I thank God sssoooo much for this weekend. Even though today was possibly the worst day ever.. it's still good. b/c I got to eat some gogoomah (sweet potato).. hear some good news.. =) I have a lot of crap that I need to deal with. Apparently I am not completely financially covered for this semester. I turned in two lab reports late today. I missed out on information in pchem today that's very important for the exam. I overreacted to stupid comments that really weren't that offensive.
Yeeea.. but it's okay. ^ ^