Alone (sort of), But Not Forgotten

Los Angeles

2008-03-03T02:47:00.003-05:00

So I am in South California for the next week or so and am having a great time! We went to the Staples Center and watched the Detroit Pistons school the LA Clippers. Today Mr. Vanderhouvel, Ross's Opa, preached and we toured some country side! He is Jim Vandenhouvel's Father and he preached in Westminster before.

HI

2008-02-12T21:20:00.001-05:00

I'm blogging today because I'm bored and don't want to do any homework. I just finished two exams and I destroyed them. I have another one on Friday but am feeling very over confident and don't feel like studying. Not much has been happening in my life that I should update everybody on. Classes are going well as, I've taken exams in Physics and Greek and the other ones are coming up soon. Spring Break is coming up at the beginning of March and I am headed to Los Angeles, California with Ross Jelgerhuis and Blake Bozarth. Ross's cousin lives there and two of his friends are coming from Michigan and we are going to hang out for a week or so.
I found out this week that I am still the youngest guy on the hall. Even all the freshman that came on the hall last semseter were older than me. I also found out that there are some pretty big time profs here on the mountain. My prof for CHOW Dr. Reg Mclelland was talking in class and he mentioned that one time he was arguing with R.C. Sproul about some finer point of theology or something. He also mentioned that he was talking to J. I. Packer one time. Also Dr. Kelly Kapic is writing a systematic theology with Sinclair Ferguson!

I'm Blogging Again (to the tune of Supertramp's It Raining Again)

2008-01-28T16:59:00.000-05:00

So all y'all have been pressuring me into blogging so I guess I have to do if I want to have any friends when I go back home over the summer. Not much has been happening in my life since y'all saw me even though plenty has happened since I last blogged. So I will start from since the last time I blogged. First and most important I have a beautiful girlfriend, Victoria Woodford. She is from Baltimore, Maryland. She is nineteen a junior by credits but a sophomore by year (for all of you people who don't know what that means: she is third year by credits and second year by amount of time that she has been here).

Madrigals

2007-12-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

I took Victoria to th Madrigal Dinners two Fridays ago. It was some great food and decent entertainment. It is a medivel castle setting. There are a Lord and Lady presiding and singers and a band playing and a jester was going around juggling. It was a lot of fun.

Chase and Julia

Becca and Zein

The Beard-Off

2007-11-30T13:32:00.001-05:00

My hall had a No-Shave November Beard-Off. That is ending because, of course, it is the end of November. Only three people, including me, persevered until the end. I planned on regular progress updates as the days passed but it turned out there was very little progress to update. The below pics are as good as it gets.

Chi-town

2007-11-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

Over American Thanksgiving I went to my roomates house in Chicago. We got three days off school but since I have no classes on Tuesday we drove up Monday night. It is a ten hour drive and we arrived at about four in the morning. Thankgiving is always on a Thursday (crazy Americans) so we had a great dinner with the traditional turkey, mashed potates, stuffing, salad, pumpkin pie, etc. It was a nice break from dumpy cafeteria food. That night we made a clay Nativity scene (below). There were some special guests including a Mountie, King Herod, a crazy black dude and their dog, Chase. Saturday night we rode the train to downtown and walked around.

I remembered how to make those bunnies out of finger mittens.

Kevin, Kyle's brother

Kat, Kyle's girlfriend, and Kyle

Two of the main streets downtown

A shady allyway that Al Capone most certainly frequented.

A giant mirrored bean

ICE!!!!! I think this was the first time I had seen real ice in about 11 months. This was in Millenium Park.

Lake Michigan -My first glimpse at a Great Lake. This was as close as I got, a highway was in my way.

A concert hall or something

Creepy!

Beautiful

2007-11-30T10:33:00.000-05:00

The Covenant College campus was recently rated one of the most scenic campuses in the nation. To find out why click on this link: http://www.warrenmclelland.com/gallery2.html and look at my pictures.

The view from the Overlook. It is actually much nicer then it looks.

The Chapel in the distance.

Carter Hall

My room is below the two windows on the far left above the arch.

Probasco - the admissions building / visitors center

Carter Hall from the back

Jackson Hall - the ugliest building on campus

The New Building - it is actually named Andreas Hall but it will forever be known by its first name.
The Art Barn.

The Gym.

The Gym

MTW Conference

2007-11-18T23:00:00.000-05:00

I went to the MTW (Mission to the World) Mission Conference in Atlanta Georgia. There were about 2000 people there including missionaries from all over the world. I need to go to bed I will update probabaly in a week. I am going to Chicago to celebrate Thanksgiving - Amercian Style.

Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken (sp.)

Katrina Relief

2007-10-18T10:28:00.000-05:00

First I would like to apologize for not Blogging for a good while. I know that all of you adoring fans just love to hear every little detail of my life but sometimes I am simply to busy with my life of academia to concern myself with informing the common fold about my amazing life.

Second I would like to inform you all that these pictures do not show what the trip was actually like. Most of these are from our one day trip to New Orleans. I did not have any pics of the work site when I blogged this.

This was the church that we stayed at. It was founded solely for the purpose of helping the community of Bay St. Louis after Katrina. Bay St. Louis, Louisiana is a coastal town about one hour west of New Orleans. When the hurricane hit many of the houses were submerged in thirty feet of water. There were still many damaged and abandoned houses and businesses.

Inside they had a cafeteria.

They also had they're Sunday service in the same room

There were very simple bunk houses. They couldn't have anything elaborate as over 300 people are there constantly over the summer.

Each group that came down made sign about where they were from. There were even a couple from the Motherland

On the ride there. This is Zein Baluch. He is an awesome hall mate who is from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Victoria

Rebbecca Austin, she is a MK from Kenya and South Africa

Casey Gray, she's from Baltimore

The Back Seat Boys. The eight hour drive there was a lot of fun. All three of us guys sat in the back seat (hence the name). The guy on the right is my roommate Andrew.

Playing B-Ball at Lagniappe

Driving to New Orleans

There was still a lot of destruction in New Orleans. We didn't see very much up close but driving past it still seemed like every other house was abandoned.

We basically walked around the French Quarter for a few hours and looked a things.

The great Mississippi River.

Beigniets (I am positive I spelt that wrong) they were essentially Ollie Bolon (I probably spelt that wrong as well) without the raisins.

Crocidile - kind of like chicken but tangy

We went to a Cajun and Creole resurant in downtown N.O. It was amazing food.

Update

2007-09-30T12:43:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody, I just wanted to give everybody an update on my life as I sit in my room on this beautiful Sunday afternoon listening to Rich Mullins and looking out at the construction of the new academic building that is starting to obstruct my wonderful view from the top of this gorgeous mountain. For once it is quiet in my room as the guys might finally be tired of playing Halo 3. I have to admit that it is a pretty sweet game and I have definitely improved my play since it came out at 12:01 am on Tuesday.
I had three exams this week, all of them went well. I got an 89 on my CHOW exam, 94 on Calculus and 96 on Greek.
This has been a good weekend overall. It was campus preview weekend which means about three or four hundred more people on campus and numerous high-schoolers sleeping on the floor that you have to try not to step on when you jump off your bunk. What it also means is great food in the cafeteria. Many people call preview weekend deceive you weekend. The food quality was noticeably better this weekend. It also meant many great events, including battle ball, Mountain Affair and Cafe Literate.
Battle ball is a massive tournament of dodgeball with teams of 25. There were eight teams and you have to lose twice to be elimiated. My hall entered a team and we started out with a win. The second game we lost to our rivals 2nd Central. We had to win the rest of our games to stay alive. We won our next two games and again met Central but this time we left no doubt who was the better team. Since they lost another game they were eliminated. This left two teams, South and Blackwatch. Blackwatch had not yet lost so we had our work cut out for us. We slaughtered them the first game but in the next game it looked like they were going to win. They outnumbered us 2-1. But in a heroic effort we pulled out the win and secured our title.
Mountain Affair and Cafe Literate were both showcases of Covenant musical talent and they were very good. Mountain Affair is a more official event with auditions and prize money while Cafe Literate is more of a loose, unoffical event put on by the students. Its is nice to see people other than soccer players get noticed at this school. And these musical talents definitely deserve to get noticed. There are a great many talented people at this school and they are very enjoyable to hear.

Update

2007-09-24T18:40:00.000-05:00

I now get to play soccer. I have been officially declared an amateur and my professional career is at an end. It wasn't a particularly great time in my life. To all the fans that I have collected over this past month I would like to say thank you for you support and if you are considering being a pro like my I ask you to seriously reconsider.
I had two exams today. Calculus and CHOW (Cultural Heritage of the West). Both were fairly easy. I have a Greek exam on Wednesday and I am confident that that one will go fine as well. Not much else to say. My hall is great again this year. The all of the first years (for you Tim ;>) are really cool guys. And now for a few pictures.

Some of 2nd South at Carter's (lying down) house for his B-day

Covenant Scots Junior Varsity Mens Soccer Team (a.k.a. the Bombers)

Barton cutting M'cheyne's hair in the hall

My new RA, Mark Wantanabe (Naboo)

Ross after a work out

Kartoon Kilter

2007-09-24T13:38:00.001-05:00

Kilter is an annual dance that CAB (Covenant Activities Board) puts on for the students. It is a Sadie Hawkins-esque dance "the girl asks the guy - its always a surprise - there's nothing better - oo - oo - oo Sadie Hawkins dance in my khaki pants..." you get the point. It was held at the Creative Discovery Museum. We were supposed to go as Disney characters. How did we do?

Jasmine (Victoria) and Aladdin

Poison Ivy and I forget who

Batman (Chase) and Aladdin

Cat Woman (Julia) and Jasmine

Batman and Catwoman

Cinderella and Prince Charming (Tanner)

Aladdin and Raphael (Naboo)?

Thoughts

2007-09-19T12:35:00.000-05:00

Covenant College is having its annual Neal Conference this week and the speaker is the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Uganda, His Grace Henry Luke Orombi. His first message was in chapel today and I'm very excited to here the rest of his talks. I just want to mention a few things that he said.
He mentioned that Africa was once called the Dark Continent becuase its people had never heard of Jesus. Now, he says, this name belongs to North America whose people have forgotten about Jesus.
He also said that he once thought that their were only demons and evil spirits in Africa. He now sees that they are just as prevelalent here. The difference is that in Africa the devil works in visible ways but here it is disguised.

I also want to mention something partially unrelated. As I was reading through James I came across the passage in 4:4 "Do you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself and enemy of God." What is the world? Would that not be most movies we see? Many video games we play? Some music we listen to? Idolizing sports teams? Might particiating in these things be friendship with the world? Would we then be alienating ourselves from God? Maybe we have to make sacrifices for God. Thats something we're certainly no used to. But didn't Jesus say that if we served him we would suffer persecution. Maybe this is our persecution. Its kind of light, don't you think, compared to what our fellow brothers and sisters undergo in China and other countries.

2007-09-18T22:12:00.000-05:00

Robert Jordan died and now I will never know what happened to the Dragon Reborn. I still am not playing soccer. And I will update my blog when I am not so busy

Soccer

2007-09-07T18:49:00.000-05:00

O that I could play the beautiful game again. I seriously wonder if it will ever come to pass that I will be able to for the Bombers. I've already missed two games and am about to miss a third. If some of you who are reading this live in a box and haven't heard my infamous story, I will expound. Over the summer I was playing Tier III soccer for the Coaldale Thunder. We entered the Cosmos invitational tournament and swept away the competition, winning the coveted gold medal. As a consequence of this the team recieved a hamson reward of nine hundred dollars. Half of these earnings went to the organization but we as players each got thirty dollars. We were professionals! At the time this was great, we got paid to play the game we love! Now I relize it was a grave mistake, accepting this money. Because I am such a honest and trustworthy guy as I was filling out my eligiblity form and came to the section that said: Since you finished high school have you won any cash prizes, accepted any money etc...for playing soccer? I said "Yes, in fact, I did make some money playing soccer. I made a magnificent thirty dollars after my team won an invitational touranment." What do they say. "Well that's to bad you are now ineligible to play for the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes, I think)." I'm like, "well that sucks but they should be able to clear it up in a few days. I'll miss one game and it will all be settled." I wish. Two weeks later I am still unable to play. My team is gelling nicely together without me and I am slowly wasting away in despair.

Back Home?... for now

2007-08-26T19:12:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody, now that I am back at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, United States of America, I have decided to resume my blog. The internet up here is faster than at home so check for updates on my previous post as well.

My first reaction upon stepping out of the airport to find my shuttle was how hot it was. I was blasted by the humid, heavy air. With this immense humidity sitting in the shade here feels like sitting in the sun back home. It doesn't cool off at night either. It probably drops down to about twenty-five at night and gets up to thrity five or hotter during the day. Playing soccer in it is pretty brutal.

Speaking of soccer I found out two days ago that I am a professional athlete and am ineligible to play college soccer. In May we won the Cosmos tournament and we won $900 as a team I got a thirty dollar cut and therefore am a paid athlete. My coaches are working to clear it up and I should be able to play in future games but I missed our opener on Saturday which we won 4-1. We have a much better JV team than last year. Our player count went from eight or nine to 22.

Anyways I got sidetracked. I was planning on taking the shuttle from Nashville to Chattanooga, which I did, and than taking a taxi up the mountain to CC, which I didn't do. Why not? You ask. Well, a wonderful Bryan College student by the name of Nicole, I think, took me up in her car. I met her on the shuttle and I found out that she was a junior at our rival school an hour away from us. She decided to be an angel and drive me up the mountain. It was pretty sweet.

I fell right back into the swing of things. It felt like I had never left. My room's a little different and we have new people at the school and on the hall and we are missing all the seniors but everything still has the same feel about it, with one major exception. Michelle Green, one of good friends from last year decided to leave for Providence, a newly established URC college. It kinda sucks but such is life.

The courses I am taking this semester are: The Old Testament, Calculus 1, Greek, Computer Programming, and Cultural Heritage or the West 1, for a total of 18 credit hours. Greek will be by far my hardest course. Next will be Calc. I used to be good at math but since I haven't done it in two years I am a little lost. I hope to be able to catch on fairly quickly though.

I'm blogging again!!........temporarily

2007-07-17T21:20:00.000-05:00

Instead of wasting five days and uploading all of my pics onto blogger I'm just going to give you a link to my facebook albums. They take at least one hundred times quicker, without exaggeration to upload.

http://covenant.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41874&id=863875633

As anybody who is reading this is probably aware of, I haven't blogged in a few months. Why not? Because I don't feel the need to share my mind and rant and rave like Robyn and Tim and now that I'm home I didn't think that anybody needed updates on my life, sorry Ryan and Katrina (and any other creepy Redeemer stalkers that I might have). But apparently I'm supposed to continue updating it so I will.

I've been having a great summer with lots of excitement. Once again I am working at ITB (Intercontinental Truck Bodies). This is where I worked for almost a year and a half before coming to Covenant. At this plant we make truck bodies. I got moved from my original position in special units to the finishing line. Here I install insulation, wall/roof lining and flooring.

Thus far I have been on two camping trips, Writing On Stone and Kikomun Creek. Both were great times with great friends.Sorry for the ramdonness and incomplete.ness, uploading pictures takes way to freakjobbing long

Calgary Flamers

2007-04-23T00:17:00.000-05:00

I would like to apologize to all hockey fans for the disgusting play of my Calgary Flames, with the exception of only Kipper.

Spring Banquet

2007-04-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

Last night we had the annual Spring Banquet at Hunter Museum of American Art. I know that it sounds like a random place to have a banquet and dance but it is a cool place overlooking the river. I took Michelle. They had a good dinner and later a dance, which we didn't do.

The Hunter from the river

This is a walking bridge that goes from dowtown across the river to Cooleridge Park.

They're making a new bridge across the river.

Spring Break

2007-03-15T16:18:00.000-05:00

So for those of you who didn't know, I went to Florida for spring break. It was great!! I went with Andrew, my roommate, Julia, Tori, Ashley, Tobi, Katie and Timothy. We left Saturday morning and it took about 7 hours to drive to Fort Walton Beach. Andrew

Timothy

Julia

Cool bridge over the ocean

We arrived at the condo an hour before we could check in so we went swimming. It wasn't very warm out, probably 20, but we went swimming anyway. The water was pretty cold.

Tim had a broken leg, he tore some tendons playing soccer. That didn't keep him form going swimming though. One day he wrapped four garbage bags around his leg and duct taped it at the top and jumped in.

Ashley

There was a gazebo a little ways down the beach from us, we went there a couple nights.

Katie and Tobi

Tori and Katie

We went to Starbucks a few times.

Ashley took like fifty pictures of herself with my camera.

Tori, Tobi and Ashley

All of us, except Tobi, and Tim's toe.

My beautiful sandcastle.

Destin Beach

The view outside our condo

Our condo

Don't worry Mom, there was another bedroom upstairs.

Pictures

2007-03-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

Blake and my Roommate, Andrew

M'Cheyne, my roommate

Kyle, my roommate

Jonathan

Debra

Debra and Michelle

Andrew

John-Michael

We piled nine people into a '85 Honda Civic hatchback

Lauren

We had an '80's skate night

Thomas' 18th B-day party

Thomas

Tanner and Sam

Ross and Luke

Katie, Valerie and Thomas

Chris

Musings

2007-02-17T13:26:00.000-05:00

I have already been here in Georgia for six weeks. When I stop to think about that it's weird. It seems at the same time both a lot shorter than that and also longer. It seems shorter because I don't miss my family or friends very much (sorry guys). I would like to see them but not really badly. It seems longer because I already feel at home here. I have made some good friends, I am getting into a bit of a routine, I'm comfortable here. I don't think that this will ever replace Lethbridge as home but it's a pretty good substitute.

Assasinated

2007-02-17T13:17:00.000-05:00

I have died. It really wasn't a big deal. The girl was waiting outside my Pauline Epistles class and when I was about to go in I got killed. There is only one person on my hall left alive. We have failed as people.
Catacombs (one the Halls) put on a Folk Festival yesterday. Anybody who wanted to play in it could. I sang a song. It went pretty well.
Michelle and I were there from 6:30 to 11:30 and it was only half way done when we left. Some of the singers were amazing. I forgot to take my camera so I can't show you any pictures.

858 hours, shot to the heart. By a woman! The pain of humiliation is worse than the searing pain in my chest, as I drop to the floor, assasinated.

2007-02-17T13:11:00.000-05:00

New Target Patrick Efird

2007-02-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

1136 hours Zach Moore gunned down

2007-02-14T12:39:00.000-05:00

Some Random Things

2007-02-13T16:10:00.000-05:00

Sorry faithful blog readers, it's been a while since I have updated this thing. Not a whole lot has been happening that has been really blog worthy so I'm just going to spout off some random facts. As I'm writing this I have just found out that I just left my newly bought Covenant College travel mug in my last class, English Composition. It's not a bad class and its getting better. We now have to do a critique on a humorous argument. That means I can watch the Simpsons for homework. There's very little that can be better than that. Well anyways I lost, or someone stole, my first travel mug and I just bought that new one maybe two hours ago I hope its still there........ ten minutes later......... Nope I went to the classroom and it was gone, I hope its in lost and found or something I just spent $11 on that thing.
We have a game at the school called assasins thats starting tomorrow. I just got my contract in my mailbox, I have to kill Zach Moore. I bought myself a sweet gun at the dollar store the other day. It shoots water at least two feet. If I win I get a whole $25, which is kind of a rip-off since I had to pay $1 to play, I have no idea what they are doing with the other $300.
I had my first test on Friday and another one today. The one on Friday was for Pauline Epistles. I don't think I did very well on it though since it had a bunch of stupid, obscure questions that I shouldn't of had to know the answers to. The test this morning went much better though. It was for Introduction to Literature and on poems. All I had to do was BS my way through questions about why I liked the poem and stuff like that. I also got my first paper back and got an A- (not bad) and I can revise it for a better mark.
I am going down to Florida!!!!! for spring break with my Roomate and a couple other people.
I can't think of much else to say.

Until next time, Goodbye!

Look Robyn, I Can Take Pretty Pictures Too

2007-02-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Snow Day

2007-02-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

It snowed about an inch last night!!!! Big deal right. To these crazy people it was. The entire school shut down and some people were so excited that they went out and played in it at three in the morning when it was first coming down. Since I work on Grounds I got a call at 6:45 to come and shovel the walkways. I was shoveling until noon. But guess what, I got paid a whole $30 (American) for my total time out there . Hooray!! It was understandable that they canceled school though. It first snowed about an inch and then it started raining while it was still below zero. Needless to say it got a little bit slippery. If the cars didn't drive fast enough up the hills they got stuck and had to back up and take a run at them.
After I was done working I went sleding down the hills. That was alot of fun. Even though I cut my face on some ice.
It has been a pretty good week althogether. I have had a grand total of TWO classes so far. If school isn't canceled tomorrow I'll have one more.

Concert

2007-01-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to this awesome concert at the school. The guy's name was Drew Holcomb. He played acuostic guitar and sang, his wife did backup vocals and some other guy was the most amazing guitar player and he also played the piano. If you want to go to look at his music his website is www.drewholcomb.com He kind of sounded like David Gray/Bruce Springsteen.

Rebellious

2007-01-27T20:05:00.000-05:00

Since leaving the protective shield of my home and into the free, do whatever you want attitude of college life I have become somewhat of a rebel. To prove it here are a couple pictures of my brand new tattoos.

Friday Night

2007-01-27T19:33:00.000-05:00

Me and a couple of other guys played Risk last night. It was fun for the most part. Nathan and Jim didn't want to take any chances though and they each took like half an hour on every turn.

Nathan, freshman, 21 and lives across the hall

Jim, rooms with Nathan also a freshman

Jonathon, he also just came this semester, he is 20 and a paramedic and from Ohio

Thomas

After Risk, Jonathan and I actually quit before the game was over because it was taking forever and we were pretty much dead, we played pool and ping-pong with Debra and Michelle. After that we watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Michelle, she is only 17, like me!!!, and an MK from Costa Rica

Bowling!!!

2007-01-25T23:24:00.000-05:00

Last night my hall, 2nd south, went bowling. We each also had to take a girl. I took Debra, a girl from Virginia who also came this semster. We bowled two games. I won the first game with a score of 126!!!!! After that we went to Waffle House, which is a dumpy, dirty, very popular resturant chain that makes breakfast 24/7. We got back around 1:30 and I still had to write a couple paragraphs on How Do You Know When You Are Reading a Poem?

Thomas - Andrew's, my roommate's, cousin

Dan (DK) and Debra

Andrew Chase - My roommate - From Tacoma, Washington

DK, Chase and Julia - Chase's date

Valerie, Thomas' date, and Julia

My Humble Abode

2007-01-25T22:32:00.000-05:00

Here are a few pictures of where I now live

My Desk

My Bed

Yes, I'm blogging

2007-01-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

I am now blogging. I kind of figured I had to since everybody else has one. Don't expect it do be very good. I guess the purpose of this blog is so all of you way up north in that freezing snow covered desolate country can be blessed with the details of my incredibly interesting life.