Sorry for not having written in so long, but you know how life gets. I’ve had a lot of other stuff to do, like…video games…and TV….and FaceBook…and writing essays and sending in applications to colleges! Wait, did you read that right? Writing essays and applications to colleges!? What have you been missing? Quite a bit I’m afraid. So now I’m going to write you a nice big post about it all. As you may have guessed by now, I just recently finished my essays and applications for Houghton (In Houghton, NY) and Thomas More (In Merrimack, NH). Now besides meaning that I’m a big boy now it also means that around January first I will know who loves me and who doesn’t. I made two superb essays for Houghton and a little less superb, but still great essay for Thomas More. On my Christian character recommendation form for Houghton my friend Andrus practically told them I was Jesus (I have been extraordinarily flattered by people’s opinions of me during this application process) and in my academic letter of recommendation for Thomas More, Captain Stephen Court (PhD) over in Australia basically said I’m a great guy who they should throw money at. What college could reject all that? I mean seriously, once I get accepted to both and they start fighting over me it’s going to get pretty violent. Now that might sound big headed and overly confident but the truth is that I feel extremely confident. And I feel I did a very good job all throughout the application process and have earned my bragging rights. So while I still have bragging rights I will brag.
Let me see…what else has been happening? Well we had a big annoying regional congress a little while ago. It was a great. Lots of people from everywhere all running around our corps making a mess. Very exciting. I did rather enjoy it though. But the food was horrible. Anneli is still threatening to sue, because she claims that chicken is still bothering her. I say it’s been 2 weeks and that chicken should have (hopeful) run its course by now but…She says otherwise, and who am I to argue? Now that I’ve started what was meant to be a long post I seem to realize that why I haven’t blogged lately is because life has been relatively boring lately. It’s been like this, Wake up, study, chores, study, prayer room, study, corps, study, sleep, and repeat. Oh, there’s something. We’ve been having a prayer room again and I’ve been loving it. I don’t know if anyone else likes it as much as I do, but to me it’s a wonderful way to just recharge. It helps me keep going with my schoolwork, and corps work, and life work…it’s great. And though the prayer room hasn’t been so popular with everyone else (“I’m too tired from school/work/video games!”) there have still been a few people who will cover the shifts.
Since I was just bragging about my essays a minute ago let me tell you about them a little bit. Especially the Thomas More essay. The two Houghton essays were pretty easy. It was basically just two essays about me. And as you’ve noticed I love writing about myself. So I was able to finish the Houghton essays only after editing out half of what I’d written so that it was short enough for them. And they are great essays too. I’ll probably put them on my blog someday. But the Thomas More essay was hard! Three pages about heroism, and how education can prepare you for heroic action, and “who do you think is a hero?” at first I had trouble with this because I want to write about my favorite Old Testament hero, Joseph! Temptation dragging you down? Be a man! RUN AWAY!! It’s worked for both me and Joseph. So I started writing about Joseph. I wrote to great pages about how “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” but how Joseph was too heroic to care. But you know what? I read it over and I thought “well that sucks” and it did. If it had been paper I would have crumpled it into a ball and play basketball with it in my trash can. But it wasn’t so just saved it on the computer and started over. Then I decided I’d pick the most heroic hero in all hero-dom, the one so full of hero-ness that he can only be called the ultimate hero. Someone who sacrificed himself and saved the whole world. Who is this excellent hero? Well I thought it would be obvious. 007. No wait, sorry. More like 777, Jesus! Duh! I wrote a sweet essay about Jesus in all his majestic heroicness. And you know what, Jesus rocks! It was a great essay, but it took me three tries, several days, and lots of hours to get it right. I’m glad it’s done and sent off. It was such a pain in the butt to do, but I did it, and I feel very content.
One other interesting tidbit of info is that on Friday (today’s Wednesday so…CRAP I GOTTA PACK!) morning my plane takes off on its way to the good old U.S. of A. Now when I say “the good old” I don’t mean to say that it is more good, or older than, Estonia. Because it is neither. I’m rather excited about this trip. It’s going to be fun doing things like, eating American candy, seeing friends and family, drinking root beer, visiting exciting places, eating American junk food, and jogging my memory with repeat déjà-vu. Almost everywhere I go In America gives me déjà-vu But then again, I’ve been so many places it’s not surprising. Or maybe it’s just that the whole matrix thing only happens in America. Déjà-vu means they changed something. So maybe in America I’m being chased by matrix secret agents, and I’m going to find out I’m the chosen one and…maybe I should watch less TV. But anyway, I’m wicked excited because of thanksgiving, a time when it is culturally acceptable to stuff your face full of delicious food. And I’ve had the wanderlust on me for months, just the desire to travel. I’ve stayed in one place far too long, time to move around a bit. I still want to come back of course. But I just love to travel.
Now it’s time for just one final piece of “Chris’s trivial life trivia” before we go. I’m going to tell you what’s happening on the “happenin’” social scene. The other day I was chatting on MSN when my friend Elis told me she had some news for me. At first I thought “Do I want to know?” because many times when I’m told there’s news for me it turns out to be some story of soap-opera type drama full of sex, cheating and lies all going on down in southern Estonian with those I once called “friends”. And course this type of news upsets me greatly. It makes me want to go down to Tartu with a machete, welding mask and blacksmith’s apron and play John DeFoe (Matt, you know half of what I write only you will understand). But it turned out this wasn’t machete type news. This was my favorite type of news. Nerd news! So now a very special broadcast from NNN, the Nerd News Network. Elis told me she had a new friend, and not only a new friend but a 17 year old girl. I’m 17…And not only is this girl 17, she also speaks English, loves anime and (my favorite bit) plays Yugioh. And she’s Russian too! So tomorrow, Thursday, Elis says she’s bringing her friend Nadia to the corps to meet me. And I gotta say I’m excited. Now you all probably think (and rightfully so) that I’m slightly obsessed with Yugioh. Well I am a little. It’s loads of fun, really relaxing and gets me to do math without it feeling like math. And I already have the cards so why not? And believe it or not Yugioh has actually been a bigger deal for me than most anybody thinks. I’ve been praying about Yugioh for over a year now. I had this great vision of going to play Yugioh here in Tallinn and using it to meet people and invite them to the corps. It’s what I did in Tartu, and in Tartu kids came to our little VBS thing because I had translated their Yugioh cards for them. I truly believe I could use Yugioh for ministry. But the only problem is that to participate in tournaments and stuff costs money. And I need money for other things, like college. So for over a year I’ve been praying about this and using a variant of the “fleece” method of praying, just like Gideon in Judges 6:37-40. I did some research online and realized that if I bought the Zombie Madness deck than I could create an unbeatable deck using those cards along with what I already have. So I prayed something along these lines, “God, if it’s your will for me to invest my time, energy and money in meeting and inviting people to the corps using Yugioh than let me find this deck for sale. And if it’s not your will, then I’m sure that being both omniscient and omnipotent that you will have worked out all stores being sold out.” And guess what. I’ve looked in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia and America during our last visit. And every place will have every other Yugioh deck ever made, but not that one. So after months of searching Kaubamajas and asking sales people if they’re sure they don’t have one in the back room somewhere I gave up. I really wanted to go play Yugioh. But not if it wasn’t what God wanted. So I started praying that if it wasn’t God’s will than he would take away my love for the game, and desire to play it. But he hasn’t. Instead, out of the blue three of my best friends, Anneli, Evelin and Elis have suddenly taken a great interest in playing Yugioh. Not in actually buying their own cards of course, but playing with mine. So I had been trying to figure out what it was God wanted. He doesn’t want me to spend time and money on tournaments, but he does want me to goof off with my friends…? Giving me a bunch of new playmates isn’t a great way to take away my love for the game. But now maybe this girl Nadia will come to the corps, meet me, have a wicked good time playing Yugioh with me, spend more time at the corps, and end up getting saved. That would be great, but I can’t see the future so for now I’ll just keep trying to work out God’s will for my life. And if you guys could pray for me about me figuring out God’s will, that would be great. Because Yugioh is the least of the things I’m praying about. Pretty high up on the list are things like which college to go to if I get accepted to both, and who to marry, if anyone. So thanks in advance for your prayers.
Anyway, that turned out a bit longer than I thought. Sorry about that. That’s almost three full pages and just over 1900 words. Wow. Anyway, I need to go now; my sister wants to use her typing instructor thingy on the computer. Until next time, Cya!
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