Atlanta

Samaritan's Purse is one heck of an organization. I met God in a powerful way this week...

My heart's desire is to serve people in a capacity like that for the rest of my life.

I wish I could have spent more time with the people of Atlanta. It stinks that at this point I can only give a week at a time to physically serve those who severely need it. You can bet your britches that I'll be more focused on meeting the needs of others here at home, though! I'm SO excited to go back to "normal life" with the assurance that God is guiding me into countless opportunities to share him with others!

"Direct my footsteps according to your word, let no sin rule over me." Ps 119:133

comings and goings

As of Sunday, I'll be embarking on a journey to Atlanta, Georgia to do flood relief with Samaritan's Purse.

I've been working on a painting, which has been pretty awesome. I haven't painted in a while! and also, I just finished knitting a pair of mittens!!

yeh. and yes, that is a transformers sweatshirt from the little boy's section.

the creative juices are flowing?

doodling during small group

the scanner is working!

playing around with illustrator...

My scanner has been acting up on my new computer, so I haven't been able to upload new sketches. I'll try to fix it this weekend tho!

Moving

Hi Valerie,

I've talked with the leadership of the team about your application, and we are pleased to offer you a six-month internship on our Production Team. We look forward to welcoming you, your perspectives and your skills to our team.

Madison, Wisconsin, here I come!

Details: 6 months in Madison with 2100 Productions (InterVarsity's Production studio).
Doing animation, live-action camera work (yikes!), and other communications and media work.
Living with other missionaries and/or staff in Madison.
Raising my own support (yikes again!)
Starts Feb. 1

Friends, pray!

Fave songs/artists lately

Penelope - Pinback
LES Artistes - Santigold
Spotlight - Mute Math

Psalm 65

Praise awaits you, O God, in Zion;
to you our vows will be fulfilled.

O you who hear prayer,
to you all men will come.

When we were overwhelmed by sins,
you forgave our transgressions.

Blessed are those you choose
and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house,
of your holy temple.

You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness,
O God our Savior,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas,

who formed the mountains by your power,
having armed yourself with strength,

who stilled the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
and the turmoil of the nations.

Those living far away fear your wonders;
where morning dawns and evening fades
you call forth songs of joy.

You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.

You drench its furrows
and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers
and bless its crops.

You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.

The grasslands of the desert overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.

The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing.

The pastor of my new church who taught my "Life-Connect" (new members-ish) class this morning spent 5 years as a missionary in Guyana. He and his wife lived in Georgetown, but traveled all over working with various pastors and doing an international worship program. Among those he worked with were Pastor Motie Singh, and also Pastor Yasin. He told me especially how much Pastor Yasin and his "flock" rejoiced over the new orphanage/church building and how much fruit his ministry bore there, as my Pastor and his wife spent a lot of time building a close relationship with the Yasins and ministering in the interior.

Rochester, NY - Guyana, SA - Allentown, PA

amazing.

duffy

Sully

Layouts

brainstorming...

Plans...

So, my future plans may or may not involve an internship at 2100 productions, InterVarsity's production studio. Raising support will be tough. It might help me in trying to figure out how in the world God can use my skills as an animator to further His kingdom. Again, raising support will be tough. Also in the "tough" category will be my ability to see this as an opportunity, rather than a step backwards where finances are concerned. It will also mean a step away from studios and a step towards freelance and communications work.

At this point, anything is possible.

Road Trip to FL with my sister

My sister and I drove to FL in my little Kia, Matilda, this weekend. It is an 18 hour drive both ways. We made the drive straight through both times. Matilda does not have AC and her radio speakers crap in and out (they lasted 14 hours on the way down and the entire 18 hours on the way back). We ran over a full 18-wheeler tire tread that raked the bottom of the car a 1/2 hour after we left at 4 am on Friday morning (it did no damage). We got stuck in a huge traffic jam in Alabama in the heat of the day (we saw a lot of interesting characters!). A cop pulled up behind us and flashed his lights more than once (we never got pulled over). Our cd player stopped working about 9 hours away from home (my little ipod has about 9 hours of music on it).

It was a wonderful adventure and I loved every minute of it. :)

States through which we travelled - 7
States in which we decided we would never live barring the mandate of God - 2

"Caverns" advertised between Allentown and Pensacola - 10

Headlights which I witnessed flicker and go out (not my own) - 3

Close calls involving road debris - 3
Close calls involving banana peels - 1

Brothers seen - 1
Beaches visited - 1
Cockroaches sighted - 3
Cockroaches in personal space - 1
Fish caught - 0
Jellyfish stings - 0!!!!!

Times the GPS messed up - 3

Sweet tea consumed - 3 quarts

Total Hours driven between Friday and Monday - 40

I love road trips.

"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God."
Psalm 20:7

Resumes

Got 'em in at 5 studios, 1 temp agency.

I'm going to Florida for a weekend to visit my brother and some family I haven't seen for a while. It's funny that I never did much traveling over the summer or breaks (missions trips excluded, of course!) and I always used lack of money or the need to work as an excuse. Now that I need money more than ever but have no job, I'm getting around more than usual! One road trip down, one planned, and one to plan.

Katlyn and Nate's wedding was this past weekend. It was awesome. I truly enjoyed it, including all the fuss leading up to it. Everything was great, from meeting new friends, the shady shopping trips, getting prepped and beautified, hanging out with Katlyn's family, the "other wedding" at the park, seeing old friends at the reception, and even the trip home. It was really a blessing just to get to see Katlyn go through the whole process, especially the day of the wedding. She was absolutely radiant. I'm not good enough with words to describe her and Nate on the wedding day. they blew me away.



Songs of the week:

Manchester Orchestra

Saves the Day
Wild Sweet Orange

Some thoughts from Basileia...

At Basileia (an InterVarsity end-of-year retreat), I was in a track where we intensely studied a portion of the book of Mark. I came home and continued my morning study of Matthew with a completely renewed perspective. The things that I got out of Mark during the week of Bas were stunning, while my new perspectives on Bible study in general led me to crave a new attitude in studying Matthew. I have begun to tell myself:

It all has to start with believing that God has something to say to you. Believe that he has orchestrated this very moment in time, everything surrounding it, and that this moment has a purpose in your life within His will. He is here with you, experiencing this moment and watching you. Enjoy what He's made for you! He's ready for you to hear what He has to say to you. Are you listening?

I think that was the overall theme of Basileia for me. "Are you listening?" And now I'm at home, forced to do nothing but wait for something to happen, for some effort to pay off, for God to reveal the next step. Will I be ready? Will I know it when I see it?

Am I listening?

"To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told."
~Oswald Chambers

ANTM

There's a girl on America's Next Top Model this season who is a Christian. She got into the semifinals and told the judges straight up during her one-on-one interview that she was a "street preacher," and gave an example of one of her "sermons." It was awesome. She says her purpose in being a model is a mission to the lost within the fashion industry. I was kinda skeptical after the first half-episode, but I've come to the conclusion that this chick is awesome. They discovered that there was one less bed than there were girls in the house, so she gave hers up to the girl that hadn't gotten one, and when everyone said she was "so nice" she insisted that Jesus deserved all the glory.

That might not seem like a big deal, but watch a season or two of ANTM and then tell me that isn't strange.

I'm SUPER excited that a Christian like London is doing so well in a setting like that. It's also rather convicting for myself, as I tend to use the setting of the art world as an excuse to slack off in telling others about my faith. It sucks, but it's true. It's no secret that most artists tend to be extremely liberal, and very anti-God. However, this is not only true in a lot of other fields, but it is also not an excuse to clam up about how wonderful Jesus is!

London is still in the running, she's in the top 7 out of 13. I don't think it matters if she wins, but it's just really encouraging that she's so out there with her faith, and attracting people to Jesus just because of her openness about who He is.

Pleasures

Do you ever have those moments within your busy and otherwise stressful life where everything is just pure bliss, and you realize, for a moment, just how much your Heavenly Father must love you in order that you would experience such peace and joy? I love when this happens. Usually, it's because I'm listening to music. I've always had a strong emotional connection with music. Whenever I get that indescribable sensation of pleasure, I think of this passage from C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters:"

And now for your blunders. On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there—a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this? The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method—by making him a kind of Childe Harold or Werther submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses—you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes' genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem. But you were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn't you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value? And that the sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel off from his sensibility the kind of crust you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, recovering himself?

Well said, C.S. Lewis.

Well said.

I call out your name, but you do not hear
I dial your number, but your phone rings and rings
I shout and sing to try and block out the sound
I'm desperate
I have not slept these nights
I think of how I can get your attention
without you remembering in the morning
that I dumped water on your head
because you would not stop snoring

I love milk

Seriously, what is better than a tall, frothy glass of cold milk sometimes?

Also, it has come to my attention that I never wrote about some of the things I wanted to. Let me just say, it was bound to happen. Maybe I will get to them sometime in the future...

But for now, onwards and upwards.

As I sit here guzzling down glass of milk number 2, I find myself thanking God for the quirks of life.

For example, I've gone an entire year without a desk chair at my desk. I instead have opted to sit on a big bouncy ball. and let me tell you, I'm none the worse for it!!

On glass number three, and loving the fact that I know people who will not only allow me to dump a bowl of worms on their head, but will go and collect them for me.

also, we are in the midst of an economic crisis, leaving seniors like moi in a sticky situation. However, it just so happens that animation companies like Dreamworks and Pixar are expanding like whoa.

mmmmm milk

Clowns, Ink, and Discipleship

There was a carnival in the SAU today. There were clowns with cowbells walking around. And carnival instruments playing christmas songs. Weird. but also pretty cool!!

So, I've spent the last couple weeks getting into the swing of this quarter, and as a result have not gotten much of anything done on my thesis. Consequence? I am inking EVERYWHERE. Inking being the act of going over each of my drawings with a sharpie. It is a long process, but hopefully will only take half the time it took me to actually draw all these frames (there are over 2,000 of them). oh goodness.

Through a series of recent events, God has provided something that I have been needing (whether or not I've realized it). Isn't that just like Him? Basically, I'm gonna meet with an older girl from church regularly on Sundays :) It's really awesome and we're both really excited to do it!! I haven't gotten very involved in my Church, and don't know that many people there, but I met this girl, Jess, through a small group I did attend last year. Anyways, I'm super psyched about this, I think she'll definitely be an awesome source of wisdom and accountability!

Song of the day: Ten Dead Dogs ~ Wild Sweet Orange. look it up. listen. it's awesome.

There are too many books to read!!!!!!!!!!

The Shack

I just finished The Shack, by William P. Young. I loved it, and have a very specific opinion about it. I think, however, that this is a read that needs to be undertaken without the preface of others' opinions. Many others had given me their opinion while I was reading it and I found that I had to struggle past my nitpicking nature in order to get anything out of the book. Even the comments on the cover and first few pages bothered me. It's good for a discussion after the fact, though!

So if you've read it, lemme know what you thought sometime.

So, on monday mornings I've taken a babysitting job in Pennfield for a ladies' Bible study. I think it's good for my heart. I'm not the best with little kids, but I adore them. The best feeling ever is when a little one runs to you and gives you a huge hug around the legs until you pick them up and hug 'em tight. There's a one-and-a-half year old named Jacob who LOVES to dance. Whenever he hears any kind of music, he's clammoring to be picked up and bounced around or he just spins in circles and just laughs and laughs... It's one of the highlights of my week.

That I could be the same with my own Heavenly Father!

Friday at work...

So, Friday was probably the busiest day at work this whole year, seeing as we're selling for playoff hockey plus about 16 million other events. I'm talkin lines out both windows and the phone ringing constantly on 4 lines at a time.

Our policy when it comes to hockey tickets is one per student. Or, more technically, one per student ID. For some reason, most people find this to be a surprise when we tell them, so we're used to appologizing and suggesting they get their friends' id and bring it to us. When approached by someone asking to buy more than one, I usually start by asking "do you have more than one ID?" just to get that out of the way right at the beginning. People usually don't.

So as one can imagine I was pretty frazzled having spent 5 hours in the box office already when this group of guys comes up and crowds the window outside. The guy in front says, "6 RIT students to tonight's hockey game, please." Expecting the usual exchange, I ask, "Do you have 6 ID's?" He turns to the guys behind him and goes "All right, boys, give her your ID's!" I am then flooded with a wave of IDs being dumped onto the counter for my viewing pleasure. It's all i can do to keep from busting out laughing as I tell them they can take their ID's back. "You can keep THIS one!" Says a guy who has muscled his way to the front, and all they guys laugh at the expense of the owner of the ID he's holding up to the window.

Best moment ever.

Matthew 6: 24-25

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Why I am "Pro-US Military"

allrighty. The facts are these: I have a brother in the U.S. Navy. I have been involved with in-depth discussions about the psychology of a U.S. soldier during wartime, although I am no psychologist myself. I'm not talking about war in general, just the U.S. armed forces in general.

Last quarter I took a class -- Visual Anthropology. Virtually everyone in the class was a photo or film/animation major, so we had a lot of liberal opinions, a few conservative ones, and a few wacky ones, as per any class populated by mostly art majors. When the topic of joining the army came up, (looking at advertisements for the various branches of the military), the class was mostly united in crying brainwash, entrapment, deciept, falsification, and pretty much everything else that usually accompanies American marketing strategies. This, of course, sparked a discussion about recruitment techniques, which led to a conversation about conscription, free will, and the questioning of whether there should be recruitment for the military at all. Frankly, those couple days that we talked about these things I left the class feeling really discouraged. I'll tell you why:

I looked around at the people in my class, and at myself, and wondered what any of us has really ever had to sacrifice. How many times have we placed ourselves completely and utterly at someone else's service? How many times have we griped and complained about the obedience and respect we owe to our teachers or parents, sometimes disregarding our duty in that sense alltogether? When was the last time we disciplined ourselves to the point of depriving our flesh of something it craves in order to better an aspect of our own life? When was the last time we fought for something with everything we had inside of us... something completely apart from our own ambitions and desires? And when was the last time we genuinely thanked those who provide for us to live in the country with one of the highest standards of living in the world? *note: we were number 12 in 2008!

Convicted: check.

The principles that I saw both in the ads for the military (like the ones that accompany most movies in the theatre these days) and in the recruitment of my brother to the Navy (although he did most of the searching and research himself) were obedience, humility, service, and basically living through what is admittedly a horrific experience for a purpose larger than yourself. This was backed up by my brother's experience with boot camp. First off, boot camp for any branch of the military is horrible. The recruits are dehumanized, screamed at, held accountable for the actions of almost complete strangers, and deprived of sleep. Very quickly, they learn to stick together and unite underneath their drill seargent and do EXACTLY as their told. They're forced into a state of being that almost no one in their right minds would place themselves. They trust their lives and their health to people they've never met, regardless of their reasons for enlisting. They hold each other up and accountable. My brother was in charge of making sure his division could meet their academic requirements. He quizzed them on protocol to prepare them for their tests. Just one example.

My point here is that military training does more than provide the manpower to run the United States' War effort. I'm not trying to belittle the horrors of war and the mental, physical, and emotional scarring that results from battle. But if anyone I knew were seriously considering joining up, I'd be all for it. I believe that the men and women in our military are some of the most self-sacrificing and admirable individuals in our country, and the principles that go into their training would serve most in our generation incredibly well.

"Debt" or "Job searching at home, part 1"

Ahh, the job search. I decided i'd be a good little college student and throw myself into it over spring break. I had a few prospects going in, not to mention what I thought was a pretty solid backup plan just in case. Well, truth be told, prospects meant places I had thought about once or twice right before falling asleep at night in a sort of "wouldn't it be cool..." sort of vein. I also thought that googling "Christian Animation Studios" would provide me with all sorts of options. It doesn't. Try it. And while I went into the process believing that the whole world was open for options, I hit mid-week feeling discouraged, hopeless, and resigned to living with my parents for a very long time. There was definitely a low point, where I just couldn't understand how so much debt could be so big of an obstacle to a future which I had committed wholly to the Lord. I couldn't understand why I couldn't just pick up and move on a whim to a prospective town where I'd be perfectly happy to wait tables or something if a studio job wasn't available. I mean, if that's what God is leading me to do, there's nothing that can stop me! I must be free to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he leads, living off of just what I need for the day, doing the Lord's work. I get so frustrated with the attitude that after college, you need to get a job doing work in your field of study, make enough money to secure your future, and focus on what you need for yourself. You know, the overly-pragmatic, "depend on YOU!" attitude. If I have a solid job offer in my field, living at home, and making tons of money, the world says I'm crazy if I want to wait tables in Colorado!

So, I did what any frustrated college girl does when faced with a tough road. I asked my Daddy.

I knew he had a colorful life after high school. He smuggled Bibles into communist European countries for a while, traveled back and forth between Europe and the states a few times, freeloaded off of friends' family, lived basically how I would like to live my years of "freedom" after graduating. Turns out he has a pretty amazing story when it comes to trusting in the Lord to provide. But as he was relating this to me, he made one thing clear throughout the whole thing. While he maybe didn't know how he was going to support himself day to day at times, he did not have any debt. I started to learn about the Lord's provision. My Dad had a Christian mentor who took him in like a son and sponsored him through work right after high school, the Bible smuggling, and even Bible College, to an extent.

I started to learn about the difference between worldly wisdom and common sense. Open up the Bible randomly to Proverbs and you will probably find the subjects folly and money talked about quite frequently. A lot of the times in the same verse. And God really started to show me how serving and following his will can really look. I was getting upset because I'm anxious to serve the Lord in a capacity that I cannot fulfill yet. Having tons of debt feels like a stone weighing down every move and hindering the freedom that I KNOW I have in Christ, when it should look like a tool God could be using to teach me a lot about responsibility, seeking Him, and waiting. Not to mention all that could change while I'm paying things off, and how much I can witness the Lord provide with all these gobs of cash that need provided for!

So, at the end of this, the firm back up plan isn't so firm, Christian animation studios are virtually nowhere to be found (I have one on my list of prospects. Not even Adventures in Odyssey is animated by a Christian studio.), and I have to actively tell myself each and every day that I'm not in control of my own destiny, as the world would tell me. That is one piece of worldly wisdom that absolutely MUST be discarded before moving forward with any of this. Seeking hard after the Lord is all I can do, and this mountain of debt is much better placed at His feet than on my mind in worry.

So, I just got back from break and there's a few things I'm itching to write about. So later on this week I hope to find time to put bodies to these subjects:

I believe that Art is objective.
Why I'm "Pro-U.S. military"
Shucking off worldly wisdom and "the norm" (with regards to future plans) in the shadow of debt/God's will in the face of debt
What I've observed of Middle-class christian complacency (with regards to a bunch of issues)

Also, I hit a possum on the highway today. It was my first kill.

New Beginnings?

I love God. God made creativity. Creativity begets art. I love art. Art is a part of my life.

In essence, it's time to get a big-person's blog. Job searching and soul searching this week has been rough and eye opening, to say the least.

I'm so glad God's in charge and not me!