Good To Be Home

Boy is it good to be home! I am so thankful that I am able to come home for Christmas and that God kept me safe traveling home. I'll be home until January 6th and then gone for a couple months, but hopefully able to come back for Spring Break in March.

I absolutely love HBBC and am excited to get back to school and hanging out with my friends. Don't get me wrong; I am absolutely loving being home and not having to worry about homework, but I actually miss being there. It is a totally different atmosphere down there and I like that I have a schedule for my day; I never feel like I haven't done something productive. Anway, I love you guys and am enjoying spending time with you all.

I have posted pretty much all of my photos from Heartland on a website called Flickr. Please check them out by clicking on the link below. It is so much fun taking pictures for the yearbook, but more work than I thought :D!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/amber90/

Please be praying that I just step back and trust God to supply the money for the monthly payments for school next semester; I am a little worried about it, but I know deep down that God will supply if HBBC is where He wants me. Please also be praying that Amanda and I would get along with our roommates; we have hit some rough spots last semester and are looking for a smooth second semester. I am thankful for all of you who are and have been praying for me and Amanda. I love you guys!

Almost Done!!!

All of us girls arrived here at College safetly and with no complications! The time I had with you all was too short, but I will see ya'll again in about a week and a half! You can tell that everyone here is anxious for the semester to end and for the break to begin. I am SO looking forward to being home and not having to worry about homework.

There really isn't anything new happening right now other than everyone's getting ready to attend the Christmas Banquet and looking forward to the Midnight Breakfast. We've also got finals next week that everyone is dreading; I know that they will be difficult. Please pray that I will study hard and do a good job!

Well, I miss you all and look forward to seeing you soon. Have a wonderful week guys!

SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Amanda, I, and Sarah Boyer (former pianist for Assurance Trio) will be leaving tomorrow around 2:00pm for Nebraska!!!!!!!!! I cannot wait to see my family and all you guys; I miss all of you SO much!

There is a family here called the Buffingtons; they went to school with Carrie Wilkenson. I've felt drawn to this family and really enjoy talking with them and picking on them. They do not have any kids of their own; in fact Mrs. Buffington has had 11 or 12 miscarriages, but she is one of the happiest people I've talked to here! Instead, they foster children and are in the process of adopting two of their three foster children. The two boys came from an angry, and abusive home, but are now saved and desire to witness to their parents. The little girl, just 3 yrs old, has only been with them for a month. When they first met her, they could hear her screaming down the hall; this is what she did whenever she wanted something. I went out to supper with them lastnight and she did not scream at all; infact she was very well behaved! I just love them!

The chapel and sunday school messages have been awsome and I am learning a lot. There are many things that I knew before, but had never really clicked in my brain until lately; it's been a blessing!

Work is going well except for all the thefts we've had lately. About a week ago, there was a man who tried running out the back of the store with 10 boxes of shoes. He escaped with 6 boxes after dropping 4 when the alarm sounded from the back door being opened. There was also another many who walked out of the store with shoes in his sleeves, but he left his buddy behind who got arrested :D. The third theft we've had recently was when one of our managers saw and approached a man wearing one of our pairs of shoes; he was also arrested. There is AT LEAST one pair of shoes stolen daily and it will only get worse as we approach Christmas unfortunately.

Amanda is doing well and is enjoying classes. She and I have become closer friends and I am so thankful that God has given us a strong friendship. Another plus is that she puts up with me!

I have a few prayer requests:
~ please pray that God would supply the funds for the next semester monthly payments; they are huge!
~ Chelsea Hatahlie (one of my good friends)- her family is going through a very tough time right now
~ Glori Dominigo (lady at my work)- she is a very sweet, 70 year old Philippion lady who had a massive stroke the other morning. She is making huge progress, but is not out of the woods yet. Please pray that she would recall the stuff in the track I gave here and that this would be a good opportunity to witness to my other co-workers.

Well, I've got to get going to choir. I love you all and will see ya'll Wednesday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hillbilly Hayride

God has been SO good to me lately here at school! He is teaching me sooo much and helping me to get victory over things. He has provided for me time and time again, teaching me that stressing out is pointless; everything is going to work out!

First of all, I want to thank EVERYONE who had a part in making my b-day special! It was the BEST b-day I have had.  Ya'll really made my day with the answering machine messages and packages. My friends even bought me a little mini choco cake, a card, and took me out to CiCi's Pizza. I have such wonderful friends who care about me and encourage me daily. I love you guys and cannot wait to see you in only a month!

The friday and saturday after my b-day I went to Nevada, MO for Friends from Heartland visitation and it was fun! It is about 5 hrs away from the college and the scenery on the way there was absolutely beautiful!!! Me and a girl had a very intersting visit with an 80+ year old Mormon elder. I had to shut the visit down after about half an hour of debate because it was taking too much time and it was starting to get heated between my partner and him. However, it was good to see that we got in a few "punches"; I could tell we made him think a few times by the look in his eyes. He finally took our "Friend Day" invitation so he could contact the Pastor to talk with him.We left on a good note and I hope that he didn't give the pastor too much grief :D.

Yesterday was the Hillbilly Hayride. It's similar to the Hobo Party except about 5hrs longer and they have more games. Almost everyone dressed up in hillbilly attire and some took it to the extreme (as you can see in the pics). The games consisted of bobbing for apples, hub cap toss, toilet seat horse shoes, 11 legged race, hatchet thow, jar-o-spit, wheelbarrel race, frying pan throw (with a real cast-iron frying pan), 10-15 mph hay rides, and steal the bacon. There was also a photo booth where you could pose in either an outhouse, on a toilet, a rusty bench, or some tree stumps. They also had a costume contest judging on the best costume, best smile, and best pig call. The girl who won was Maddison, the one who has one every dramatic reading during the times she came for College Days.
The food was good and we had preaching as well. It was a good time to get out and make complete fools of ourselves playing hick games. We even got to make up our own hilbilly names; guess which one I choose? Yep, Marlene. I couldn't pass it up :D.


I WILL put pictures on here this week!!!


Midterms are finally over and eveyone is starting to relax. Work is going good and we all have a good time acting like clowns there. Please be praying that they give me thanksgiving off so that I don't have to quit. All my managers seem to like me, so I'm praying that they would rather let me have it off than fire me :D.
Anyway, I need to get going so I'll talk to ya'll later!

Dorm Day!

Tiffany and Chrissy

Amanda

Hi everyone! It's been a busy past few weeks with homework and other activities. Last saturday was the dreaded White Glove Inspection Day where all the students are busy deep cleaning their rooms and the dorms all week long. Each resident of the dorms is assigned a dorm duty to do everyday and are responsible for getting their room duties done. We also left room and dorm bribes to get more points from the judges. On Saturday, the RA's (resident advisors) went through each dorm room and ran a white glove over everything to make sure it was all clean. Awards were given for cleanest room, most creative room, and cleanest dorm and, drum roll please.................... my dorm won! So, all of us in Faith dorm get to have a catered mexican dinner from Ponchos! I hope it will be tasty!

  

Monica



Megan

 

Sign on a bench

•  Last month I and a group of students traveled 2hrs to Sperry, OK for Friends from Heartland. This program takes HBBC students to surrounding churches who need help in canvasing for any events that they're wanting people to come to. It was a blast! When we got there we were told that we would be canvasing in rural areas, so lose dogs were to be expected. My friend Chelsea and I went together and were approached by a large, black, pit bull that decided to bark and growl at us. It was really funny when the owner came out and yelled, "Ornery! Ornery get back here!" What an appropriate name for that dog! Chelsea got her shoes nipped at by some very protective weiner dogs...but, all in all we only had one lady reject the inviation. Next saturday, Lord willing, I'll be traveling to Nevada, MO (about 5hrs away) to do some more door knocking!

• Last saturday, most of the students helped out at the church with the Fall Festival, an great time for kids to be able to come out and have a good time playing games, eating cotton candy, popcorn, and snow cones, and just have a great time. I was incharge of directing the kids down the lines for cotton candy and just making sure they were all behaving. I was able to get a way and take some neat pictures. There were probably over 250+ kids we had, but not all at one time; they came in two waves so as not to overwhelm us. Something I'd never seen before during a children's activity like this was a soul-wining booth. They had some HBBC students go around with tracts and ask the parents and kids if they knew if they were going to heaven or not; there were 5 that got saved and one of the boys was baptized @ church on Sunday!!!

• I love working at Shoe Carnival! I've gotten to invite two more people to church and God's given me the chance to witness to two people. They're treating me really well and are being patient with all my questions and mistakes. One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to call out stuff over the speaker system :D!

• Well, I've got more homework to do so I've got to get going. Oh, please continue praying for Bro. Doug Taylor; he is doing better and is slowly improving. Here is the address for his blog if you'd like to keep up to date with his progress:

http://www.dtaylorjourney.blogspot.com/

I love you all and look forward to seeing ya'll in about a month and a half! Chow!

Desperate Heartland Guys

Here is the video that I said I'd post once it aired at the church. Its about two guys who are having problems attracting the girls. Enjoy!

Latest Happenings

Well, it's been a few weeks since I've updated this thing and there has been a lot going on:

~God's given me a job at this place called Shoe Carnival. They are the try-out store for the entire city, meaning that all shoes come to us first and if they do well, they're shipped to the other shoe stores.
I am enjoying the work and have already gotten the chance to hand out a track to one of my co-workers.
~There is a class @ 5'oclock on Sunday nights called the Relationship class. They did a skit for this class last Sunday where two guys were talking about how to get a wife. One guy referred to Judges 31 (which is actually supposed to be Judges 21) where the men hid in the bushes and grabbed the first woman that walked by, slinging them over their shoulders. Well, long story short, I was roped into doing one of these skits. They asked me to walk out of the campus book store and down the sidewalk. Meanwhile, they had one of the HBBC guys hiding in the bushes, waiting to jump out at me. When he jumped out, I was supposed to scream and run off while he chased me and yelled, "Wait! Stop! Your my wife! Judges 31!" Oh, it was SO much fun and they said that I did a really good job. They taped the whole scene and will be showing it this Sunday. I will tape it and post it on here so you can all see it.
~School is going good and I'm trying to stay ahead of my homework. Freshmen year is A LOT of reading assignments. One big one that I'm finding hard to keep up with is reading 9-10 chapters a day in the OT; I have to have this done by the end of the semester. Another assignment is where I have to find all the pronouns in the book of Acts and write down the Strong's Concordance #, the dictionary definition with the pronunciation, the Bible reference, and a little background of the word. The work isn't hard, but time consuming.

~Labor day weekend was a blast with all the activities we had going on. They grilled polish dogs and burgers and had homemade pies and cobblers. Singing, preaching, and games for the kids filled the day and I spent much of the day taking pics for the yearbook.
They had a dunking booth that the kids just loved to participate in.... it was pretty funny to see him get dunked every time.

 ~I love going to church down here!
Every Sunday that I've been here, someone has come forward to join the church or theres been a baptism. The preaching is excellent and the people are friendly. They are trying to expand the parking lot; they have so many members that visitors are driving away because of a lack of parking space! Average attendance for church service is around 2,100-2,200 people, including the HBBC students! This is at least 3x's the size of my hometown!

I miss you all and I will try to update this sooner next time. Have a great weekened everyone!

More Fun at HBBC

Eunice, Brianna, Amanda, and Chelsea

I've had a lot of fun at HBBC this week with all the preaching and activities. There was a ladies game night last Friday and it was a blast. It was a good time to fellowship and get to know the ladies better.There were several games being played by the other girls that involved having to do something; this girl had to wrap toilet paper around her head :D. Some other girls were jumping up and down, singing, etc. It was a lot of fun to hear the others acting crazy.

The girl with the bottle in her mouth is the Head Resident
Advisors in our dorm.


The next Sunday night we had a Pizza Gorge where they ordered somewhere around 500 pizzas from Papa Johns for all the single and married students. While everyone was gorging, Bro. Lande involved all of us in a treasure hunt game. He read from a list, items that he need like chapstick, bobbypins, toilet paper, and even for a guy who had white socks on with black dress shoes. Whoever could get to him first with the item won a prize. There were people colliding, slipping and falling down, and even some got hurt, but it was a blast. Words of advice: never laugh on a full stomach :D.

Chrissy Roberts

  The preaching for this week has been awesome. Our special speakers were Bro. Copes, Bro. Marshall, and I forget the name of the third; all messages were good!

 

The most fun is the time I've spent with the friends Amand and I have made. I am having a blast and can't wait to get to know these girls better!

Eunice, Chelsea, Amanda, Ashely

Brianna and Amanda

HBBC Girls

Here I am!

First, I want to appologize for not having updated this thing lately! I have be SO busy with settling in, getting internet figured out, and going through registration, orientation, and job searching. Thanks for putting up with the delay!


God kept dad and I safe as we traveled down on Thursday and I didn't have trouble driving until we hit OK City :D. I've gotten honked at at least twice, but for the most part, it's just like driving in Lincoln except the people here are more polite. I have never met a more polite people than I have here!


Opening days consisted of a Red Hawks Baseball game that was held in Bricktown USA When we first got there I saw this really cool Cow print PT Cruiser that said "Honk If U Luv Chicken!". It was a car for Chick-fil-A, a popular fast food restaraunt down here.

The game was boring for the most part, but it was interesting. They started throwing prizes into the crowd and a soft baseball landed between me and Amanda's mom and she let me keep it as a souvenier :D

On Saturday, we went to Frontier city and rode a whopping total of TWO rides! Dad and I rod the ferris wheel and the bumper cars. I'm glad that I didn't ride any rollercoasters because the ferris wheel actually made me kinda scream :D. Amanda and her mom stayed behind and got more settled into the dorm, so dad and I spent the day together.

I will post more tomorrow; I need to leave because the cafe is closing. Bye!