Thursday, August 16, 2007

No power is not a bad thing

Last night there was a viciuos storm that came upon us very suddenly... It took out our electricity. For me it wasn't all that bad. I mean, the tornado sirens were kind of scary, but I actually thought it was kind of exciting.
I thought the weather was nice, but my dad and brothers got overheated, and my mom got a migraine (It was only 70 degrees!). Despite everyone elses misery, I though it was really nice to have the electricity go out. Everyone sat in the same room, we listened to the radio, and we talked as a family. We don't do that very often, and I felt close to them for once.
And the electricity came back on eventually, it was just a small inconvenience.

Today is Rebecca's birthday, and Jessie's Birthday.
12 more days until I go back to Bethel. I've been giving serious consideration to changing my major to Youth Ministry. Ha, yeah, a senior in college and I'm considering changing my major. I suppose the thing is that I have been hiding from this major since before I started college. Yeah, I know, that needs explanation, huh? Well, when I was a senior in high school, and thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I felt very strongly that I wanted to work with youth. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a job, so I thought maybe I would just minor in youth ministry, and get a professional degree in something else. So I chose English, with a minor in Youth Ministry. Right before I was supposed to come to Bethel, I decided to go undecided. After the first semester I felt another tug to full time ministry, but I was scared. Really scared. What kind of job can I get as a female in ministry? I went to the carreer office and took one of the carreer tests and my highest marks, by quite a few, were in the feild of ministry. I thought, okay, I'll declare a major in ministry. I was still passionate about youth, but I wanted to keep the major pretty broad, just to leave my options a little more open. So I did. Sophomore year passes, junior year passes. It must have been a hundred plus times I've thought about changing to youth ministry, of looking at the classes I would need and reading through their descriptions, wondering if I could do it, desiring to do it, but always deciding to stay right where I am because I could be wrong, God might not want me to work with youth, so I'm safer answering my call to ministry just by keeping my major broad. Besides, I don't need a degree in Youth Ministry to work with youth anyway, right? During my junior year I decided to just take Foundations of Youth Ministry and ended up deciding to take an extra year at college because I wanted to add a youth ministry minor. Well, this summer I have been working with the Youth Group at LifeBridge Christian Church, and also doing a bit of an independant study, and once again I feel pulled in that direction. Youth. Whatever God has me do in my life, its going to involve youth. I know that. I've always known that, there's never really been any question about it. But like I already said I don't need a degree in Youth Ministry to work with youth professionally, so I may as well just finish out my degree in Christian Ministry. Well, last week I was looking through the list of classes and everything needed to complete the degree and I realized that there are more classes to take than just those required in having a youth min. minor, and I want to take the other classes too. I want the information that they offer, I want the expereince and the training. So then I started looking to see if I could complete the degree in the appropriate time, taking only 5 years like I had already decided I was going to do, and it seems really likely, with the exception of the Saturday Seminars, by the time I graduate I would only have 4 and I would need 7. So, I decided to pray about it. Do I keep studying Christian Ministry, or do I switch majors? I felt peace. Now I'm extremely cautious about this for some reason, and I decided to ask the people who know me well what their opinions were. So far they have all said that I sound like I'm taking the right steps in seeking leading from God, they think youth ministry fits me very well and that if I'm sensing the leading, then I'm probably being too cautious and might be required to take a leap of faith. So now I want to talk with someone in the Youth Ministry department and get their imput. I feel like I am at a critical point. We'll see what happens.

Amanda

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