Poems, Prayers and Promises

I relized today that in less than a week, I'll be back up in Lafayette. I have to go back up early to get started in my new job. I really don't know where it all went. No new developements..... I kind of feel like this is the calm before the storm of next semester.

It's kind of funny, I come back to Indy from Lafayette for break and the rest of my family goes up to Lafayette. This Friday I will officailly be the only one left at home here when Mom and Dad go to pick up the others from the CYPU camp thing in Lafayette. Somthings just a little backwards there....

So yeah, I'm still here, still trying to keep busy, and enjoying every minute of it. Although the more I enjoy it the faster it's flying by, so I better not waste any more time on blogger.....,

The second week of break; Christmas is over, Philip and Kathryn have gone to the CYPU winter conference/camp thing, and for the first time in a long time I actually had nothing to do and actually felt a little lost. So out of desperation I broke down and decided to write on my blog. So if you want the random thoughts to stop all you have to do is give me something to keep me busy.

I was a failing student this last semester at Purdue. Now I know that may not be anything special, but for those that know me the thought of failing at something isn’t appealing. But despite my aversion to it, I failed. Before you try and figure out how my parents have let me live with failing grades or who at Purdue I had to smooth talk to let me come back next semester, I will point out another thing. The way I failed is not readily visible the way an “F” on a grade report is.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted it, but the other night I picked up my bible and turbo-read Ecclesiastes. I think I was looking for a particular passage in the book but in the process I ended up reading the entire thing. Towards the end of this last semester I had begun to feel a little discouraged at the ruthless pace I kept in this work at college that really didn’t seem to be leading anywhere immediately. So as I read Solomon’s groans of “meaningless meaningless, everything is meaningless” I could kind of sympathize with the way he felt. And in fact I would have to agree with him now, it is all meaningless! Time will move on, the world will not last forever, and 100 years from now who will remember, let alone care, that I got an A in 727 Systems. Shoot by then who will remember the already outdated 727?

Although the things of this world are “meaningless” in the big picture, working to further Christ and his kingdom are far from that. This is the picture Solomon was painting for us in this book. He sums it up in verse 13 of the last chapter “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep his commandments, because this applies to every person.” Christ and his work is what we as Christians can draw our meaning in life from, while people without Christ flounder in a meaningless current in life. Life away from the Lord would be a sad position to be in.

So how did I fail? While I gave classes at Purdue a good effort and succeeded academically this last semester, my record was far from flawless when it came to the things that last. The things of Christ. I allowed myself to get so swept up in school that it made it hard to build and strengthen relationships with my family and fellow Christians, or even more importantly my relationship with God. Solomon warns right before his conclusion: “But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.” There needs to be a good balance between college and my job, although they are both things the Lord has called me to right now, and spending time developing my relationship with Christ and furthering his kingdom. It’s a lesson that I’m glad he showing me now, because even beyond college there will always be opportunities to become so bogged down in “good things”, or even “necessary things” like jobs, that I get distracted from the lasting work God has given me to do with him, my family, and other believers.

Or at least that's what "they" say. If that's true, I've just posted about 11,000 words so I won't say much more.

We got some snow here, not as much as points south but still a pretty good amount. The roads were a mess for a while, but it wasn't anything a little momentum and four wheel drive couldn't handle. I was a little disapointed though, with so much snow it made it near impossible to do doughnuts. Once we (Philip and I) found that out, we decided to find some other way to enjoy the snow that involved the truck. We settled on the idea of tieing a rope to the back of the truck and to our sled to create a new form of water/snow skiing/sleding. That provided several hours of entertainment, I don't know who got more enjoyment out of it though......those sleding or those watching the other person get drug through the snow at 25+ m/h.

And then there was the fireworks tonight (Christmas eve). Our neghbors just have to love us. They were kind of cool though, I think we just got our seasons mixed up.

Alright, well, enough said for now. It got late real fast as I tried to figure out how to upload pictures using our home computer. Just kind of mentally rotate the pictures that are on their side 'cause I really don't feel like doing that right now. Have a great christmas!

I created a new drive for us. Four wheel drive is great.

Philip gave me one of the coolest Christmas gifts.

A couple pics of my room in the basement at home just cause I had them on the camera so why not right? Notice how I just dumped all my stuff in there when I got back from Lafayette.

Yes, fireworks on Christmas eve. You mean that's not normal? Dad and I spotted some of these alrtillery shells at the store earlier in the day. We bought them for new years, but of course we had to try them out.

A new Christmas tradition lol. 

Oooh. That one will help Kara sleep well tonight. (She claimed once that explosions put her to sleep. Some people.....lol) 

oooohh, aaaahh 

Our house at night. Yes, my camera is bad. But it's better than nothing. 

Kathryn modeling our single snow shovel for a picture. She promtly gave it back to me and allowed me to finish the drive with it after the picture lol. 

No, Ross hasn’t fallen off the face of the earth. Finals week was crazy, but survivable.

My last final was late Thursday night, but I didn’t start rolling home till late Friday night because it felt kind of good to just take it easy. I cleaned most of the house, with the exception of my room (didn’t even want to open that door), and didn’t get out of my pjs till about 3:30 in the afternoon. I finally packed and headed home, and actually made it back home in time to re-heat some of the recent dinner.

Saturday, I don’t even remember. I think I was just enjoying being home and studied for my Instrument Instructor check ride on Monday. Oh, and Dad and I finally went out and put up the Christmas lights, which made certain members of our family happy.

Sunday, I really enjoyed being back at 2^nd RP, Lafayette is great but it’s always nice to come back here. After church, we all came home and got ready for the infamous Reinhardt Christmas party that afternoon. That was alright, lots of food and ping pong and of course, the shocking game or whatever it is that has metal handles that you hold onto and it shocks you. Always nice, I thought the idea in life was to avoid getting shocked since it tends to not be so good for you….. at least it’s great to get to see some of our family at least once a year :-).

Monday morning I got up and drove back up to Lafayette. It took a lot of convincing to get my truck to go back up there so soon, but it went none the less. By the time I got up there I had a few more hours to study before my checkride at 2. I was pretty freaked out about it, since it’s been at least a year since I’ve taken my last checkride. Over all it didn’t go to bad though, the oral questioning part wasn’t bad until he started pulling out these really detailed questions that he must have been saving just for me, because I talked to another guy that had just done the same checkride with this guy and he said that he didn’t get any questions like that. The flight part actually went real well despite the hurricane force winds, and even though it seemed it would never come, the end of the checkride finally came. With that over I could finally start enjoying break.

Tuesday……did nothing…….felt good.

Today, bought some Christmas things for Philip and Kathryn, slid around in the snow for a while in the truck just for the fun of it, and that’s about it. We rented Luther, so I think were going to try and watch that tonight. The rest of my family hasn’t seen it yet so I figured we’d have to fix that.

Oh, and I guess I hadn’t mentioned this yet on here….but this is real exciting, at least to me :-). I just found out last week that I was hired for a flight instruction job down at Lafayette Aviation. They’re a little business separate from Purdue that provides flight instruction and other Aviation services. I am pretty excited because it’s the first “real” job I’ll have in the industry that I’ve been training in. God couldn’t have worked the timing out any better though. For one thing he brought this job along right at the point were I am shifting my focus from school and pushing hard in that to the transition from school to a career or whatever God has planned for me, and this job will provide opportunities and help me build me flight experience. Also, money has kind of been a concern for me recently because I really wasn’t able to work up at school last semester and I was only able to work full time for half of the summer because I took summer classes for the first half. Well, just as I was reaching the end of my means (about $50 in checking…..one trip to the grocery) God has brought this job along. Our Lord really has an awesome sense of timing. Of course, he would still have an awesome sense of timing if I didn’t get the job, he just would have provided in another way if it was his will that I be at Purdue right now….but yeah so I was excited.

Well, it’s taken me so long to finish babbling that since I wrote the part about renting Luther to watch tonight, we have rented the movie, eaten dinner, and watched the movie. Yeah, I know I’m a slow typer. The movie was a big hit. And now I need to think about going to bed, still got a lot (week and a half) of break left to enjoy.

Yeah, I don't know how studying's supposed to make you smarter.....I haven't felt this brain dead for a long time. Tell y'all what, just be praying for me this week with finals and housing decisions and all and I'll pray for all y'all and it'll all be good. Congrats to Ben and Laura on their engagement. That's so exciting! It's nearing one o'clock and I've got to move onto my next topic of study before the caffeine begins to wear off and I crash. Uh, peace. Or Merry Christmas... Or valentines.... or I don't know.

What do the above things have in common? They were all a part of my grocery store adventures tonight. Now I really don't like going to the grocery store all that much. Some aren't bad, but most are kind of dirty, having many signs that most of the surrounding population has at one time or another tromped through on a quest for food. Not to mention the insanely annoying 80's music they play. I don't even know were they find most of that music. My theory is that they had it specially composed to drive shoppers mad so they grab everything in sight and get out of there ASAP. But anyway.

So yeah, I saw one of my favorite AT profs there and he looked about as lost at times as I did. He had the infamous "list" with him that I'm sure had been composed by his wife because he didn't even know were to find some of the stuff. I almost bought Mustard Greens for my salad but they all looked pretty sad so I didn't. The clueless guys entered the picture as I was making my way to the checkout lanes. All three of them filed in, big football player type guys. After wandering around a little to throw off any one watching, they walked over to the flower fridge thing and each grabbed out one rose. Chuckling amongst themselves and smacking each other in the arm to congratulate themselves on their success so far, they made their way to the check out lanes. Now there was a sight, three big guys standing in line each holding a supermarket rose. So maybe the grocery store is good for something.

Compared to that, the rest of the week was boring. I did get to taxi the 737 pictured below, which was cool. I really will post something worth reading in the near future I promise. Until then,

737-222 

The path that is right in front of my house looking down into Happy Hollow park.

It's the closest thing to a back woods cabin this close to campus. 

Front of my house. 

Notice the tumble weed that was blowing across the ramp.  

The airplane I flew today. 

I can’t believe that another week has already passed! It may have gone fast, but it wasn’t easy. I think I had some kind of test or project to accent just about every day of the week. But it’s over now.

Last night I got to go to Navs for about the fourth time this entire semester. Andrew came over to my house and after hangin’ out for a while, we got on our bikes and rode down to Navs in the stew center. It was fun, but I guess I didn’t realize how long it had been since I had gone.

After Navs I went over to Erick, my bible study leader’s hilltop residence and hung out for a while. We downed a Vanilla Coke or two and caught up on the semester. I headed home, still on bike, a little after ten.

Today I got to sleep in till about 9:30, which was totally awesome. It’s was much needed rest. Then I got up and took up most of the time between then and my flight slot at noon by taking a shower, eating breakfast, and reading some scripture.

It was a slow morning, but once we left the Purdue airport at noon in that Cessna 172, things were jolted into action. It was about the worst day I’ve ever tried to fly on using instruments. And on top of that, we were doing an exercise were some of the instruments are covered up to hone your skills and make it really hard on days like this. But we made it back and the instructor, also the guy in charge of hiring new instructors, complimented me on my flying. I responded my handing him a folder with my resume and a bunch of recommendation letters. Talk about God working out the timing. He sounded pretty optimistic about my chances of getting the job, and he actually left the folder out on his desk rather than filing it away, so we’ll see.

I got back from flying and decided I just needed to take a walk, so I set off on a hike into our backyard, also know as Happy Hollow Park. Today was such an awesome day for December. The walk was rather rewarding, if not because of the nice day, then because of the secrets uncovered. This was the best part of the walk. Ok, so I was just walking along the road that runs through the park, when I see one of my buddies from Navs pull in. It looks like he has someone with him, but I couldn’t really see who it was. I figured I would mosey on over and say hey, so I started towards his car. He pops out first, and who should pop out of the car next but an unidentified girl! Now this was interesting, because as of the last time we talked he hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend…… I walked up and said hey to the cute couple who acted a little surprised. I quickly let them out of their misery though, and allowed them continue their little sunny afternoon excursion and I went back to mine. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I finished my walk. Busted! That was the highlight of the afternoon. You know I’m going to have to ask him about that one later.

That whole thing reminds me of the post I did on the all the couples walking around down there in the park…..oh wait, that’s one of the one’s I decided not to post. Nevermind ;-).