A Whole Year

It's been one year since I have started attending CBU (California Baptist University), and a great deal of things have happened. One of the most important things that has happened within this year has been the growth of my Christian faith and the education I received regarding the Biblical text. Coming into CBU, I thought I knew quite a bit on the Bible and thought I was going to have an easy time taking Old Testament classes. I was sure wrong about that! Although the class was an immense struggle and a test of how committed I had to be in learning and understadning the Biblical text, I can look back and thank God for how he used my OT professor to be as academically challenging as he is, it was worth it! In my Old Testament classes alone I grew more and more in the Faith, recognizing certain aspects of what I thought was biblical was not in fact biblical, and coming to terms and working through very challenging things in the Bible. As well as to be concerned and focused on the persecution of brothers and sisters around the world, and the oppression and persecution of various people around the world. During this past year the LORD also gave me the will to be able to do better academically than I had ever done before. This year I also began to speak out more and engage people more when it came to talking about the Faith.

The people I have had the opportunity to meet and become friends with throughout this year were another aspect that stood out. From beginning at CBU as the only mohican punk kid on campus who knew nobody and was somewhat of a hermit on campus for a good part of the first semester, to constantly hanging out and doing different things around campus. Some of the major highlights were the random middle of the night trips to Denny's which would feature some karaoke on the part of my friends and I, walking down to the Plaza right before Thanksgiving mistaking a strip mall arcade for a video game arcade, haviing a snowball fight at park in downtown Riverside, the Spring Break trip to San Francisco which was just a complete blast in and of itself, to getting addicted to Super Smash Bros. for the Wii in the last month and a half of the semester when I had 3 major papers, 2 final exams, and various projects in between that I had to do. Suprisingly I was able to get all of it done and still earned A's in all but one class. There are various other trips and events that helped shape this year and they are all just as great and memorable.

When I first arrived at CBU in the Fall of 2009, I had great doubt whether I was supposed to go there, for one of the main reasons why I made a decision to go was to cover up that I had been out of work during the summer (I would later man up and tell the truth). Even though for the first month or so I was still struggling with whether or not I was suppose to be at CBU, I would soon begin to see how God had used my lie to lead me to where He originally wanted me to be. This came to fruition in looking back on how much I have grown in the Faith, through how much He has revealed through me at school, and how much He is constantly revealing to me here,that I am to continue on at CBU. So to answer Willie Nelson, yes,I am sure this is where I ought to be.