Spring Semester So Far

I figured I'd give a quick rundown of my schedule and what all is going on this semester so far.

10:00-MWF-Living World Religions- Dr. Cox

This is one of the hardest classes to get into at Harding. It has the famous former missionary Monte Cox, fun and interesting class, and there's a field trip to Dallas towards the end of the semester to visit worship ceremonies of different religions. I was able to slide into the class at the last second. It's been really good so far. We've had a general overview and now we're discussing Judaism (which I find fascinating). We have a lot of good discussion and there's a lot of fun people in the class, so I'm really excited.

11:00-MWF-Intro to Preaching-Dr. Thompson

I finally get to do some preachin'! I've really liked this class so far. Dr. Thompson is really cool and he's lots of fun. He does a good job of letting every person use their own voice and use the tools God gave them, and doesn't impose his voice and preferences on everyone. We've been giving introductory devos every day, and it's really cool watching the different styles of everyone. I've got a good one warming up for my devo coming up on Feb 6. I do have to do a 16 page exegesis paper for it, so I may be changing my mood of this later.

1:00-MWF-Missionary Principles and Practices-Dr. Dials

This class is a little boring, but it's had some good discussion so far. It's been easy at least. So, we'll see. It should be helpful in case I ever decide to pursue mission work.

1:00-TT-Western Civilization till 1577-Dr. Julie Harris

This is a class I didn't know I had to take, so now I'm taking my last gen ed here late in my Junior year. The good news is that I LOVE history, and it's nice to have a history class back in my life again. Plus Julie Harris is awesome and the class is easy, so it should be lots of fun.

2:30-TT-Seminar in Missions-Dr. Cox

This is another Monte class, and this one is really really awesome. It has a lot of hard core mission majors and it's a 400 level class, so it's really in depth and finds a way to handle both abstract and practical concepts. Monte gives some good lecture but this is probably the most insightful class discussion I've ever been a part of. It makes the discussion in my Missionary principles and practices class seem like freshman type stuff. I think this class will really be useful to me for whatever type of ministry I get into and it is my favorite class this semester.



Now for the fun part......My job!

I'm the Greek II SI (Supplemental Instruction) Leader, which basically means I'm a group tutor for Greek. This is nice because I definitely need a job, it's a good way to keep up with my Greek, and it's sort of fun. I have to go to the Greek class every day, which is tough because it adds to my already busy schedule, but I get paid to go, so that's cool. Plus, Master Bury is a really good teacher and it's cool to watch the way he presents the information. Then I have 3 SI sessions every week and one training session a week. So I get paid 11-12 hours a week, which you know.....it pays the bills.

So yeah, I'm pretty busy this semester (especially compared to last semester). I'm usually going going going from 9-5 with few breaks in between every day. As far as extra-curricular projects go, on Sundays we go to church with our West Pleasure COC friends and do community projects in the afternoons. On Tuesdays Coleman and I do Jail Ministry. Wednesdays I work with our bible study/planning community, and then I'm doing various projects in between. I've been busy on the weekends so far with work, two steppin', Foo Fighters concert, and the official Arkansas headquarters Obama South Carolina watch party in Little Rock so far (awesome weekends!)

So, I'm busy, but good busy. I'm having tons and tons of fun, lots of new friends, stronger relationships with old friends, lots of laughter, and I'm getting to do a little bit of ministry. This could be my best semester ever here at Harding if things keep up. God has blessed me a lot and things couldn't be better.

Anyways....here's some pictures from the semester so far:




Our group after two-steppin' by the mountain. I can also do the 10 step and the Texas Waltz now. Thanks Lilly!
















Foo Fighter concert. Rock on! Stein Auf!
















Beale Street in Memphis after the concert.




























Eating at Super China Buffet for my birthday! A Harding birthday tradition dating back to freshman year. I love their Sesame Chicken!





























"The Family" hanging out.





















Coleman and I at the Obama party. Thus the "O." It was a lot of fun and I felt like I was in an episode of the West Wing when we watched his victory speech and the supporters at the party with us we're cheering and chanting along with the people on tv.













The fellas












Me and Jimmy's 4 year old son Conner having fun after Bible Study tonight.

















So yeah, as you can see, very fun times. I just hope it keeps on rockin!

21

Sorry for the lack of posting. I've been getting used to my crazy schedule here at Harding, and really just haven't had a whole lot of free time.

Well, today (actually yesterday as of 20 minutes ago) I turned 21. It was a great little birthday. We've really got a great group here now, (which we affectionately call "The Family") and we've been having lots of fun. Laura got me tickets to the Foo Fighters concert last Friday and it was incredibly rockin and lots of fun. Today we went out for Chinese food, played some Balderdash, snuck around the new Pharmacy building that's under construction, played with the Microfilm in the library and looked at the New York Times on the day I was born (big day.....Gorbachaev was reforming his country, Regan just had the State of the Union, Challenger explosion anniversary, and Phil Simms and the Giants had just won the Super Bowl......hmmm......), and then we all sat in a hippy circle in Harding park and laughed a lot. It was just a great day and I am so blessed to have such great people around to celebrate with. And don't worry......there was no drinking involved on my 21st. I had a sinus cold, but that was the closest I came from not being fully myself.

God blessed me so much during my twentieth year. I feel like I've grown a lot, done some good work, had a lot of fun and laughter, grown in my friendships, made many many new friends, and am on my way to becoming the man God wants me to be. I only hope and pray that my twenty-first year could be just as good, and that I can continue to grow in ways that I couldn't even possibly imagine.

Thank you to everyone who sent me facebook messages, text messages, and even old fashioned face to face birthday wishes. You all mean so much to me and I love you all a lot. God bless!

Hope Is A Good Thing

"For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it."

-Senator Barack Obama (victory speech at the Iowa Caucus)

I wanted to post this quote not for political reasons, but because it is a beautiful statement on the aspect of hope. It shows how hope is not something that you sit around and wait for. It is not passive, but an active element in our lives if we truly wish to follow our hopes. It is not sitting idly by and saying, "I hope that one day these terrible things will change." It is following your hopes in order to change the world.

As Christians, we sometimes get get stuck in a rut of hope. We hope for heaven and we hope for the day when we don't have to worry about the fallen and broken nature of this world. And while that is true, we must also have hope that God wishes to establish his kingdom here and have the hope that he can use us as his instruments in order to bring about love, joy, and peace in this dark world. We do not simply sit around and lazily hope, but we must use that hope to spur us on to do amazing things for God. We act because we hope and we hope because we act.

In The Shawshank Redemption Andy Dufrense, after escaping form prison, writes a letter to his friend Red and says, "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." As Christians, we have the greatest hope ever. And we cannot ever let that hope die. Instead we must bring hope to a hopeless world and let our hope shine out of us every second of every day.

The writer of Hebrews puts it beautifully when he says in 10:23-24:

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds."

May we be a people who hold unswervingly to our hopes and may we live them out every single day.

I'm Back

It's been a long time since I actually posted a blog on here. My bad. I have this thing where if I don't blog for a while then I feel like my first post back should be really awesome and then I don't ever feel like putting in the effort to making an awesome post and then it just goes longer before I blog and it just becomes this vicious exponential cycle.

So, I figured I just need to start getting back into the swing of writing again. So I'll just give some quick little tidbits from my life real quick and then hopefully I can start writing substantial things here soon.

• It's been a fantastic Christmas break. My sleep schedule is completely messed up. I don't get in from hanging with the guys usually until somewhere in between 3-6 a.m. We hang out, act stupid, have great talks, flirt with waitresses at Waffle House, play games, and laugh and laugh and laugh. I sleep late, watch some Lost or How I Met Your Mother (I got both for Christmas), eat dinner and hang out with Mom, and then start hanging with the guys again. This is another reason that I haven't been blogging, because I've been too busy. It's been incredible. I've had so much fun and laughed more than ever before.
• Christmas was nice. Mom and I had a nice quiet little Christmas. We watched some movies and of course It's a Wonderful Life (a Pyeatt family tradition), made some brownies, called Laura and Lucy on Christmas day, and had a nice time. We were both kind of sad that the girls were around the world for Christmas (We dealt with it in different ways. I sort of forgot Christmas was coming until it was suddenly right on me and Mom called me from work the week before and said, "What if we just went to the beach for Christmas?"), but we made it through and had a good solid Chistmas '07.
  
• The Titans and the Cowboys made the playoffs! I'll have to have a bigger post on this here soon, but I'm super stoked for the upcoming playoffs. It's been a really fun regular season and it's been a lot of fun to see my guys win some big games to clinch the playoffs.
• I've got mixed feelings about going back to school. I'm excited about a lot of things, but I've enjoyed being home so much that I don't really want to leave. I'll just have to enjoy this last week at home as much as possible and then all the good things that Searcy has to offer as well. It should be a great semester (if I can ever register for classes!) and there should be a lot of cool things about it.
• My boy Barack Obama won the Iowa Causus tonight! We'll see how this will affect the overall campaign, but it should be interesting. Hopefully this will get our Bisons for Obama group actually moving when we come back to school. And I get to vote in my first primary! Should I register in Tennessee or Arkansas? Hmmm....
• I've watched a lot of great movies lately. Charlie Wilson's War, Walk Hard, National Treasure 2, Sweeny Todd, I Am Legend, American History X, all of which were fantastic. But my favorite was a little independent movie called Once that Mom rented. It's a great movie about a musician who gets some help from a girl to record some songs and get his music career started. It's brilliant.

Well, that's all I've got so far. I'll try to post here soon. God bless!