The last week of Christmas Break was absolutely amazing. I got to spend a few days with MOBsters preparing for the shows at the Texas Bowl, and then we ended up creaming WMU 38-14 which was amazing to watch. The first Rice bowl game victory in memorable history. We played a lot of mafia in the hotel rooms, I took lots of pictures, and I got to grow closer to old friends as well as new ones.
Then I had a brief break for New Years Eve where I went out to lunch with Andrea and hung out with her for about 3 hours, which was one of the highlights of the break. Then I went to a basketball game against A&M which we were acually winning in for parts of it. And I celebrated my first New Year away from my family, which was interesting. I feel like I'm starting to grow up a bit more and move on to my own life away from them, but at the same time I'm still pretty close to them.
The rest of this entry will be mostly focused on the Winter Conference, which was amazing. I learned a lot of things at that conference and set some goals for this semester and beyond. Some of the things that were talked about were how we need to have strong relationships with not just God but also with each other. The vertical and horizontal motions that the main speaker used will be stuck with me for a while. Loving others is just as important as loving God, and I need to remember that love is the central mission that we as Christians should have.
Greed is an ugly, nasty thing. I'm really hoping that once I actually have money I'll be able to get myself to give as much of it as possible. I've noticed that poorer, simpler people tend to be much more happier than wealthy and famous people. If I can give money, I can both bring myself closer to that happy, just as much as I need to live comfortably, economic level and help others who need more money to reach that point as well. Everyone will win. I really hope I can remember this in 3 years when I have money to give and am not constantly asking others like my parents to support me financially.
I also thought about how important relationships with other Christians can be. In the last workshop I went to, one of the girls at my table said that the problem that the three sample struggling Christians that were portrayed in one of the speaker's examples had was that they were all trying to do it on their own. I realized that that may have been my biggest problem this past semester. Last year I was much more involved with Cru socials and met with Mithun for discipleship every week so I was constantly surrounding myself with other believers who were struggling with the same things that I was who I could discuss things with. This semester, on the other hand, I haven't been in a discipleship relationship with anyone and have been unable to go to almost every social, as well as most of the Agape meetings. My two plans for this were to ask Kyle about discipling me and then also forming a group of Jones guys to meet with every week to talk about what God was teaching us and to pray for each other. Then Pat said that we were going to switch the structure of Agape this semester to make small groups like the one I was envisioning, which was perfect.
There were several other things that I was thinking and praying about, but it's late right now and I can't remember them. I'll update this as I remember more of my thoughts.
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