Earthquake training

As you have probably already seen on the news, the East Coast got its largest magnitude earthquake since World War II, a 5.8 on the Richter Scale that caused even the Pentagon to evacuate. What you may not have realized, however, is that its epicenter was 20 miles away from our lovely little compound here in VA. It was also my first experience with an earthquake. Talk about crazy.

After an emotionally exhausting morning of story after story about persecuted believers [hopefully more stories on that later], we were all sitting like zombies in our chairs, listening to goals and visions, when suddenly, we hear a low rumble. The ground starts to shake, rattling pens, cups, tables...

It's amazing how many thoughts can go through your mind in mere seconds.

"Did someone drop something massive out in the lobby? There's no way that was it. Thunder? No... Jets? No... Holy cow, is this an earthquake?? What are you supposed to do in an earthquake? I was never trained for this! Quick, what's everyone else doing? Getting under the table? Sounds goods to me. *gets under table* Wait, people are running outside. Are you supposed to do that? Oop, they're telling us to evacuate! Run for it!"

By the time we evacuated the building, everything had stopped. What felt like minutes really only lasted 45 seconds. Time is a very strange thing.

All that night, awareness was peaked, and we all had slight panic moments when we felt tremors later that evening.

Then, last night, I woke up around 1 to another rumble and some shaking. I'll be honest, though, I was still in that half-awake/half-dreaming mode, and after I woke up a little more, I didn't know if I had just dreamt it all or if there really was an earthquake. But then this morning, someone confirmed that we had indeed experienced a 4.5 earthquake.

And now, Hurricane Irene is making her way up the East Coast.

Not even six weeks here in VA, and I've experienced my first earthquake and soon my first hurricane. What a week.

SEAPs rock

Saturday my lovely SEAP family went to Kings Dominion!... which happens to look exactly like Kings Island! It poured the first hour we were there, but we rode the Spongebob indoor theater ride and outlasted the rain. It turned out to be a pretty day, and we were able to ride to our heart's content.

Saturday my lovely SEAP family went to Kings Dominion!... which happens to look exactly like Kings Island! It poured the first hour we were there, but we rode the Spongebob indoor theater ride and outlasted the rain. It turned out to be a pretty day, and we were able to ride to our heart's content.

This week's emphasis was on Northern Africa/Middle East and Central Asia. So to our cultural time, the women were required to wear long sleeves, long pants, and head coverings. It was quite the experience. The men and women were separated, and it was strange not being able to tell who anyone was from the back.

I played my first ever game of soccer! For whatever reason, my parents never enrolled me in sports as a kid - perhaps because I was the squirt who always got hurt - but consequently, I lack any kind of athletic capabilities. So when I say I "played" soccer, I really mean I contributed little to nothing. I first had to get over my intial reaction of running away from the ball (hey - what can I say? It's natural instinct! A fast-moving ball is headed towards me and people are charging at me... self-defense!) but after my initial avoiding the ball and illegal move of protecting my face with my hands from getting smashed by the ball, I at least wasn't a hinderance. Everyone was super nice and encouraging.

On a brighter note, I have an announcement to make - we have baby squirrels in our quad. Five of them to be exact (can we say flashback to the Chasity/baby squirrel incident of '09?). These squirrels are itty bitty. Tomorrow, their rescuer is taking them to an animal refuge to be taken care of. Our quad has suddenly become a lot more popular now that we have baby animals.

"For it is you who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness. For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. This God - his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him." - Psalm 18:28-30

“Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” Josh. 3:5

Welcome to the world, Grayson Lee!

My dear cousin Emilie gave birth to a healthy baby boy, their first baby, Monday night. I’m in love with him already.

Life here at FPO goes by pretty quickly. It’s crazy to think that I’m already in week 3. Days are long; we’re in classes during the week from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., if not later. We’re learning about everything on the planet that’s related to ministry or could prepare us for life overseas. Each week has a theme. The first week was more of an intro to life here and what we’ll be doing during FPO. Last week was focusing on personal discipleship, which was awesome. We had 3-hour sessions on prayer and 5-hour sessions on doctrine, all followed up with details like payroll or insurance. By Friday, my brain was gone. So much stinkin information in five days. All I can pray is that I’ll recall this stuff when I need it.

This week is affinity week, which has been really awesome. Monday we studied anthropology, and Tuesday we broke into worldview workshops. Meals are even based on what week it is. We had two special meals at lunch where we ate like different cultures. The first meal was bortsch (pardon my spelling), rye bread, and sour cream, based on Central Asian culture. The second was Middle Eastern. I forgot the name, but it was some sort of “salad” (picture fruit salsa, except it was onions and some other diced vegetables) and meatballs that we ate by tearing off pieces of flatbread and grabbing the food with it. Quite delicious actually and both fun experiences. Unfortunately I’ve heard we only have one more.

Visa details are still being worked out. I got my paperwork for my initial visa today, and my departure date was pushed back four days to October 9 for my language school partner.

New requests:

• Stability and consistency in emotions and thoughts. I feel like it’s the middle of the school semester, and I can’t form intelligent, coherent sentences because I’m so zapped. And it’s been a super emotional time for many, many different reasons (I think my record for days crying in a row now is up to 12). No worries, a lot of those days were empathizing with others. I’m not THAT distressed.

• Discernment in knowing what’s truth in my head and what are lies, and strength for fighting those lies. I’m constantly reminding myself that it’s true that I can’t do this by myself, that I’m human and sinful and in need of Him, but the great, awesome hope is that He is my sufficiency and power.

• Emilie and Josh as they are trying to figure out how to raise a baby and are getting used to there being a third one in their family.