The Chronicles of Blake – Volume LXXXVIII

Well HELLO Again America (and some other countries out there)!!!

You know what? I know it’s going to be a perfect year… because my room extension is 7777. Not only that, but it is a very cold room with the AC constantly running, so I am living like the penguins. Anyhow… let’s get to the main story…

How I am Here - Once upon a summer I had a great summer at the Wilds working as a counselor. I grew SO much during that time! God knew exactly what I needed and opened all the doors for me to go there, and I very gladly walked right through them. It was not only a blast, but I had a great time digging deep down in God’s Word and getting to know Him better! (if you would like to see how things went, I had weekly updates over the summer on my site) I would have to say that it was absolutely essential, and that I learned things there that I would not have learned anywhere else… especially in regards to working with youth. The greatest thing was just seeing guys come into my cabin week after week and seeing them leave as totally different people. Sometimes I just want to say, “I want to get into the ministry as fast as I can!” But, the reality is, I have to finish school and get training there too. Here lies the problem. I DEFINITELY did not have funds to go back! I didn’t make much money working at the Wilds, and I was getting a bit concerned when I had about 2 days to get to school, and I owed A LOT!!! That is when God said, “Watch me work.” I called around to a bunch of offices down at BJ all morning, and was amazed as I heard what had been going into my account: a $1,000 anonymous gift from the Wilds, about $1200 that my church gave (partly as a love offering), an amazing $2,850 from a scholarship, and a $3,600 grant, and MORE!!! Then I had just over the amount that I needed to come back. And… came back!!!

And Then… - Then after I greatly rejoiced, I came down and spent a morning with Erika on Saturday, which was awesome after a whole summer of being apart, which, I cannot lie, was very rough. Then… [insert scary music] I checked in and got all my classes and stuff figured out. I didn’t have much money left over for books, but ONCE AGAIN, God provided enough money to get all the books I needed!

Awkwaaaard – Speaking of buying books, there is one class where the notes were written by Mr. Valentine, and they didn’t have the notes in on Monday. So I went into the book store, not thinking too much I walked back to the textbook pickup area and asked the girl running the table, “Do you have the Valentine notes?” She stopped and looked at me strange for a few moments and said, “Uh, noooo…” Still not catching on I just said, “Oh. OK, I’ll come back for them later.” I started to walk out, turned around, and said, “Ooooh, hehe. I meant the NOTES written by Mr. VALENTINE for the YOUTH BLOCK!” and everybody who was standing around all confused all said, “Oooooh.”

Decorating for Greeks – On Tuesday afternoon I was in my room getting ready to sleep for a long winter’s nap when I received a phone call from the Alpha VP, Robbie who said, “We are going to be on campus in 20 minutes. Meet us in the dining common with all the Alpha stuff you can find when we get here.” SO I frantically grabbed all my Alpha t-shirts, posters, wooden signs, rubber chickens, etc. and ran to the dining common. There we decorated for “Greek night” and right there, right above everyone as they walked into the line, was my Alpha Jersey Tee with my number and name on the back and a small cleverly hidden stain on the underarm of my right arm sleeve. Then I met Nikki and Clayton and Erika and their friend Sarah for dinner. But Sarah didn’t eat with us because I scared her off and some other people ate with us instead.

A Little Time with my “dad” – On Thursday we went to a seminar thing, then Rich asked me what my plans were afterward and I said something about grab-n-go and he said, “Come to the snack shop with me,” so he treated me to lunch at the snack shop and it was a good time to catch up with each other after a long summer then went back to my room before class and chilled in my fridge room and it was really nice of him to do lunch with me and I enjoyed it very much. I think that is the longest run-on sentence I’ve ever written. Oh, and Rich is my BJ-adopted dad, hence the title of this paragraph. :D

I Need to Go Running! – So I’m in this class called the Youth Block, and the whole semester is comprised of 2-hour classes every single day. The teachers are mostly actual youth pastors coming in to teach for the week. We were introduced to how things roll in this class; the teacher brings in candy. LOTS of candy, like chocolate, snickers bars, M&M’s, etc, and passes it around in class. Then at the end of the week he calls up the next teacher and says, “This is what I did for the guys… Now you have to top that!” This last week was great. Each class day Mr. Peterson brought in a 5-pound bag of assorted Hershey’s candy bars, and on Friday he took the whole class out to CiCi’s for lunch! It was great!!! I can get used to this type of class.
My other classes are going well. I am only taking 5 classes all together at one given time, but that is 19 credits worth. Keeping me busy, but they are good. I am also taking Poetic Books (let’s try again), Pulpit Speech, Preacher Boys, and…. ADVANCED PAINTING 2!!! That one is going to be fun! More on that later!

She’s Growing Up – This was also a big week for Kaylee. This past week she also started kindergarten! She is so excited about it, and if you ask her, she will go on and on about how much fun it is! In fact, she learned how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she said it to me word-perfect on the phone! I also got to see this summer how she learned how to tie her shoes, in which she did a demonstration for me when I got home from camp. That is one smart girl! [sigh] My baby sister’s growing up. But she will always be my baby sister.

Randomness and Roommates – I have 2 roommates this semester in… my room. Their names are Woody (who has lots of shoes) and Tim (he’s a freshman). It’s kind of interesting, because Woody has grad privileges and doesn’t really HAVE to do anything he doesn’t want to do, and Tim is a freshman, who is just… kinda confused. We all have a lot of fun together, though, and get along great! The other night I was in my room around 10:15 with Tim, and I said, “Hey, want to have some fun?” He was uncertain, but I did it anyway: I opened our door, turned all my volume on my computer all the way up, turned my speakers all the way up, and blasted such wonderful songs as “Oompa Loompa, When You Wish Upon a Star, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (the MIDI version), It’s a Small World, etc.” Tim sat in horror as the wind blew and he could no longer think. People came out of their rooms to see what was going on, Steve from across the hall came in and tried to strangle me, etc. It was all great fun and Tim is now oriented. I do have a feeling that Tim The Freshman and Woody are going to make it into a lot of my Newsletters (and maybe some excerpts from our room quote board). Did I tell y’all that Tim sells Cutco knives as a job and does in-home demonstrations? Pretty cool.

Lending a Hand – Let me tell you all: It is absolutely wonderful to be down here with Erika again. It was a very hard summer, as we only had a few hours to talk every week. But we made it through. It was rough though. Now I get to see her every day. Even though sometimes it isn’t too much because of our responsibilities to school, we still do get to see each other every day!!! So the other day we were studying in the Social Parlor (as the library was not yet open) and it got really loud for studying. So [even though I try not to do this too much and will research my options before doing so,] we went over to the Riley Room (“the couch factory, the dark side, the drooling parlor,” whatever you want to call it) and studied there. Now, there is a hostess that walks around this dark loveseat-filled room and makes sure no one is touching or being too gross (in which case they aren’t doing their jobs too well :). So I saw the hostess walking around and pulled a big ol’ cushion from behind me and put it between Erika and me. When the hostess came by she just smiled and said, “Nice…” Then I told her, “Just making your job a little bit easier!” She liked that.

Graves 220 Quote of the Week – “When did we get a dog?” (Tim, the freshman)

PICTURES of STUFF!!!



1) Here is a Picture of me balancing a rock. It was so impressive that some people came and made a sign for me. This was taken at Backbone State Park near Strawberry Point, IA, I believe.



2) This is a cute picture I took of Kaylee and Dad walking down a beach on Lake Michigan at Door County, WI. Isn’t Kaylee looking so “grown up?”



3) This is a picture of Erika and me hugging Winnie the Pooh the first day we were down here together, and right before we registered for the year. So… at that point she WAS allowed to wear pants and we WERE allowed to be out with Nikki and Clayton. :)

Eeeek! It’s a….. – I purposefully saved this one for last, because (1) it is the strangest and (2) because it happened last night as I was typing this, and resulted in me not getting it done last night. I was sitting at my desk typing away after 11:00 and Tim was in his bed studying when he said, “Uh, I hear something moving by my bed… and something smells weird.” And I laughed and started going on about how we should “Watch out, there’s a Chupacabra (a mythical blood-sucking goat killer) in the room!” As I was going on about this, a little mouse went scurrying across the room and ran in between the sink and Tim’s bed. I said, “AAAA! A mouse!” and went to go get the custodial crew chief of Graves, Josh Brown. We then discovered dozens of peanut butter and jelly packets behind Tim’s bed that he was feasting on. (The mouse, not Tim) and as Josh was removing those we found an open bottle of medicine pills behind the sink. That is when I got scared, because not only did we have a mouse, we had a drugged-up mouse in our room. It was a very exciting evening and we still haven’t found him, but the mouse’s name is Woody.

OK, I’m done. Bye!

-Blake “The Mouse Tamer”
(608) 477-1415
bjunewsletter.com
I Thess 5:16-18 “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks…”