Trying New Things

It's been another full week here at the seminary, and more things have happened than I expected.

This week I decided to volunteer to take a more active role in the Morning Prayer service put on by Bexley Hall. I will be officiating in a couple of weeks and will both officiate and read the lessons several times this semester. I'm looking forward to it because I really love going to Morning Prayer, as I find it to be a good way to start any day, and I will have the opportunity to practice leading and chanting in front of a small, supportive group of people.

I also ended up volunteering and being selected for a role I wasn't expecting to take on. We have a campus group called Life Together which works on creating a rich community life for the entire campus. I am one of the Junior class representatives to Life Together, and I think it will be an interesting experience. I hope that we come up with ways to keep this community going, because I love the community here so much. That role also meant that I attended a faculty meeting on Friday with other representatives, which was certainly interesting.

Classes are continuing to keep me busy, although the workload is not awful this semester. I'm fairly certain it will be more difficult in coming semesters. I am enjoying most of the reading I'm doing, but of course there is always some classwork I will find more enjoyable than others. One of the more interesting things I am doing is working on an exegetical paper about the story in Matthew in which Jesus walks on water. It's fascinating to read the studies that have been done on the text, and next week I'll be pulling that all together into a paper of my own.

I am also working on a contextual assignment for my Faith Seeking Understanding class, and I am actually going to ask for help with it from those who read this and are members of Abiding Grace Lutheran Church. I am going to be doing my assignment on Abiding Grace, and that includes a timeline of important events and memories from the life of the church. If anybody wishes to let me know something that they think was important in the history of the church, please let me know. My project will be better if I'm not only relying on my own memory. I think that should be an interesting project, especially since I so much love Abiding Grace and I think it has been going through a wonderful journey since its conception.

Other than school things, I am keeping pretty busy exploring Columbus and seeing what it has to offer. This month I am visiting churches to attempt to find what will fit well for me for a Ministry in Context site, and visiting a different church every week is interesting so far. My friend Erica is going with me to many of them, because she does not have a MIC requirement, so we are having a good time finding out what is offered around Columbus. I'm hoping to find a place that will be a good fit for me and will offer a lot of opportunity for me to learn and grow.

This morning I went out thrift store shopping with Erica, and I have found that that may be how I buy clothes for quite awhile. We had a great time, and I bought several things for very little. I love adding new clothes to my wardrobe, but of course since I'm trying to only take out what I need in loans while I'm here, I don't have a lot of extra money floating around.

I'm also still working at the library and on the hospitality team, and both are jobs I really enjoy. I love both libraries and hospitality, so the jobs fit my personality well and getting paid to do my homework in the library is not half bad either.

Now I'm off to do a bit more reading for the weekend, and then tomorrow I'm going to rest and learn how to crochet!

Kathryn