It's been a rough month. My life right now is as follows: wake up as early as I can (usually 10-2pm), go to campus, study all day, go home (2:30am), sleep (4am), repeat. It is not a great schedule.
However, I am going to say that I feel I am pretty on track for school. I have gotten most of the assignments done in the for the first two exams I have that are next week. In the midst of all of this studying, I realized that I have started to neglect my body and my health. I have been taking vitamins, trying to eat oatmeal for breakfast, drinking lots of water, and eating yogurt to try and stay as healthy as I can. But in reality, I have been eating out a lot (even Subway isn't the healthiest). I haven't been sleeping a lot either, or at regular times. Sometimes after I come home from studying on campus, it's 3am but I'm not tired. I shower and I continue studying until I realize that it's bright outside - that it's morning already when I'm about to sleep. This was bad. After I realized that it wasn't the artificial night lighting that was seeping into my room, I realized that I really needed to fix my sleeping schedule.
On top of that, this morning I was talking to my suitemate and he is a really healthy guy. I was talking to him about how I have been eating out because it takes me so long to get groceries and come back and etc, but he told me how he got his groceries done in less than an hour. He tried to help me think of what I could eat that was fresh and fast, and I really appreciate that he cares. So I am going to go grocery shopping after I write this. I am going to bring some fresh foods back to my classmates on campus too so they can be healthy.
I have been learning a lot about what it means to share my faith to my friends, my peers. I have been hanging out a lot with my program friends now, since we study together. They have started to take care of me by making sure that I get home safe every night, by seeing if I need food or coffee, and in return they ask me questions about homework and I try to help them out (since I usually end up learning it before they do - these guys are very last minute crammers). But it helps me to reinforce what I think I know, so it helps! There are also other smarter people who study there, so it's like a flow of knowledge. We go to the next level up when one of us doesn't know. One day after a rough week of handing in report after report and multiple projects, we couldn't study - we couldn't take it any more. So we played this new board game (new to me) called Citadels - it's really fun! I actually felt like throughout this time of studying, playing games, and encouraging each other when one of us breaks down and gets consumed by the fact that we think we're not going to make it.
I was talking to one of my classsmates/friends yesterday about how our other friend went home this weekend to see his family and how he's a family man and how he cares. I expressed how I hadn't been home in a really long time (almost 1 month) and then he said, " Do you just not care?" which really made me really sad as I didn't see that connection. I haven't seen my family in a really long time and it didn't really occur to me that it's been so long since I've been so caught up with all this school work. =( School sucks. I need to be more like my friend who cares more about family than school. I also think he can do it because he is super smart. But the fact that he's going at such a crucial time (exam time) is really something I respect.
Anyway - so about sharing my faith. A lot of my classmates have this image of Christians that make it difficult for me to think about how I can share my faith with them in a way that is different. I have this problem where I am scared that they will judge me - which I should not have because if I truly believe in God and that He is in control and that the lives of my friends are more important than how they see me - if this is true, then I should not care about how they may judge me and just do my best to share the Gospel with them. I have prayed for an opportunity to share, but I feel like it may have been insincere - I only pray it so I don't feel bad about not wanting to share. All in all I feel like that's what this whole term has been about. I have been reading Acts - and seeing how Paul and the other followers are so bold in their faith really makes me feel like I should be doing much better. Paul was so thoroughly persecuted and I am just afraid of a little judgement. Even from reading Acts 27 today, I can clearly see how God takes care of His people - Paul and some other prisoners were sailing for Rome and God promised Paul that all of them would make it to shore alive, despite the storm and shipwreck. At the end of the chapter, it says, "in this way everyone reached land in safety".
So if you are reading this, please pray for me that I might be bold in sharing my faith with others. Please pray that God will allow them to listen to me and that He may change how they see Christianity. Anyway, I hope to be able to post an update. I am going to get groceries now! YAY!! I haven't set foot in a grocery store in WAY TOO LONG (about 2-3 weeks).
