God worked in Paul’s life to prepare him to be a missionary in a couple of ways. One of the ways is when he was a child, Paul learned many languages and knew the Bible and the Apocryphal Books well. Another way God helped prepare him is as a trade Paul learned to make tents. Like Paul, I have my own life experiences and gifts that God could use to further his kingdom. I’ve been in a lot hard situations, so I can relate with people who are going through similar things. I’m good with technology and can write well.

Distance learning certainly has been interesting. I haven’t had many challenges throughout this away from school experience. It’s been rewarding to finish assignments at the same time as I begin them, so that I don’t have to think about when I’m going to get them done if I didn’t finish. Does that make sense? I’ve enjoyed having time to do activities that I haven’t had time to do because of school such as: programming, playing video games, and reading. I hope that in this time of uncertainty I will be able to grow in my relationship with God.

1.  What did you do for the Stephen project (ie. newspaper, comic, etc.)?

I did a newspaper article.

2.  What did you do well on the project?  (or what are you proud of and what you want me to look at when I grade it?)

In my newspaper article I twisted the facts to make Stephen sound awful like a normal reporter would.

3.  How do you think you would feel if you were really observing this event?

Not great, I don’t think I would enjoy watching someone get stoned.

4.  Re-read Acts 7:57-58. How would you feel towards Saul?

I’m not sure. I don’t understand why they’re laying their coats at his feet.

5.  What do you think encouraged these early Christians? In other words, why did the early Christians keep up the faith despite the persecution?

They obviously loved Jesus and thought it was very important that others also love him. They must have loved people as well otherwise they wouldn’t have risked their own lives to try to save them.

My Newspaper Article: Stoning of Stephen

Thus far the year has been okay. It hasn’t been my favorite… yet. I had a friend that was in every single one of my classes the previous year. This friend made school exciting last year. This year my friend is not in any of my classes. (except for band but even then I can’t interact with this friend.) The year became a lot less interesting with that fact alone. I’ve enjoyed the academics side of it though. I really like all of my teachers. This is the first year I’ve enjoyed social studies. I’m not sure if that’s due to the curriculum or the teacher. I suspect it’s a good mix of both. I’m fond of science class. I find very interesting and intriguing. I’ve learned some different things this year. Not only from school, but from general life. I believe the most important thing I’ve learned so far this year is how to set priorities in order to not become stressed. For example this past week we have had MAP testing. From what I have observed the teachers have given us homework planning that we do this homework during the block time once we have finished the test. I generally take longer than other students on the test. I’m not sure if I’m slow or if there is a different reason. Due to that I normally have a large amount of homework to do at home. I’m also a procrastinator, so that doesn’t help. I found doing most of my homework directly after school helps me not become overwhelmed. This year I’m looking forward to the play among other things.

Immediately after I got out of school I left. So did everybody else. What makes me different from most people is that most people went home. I left for Chicago. Then I left again. This time I got on a plane. This plane took me to colorado. You might be thinking, that sounds fun. And it was… The next day. The travel, however, was no picnic. Our flight became delayed due to weather. Our flight was already pretty late at night and now it was even later. If you didn’t know, I have two younger brothers. The first one is Luke, he is ten years old and all he wanted to do was sleep. The second one is Ben, he is two years old and all he wanted to do is play. We tried to get Ben to sleep and he didn’t want to. I’m pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing, is the whole flight going to be like this? Luckily, it wasn’t. Ben watched as we took off, then fell asleep almost immediately after. I was watching The Big Bang Theory on the flight. I think I fell asleep for a bit, but I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that I don’t remember the entire flight. After we picked up our rental vehicle and went to our hotel, it was all downhill from there. Throughout the week we saw many things including Zion National Park, The Hoover Dam, and The Grand Canyon. Overall, it was the best week of my three months away from school and made the airport madness worth it.

Questions

1. Do you hold a ‘single story’ on Africa? Currently no. Previously yes. Until I saw the TED Talk on ‘single stories’ I always saw Africa as a place of people in poverty, of people who needed to be saved. I now realize Africa is similar to the U.S. and other places in the way that just because you often hear about the poor people in Africa doesn’t mean Africa only has poor people. Just because hear a story about an American murderer doesn’t mean everyone in America is a murderer. 
2. What stories might you be missing? I was missing a lot of stories about people who are rich and have a lot, and people whose lives are very similar to my own. I never used to think an African person could be wealthy, but after hearing more from school as well as doing a little research of my own I now realize there are people like myself in Africa.
3. What is the ‘danger of a single story’? The danger of a ‘single story’ is stereotyping people on what little we know to be true. It is dangerous when we hear one thing about someone, someplace, something, over and over and over again because then it puts that idea in our mind that everywhere in that place is like that, that person is only that, that thing is only that.