Paul was a prophet of God that went on a journey to tell others about him. Paul wasn’t always a follower. He first wanted to kill other Christians, but then he was blinded by God. He couldn’t see until Ananias talked to him and he became a believer. After that, he went and told others about Jesus. He was also put in jail for what he believed. He trusted God through that situation and God lead him out. I feel like God is work in my life in different ways. Now when I am around my friends or people I am close to you can see that I might be loud and social. If I get to know a person I usually find myself becoming more communicative and more comfortable with talking a lot. I feel that God will use me, my personality and talents to do the work of God. I know God will keep working in my life and I need to trust him.

The persecution project is when we are all put into groups and we all learn about different countries. From there we learn about the general information, persecution facts, and how we can help. For my project my group learned about Iraq. In Iraq the persecution level is very high and a lot of Christians are fleeing from the country. They are all afraid of getting hurt or even death. One thing I learned was that only 225,000 people in Iraq are Christians. That might not seem little but they only represent 0.6% of the country. That’s because they live in fear and all flee from the country. There are many more ways they persecute the Christians like bombing churches. As you can tell Iraq is a really bad place to live.

Keynote on Iraq persecution:

Iraq – Christian Persecution-1mgm6ki

We just did the spaghetti and marshmallow tower. It is supposed to hold an egg in a “earthquake” for 10 seconds. We had a few things that didn’t go well. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it all in one day, so the marshmallows harden and it was very hard to get the rest of the tower made. As you can see are base isn’t very well built so the tower started to lean. Some things did go well. The cube at the top is good, and the egg sits right on top of it. Overall, I tower was fine, but it had a lot of downs to it.

One thing that I think will work the best is pipe cleaners. When you twist them together they hold really well. One thing that I think isn’t going to work the best is straws. They might come undone and break. One thing we didn’t use was the popsicle sticks. We cant bend them and make them into a chain because they will snap. I wish we could use it because that would be nice and strong but we couldn’t bend them.A thing that we did use was the twine, it is very strong.

This 8th grade year has been great so far. One thing I enjoyed this year is social studies. I like how we get to do projects, and pretend that we are from back then trying to find new land. One thing I learned this year is how to be a leader. At camp we learned that we are the oldest at the school and we have a lot of responsibility. We have a lot of responsibility with home work and showing how to act during class and out in the hallways. One thing I am looking forward to is singing in front of every one in the chapels.

Last week we made boats out of mostly random materials. We made two mini sails with a big sail/wall in the back. The big sail/wall worked great to catch wind. We tried to blow up a ballon and let all the air out when it went in the late. That just made it sink in the front.

This summer was the best summer yet. This year was my first year to go to Mackinac Island and the upper peninsula. I found out that I like sea salt caramel fudge! My favorite thing in the upper peninsula is Tahquamenon Falls. I also went to my cottage a lot. My cottage is up in Silver Lake, and I love to go up in the sand dunes.  I also went to camp with Jaiden and Kendal. The camp I went to was Grace Adventures. My favorite thing there was the big long zip line. Most of all, I had fun with friends and family this summer.

My country is Zimbabwe. In the beginning, I didn’t know anything about this country. I liked learning about this country but it was hard to represent it. It was hard for me because my government was against democracy. It was also hard because we had to make up things against democracy when we had been learning about what makes a good democracy. I like having the debates and asking people questions about how they were going to achieve their plan. My country worked with the DRC and Somalia.  My resolution was that people shouldn’t vote until they were 25, because people were unwise and didn’t know anything about democracy. We didn’t have a lot of votes on that. I think it was because at the beginning of the debate we said that they have to be over 60. That was not a very good idea.

In Invictus, an example of reconciliation is when Nelson Mandela worked together with Francois. At the beginning of the move, the white and blacks were not friends at all they never talked and they judged each other by there skin. Also at the beginning, the white people had green grass, nice fences, and big buildings in the background. While the blacks space was dusty with dirt, and broken down fences.

The character that changed the most was Francois. It was because they played rugby with the black kids and it was really nice of them but if there was Nelson Mandela they probably would never do that because they thought they were way different. In the end, he hung out with everyone it didn’t matter what they look like.

At the beginning of the day, we all wrote down words and phrases that we thought of about Africa. A lot of it was about poverty, the animals, it is hot there, and it was poor. The first thing we talk about was it is hot there. Really we can’t just assume that it is hot there because there are desserts and savannahs. In the USA we have hot days and also deserts but we don’t say this is a hot country. We talked about animals, poverty, and other things but after that, I think that is when I learned a lot. We looked at 22 pictures and wrote down if we thought they were from Africa or not. That was hard to think about.

We went on a field trip to the The Center Of The Arts to watch a documentary about native americans and people still live like them today. What struck me in the documentary is that when they have a big celebration they really celebrate it BIG! There is dancing and drums and a lot of other things that they celebrate with. It is also loud. What also struck me was what they think creation started out like. They had to have a really big imagination and the world around them to think it through. When I heard if the kids were bad at the boarding schools they would beat them that really surprised me. We also got to look at there art. I really like a basket that had a top so the baskets shape was like an egg. It was blue with gold weaved through it. It also had a flower on the top with leafs. I thought it was pretty and kind of looked like a pineapple. I realized that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did about Native Americans. I also didn’t know that Native Americans live in west Michigan and Grand Rapids. I learned a lot there.

Living on a dollar a day meant to me that we have so much. Four guys went to live in Guatemala for 2 months. They realized that some people could even get a job. I realized that sometimes we think that we don’t have anything we want. Some people don’t even have good jobs or can’t o to school because it is to much. We have it lucky and can go to school and work. We all have a bed, cooking utensils, sink, clean water, and so much more. All the had was a house some with stoves and a kitchen but in some places they didn’t even have a bed.

La escuela en Costa Rica.  El papel es encima de mesa. Un lápiz esta encima de mesa. La biblioteca esta enfrente de salon. La puerta esta a la derecha de la mesa.

San Jose esta a la izquierda de Cartago. Limón esta a la derecha de Cartago. San Jose esta cerca de Limón.

This summer I when to my cottage ,a lot! We always go to our cottage in Silver Lake.  We race at a race track on our quads. It was so much fun!