There were a couple of ways that God was working in Paul’s life, even before he began to be a missionary. For example, as a boy, Paul spoke both Greek and Hebrew, so he would have been able to reach out to all kinds of audiences. He also knew how to make tents, which may have seemed like a strange skill. However, when he was traveling he probably needed to know to make tents for various situations where he or someone else needed a tent. Just as God was preparing Paul for his missionary work, he also prepares us by giving us gifts and talents we can use. I think that God has given me the gift of music that I can use to reach out to others. Sometimes people feel even more of a connection with music than with something else. Worship music can be a great way to connect with God. I think one thing/experience I have had has also really helped. My family sometimes listens to a pastor online. He has a lot of helpful insight, and gives you a good perspective on things, which I think has grown my faith, and in that has helped prepare me to share God’s message.

The distance learning thing has been really different. One thing that has been hard is that there is not that much stuff to do. It can get pretty boring without friends to do stuff with. However, it has been fun to be able to do other stuff that I can’t do as much. I have been able to hang out with my family a lot more. I have also had more time to work on softball, such as certain excercises and getting better in specific ways. I have also been able to get better at the piano, which I didn’t have as much time for before. I really want to be more organized after this time, with all the time I have to work on things. Having online school forces you to be driven, focused and organized, and I hope that I can keep that skill when this time is over.

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

I made a newspaper that could have been written during the time when Stephen died like an outsider was writing a story about it the day after.

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?)

I like how I got most of the details in, and I felt like the project was very thorough.

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

I would feel horrified. No matter what someone does, especially in the case that Stephen literally did nothing wrong, I would feel horrified that someone’s jealousy and hate for someone could make them kill someone in an incredibly brutal way.

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

I don’t think I would like Saul at all. At this time, he was a brutal man who went around killing Christians for their faith. He was essentially helping them kill Stephen, which automatically was awful.

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

I have no idea how they kept on going, even in the middle of all the persecution. They must have had great faith in God and trusted that he knew what he was doing and that he had a better plan for their lives then they did.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D5jW-A6VOe02htiRw_7gCVSjjprIbuyPZzDTUvj4ISw/edit

One thing I have enjoyed this year is being able to see my friends more. I don’t get to see them a ton in the summer, so it’s always nice when you get to see them all day. I have learned a lot of things this year, but I have really liked learning about genetics in science class. One thing that I am excited for is when the worship team gets to perform for a chapel, which will be really fun.

One thing that I did this summer is went camping. First, we went to Ludington State Park, where we go every year with our grandparents. This year it was just us, but it was still fun. We swam, hiked, and did other fun stuff like having campfires. Then, the second time we went camping, we went up by Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was awesome. We got to climb the 43 story tall sand dune, swam in multiple lakes, and did stupid things like jumping off of bridges. That time we went with some family friends. We also went to my grandparent’s cottage near Gun Lake. They have a speed boat, so we did a lot of tubing. It was really fun.

We did the African Union last week. One thing that I learned, was that there is a lot of rules involved in the process. For example, you can’t talk at all without raising your little flag thing. It can get kind of intense because everyone has their own opinions on something, and they all want to share them. You have to learn how to collaborate with other people, especially when you are writing the caucus. You have to make sure to pay attention because if you want to vote on something, you need to know what your opinion on something is, and if you have questions you need to be able to ask them. It took a long time and could get boring because you had to sit down for forever.

Yes, I did hold a single story before we started the unit on Africa.

I am probably missing a lot of stories, about people who did interesting things, or something like that.

You miss out on the other stories that you aren’t hearing, and then you create a stereotype about the people/culture and stuff like that.

What did you do/see/experience?

First, we went to the Mountainfilm festival at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts. There, we watched 8 films. Some of the movies were about cultural things. Most of them were about the outdoors, though. My favorites were the one in Jackson Hole, where there were skiers and bikers going down mountains and jumps together. It was awesome. I also liked the very first one, Brothers of Climbing. It was about how some black people didn’t like how everything in climbing was shown through white people. So they decided to form their own kind of climbing group, and they called themselves Brothers of Climbing. They took trips together and everything. The other one I liked was called surf the line. It was about this thing where you attach a surfboard to a string stretched between two cliffs, and you would surf down the rope then jump off with a parachute. After we went to the Mountainfilm festival, we went hiking. We were mostly hiking, and it was raining and pretty cold. At one point, we stopped and sat, and spent seven minutes in silence.

How did that impact you? What did you learn?

to me, the films felt inspiring. You felt like you could go and do anything, and the films were all super cool, and a lot of the things they did looked super fun, and I felt like I wanted to try them. Mostly though, I was impacted by the hike. It felt amazing to just be out in creation, instead of in a quiet classroom, sitting around, but you could be out in creation and you could look at the beautiful views, and experience creation. It was really, really hard to sit quietly. I’m more of a go out and do it kind of person, so to have to sit there quietly and not really do anything, not even talk, was really hard. Eventually, though, you look around and you see the beautiful creation and find yourself admiring how beautiful everything was.

How will you think/act/live differently?

Mostly, it was just a reminder of how much everything is fun and beautiful, and how much I enjoy it. I think it’s important that you don’t let yourself be taken over by life, that you get too busy to be out in it. I personally think I have to enjoy it more. Let myself experience it, and just take time to be in it, instead of always rushing from one thing to the next, hardly having time to enjoy it. I think that the films were a reminder that you can do whatever you want, in a way. You can go and start a new tradition, or do something new, or try something new.

The Children’s March 1963,1964

Birmington, Alabama was known as the most segregated city in the US. It was also the most vicious and violent city, nicknamed ‘Bombingtom.’ The person in charge of the city, Bull Connor, didn’t follow the laws and kept the whites separate and above the blacks. A lot of the blacks were afraid, while the whites were happy, and knew how to play the system. Things weren’t working for Dr. King, so they used radios to get kids interested. The blacks could legally order food, but the whites would rip them off their stools, violently. However, since they were taught by Dr. King, they didn’t respond with violence. The next day, King invited everyone to go to jail the next day, and no one volunteered except the kids. Then the DJs had code words so that the kids knew when to start the march. The arrived at 11:00. Kids came out of windows and doors. There were 1000 kids at first, but more and more came. They walked 19 miles to go to St. Baptist church to meet, then they started. A leader said, “whos gonna get arrested today?”, and they all cheered. Everyone started coming out at noon, in waves of 50. Within an hour, they started using school buses instead of wagons to get the kids to jail. by 3:00, about a thousand black kids were in jail. Everyone said that day 2 was going to be worse, though. The next day, they brought out fire hoses and sprayed the kids with water- HARD water. When the water was over 10 kids remained. They were singing the word ‘FREEDOM’. The police threw rocks, and balls, and brought out dogs that bit. On Day 2, over 1000 were arrested. When John. F. Kennedy saw the pictures, they made him sick. However, day 3, over 4,300 were arrested. In jail, meanwhile the girls were kept in one room, and boys in another. they would take turns singing songs to each other. When the jail was full, they started putting kids in barns. The whites didn’t know what to do, the kids just kept coming. Finally, Bull Connor was removed after 7 terms. The kids were slowly removed from jail. Kennedy went on TV and said: “This is the end of segregation.” Kennedy was killed 5 months later, but his civil rights act was passed in 1964. Dr. King continued his work until his assassination 5 years later. I think its interesting that two of the men who were big parts of the kid’s march were assassinated. Later, the church where everything began was bombed. The police/fire dept. was beat by the children, because they didn’t expect the kids to do anything.

I learned that it was the kids, of everyone, that changed history for the better. Kids can do something.