All throughout his life God prepared Paul for the work He was going to have him do. I think that God has also been preparing me for my life as a Christian. I know that he put my brother and sister into my life for a reason and he put me in theirs. Without them I would be a total different person, they have taught me to have patience. And because of them I know that God has made each of us in his own image, and he wanted them to turn out like this, he knew it would help them and us. Another thing is I go to a Christian school so he has been working hard at teaching me more about himself. I have learned so much more about him this year than I have any other year, and I feel him with me a lot, sometimes more than others but I still do. I’m not sure how God will use these things in my future and I’m not even sure if he will. Whatever he does I will do my best to be content with his plans.

This week in science class we had to make a volcano. Our group chose to do the Kilauea volcano. The Kilauea Volcano is in Hawaii and is really cool. For our model we used a water pump to make it “explode”.

This past week in Bible class we have been learning about persecution all over the world. The fact is that this happens and we need to stop it. I am really horrified by how people hurt people who could even be their family just because they have a different faith than you do. Here is a video we made about Nepal and what happens there.

                     https://website.mysimpleshow.com/#/edit/JmGHWUpEuQ/publish

This week in school we had to made a spaghetti tower. I was gone on vacation for most of the planning and the beginning stages of building, but once I got back I helped as much as I could. My group told me that they went through about 4 towers before we found one that worked. I didn’t really like this project because it was pretty stressful, and I don’t exactly get why we did this.

I am a flower. A flower has a few different parts. One of the parts a flower has are petals. These petals represent my different hobbies. My hobbies sometimes stay around for a long time but they usually “fall off” and go away. But new hobbies always come around, I can’t go too long without “growing” new “petals.” Without these petals I would look different and wouldn’t be myself, I would have less color.

I am also like a flower because of my roots. My roots are my foundation in Jesus. My roots make it so I can live and thrive. Without these roots I would crumble and fall. In explosion of hate and anger, the roots withered beneath the ground, leaving me without a foundation. Sometimes if I am going through a bad time these roots start to crumble but God never lets them fully wither.

Another way I am like a flower is I share my pollen. My pollen represents my joy, I try to share my joy as much as I can. I can spread it from person to person to make sure everyone knows the love and joy of God. Sometimes I run out of my joy so I can’t share it, but my joy always comes back to me.

My stem is like my parents. A stem makes sure that the flower doesn’t fall and keeps it held up. My parents are like this because they help make sure that I don’t fall, or if I do fall I don’t fall too far. I know that they always have my back and will always be there for me. But sometimes they do let me fall a little bit farther down, but never fully.

Recently I read a book called Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. It’s a really good book about a boy named Jacob that has “peculiar” powers to see wights and hollows! He figures out that on a mysterious island there are a ton more peculiars. He meets this one girl named Emma. Now Emma was good friends with his grandfather, Abe. Jacob had gone on his voyage to the island because his grandfather had been recently killed by a hollow. Emma was devastated when she figured out that Abe had died. Ok so let me explain something, Miss Peregrine is a ymbryne. Now a ymbryne is a lady who can manipulate time and she can turn into a bird. Miss Peregrine as her name implies can change into a peregrine falcon. While reading this book I realized that loyalty and courage are very important things to acknowledge in life.

Near the beginning of the book after Jacob’s grandfather died, he could have easily just forgotten about the pictures that his grandfather had shown him, but he didn’t. He suffered through horrible nightmares every single night. And then when him and his dad were going through his grandfather’s old stuff. His dad dropped a big bomb on him, that he could have easily believed. They thought Grandfather had cheated on Grandmother. Jacob refused to believe that. He stayed loyal to his Grandfather by believing him and trying to find out more about those pictures from when he was a little kid.

This theme is later shown when Jacob figures out that “a lot of people” that have been part of his life are actually just one person… Well not even a person, a wight. When this wight, most recently and most personally known as Dr. Golan, first came to the island he faked being a bird watcher. He then found Emma, Jacob and a couple of the other peculiars in a shed thing. Now everyone that was there showed great courage but I think that Jacob might have shown the most. Jacob’s peculiarity is that he can see the monsters, also known as hollows. So when this wight/Dr. Golan found them he gave Jacob a choice. That choice was to help Dr. Golan and the wights, and also get his old life back, or to stay loyal the the peculiars. I’m thinking that right now you have already chosen which choice you think/want Jacob to chose. He chose the second choice. He showed bravery and loyalty to the peculiars. He could have easily gone with Golan and gotten his old life back. But he chose to be loyal and help his friends face the hollow, without him they would have been dead in like seconds…

While reading this book I realized that loyalty and courage are very important things to acknowledge in life. I really liked this book and what it was about, even if couldn’t possibly be true. I suggest that you read it if you haven’t already. I just know that you will fall in love with the peculiars.

For the past couple of days we have been working on creating a chain that can hold 3,000 grams. My group decided to use pipe cleaners and rubber bands. We named our chain Sah Dood, not sure why so don’t ask, but yeah… We had a list of materials that we could use, so like we couldn’t use anything we wanted to. We also weren’t allowed to research to make our chain better. I don’t get why we are doing this for science, but Mr. Devries says it makes sense.

This summer I went to Oregon to visit my sister. We saw a ton of cool things there. We started out our trip with missing our plane and staying the night in an airport. When we finally got to Oregon we, my mom, dad and I climbed up and around a volcano, and then we rode down a tiny waterfall, which was awesome by the way. We then went to this really cool water filled volcano called Crater Lake, you are allowed to go swimming in it and go on tours but the climb was too steep for us. Then we drove down to California and saw the ocean, I had never seen an ocean before that. We also drove through a really cool open zoo thing, and got attacked by an emu…  We also saw my sister a lot, we stayed a couple nights at her house. She has these two adorable dogs, their names are Ford and Cooper, can you tell my brother in-law likes cars/planes? We climbed up a couple buttes, which are like small hills. That was the best thing I did all summer.

Ok so for school, in Bible class, we read a book called While the World Watched. It was about the Civil War Movement and how at one point in time your skin color mattered. So the main character was Carolyn Maull McKinstry and she told her story. She was born around the time of the Birmingham Bombings and some of her good friends were in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. That day, September 15, four innocent little girls died, just because of their skin color. And then the next day a boy that went to her school told her she was making too much out of this, I mean some of her best friends were just killed, is she not allowed to be sad? I know I would be sad if some of my best friends died. A lot of other people died because they were black. Like she talked about Emmett Till, a black 14 year old boy, and how he was beat up and killed, just because he was being a boy, and said some snarky stuff about a dudes wife, if he would have been white nothing would have happened. Oh yea they also drowned him, and the police didn’t do anything to clean him up they just sent him back to his mom in a box. So his mom opened the box, and was probably horrified. She had an open casket funeral for him, so people could see what whites did to a innocent boy. And the people that did it were put into jail right? No didn’t have any punishment for killing an innocent boy. I don’t see how people could not like someone because of their race. I mean I’m white, and I can’t do anything to change that, and neither could they. It stood out to me that the children were involved in this, because people value children a lot, like kids are our future. Some kids went to jail, because they marched for their freedom.

I learned that our country once was very bad, and we have to grow. And there is also the fact that history has repeated itself in the past, so this might happen again. If it does we have to figure out a way to stop it. This is important because people were killed just because they looked different. And no one really cared. I mean three 14 year olds and one 11 year old died, in a bombing. I mean this happened in our country. It could happen again. We gotta realize what happened and honor and mourn the people that gave their lives. Some racism still happens now, even though we had a whole war, and this. Oh yea and murders like Emmett Till’s were common, but his is just more known because what his mom did about it.

Now I am going to think different about this subject because I learned how evil the Ku Klux Klan was. And what they would do to people. I wonder if I would act different if I was a descendant of one of the KKK members. I think that this is really sad, that kids had to be involved in this, I mean would you not like someone just because they don’t look like you? No you wouldn’t I think, well maybe you would, but still.

Ok, so yesterday we had a debate/meeting thing. It was to help solve the problem in Kenya with the Dadaab refugee camp. We were all split up into different counties, so like two people per country. We talked about how Somalia is where the refugees are from and that we should send some troops there to help them. And to help give the people in the refugee camps more of an education, so that they won’t have to spend their whole lives in refugee camps. The biggest challenge we faced was that in the end there were two groups that had basically the same ideas. Just worded a little different and with different funders, so the group that had more funders won in the end. The most I enjoyed out of it was that we were put into groups/countries with people that aren’t exactly our friends. And that we also had to write a resolution with people that had the same ideas as us instead of our friends.

I learned that Lake MI is more of a Oligotrophic lake and Spring Lake was more of Eutrophic. I learned that sea lamprey, are very dangerous, and they also used to be a big problem but now their population is going down. And that quagga muscles used to be a big problem but now zebra muscles are. And that if you move even a tiny bit, the water, or like different lakes, you are in can change a ton. Oh and that the plume is awesome because the water changes colors.

Today in school we watched a movie about Nelson Mandela. Ok so for starters Nelson Mandela was in jail for 29 years. When he got out of jail he became president, and helped to unite South Africa. He used rugby to help unite the blacks and whites. I really liked this movie because it helped teach us more about South Africa. Then the rugby team, the Springboks, later won the world rugby cup.

Ok so today we went to a film festival. It had a lot or 11 different films. One of my favorites was The Pink Helmet Posse. It was about three little girls that skate boarded. And they got to be really good at skate boarding. I liked that it showed that girls can do anything they want to. I also liked that it showed their parents and brothers perspectives, and how it showed us their names so we felt like we knew them better.

I also liked the one about these two guys that traveled the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River. It told us about how the Colorado River doesn’t go back into the Ocean. And about how the two guys followed the river and watched how people reacted when the part of the river that was dry got wet again. So those were my favorite two but the other ones they showed were awesome too.

For science we watched a video and it was called Hunting the Elements. It was about the elements and stuff. A couple things I learned were that calcium isn’t actually white and chalky it is  a silver, shiny metal. And that a human body is 65% oxygen, thats a lot. And that neodymium is a rare earth metal that actually repels sharks. And my favorite part was when they showed how neodymium can actually repel sharks. And how it will help fishers to catch just fish instead of sharks.