"We are just monkeying around!"

Fellow readers,

It has been a while my friends.  It is good to be back on here; I missed you all(ironic, being as I do not know exactly who reads this and when they do read it).  How have you been Andrew? You might ask.  Thank you, I have actually been really great of late.  Well, what have you been up to?  That is a good question; I have just been hangin' out, you know.  Enjoyin' the life of your average college-aged kid I suppose.  I've been relishing the presence of friends, still reading the word, and going to classes and work here and there.  That's really cool Andrew, did you do anything interesting this past weekend?  That is another great question, pal.  Yes, in fact I did do something rather fun and quirky this past weekend.  It started out as your normal Friday, you could say; just the usual sleeping in, for me, until my 12:20 music appreciation class-only class of the day so not too tough of a day.  After music, I indulged in the magnificently, well-prepared caf food.  After that rather swanky meal, I moseyed on up to my dorm room and sat down and read some passages for the day.  I kind of follow a Bible study plan-when I say "kind of," I really mean I use it for the order of the books to read; I mostly read as much as I can until I start to wonder off you could say.  It varies everyday, but at some point in reading whether it be a chapter in or 10 chapters in, whatever it may be, there comes a time when I just cannot focus anymore and that is when I put 'er down.  The way I see it, if I am not focused in it, I will get nothing out of it.  Anywho, after reading and spending time on the computer or listening to music or playing on my iPad, or any combination of those things, I eventually venture off to dinner with my sister.  After another lavishing meal, we...well this part eludes me at the moment, but we eventually end up in the main quad with one of our friends.  At this point, we were left to ponder what to do for the night.  Then, suddenly, it hits my sister, like a slap to the face with a fish, we should rent bicycles and ride them around campus.  Rent bicycles?  Yes, you read that correctly.  At Tech, new this year, you can now rent bicycles between the hours of 7 AM through midnight.  And these aren't just any bicycles, no these are straight up, legit cruisers!  If you find yourself wondering what the heck a cruiser is, picture the old fashion, 50's-like bicycles that usually had the basket on the front with the huge, wide handlebars and it is a one-speed.  Yeah, we were pumped!  So, we go to one of the two dorms that you can rent these awesome machines from, and just to our luck, there were three left-perfect!  We head outside to the bike racks with glimmer in our eyes and the whole "kid in the candy store" look on our faces.  We get the bikes unlocked(one girl bike and two boys bikes, so my sis had to ride the other guys bike) and are about to hit the road.  My bike's rear tire was flat and ripping of of the rim-I rode it anyways.  My sister's seat on her's was hardly on and moved all over the place, but still rode pretty well.  Our friend's bike had no flaws.  We ride over to my car(parked at the dorm where we got the bikes) and got the tire pump out of my sweet road-side emergency kit. #thanksdadforthose.  I pump up my tire and all looks well.  I ride it for less than a minute and its popping off again.  I proceed to chain it back up, and my sister's also, to then head over to the other dorm to see if there are any good ones there.  As we walk up, three people are riding off with bikes leaving one girl bike left.  So, my sister rents the girl one and they just-so-happened to have a wrench.  Back to the other dorm again.  I end up fixing the seat on my sister's original bike, and without further ado, we were riding.  We rode all over campus and spent a little extra time riding in front of a camera that is connected to TTU's website for all who want to look at, can.  Of course we called someone to look for us, ended up not seeing us however.  After about an hour of riding, we returned the bikes and hit up the good ole T-Mart.  If you are planning on going to Tech, this whole story is good for you, because you get to hear about some totally solid things to do on or around campus.  The sole reason probably 85% of people who go to the T-Mart, go there to get the pizza rolls.  These suckers are AMAZING.  I know you're probably thinking of like Totino's Pizza rolls(TM) that come in your local grocery store's freezer section.  No, these babies are like a big pizza slice with amazing crust rolled into a roll bigger than a fist.  Like I stated right up there, amazing.  After satisfying our hunger with the infamous pizza rolls, we headed back to the quad.  We parked, and discussed what to do next.  After some deliberations, we headed to the trunk of my car(you never know what you can find in there; I used to have an inflatable bull rider costume in there.  Anyways, Brittnee and I knew that there were some baseball mitts in there and were hoping there would be a ball to) only to find no ball.  However, I found a box of shoes that were our other sister's and she was giving them away.  In this box of shoes, were a sweet pair of light-up shoes in mint condition.  No, these were not kids shoes, our sister bought these as an adult.  I asked what size shoe our friend wore and they were that exact size!  This was perfect for what ended up in store for us afterward, because our friend only had flip-flops on.  So, now comes the afterward.  We were all hanging out at one of the benches in the quad, which is lined with numerous trees.  Right next to the bench where we resided, was a grand, maple tree of some sorts just begging to be climbed.  I head over to it and continued to climb on up it.  Now, to preface this feat; I did P90X this summer, which vastly improved my abilities to climb this tree.  After getting up there my sister and our friend tried to climb as well.  They were too short to do so-not a stab in the back on them though, it could happen to anyone.  We then, were determined to get them up in a tree.  We scoured that whole quad until we found a tree suitable for their heights.  Unfortunately, there was not any.  This didn't stop them, however, for there were police blockades all around the quad(they are making it pedestrian only, so they have the roads blocked off from cars) perfect for a little step-stool if you will.  After grabbing one of the blockades and butting it up against the tree, and also a little help from me, we all got up in the tree.  It was a glorious and satisfying moment for us.  We hung out in the tree for a little while then headed on.  We eventually ended up chilling in another tree, coincidentally in the view of that same camera we rode the bikes in front of.  This tree had a few good spots in it that if you lie in them correctly, you could hang out there for hours.  After the tree climbing it was about 1:30 AM, thankfully, one of the best donut shops in town is two blocks from campus and is open 24 hours.  Success!  After having to buy a whole dozen(minimum purchase with a card is $5, got the dozen for 8 bucks-not bad at all) we headed back home for the night, completely satisfied with a very solid, very legit Friday night.  The rest of the weekend was spent heading around town to various shops and spending time with the sis and friends and then on Sunday, spent the whole day watching football.  Go Titans!  It was a very gratifying weekend, to say the least.
Now, onto the message:
Today, I'm gonna talk about love.  I know you're thinking, what does he know about love?  He's only 19, he has no idea what he is talking about.  Am I a master of love, a love doctor if you will?  No.  Have I ever felt like I was in love with someone?  Yes, but things did not work out.  I'm not sad about it, nor want a pity party over it, I am just saying, to me, and what I believe love is, I had it.  Anyways, love is all around us.  All the time people are falling in and out of love, even those we all thought would never fall in love with each other, do.  Even those we thought would stay together forever, don't.  As humans, love is always changing and is never anything 100% definite 'til we finally find that one.  And even then it's still not 100%.  But, there is one love that IS definite, and never changing, and that is the love God has for us.  God loves us so much that He sent His only son to die for us, so that we would be without sin.  I know this sounds like the standard, the classic message that everyone's heard before, but really, we need to keep hearing it.  We need to understand His love for us.  Because of His love, HE SENT HIS ONLY SON TO DIE FOR US!  You cannot find that love with any other person on this Earth.  No love can compare.  It says in Romans 5, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!  For when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"  The way I interpret that is that even when we sinned, and did not have hearts for God, He sent Jesus to die for us.  Even when we didn't love Him, He sent His son to die for us.  And now that we do know Him, and do love Him, how much more will He do for us?  So what do we do now?  How do we demonstrate our love for God?  It says later in Romans 13, "The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  Love does no harm to its neighbor."  So to show our love for God, we must show love to each other.  No matter who they are, if we like them or not, if we know them or not, if they have done something to us or not, regardless, we must love them.  On the point of if they have done something to us or not, the scripture right before that says, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.  Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.  Live in harmony with one another...Do not repay anyone evil for evil...Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written:  'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord.  On the contrary:  'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.'  Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  I know that was long, but the message is perfect.  Even if someone mistreats you in the worst way, you should still love them.  You should never hate anyone, the Bible also says, "never hate anyone, if you feel hatred, pray for them..." something along those lines anyways.  If we show God's love to them, we are building favor in the Lord and in doing so, He will give those people what they deserve and what only He alone should be able to do to them.  It is not our right to do anything to them.  So to sum everything up here, love everyone, and tell them about God's love.  If we all just love each other, the world would be so much better(I know that's cliche, but it's true!).  But don't love everyone just to make the world better, but for His word tells us so.  Thanks for readin.  Signing off

"I have a technical degree in broadband networking..."

Fellow Readers,

I hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day Weekends, respectively.  Mine has been pretty good so far, but unfortunately has to come to an end early for I have to go to work ON Labor Day in the morning.  That's not so bad though, it's only for four hours, however, my current employer is located in Cookeville meaning I have to go back to school like any normal weekend.  So much for the holiday.  It's okay though, I'm not tryin' to put on any pitty-party or anything resembling such.  From the time I last composed, nothing too big has happened.  One of the main things that happened was the total awesomeness of Tech's Internet completely falling out for ehhh...about three days.  Now, the Internet failing, that's not so much of a big deal I mean the Internet at our house fails every once and a while.  But, this was the entire campus' Internet failing and not being fixed for THREE days.  That must have been some problem to have the whole IT department working on it "around the clock" for three days.  Yeah, that's one of the funny parts:  while the Internet is NOT working, Tech decides to tell us they have the whole IT department working "around the clock" on fixing it via e-mail.  How ironic is that?  Oh yeah, we will all see that e-mail while our Internet is not working.  Anywho, it is time for a little vocabulary lesson.  Let us look at the name of the fine institution in which I call my scholarly home:  Tennessee Technological University.  Okay, begin lesson; Tennessee-the state in which this school reside-let's pass on the middle term for just a second and get back to that in the end, University-cooler name for college, well that is my definition for right now because the proper one is too long-now, we can cover the middle term, Technological-of or pertaining to technology.  Now, how good does it look that a technological school can't solve a simple Internet problem faster than more than half of our school week, especially working around the clock?!  One of these nights without Internet, I was walking back into my dorm to drop of my stuff and I ran into some kid I never had met before and we started talking about the Internet problem.  This kid graduated high school in 2008, however, this is his first year of college.  In his time after high school, he obtained three technical degrees, one being in broadband networking.  I asked him if he could fix our problem for us to which his reply was, "I've tried to go to the IT department to offer my help but when I go up there they are all just sitting around."  So much for working around the clock huh?  The problem was finally fixed on Friday, just in time to go home and not use it. Since then, I've enjoyed a nice weekend of hanging out with my family and our extended family, the Godseys.  Other than that, just the normal weekend.
For the word today, I do not have much.  I am still reading and learning and will not necessarily have a word in every post. Stay tuned for the next post!
Thanks for reading.  Signing off.