Can you believe I am acutally updating? In case you didn't notice, xanga hasn't been my highest priority the last while. Not that my friends aren't high priority, its just that xanga isn't my favorite way of staying connected. Since I last posted I finished the last term of school in Thialand, spent about 12 days in Bangladesh, had another week of wrap up back at school, and flew back to the US. I spent two days with friends in New York and PA, then came back to Ohio. Since I have been back in Ohio I have been working and getting ready to go to SMBI. If you want any more details on any of the above, I guess you will just have to ask, because I am not into writing a long boring post about my world wanderings. Just got a few random pics to post, then I'll get off.

Here I got a few shots from Bangladesh. I haven't even had time to sort them all, so I just picked out a few to post for the anyhow of it.

Christmas evening (not Christmas eve, the evening of Christmas) Jason and I got some shots of the nearly full moon rising. Right here I was haveing some fun with Jason's new fish-eye lens.

One of the things I had to do to get ready to go to SMBI was work on my truck a little. That was kind of fun - a way to hang out with my "girlfriend." (Again thanks to Jason for the use of the fish-eye lens)

And I found a good deal on a new camera. So I got it. I was quite happy.

Some of my musings the last while have been about home. When I was in Asia, I thought a lot about going "home," and I was really excited about it. (That hasn't really changed - it kind of bites that I am leaving again so soon.) But it was hard to leave because in a lot of ways, Thailand was home for me for a few months, and leaving meant saying good-buy to friends. Now I am going to SMBI, and that will kind of be home for the next few months. So where is home? You know what I am getting at. Home actually isn't even in this world. Grandpa went home last summer, and I miss him often. But sometime I am actually going  to go home too. And sometimes I don't think that time can come soon enough.

Later,

Sommers

P.S. Props to Mullet on the new profile pic. He did that one for me when we were hangin in NYC. Some of my friends think I turned trecker while I was gone. I must say there is some truth to what they said.

Yeah, I should be doing homework. But I am feeling extremely uninspired, and having a hard time with my one big assignment.  So I decided to update instead. 

We played footbal with some high school guys from Grace this afternoon.  It was great!  And muddy! I am not much of a football player, but I still had a lot of fun!  I managed to get an interception and a few decent tackles.  I am feeling the effects of the one tackle though.  Josh was running good speed when we hit, but it was so much fun because I actually took him right down.  But it ended not so fun-De and another guy had a hard collission while trying to tackle a third guy, and De's mouth hit the second guy's forehead.  His teeth and upper lip looked pretty bad! He went to the hospital and last I heard they thought they could get him fixed up by later tonight. Other than that it was a pretty clean game-2 or3 not so good tackles, but mostly clean. But by that time most of us were pretty tired and an injury kind of takes the life out of the game.  So we quit for the day.  But we had a great time while it lasted!

(Thanks to Buddy for the football pics.)

These pics come from the Saturday night walking street, which is kind of like the Night Bazzar.

This is me and Ja, a 5 year old girl at one of the Nannie's houses.  She has been there for nearly 4 years and is probably going to be adopted soon.  She was so excited to have a family, but it's gonna be hard for her to leave the family she has known for so long.

I have been thinking some about the story of the prodigal son.  A lot of this comes from classes.  But the prodigal was a son to begin with.  After he left, as his father said, he was lost, and he was dead.  When he decided to go back, he was going to go back as a servant, not even a son anymore.  But the father welcomed him back, as a son.  In a very real sense, he was adopted back into the family. 

 I really like the picture that gives us of how it is when we come back to our true Father.  We come back hoping to be servants.  We come realizing that we have nothing, but hoping we can at least be servants.  Sometimes we just want to be servants so we can satisfy our hunger and have a shirt on our backs.  But the Father wants to adopt us back as sons and daughters!  That is so amazing!!!  But sadly, we sometimes try to go on being servants-doing our duty so we can save our skin.  Our Father wants so much more!!  He wants us to be His sons and daughters!  He wants us to love and worship Him.  We need to come back on His terms-as more than servants, as sons and daughters!!

Later,

Sommers