It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Ok, so maybe not, but i have been thinking about Christmas a lot recently. I can hardly believe that it's only about 4 months away!! Time has flown by recently. Before too much longer Christmas will be here...which poses a bit of a problem. You see, I'm in charge of my church's Christmas program at church. And I don't have a program picked out yet.

Right now I'm leaning towards writing my own program. Our church has some rather unique requirements for a Christmas program, which makes it very hard to find a Christmas program. If I were able to find one that I liked, I know that I'd probably have to do some serious rewriting to make it work for us, so it seems like it's going to be just as easy (or should I say just as hard!) to write me own. I'm kind of nervous about it, as I tend to be a bit of perfectionist as far as these things go.

I will keep you updated on my progress on the program! So far, there has been no progress, but I think that I'm just thinking too hard about it. I love writing, but I have absolutely no ideas right now!! Hopefully once I stop stressing so much about it, my creativity juices will start flowing!

I asked God for strength, that I may achieve,

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey…

I asked for health, that I might do greater things,

I was given infirmary, that I might do happier things…

I asked for riches, that I might be happy,

I was given poverty, that I might be wise…

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God…

I asked for all things that I may enjoy life,

I was given life, that I may enjoy all things…

I got nothing that I asked for- but everything I had hoped for;

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am among the most richly blessed.

- An Unknown Confederate Solider

I found this on one of the blogs that I subscribe to (my sister's blog), and I really liked it, so I figued I would repost it on here. It is so very encouraging, and also very true! It was a reminder to me that while it may seem to us that our prayers aren't being answered, they are, just not necessarily in the way we want them answered. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 

June/July Update

I'm so sorry that it has been so long since I've updated!!! I've been kept very busy recently. I can't remember if I mentioned it at all on here, but I have been taking a Nurse's Assistant class for the past three weeks, and it's kept me crazy busy!!! They are finally over now, so hopefully I'll have a bit more time to update!

Disclaimer: I am updating this while I am sick, so if the thoughts seem more random or scatterbrained than usual, that's why!! :)

June was a pretty boring month here...not much went on, which was kind of nice as it allowed us to recover from the wedding and everything. The only major thing that I can think of that happened in June is that I started babysitting for a family with four kids. I found out about the job through a mutual friend. The kids were great, and sooo adorable!!! The oldest, Clarissa, or Claire, as everyone called her, was 8, Peyton was 4, and Titus and Timothy were 1. Yes, it was quite a handful!!! Thankfully the kids were pretty well behaved, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been.

July started out rather boring as well, but got very busy as it went on!! The first week in July was my last week babysitting due to various circumstances, which turned out to be a blessing because it allowed me to participate in things that I otherwise would not have been able to do.

The second full week in July we had Bible School at our church. That was a crazy busy week!!! I was in charge of registration, and I also helped Mom, who was in charge of refreshments. Thursday night was definitely my busiest night, as I went from helping with registration to setting up for refreshments, to teaching the missionary story to the kids, then back to setting up for refreshments, then upstairs to teach the misssionary story to the teens, back downstairs just in time to do refreshments for the kids, then rushed to set up refreshments for the teens, then tearing down and setting back up for registration! I was so glad when that night was over! We had a very good turnout of kids each night, which was a huge answer to prayer, especially considering that it was the first time that the church had done VBS. We were able to see four kids get saved as a result of it, which was amazing!

The week after VBS, I started my STNA class (State Tested Nursing Assistant). It went very well, and I learned a lot, but I was very worn out by the time it was over. The last two weeks of class were crazy. We had Monday and Tuesday off the second to last week, then started back on Wednesday and continued every day until the following Wednesday! On that Saturday and Sunday we did clinicals at a nursing home, which was definitely an interesting experience. I still have to take my state test, which is sceduled for the 25th of August, and after that I will be completely done!

That's it for June & July. Hopefully now that the class is done with I'll be able to be better about updating this blog. I'm going to try to see if I can't come up with some sort of schedule for posting so that I don't go so long without updating!! I'm off to take some medicine and a nap now to see if I can't get over this bug that I have.

Stephanie

For some reason I have been really missing Stephanie a lot today. I don't know why, it's not like today is really any date that has any significance or anything. It's two months until her birthday, but I didn't realize that till I looked at Facebook, so I don't know what's causing me to miss her so much today.

It is so hard to believe that the end of this month, she'll have been gone for three months.It still doesn't seem possible that she is gone, even though it has been nearly three months. It still seems unfair, but I am accepting that God knows best, and that He has a reason for taking her home to be with Him.

I was trying to think of some of my favorite memories of Steph, and here are a few that I thought of:

 -Her love of pigs-She raised pigs every year for the fair since I could remember. She loved her pigs, and even won first place in Nationals at Bob Jones University for a sculpture that she did of a pig.

-Her love for her family-She loved her family very much, especially her niece, Megan. Her family ended up adopting Megan for various reasons, and she and Megan were so very close. Steph was also close to both of her parents and her brother Westley. One of the last things she said to me was that when Westley got married, she'd probably be crying like i was at Holly's wedding. Westley is now engaged, and Stephanie won't be there to see her brother get married.

-My very first memory of her is from fourth grade, when she started attending the same Christian school that I did. We nicknamed her the "hairbrush girl" because she always carried a hairbrush in her back pack and was constantly brushing her hair.

-She loved her friends so much. If any of her friends ever had a problem, she was always there for them with a hug. Her hugs always made anyone feel better, no matter what the problem was.

Those are just a few memories that I have of her. You may not care to read this, but writing about stuff seems to help me feel better. Anyways, it is off to bed I go...in a little while, at least. I'm waiting for a reply to a txt to I sent to a friend first, and hoping that the reply is what I'd like it to be, but trying not to get my hopes up too much...Goodnight, blogging world

The Wedding

Holly & Andrew got married on May 15. The wedding was beautiful, even though a lot of stuff went wrong. Setting up for the wedding was blast as well, considering who was all in the wedding party!! The bridesmaids were myself, Jenn Stitt, and Mandy Northcutt, and Grace Thompson was the maid of honor. The groomsmen were Ben Linville, Caleb Getty, and Daniel Brubaker, and Nathaniel Minion (Andrew's brother) was the best man. In addition to that, Christy Godfrey and Nicole Risinger (along with the rest of the Risinger clan) were there to help in various ways with the wedding.

Jenn, Holly, & Nicole with their coffee

Nate and Caleb being, well, Nate and Caleb!

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Minion

Graduation

On May 8, I graduated from Ambassador Baptist College with an Associate's degree in Church Secretarial Studies. Below is a picture of me with the three other girls who also graduated with a Secretarial degree. Because we all had the same classes, we got to be pretty good friends.



Here is a pic of me with all my "siblings," Kristen &Amanda Stoliker (my "little sisters") Caleb Getty(my "big brother"), and Aaron Barrick (my "little brother")



Caleb also was graduating. Dad Stoliker, who was graduating as well, managed to sneak into the background of this pic.

Oh my!!

I am sooo far behind on blogging!! :( I feel bad! I have to do an update post (I'm striving to do at least one update post a month...we'll see...), my annual Fourth of July post, and at least two other posts that i have planned. So here we go...a marathon blogging session starts tomorrow