Week 5

     I'm back blogger world to share with you week 5 of my Link Year adventure! This mystery monday we had an amazing challenge. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the game bigger or better, but here is how you play: you take an item and you go anywhere and ask anyone if you could trade your item for an item of theirs that is bigger or better. Well, some dude from the land of maple syrup, Canada, played bigger or better and took a red paperclip and eventually traded up for a house. So we got into our dinner groups and were given a red paperclip and was told that whoever got the most valuable item after two hours and 30 minutes would get Sonic happy hour. Naturally, my group won. Now on to the substance of the week. Adam Donyes spoke on Tuesday about time management. This really brought to the forefront things I have been contemplating, such as finding time for applying for jobs, working on musical production and exposing how much free time I really have. That talk really benefitted me and will benefit me for years to come. On Wednesday, Adam Martin talked about finances. I have the blessing of having my father work in the financial world and he has shared lots of financial knowledge and wisdom with me, so even though the talk was very valuable for most people, most of the items spoken in the lecture were things I already knew. Though, the lecture might have been repetitive, he shared a resource that is great for keeping track of your spending and financial habits, www.mint.com. This is an online resource that links with your online banking and basically categorizes your spending, so you can modify or see how well you are doing managing your finances. Today was definitely the most challenging day, because Adam Donyes talked about managing self. It was challenging because he subliminally forced us to look at our inner self and see what needed growth and what needed pruning. Myself, I am not the most disciplined person and discipline is the main ingredient for self management, this became really evident during the talk today. The latter half of Proverbs 6:23 says, "... and the corrections of discipline are the way to life,". This really impacted me because I not only have I seen proof of discipline working great things in my life but scripture supports it, and this has given me great motivation to be more disciplined, and that's awesome. In conclusion, this week was full of good tips to help manage myself in a way honoring to God and one of the main ingredients for doing this is discipline. So I challenge you, if things are not going the way you are planning, honestly ask yourself, where are you spending your time, finances, and self? If everything is in check, great, keep it up, if not, discipline yourself, it works.

It's week two, and mystery monday was still not my favorite but the the speaker was amazing. His name is Mike Aleckson. Mike was a software developer and CEO that gave up owning a successful software development company to further the Kingdom of Christ through Compassion International. On the first of three days, he went through a rather large history lesson of the Old Testament and very early years of the New Testament. One of the most interesting things I learned that day was that if you are struggling with your world view or a theological question, look back to some of the early Christians and say what do you think there answer would be? Do this because they experienced Jesus, and they would be the the person with the most right answer. On the second day, he talked about what it really means to be a believer and follower of Christ. In Galatians 5:19-21, it says that if you do "x" sin you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. You might say, "Rand, I though Christianity was all about for forgiveness?" Well it is, but you must repent of your sins, then your sins will be forgiven and forgotten. This is just a long way of saying that just accepting Jesus Christ as our savior is not enough, but we must not sin. This ties in what I learned next. I also learned that when you truly have the Holy Spirit in your heart, that your sin will decrease as you get closer to God, thus getting closer to our end goal, Mathew 5:48, to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is. On his last day speaking, he emphasized to use the world to help us confirm what God is calling us to do. Myself, still listening to what God is calling me to do, this was great to learn. Over all this week was a great learning opportunity that I took full advantage of, and learned many things and exposed areas that I need to wrestle with and improve on. In conclusion, I am seeing an occurring pattern, that if you study God's word, you might find that God's voice, is louder than you think, and it's powerful.