The Last Few Weeks

The last few weeks have been pretty busy. I did win the race for secretary, which has brought an entirely new onslaught of responsibilities. Counting the votes was really interesting: we all voted, writing the name on a little slip of paper, and then putting in a box. Then each candidate picked a rep, and the electoral commission and the reps dumped all the papers onto a table at the front of the chapel and separated them into the separate piles. Then they went through the piles as the entire group counted aloud. Never heard of that before. I managed to pull it off 65-29.

The first couple weeks being secretary were kind of rough, and I had so many hours of meetings, and my emails probably doubled. These last couple weeks haven’t been as bad, and I haven’t even had a meeting since last Monday. I’m not positive about this, but I bet I’m the youngest student to ever be on the student council. I wonder if there’s any way to find that out.

After my week devoted to student council, I really buckled down and started working on my assignments. Last Wednesday was a banner day. I saw in my room all afternoon and wrote four papers (4)! It was incredible. It’s probably the most productive day I’ve ever had, and none of them were due the next day. They came to around 14 pages. Granted, most of them were reflection papers, and I had thought about them, and had written down a few words in brainstorming, but I still wrote them all. 3 of them were for church ministry and mission, and 1 was for power encounter. It was about time though. We have four papers to write for church ministry and mission, all due at the very end of the class, and I had written none of them, and it was the 9th week out of 10. I really like that class. Two of the papers were about our church visits to churches outside of our tradition, and one was about our tradition’s view of ministry and authority. I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church with a group from the class, and I wrote my second paper on my church in Kibera, which is quite unlike any church I’ve attended in the States. Then I wrote up a paper on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s view of ministry and authority, which I have thought about a great deal so it was not too difficult.

I’ve also been sick about three times the last several weeks. None of them were very serious, although I did go to get tested for malaria once and it came back negative. Twice I ended up feeling really tired and sleeping all afternoon Sunday and Monday. This Sunday I was supposed to preach, but my throat has been sore since Friday and I couldn’t talk very well Friday or Saturday, so I canceled that. As Christine pointed out to me last term, there is no soap in most of the bathrooms, and almost every time you pass anyone, and definitely whenever you greet someone, you shake their hand, so...not a great situation. I hope I’ve finally getting over this cold, I’ve been feeling a bit better today.

Now it’s the 10th, meaning last, week of class. Crunch time…