As the title suggests, this is in fact it. The blog note of all blog notes. It is a year in retrospect. It is my life for the past 365 days. I hope you will be touched, horrified, pleased, stupefied, flummoxed, befuddled and enlightened. This will be the best thing you will read by yours truly for at least at week. So cherish this as I do.

Let's go back a year and a little more. Back to December 2006. On the 12th of that month I got off a plane in Cleveland, Ohio. I was returning home after six months of living in Bolivia, in what I'll say were the best days of my life thus far. I was tired, I was chilled, but I was glad to see my family again. I had grown, and so had they. After the celebration of Christmas with our extended families, we journeyed home to Minnesota. It was the strangest feeling. It was as if I had never left. But I was different, even if the world around me didn't change. I tried to cope with this feeling as best I could, and soon found it gone.

I reentered my life by going to Ridgewater College in my town. I had decided while in Bolivia that I wanted to pursue a career in Nursing. So I began taking the necessary courses for that major. The first semester was a foretaste of what was to come. The Anatomy class was difficult, but it was enjoyable for the most part. It helped me get a feel for what I would need to know in the future. But gradually God has shown me that he doesn't want me in Nursing. He showed me that I should go into Cardiopulmonary Rehab. It is similar, but not as extensive. It aids folks who have heart disease, helps them rebound physically after a heart attack. I feel called into this, so I'm going to trust God to get me there. I'm going to Winona State University to pursue this. I'm moving in about a week. Yikes.

I'd like to share with you a passage that has been my anchor for most of this past year. It is a great one, and I've been trying to memorize it. It's going very slowly. Ladies and gentlemen, Romans 6...

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This has been an important passage for me. Whenever I sin, I go back to this to remind myself that I don't have to live like that. Memorizing this is helping me sin less. Because seriously, as it says in it, "We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" We have been given this incomparable, awesome grace and we take advantage of it. We say to ourselves, "Oh, we messed up. Oh well, God will forgive me." That is not how it works! The true way of this grace is through a repentant heart. First you say it, then you don't do it. You confess your sin, say you're wrong, beseech God to have mercy on your soul, and you repent from your sins. Don't do them anymore! You don't have to let the sin reign in you now. Jesus has come and replaced it. You can't have two Kings of your heart.

I think I have done this before, but now I'm going to talk about various highlights of the year and title each thing with a song. This should be interesting.

The Songwriter (Staple):

For the past year, I have tried to make a cd. I have written song after song, and I finally got them onto a cassette tape. It sounded halfway decent. I desired to have it sound great, however. But that didn't happen, and I was content with sharing the album---titled The Desolation EP---with my friends. I created the name Acommonapathy for my project band. My friends liked the music, bless their hearts. Lest my ego bloat too much, I still wanted to make a better, more thorough album. That did not happen for a while. My friend Greg slithered his way into the band and helped me write some songs. We created a Myspace for the "band." This Christmas, Greg received a fancy recorder. This machine is amazing. It makes everything sound so professional. We recorded a couple random jam sessions, and re-recorded a song off The Desolation EP. Last night, on New Years Eve, we tried to record something good. We attempted a nice piano ballad with guitar accompaniment, but since neither of us play piano very well it turned into a chaotic symphony for two. Then we wrote a song, recorded it, and it sounded great. We were devising a plan for a piano background, and my Father came in and volunteer to do it. The end result is amazing. Everything mixed so well. It is going on the Myspace very soon. Watch for it, called 14 Years.

So this year has been musical for me. I hope the music lives on into the new year. Hail God, the creator of music!

Camp Joy! Camp Joy! The greatest for each girl and boy!

Oh, the wonderful place known as Camp Joy. So many memories flow from that singular place for many people. Most, if not all of my friends I met at Camp Joy. And I should say they are closer friends than anyone that lives nearby. I love them all so much. This year I've really gotten to know Kelly and Oksana. They came to visit twice. And that's more often than anyone else from Camp I'm pretty sure. Take that as a hint my friends, a strong suggestive hint. Those girls are amazing. I love them so much. I'd say the best memory aside from Camp itself was the Camp Joy Christmas party that happened not too long ago. I saw many of my friends again, and deepened my friendship with some of them. That would be Angel in this case. Had a deep conversation with her. It was nice, I enjoyed talking to her.

Camp Joy hopefully will remain a major part of my life. I hope to be a Summer Missionary this year. I think God's calling me to that. We shall see.

Okay, that section seems shorter than I intended when I first set out. But I think I covered what was important that I didn't cover earlier.

This coming year will be interesting. I will be moving away from home again, this time to college. I'll be on my own for real now. God help me.

So this was it, the big cheese. My extravagant blog note. I hope you enjoyed it. May God bless you all in this new year.

Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Amen.

Things are gradually coming to a crazy plot twist in this movie of my life.

God, the director, executive producer, and writer of this story has a lot in store for his leading man (which is me, by the way). He just hasn't let me have a look at the script. Sure, he shows me a little bit to get me going, and that's good. But then he shows me some stuff that I didn't think would be there.

Ah, forget the movie analogy. It died before it even took flight.

So anyways, God has really been leading me from checkpoint to checkpoint it seems. He reveals one step and lets me go for a while until he deems it right to show me the next step. That's how he's been leading me this past year. Let me detail it for you.

First, I did not know what in the wide world I wanted to do for a living. I did know that I wanted to go to college. But I had know idea what to go for. So after graduating from high school, God laid it on my heart to live in Bolivia for six months. That was step one. I'll label the steps like this (1).

So while living in Bolivia I learned a lot mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc. God really blessed my time there. One of my hopes for my time there was to figure out what to do with my life. During one of my talks with Rolando (the father of the all-bolivian missionary family I stayed with), we discussed this. Rolando is a man with infinitely deep amounts of wisdom rooted in God's word. He brought up the fact that medical professions have many opportunities in the States. He planted that seed of thought that I could probably do that (2).

Later on that week, I was walking around the sand volleyball court they had on the compound thinking (and getting some exercise). Then a thought, seemingly coming from right out of the air, materialized in my mind (3). "How about nursing? Yeah...I could do that." So I told my parents about it, and we lined up all these classes I would need for the program when I cam back from Bolivia.

When I came home, things were kind of strange. The States are a lot more different than Bolivia. Either way, I was no longer a minority. Things went on in my life, went to Ridgewater College, studying pre-nursing classes. I had no idea where I wanted to go to college (I was thankful I had figured out what I wanted to do). So I asked a bunch of people what colleges would be good with nursing. I came up with NDSU, UND, SDSU, and Winona State. I visited Winona State first. I really liked the campus, the faculty were extremely friendly and accomodating, and the landscape of the Mississippi was really beautiful. Plus the first thing the advisor told me before the tour was that I was accepted (I just had to sign an application and send them $20). I really liked that college. Then I visited all the other ones. I did not like NDSU or SDSU at all. UND I liked, but then I got some discouraging news about the program. It would take the normal length of time (about 4 years) even though I was a transfer student. So Winona was my top choice (4).

Another reason I liked Winona is because the advisor listed some other possible majors similar to nursing. Such as Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation. It sparked my interest. But I still wanted to go on with nursing. I continued with the pre-nursing classes for another semester, this semester. I applied to Winona State, and hoped I could get into the Nursing Program in the Fall of 2008. But then God showed me that I might not get into the nursing program anytime soon. Plus, he showed me that if I went into Cardiopulmonary Rehab, I could go to Winona in January and start instead of not doing anything until the Fall. So now I'm going to Winona State University in January to major in Cardiopulmonary Rehab (5).

It's been a crazy year, and I'm not done yet. God's got more to show me. All I have to do is wait for his timing.