D&D

What an awesome weekend!

I drove to Simi Valley Thursday Night after my class, I had had a really long, tiring week and was ready for a weekend away...

I stayed at Nicole's apartment Thursday night (thanks Nicole!) and Alden picked me up early friday morning to drive to LAX to pick up Layne (his brother) and Gail (his aunt). In the car he had surprised me with chocolate chip pancakes and milk from Ihop! :) it was so sweet and yummy!

Layne and Gail flew in for Denise's wedding which we all went to on Saturday...

Most of the pictures are on Gail's camera so here are the ones I got...

Before the ceremony began

During the ceremony

The New Mr. and Mrs. Dowd Walker

Aldie and Layne getting in my way :)

Denise looked SO beautiful and happy!

It was so much fun being at Denise's wedding and getting to hang out with Layne and Gail!

ALSO~ Me and Aldie celebrated our year and a 1/2 dating anniversary as well as were down to only 4 months till the wedding! 117 days to be exact! :)

After Layne and Gail headed back to LA to go home me and Aldie enjoyed a bouble feature~ Marley and Me and Paul Blart, Mall Cop. Then we went to dinner at Olive Garden which was a great experience! :) He even got me dessert! YUM! :)


To top it all off- the Lakers beat to Celtics in Boston in OT to stop Boston's 12 game winning streak and to become the number 1 team in the NBA right now based on record.

AND- they went to Clevland and stopped their 0 loses at home record by defeating them 101-91.

What a great weekend!

And baby girl paulus is being born TOMORROW! :)

I needed to take a moment to focus on the good... there is so much good in midst of the STRESS!

Praise God, for He is good.

Prayer Request

This is my beautiful niece...













...Hannah Louise Drake

Hannah needs prayer. We recently found out that she does not have a wall in her heart and she is going to have open heart surgery. Hannah is 14 months old.

Please pray for her healing.
Also pray for her Dad (my brother Josh), Mom, and big sister.

Thanks!

Distraction

I'm the most blessed girl... I get to marry Alden Arakaki! For those of you who don't know, here's our story...


In 2002 I moved to Hilo, HI. Honestly, I wasn't happy about it. That's no secret- my parents knew I didn't want to move (I think my mom dragged me on to the plane). We began attending Kinoole Baptist Church. This is where I met Alden and where we will stand before God on June 6th, 2009 and become man and wife.

From 2002-2005 me and Aldie had been "just friends". I admit that I liked him all along. He was that one boy that would cause me to melt whenever he entered a room. He was always a little bit of a mystery to me and I think that's something that really attracted me to him.

Our highschool days together were great building blocks to the relationship that we have today,

(DCLA 2003)

(DCLA 2006)

In 2005 I moved to Riverside CA to start going to CBU. He also moved from Hilo to Washington to play music. My freshman year of college I spent a lot of time talking to Alden on AIM. If you don't believe me you can ask Jen, my freshman year roommate and one of my bridesmaids. This is the time that my feelings really began to grow! I was actually really sad when things didn't work out between us at that time but it is all so clear now why it didn't. After a few months of talking every night our conversation slowly died out and we didn't talk nearly as much.



Summer of 2007 is when everything changed. For the first part of the summer things were pretty crazy, we both had gone overseas, he went the Maui for a week to play music at a camp there, I went to Indiana for a week to visit my brothers family, and I went to California twice, once to visit my mom's parents and once because my dad's dad had passed away.

By Mid-July we were both back in Hilo and planned a trip to Kona since we hadn't hung out in such a long time. We had such a great time on that trip! We were able to talk and we felt it was time to begin a dating relationship. We didn't want to jump in to it too fast so we just prayed about it and waited...

August 8th, 2007, after much prayer and thought... He asked me to be his girl friend!! :) August 10th I flew back to California to start my Junior year.

(This picture was taken when he came to CA with his family and I got to see him)

After a year of long distance dating, it was finally summer! I couldn't have been happier to spend time with my boyfriend.... well, the unexpected happened, we broke up... i know- not what you were expecting huh... we'll luckily I already told you the end of the story and you know we get back together. It's interesting, the 3 weeks that we were broken up we were able to talk and grow in a way that we never may have been able to. The break-up may have been the best thing for our relationship.

That summer came to an end and it was time for me to move back to Cali. This time Alden came too! He started going to Eternity Bible College in Simi Valley, CA. it's about a 1 1/2 hour drive from my school but we get to see each other much more then the previous year!!!

In these last few months there has been so much growth in both of our lives. I've never known anyone who loved God the way that Alden does. He really knows what it means to be a follower of Christ. He has been such a great example to me and really led in our relationship. His character and love for God were what truly got me thinking that this is the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with!

December 16, 2008 HE PROPOSED!

It was perfect for me, he knows me so well!

We started the night off by going to look at Christmas lights! We had such a fun time laughing and enjoying one another. We ended up at Mission Inn (which looks incredible during Christmas) We walked around for a long time and had fun with one another...

After we hung out and explored the whole hotel we found a private cove (He knew I wanted it to be just us when he asked me) After a special talk, that I'll always remember, he got on his knee and asked me to marry him... After the shock and tears I said yes.



This is not the end of our story... it's just the start. Our reason for marrying each other is because we believe that we will bring our God more glory by being together than apart. God isn't finished with us yet, as individuals and as a couple.

catchin' up

So, my life has been crazy...

I went to New York City for a USP trip. We had an awesome time and I am so thankful for all that God did...

here's a picture of the team...



Also, I was given the honor of Ms. CBU!

Here is a picture of me and Mr. CBU, Carson (who went with me to New York too!). But these are not the best ones cause they are saving those for the year book... once yearbook gets them their gonna give them to me! :)



Thank you CBU for such an awesome honor. Thank you to everyone in my life who has impacted me into becoming who I am today.


I can't wait for Christmas, 16 more days to go!!!

International Celebration

“Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples.”

Psalm 96:3

This past week was INTERNATIONAL CELEBRATION! It was an incredible time of celebration. The purpose of this week was to bring awareness to CBU students about the international students that we have here on campus. During our international fair on Thursday we asked a group of students how many countries that they thought were represented in our student body... everyone guessed a number less than ten. In actuality we have 30 countries represented here at CBU! It is so cool to be in an environment like this!


Jared Dobbins put together for us to give everyone a taste of the international students on campus...

I tried to post it but it was too big... I'll work on getting it re sized and post it!

Wednesday night was the kick-off of the week with a time of prayer in the Knuppe Prayer Chapel. Tera made these awesome poster boards with pictures and different prayer requests from the countries that we have international students from...

Our prayer time started off with Jared opening us up with some scripture and a challenge to be praying for the nations. After that the students who were there were led into a time of prayer. The prayer chapel had been transformed by the work or Tera and the creativeness of Alden. I have to say it looked pretty cool.. It was broken up into 5 different sections...

The students who came to pray roamed from section to section praying for the different countries and the international students that are here at CBU. It was such an incredible time of prayer. Jeff played his guitar while we prayed. While we were praying I was reading my bible and I read an awesome passage of scripture that really impacted me that night...

Isiah 6:8-13
8. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said,"Here am I! Send me." 9. And he said, "Go, and say to this people:
"Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not percieve. 10. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with thier hearts, and turn and be healed."
11. Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said:
"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12. and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

This night of prayer was the beginning of a 48 hour prayer time. Every hour for the next 48 hours someone came to the prayer room to continue the prayer for the nations.

now that the 48 hours of prayer are over I hope that no one ceases to pray. My prayer is that everyone who was burdened that night to pray will truely seek God in how He wants them to respond and that it won't be a one time thing that they participated in.

The next morning was international fair. Different venders came and set up booths outside of the caf. There were about twenty organizations there including TomsShoes, Childrens Hunger Fund, C28, Habitat for Humanity, Path of life (A mentoring program), 6 different study abroad programs, ISP, ISI, Gospel for Asia, and many more! It was a lot of fun! Many students told me that they loved hearing about ways to get involved globally and the venders all told me that they enjoyed being at the school and sharing with students what they had to offer.

We played music and had give-aways during the passing periods when there was a high volume of people around.

Here are some pictures from the fair...







Jon Bello had some dried anchovies that he was trying to give away and he only got a few takers...





It was a great opportunity for two CBU students, Nick and Tim, to share with their peers about the backpacking trip that they will be taking this coming summer to raise awareness and money for gospel for china.

That night there was a game night in the game room that CAB helped put on. There were snacks and games. It was a fun time to hang out and make new friends while learning new games...


My favorite from the night was Yut. It is a Korean game where you toss 4 wooden sticks and you get to move a certain amount of spaces depending on the way the sticks fall.. It was so much fun. At the end of the night the kids that I babysit came and played Yut with me... Sarah and Emily were so good! I told there mom, Laura, they must be part Korean cause they were better then everyone else! =) I think everyone had a really fun time!







Friday night was our final event. We called it Celebration! This took place outside at our gazebo. Of course it was the first windy and cold night that we have had but that didn't matter. We started the night off with the international student video that we made and then jumped right into our talents. Mercedes and John were our MC's for the night and they did an awesome job! Briana from Spain played her violin and she did a beautiful job! Next up was Hailian! She read poetry in both Chinese and English. She did such a wonderful job. She looked so pretty too!
Next was Brett Vowel who sang the United States national anthem. He did a great job and was a crowd pleaser! Dr. Lu came and played with incredible instument (I don't know the name) and he spoke for a few minutes about the international students that we have here at CBU and the oppertunity that that gives us American students. Malavika shared with us a video about a man who was in America but was from India and missed his home country. She then shared how she had similar feelings. She did awesome and looked great in her traditional clothes from India! Erin shared a video from Blood:Water:Mission and shared about her bike trip this past summer. It was really cool hearing from an American student about creative ways to make a difference! We ended the night with a BEAUTIFUL performance of Amazing Grace by Mercedes, Vicente, and Jorge.

It was an increadible night of fellowship, celebration of talent and home countries, and food! Their were different snack type foods from all different countries. It was an awesome way to end the week.

(I don't have any pictures from this night but i will get some and post them ASAP!)

I want to thank everyone who helped me put this event on. It was a team effort and I believe God blessed our efforts!

International Celebration around the corner

International Celebration is an annual event put on at CBU to highlight international students here at CBU. Me and the other student ambassadors in the International Center have been working really hard to put this event together! If you go to CBU you should definitly participate in the different activities we'll be having!!!

Wednesday, October 8th

In chapel we'll be showing a video!

7:45- Prayer Meeting at the globe!

**Come for a short time of prayer and worship and head over to Relevant at 8:30!

***48 hours of prayer- the Knuppe prayer chapel will have pictures, prayer requests, and other neat things to guide you in prayer.

Thursday, October 9th

10:30-2:30- International Fair in stamps courtyard. Stop by in between classes for a chance to win prizes, find out about international justice organizations, and ways to get involved with international students. C28 and Toms shoes will be there!

7:00-9:00pm- Game Night!

**Come to the game room to learn games from other countries. There is this really cool game that is sorta like hackie-sack but has a new twist. You all should be there!

Friday, October 10th

7:00pm- Come to Harden Square for an evening of talent and international snacks! This is sure to be an evening of laughs and fun! :)


I am really excited about these events!

It's been a lot of work but I think it will be worth it!

:)

Grateful

Oh the things I have to be grateful for...

...God used someone, I don't even know who, to bless me incredibly. To whoever it was, thank you.

...My grandma Marion. I love you.










...CBU. I have grown immeasurably in my three years here and can't wait to see how I grow this year.












... International Students. I am praying for you all.








...Lancer Arms RA staff, you are all awesome. Thanks for the fun times.










...headbands













... I ran into an old friend in the caf. today. I miss you Aimee.










... speaking of friends, I have some great ones. love you all. thanks for being there for me even when my schedule keeps us from spending a lot of time together.

Here are a few pics of close friends.. this is not everyone for sure but a few close ones...










(Jennifer... You will always have a special place in my heart)











(My maylay sisters. love you!)









(My sweet friends.)









(Mary, Hailey and Emily =))









(I miss you Hannah. A lot.)

Again this isn't everyone... sorry to everyone I didn't get.

... ROOMMATES. Hailey and Emily, you are so much fun. Thank you for sharing your life with me!









(first roommate picture)

...down comforters and pillows.







...family. there's nothing more to say, just that I'm grateful for you.










































...Support. I have support coming from so many different angles. Thank you to all who pray for me, walk beside me, and challenge me in my walk with Christ.

...colors.










...my loving boyfriend. I don't deserve your patience and grace. ;)











There are many, many, many more things to be grateful but these are the things on my heart tonight.