Friday November 23, 2007

Emma Hanks

23 November, 2007

New Testament Journal Entry

I’m very excited to study the four gospels testifying of Jesus Christ and I have some objective that I have written down so that I can take advantage of this awesome opportunity to study here in the holy land. I guess that my goals mirror those of BYU-Intellectually enlarging, Spiritually strengthening, character building. I want to come to better comprehend the New testament, it vocabulary, geography, customs and everything about it. I plan to stretch myself spiritually, to pray to learn by the spirit and to practice having the spirit with me, to actually feel what the writers of the gospels would have me feel. And I want to become more like Christ, to understand him better and apply his example practically in my life. Another goal I have is to come closer to the savior and understand his atonement better.

Friday was a great day at the Jerusalem Center. It was a typical quiet Friday, with few outings. The cool weather and the fact that we couldn’t leave the center helped most people decide to hang out here. But it was anything but a boring day. It started out with 2 hours of New Testament Class and grueling quizzes in both classes. Then we had 311 and studied the Hasmoneans.

I played fusball with Greg and currently we’re locked in at one game each, it gets pretty vicious sometimes, good thing they’ve got the tables in the bomb shelter! My roommate, April played ping-pong “for like 4 hours”. My other roommate, Rebecca, was sick. After lunch(by the way I started my new diet after thanksgiving and ate a whole plate of French fries) I took a nap, read my scriptures, a few people made it all the way to Lanas and Alladin’s for snacks and money to buy even more junk food.

Then the highlight of the night came, dinner! One of my three favorite times of the day. No really, the best part of the night was definitely the variety show. Started out with “Ryan Zion” (both ryans) as MCs. Then came an incredible Hippo song by Ashley Eskelson. Caleb and Kayla danced a waltz. Becca sang ‘poisoning pigeons in the park”, Greg and Brandon played the nose(bag)pipes. Rachel M. sang a song from the scarlet pimpernel. Archie gave an original reading of an original essay by himself. Holly and co. yodeled the sound of music song, she did her own accompaniment and read the notes off of her hand, a real accomplishment. Stephanie and Lauren played a “sleigh ride duet.” Brooklyn played “Jessica’s theme”. Nick and Craig sang “I think we’re alone now” with a slide show of pictures with people singled out. A bunch of people did an OT rap. Tiffany sang “Popular”. And I’m sure that I forgot someone incredible, but all-in-all it was a pretty hilariously awesome night. Laughter is just about the greatest thing.

Later that night we played a killer game of soccer with April carrying one of the wounded (Caleb) from the 3rd floor up to the 6th floor on her back. Wow.