Love...redefined. (contents of this post not suited for young children)

Summer is almost gone, can you believe it? Where oh where did the time go?! Yet as we sadly wave our summer goodbye, we welcome in the new semester with eagerness and a longing to see each other again, and this makes the heart yearn for the fellowship of the brethren. I am particularly eager to see you all again, for I am bursting to share with you what I have learned this past summer. Also, this monsoon season in Korea has been no joke, as you can see from the picture.

As some of you know, I have been rather uncertain as to what I want to do with my life, be it going into law enforcement, teaching English, or becoming a plastic surgeon, I really was not sure as to what i wanted to do.

However, this summer has been eye opening for me into the underground world of human trafficking and just how prevalent this abomination is. Do you know how many slaves there are in the world this present day? 27 million. This is more than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade has seen! Many of these people are forced into prostitution, and sickeningly, a large number of these people are taken into captivity when they are but children. The countries that are the most involved in this ugly trade? Thailand, Cambodia, Moldova.. but i was shocked to find out that South Korea is up at the top 5 in human trafficking.

This Friday, I had the privilege of seeing the world premiere of the documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. It was an hour 45 min well done film showing the hidden world behind the red light districts and the karaoke clubs and underground bars: it showed the testimony of women who have been rescued from lives of entrapment in sin and destruction and gave hope, sharing success stories and experimental legislation in Sweden that has proven surprisingly effective in discouraging human trafficking.

Then today, Sunday, the director of Nefarious, Benjamin Nolot, spoke at the church I am attending, addressing the issue at heart here: at the root of this abomination, is a twisted view of love. He compared God-given love with human self-centered lust, and contrasted where each will lead to, ultimately. It all goes back to Romans 1 (nod at Charity): ..."they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen." (Rom 1:25)

By focusing on the creature, mankind, "people have lost the vision of the supreme ethic of love. In pursuit of carnality, we have redefined love to fit in with promiscuity." (Benjamin Nolot). This so accurately depicts the culture in which we live in! This culture is so warped that fashion idols that kids look up to such as Angelina Jolie say things like "I doubt that fidelity is absolutely necessary in a relationship... we make sure that we never restrict each other." What is this?! This is the world we live in today.

Yet in this world marked with lust, God is still full of love for his children. Nolot shared a story of a middle eastern girl being kidnapped into the sex trade industry at the young age of 9, never before having seen or heard of a Bible. 4 years later, she was rescued and without ever having heard of Scripture before, she had written on her wall in the brothel a verbatim transcript of Psalm 27:1-7.

¹The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

²When evildoers assail me
to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
it is they who stumble and fall.

³Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet I will be confident.

⁴One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple.

⁵For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.

⁶And now my head shall be lifted up
above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

⁷Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!

Praise the Lord, He is worthy to be praised indeed! When i read this psalm, my heart just broke, knowing that we can never fully grasp how much the Lord loves us, and desires us to be saved.

There is a rap song done by a christian artist, Mickey Cho, that paints a realistic picture of what is going on behind the veneer of our society. Check it out here.

I apologize for the graphicness of this post: it is something that the Lord has laid upon my heart, and I wanted to share this with you all, so that you can all pray with me, that the Lord will see it fit to mark our society with a culture of Love.

10 things that I have caught myself or had to stop myself from doing since I came home from college:

1. resizing the window/zooming/resizing text on random websites to see when they finally break (muahaha!)

2. telling people they are rude

3. comparing MacGyver's mannerisms (and awesome hair!) to Weston's. This is no joke: we watched an episode yesterday and as we were starting it up my Mom suddenly yelled "oh my! He looks just like Weston!". We told her she should probably stick with Weston on her desktop.

4. trying to see how much I can see on all your Facebook's, without using my login credentials (because I'm not on Facebook and besides.... I'm not sure where my HD platter is right now)

5. saying "it's so fluffy I'm gonna die!!" then have people look at me strange

6. when someone says "long date" they are usually not actually talking about the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970

7. no pun intended

8. getting Rebeka Black stuck in my head when somebody  says "Friday" or John Denver when they talk about country roads (though I would definitely prefer the latter)

9. laughing out of context when someone says loop, a ray, C, java, SLIGHTLY, or any of our other innumerable computer puns.

10. losing the game when I see an Asian.


...now that's not creepy....

on a bit of another note, I'm in a bit of limbo right now on whether or not I'm going to be able to go back and work this summer. Everything was ready to go, but then there were some setbacks so I'm talking to Jason and trying to see if we can get everything worked out. Also I heard that there is a stomach bug going around Master's that is nailing everybody, so I hope Weston and Rhi start to feel better soon. Have any of you had to catch yourselves doing something completely strange, but would make total sense at college?


Joseph

Ready, get set, you're HOME!!!!!

Yes, as Joseph said, we are back in Texas safe and sound. We have had a rather adventurous first couple of days back. All kinds of gross and funny things. . .
On the way home from the airport, before we even got out of San Antonio, we stopped at Home Depot in order to pick up some ammo for the Jacobson Massacre of fire ants, scorpions, mud daubers, wasps etc.

This poor guy was actually still alive when he got pinned up to the board. Gross huh? He was wrigglin' around there with no stinger because it was cut of by the murderer . . .















Lovin' the good ol' dogs and cat that live outside, hunt, chase each other, get into trouble and live their whole life as an adventure without ever being treated like children . . . don't know how they can survive it.















Me and my Natey Boy!!!!!!!

Watched some REAL Brazilian Jui-Jitsu yesterday evening. These little boys put you big boys to shame!! Man, it was rather intense to say the least.

Last night we found my husky Willy out on the porch watching this spider . . . Dixie the cat soon got into the fun and started to play with it. Seriously it's like five inches across without being all stretched out. DISGUSTING! Never seen one so big in the wild. My brother-in-law and sister are convinced it's a baby. Now that's not creepy!!!!


While we were out on the porch screaming our heads off about the spider, who I'm convinced was really chasing me, I heard Natey crying. I turned around to see him standing there with blood dripping down his face. I guess he was playing in the shower and slipped smacking his head on the soap holder thing. He split his forehead open - just like 3/4 of an inch. He was rather adamant about me posting a pic of it, but I was a little afraid for you who are weak in the stomach. Mine did a nice little flip a couple of times. The urgent care clinic was closed sadly so my mom and I had to do at-home semi surgery with no needle or thread. We had the best of teachers though with my dad on the phone . . . hopefully we didn't completely mess it up so his scar won't be too bad. A few butterfly bandaids and a little liquid glue and he doesn't look too bad as of now.

So in a nutshell, we are in Texas, looking out for scorpions, catching up on all the amazing things we've been missing out on, are disgusted or enthralled (depending on who you are) with Mario's new pet spider, and are encouraging Natey in the manliness gained by having a scar on his face.

Ps. Thank you dear boys for the wonderful cold. It is so pleasant to know that I got it from you.

TMC Gangsters

This is a website designed for the increased collaboration between random individuals spread out over a vast geographical area (aka: North America, Asia, and Texas).

Rules for this website:
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