Apartment hunt...

Today Kate and I went apartment hunting and we found the perfect apartment. The Lord really opened some doors and lead us to a wonderful place. Log on to see where we'll be living. If you are looking at the floor plans we will be living in the two bed/two bath split that is 995 square feet. Here is the web site to go to http://www.barrington-lakes.com/. We're excited!!

Nine down, nine to go...

Ok, I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything new. I'm so sorry to the two of you that read this;-) But I've been really busy finishing up my first half of student teaching. I loved it! I'm so glad I am going to be a teacher.

My last day was hard though. I will more than likely never see these kids ever again. I am now going to student teach at a different school, then this summer I will move to a different state, far away from them. As most of you know, I have really been burdened for these kids. I have really grow to love them, as I'm sure I will with all my students, but my heart still aches for them because they have not the truth.

Although I leave them to go to a new group of students, a new cooperating teacher, even a new town, I will always remember them with a great heartache and prayer. "My prayer and hearts desire" is that I may have planted a small seed in the hearts of these students, and maybe someday, the Lord will lead someone else to water, but ultimalty, the Lord will confict them so much, that they come to a saving faith.

"Lord lay some soul upon my heart. And love that soul through me. And may I humbly do my part to win that soul for Thee." May that truly be our hearts desire.

Math Papers...

I know, it's been a long time since I posted anything new. It's not because I haven't had anything new and exciting happen, but because I've been so busy. Busy with teaching, busy with preparing for the move to Chicago, busy with being interviewed by the Watertown Daily Times (another blog topic for later this week) and busy grading papers.

What I'm about to tell you will confurm and questions you had in your mind about how crazy I am, but I'm still going to tell you anyway! When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teacher because I thought it would be really cool to grade papers. Let me just say, grading papers is not all it's cracked up to be, and I don't even have to record the grades yet! As can be gatherd from the title of this blog, I had math papers to grade. I love grading written papers, drawings, even listening to them read, but I HATE grade math papers. Yes, some would say "How hard can it be you just go down the line and see if they have the right answer?" But it's more than that. You see the same thing over and over again, when there is a mistake you have to figure out where it is, and most of all, there's no creativity! I love reading papers where they really show me what they are thinking, but math? Come on, there isn't anything "extra" you can put in math. It's just plain ol' numbers.

I realized, even when we love what we do, there are still things we have to do even when we don't love it.

I'm glad I'm not...

There are so many things that we can be so thankful we are not. I know you are saying to yourself right this minute, "Katie, you are so wierd." I'm willing to accept that. Would you at least give me a chance to explain my thinking. Great, thanks:-)

Today, one of my students came to school without their homework done. As a teacher, my first thought was, "You're in second grade. The only homework I gave you last night was to read your assigned reading homework for twenty minutes. How hard can it be??" In this case however, it was much harder than it sounded. You see, this young student of mine comes from a broken home where love is few and far between if it's ever present at all. Yes, he may only be in second grade, but his life is harder than mine has ever been in the past twenty-two years, and my guess, full of more heart-ache than I can really every know. Yes, I come from a wonderful, loving two-parent home where love and discipline are abounding. And yes, I have seen the other side of life, the side of life where you have "two families" both of which want to spend lots of time with you without taking you away from the other for too long. But neither of my families, Jaspers or Nadaskay's, have every made my life so hard I couldn't sit down and do twenty minutes of second grade reading. Back to my story about the my student. This poor eight-year-old child couldn't do his homework last night because his dad got arrested. The police came to his house, arrested the dad, and took the two children to their mother's house. I use house for a reason and not home. For these two young children were taken from their father's house to their mother's and told by their mother, she "didn't want them because it wasn't her turn. The dad needed to keep them for his week. They were not her responsibility." As horrible as I may sound, I don't think that woman should even be called a mother. A real mother would NEVER say that. The saddest part of this story is that this is the third time since I have been teaching here (I've only been here six weeks) that this has happened to this little boy, and he is the second student to relate to me that one of their parents were arrested the night before and taken away.

So I guess tonight I'm glad I'm not living in a home where God is not dwelling, love is not present, and a family is missing. I would love to hear what you're glad you're not. God is so good to us, and yet how often we forget that fact. Life has struggles for all of us, but we have the wonderful truth that God will "not ever forsake us, not ever leave us."