I'm leaving for New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with Daniel's family. So I won't be able to respond to any e-mails until next week.

Thank you God for this break and for all you do for me.

I finally have pictures from the Fairfax campaign, so here they are:

Jeremiah driving his trusty Subaru that worked very hard for us all weekend

Me in the car

Jeremiah

Me

Leeann and Christy with our campaign signs early morning on election day

A blurry shot of me holding a sign on the morning of election day

Jeremiah, me, and another guy that volunteered with us on election day morning

Mrs. Brickner getting interviewed before she voted

Our core team of PHC students that stayed until the end

Thursday night I attended a lecture by one of the professors here, Dr. Mitchell. He teaches my Logic class and is very good. He spoke about the loss of community and the break-down of the family in democratic society. It was very interesting. He's writing a book about the subject and presented what he had written so far. He took Q&A afterwards and I asked the question: "Do you think possibly that one of the symptoms and/or causes of the mobile culture and loss of community is the prevalence of two people coming from distant locations getting married to each other?" He agreed. After hearing his talk, I was reinforced in my desire to 1. marry someone from Arizona and 2. live and work in Arizona after college is over.  The weather has also been making me wish I was in Arizona. After warm rain on Wednesday, we have had cold wind for the last two days. Veerrry cooold. Brrrrr!

 

I started to feel stressed yesterday because I'm going to have 1 paper due the week before Thanksgiving, 1 paper due the week after that and 2 papers due the week after that! So I will be doing a lot of writing for a while.

 

Yesterday I something happened to me that hasn't happened in a long time. Dr. Gruenke was explaining the circulatory system in Biology class and towards the end of class she demonstrated how the valves in our veins work by applying pressure to her wrist. I was sitting in the front row and began to feel woozy. My dizziness got worse as my friend Jeremiah who was sitting next to me asked the question: "Why do people faint when they hear about things like this?" I could feel the blood leaving my face and as Dr. Gruenke was answering his question, I guess my mind decided to take the suggestion and I demonstrated the phenomonon of fainting. From my perspective, I just started dreaming. After a little while I opened my eyes and found myself lying on my back staring at the ceiling. I was told later that from the perspective of the people around me, this is what happened: My face was white as a sheet and after my eyes rolled back into my head, my body straigtened, stiffened and fell to the ground, my head hitting both the table behind me and the hard floor beneath me. My body convulsed for about a second and then I opened my eyes and looked peaceful. It was a pretty scary experience for everyone else, but not that bad for me. The appropriate personnel were notified and Mr. Hall, a trained parametic, stayed with me until I regained enough strength to go back to my dorm. What I learned from this experience is that I will immediately lie down and close my eyes the next time I feel dizzy like I did, and hopefully I can refocus my thoughts on something pleasent so that it doesn't happen again. I rested for a couple of hours and then went to History class and felt fine.

 

Last night I went to Josh Harris's church and heard him speak about the need for sex to be rescued. He emphasized our need to know God's perspective on this subject and made the following points:

 

1. God invented sex (and He designed it to feel good)

2. God reserves sex for marriage (He values it so much that He put boundaries around it)

3. God punishes those who misues the gift of sex.

4. God is merciful and has provided salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.

 

It was a good reminder of the importance of maintaining purity in my life and I enjoyed visiting Covenant Life Church, a very nice church. Well, I better get to dinner before everyone else takes all the food.

Last weekend I was given the opportunity to work for the Mychele Brickner campaign. Brickner was a conservative Republican running for the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, VA. About twelve PHC students worked on the campaign at various times throughout the weekend. Since Fairfax county is about an hour from PHC, the campaign put us up in the very nice home of one of their supporters. After arriving Friday evening and getting to know the office and the people a little bit, we got to work. Our first job was to pound wooden stakes into the ground in the median of one of the main streets and staple campaign signs to the stakes. That was Friday night. Jeremiah and I were the only ones that packed Friday afternoon so we stayed the night while everyone else drove back to PHC. Saturday morning, we went to the office and got our assignments. For most of the day, we knocked on people's doors, handed them literature, and asked them to vote for Brickner on Tuesday. Saturday night we went out to eat with some of the campaign staff at a Mexican grill that was very nice. Sunday morning, we hit the churches with literature. Jeremiah and I had time to put literature on the cars of church members in 3 services at a Catholic church, 2 services at an Episcopalian church, hang out in Starbucks, and attend an English service at a Korean Presbyterian church as well. It was a fun morning. Some of the other groups got kicked out of the church parking lots, but we didn't. We walked around neighborhoods all afternoon and evening, hanging door-hangers on all of the Republicans' doorknobs. Monday morning, we stood outside the train stations that filled up with commuters heading for DC and handed out literature reminding people who to vote for the next day. The rest of the day Monday was spent doing more lit-drops in neighborhoods. Jeremiah, Christy, Allis, and I found that we were a pretty good team so we stuck together. Aaron, Jeremiah, and I went out to a nice Italian restaurant Monday night. We got up early Tuesday morning and joined Mychele and her family at their polling place. There were I believe four or five television stations there, covering her vote and we waved signs in the background as she was interviewed. Then we went out to neighborhoods and reminded the Republicans to get out and vote, dropping off literature about Brickner of course. At about 3pm, Jeremiah and I were assigned to a fairly busy polling place and we got set up in a system. There was a Republican gentleman running for the local school board, shaking hands with the voters. The Democrat lady running against him was also there. So Jeremiah would greet the voters and funnel them to the Republican, while I stood directly in front of the Democrat, handing out Brickner literature. After they shook hands with the Republican, there was a girl handing them sample Republican ballots, and then I handed them my flyer. We hoped that by the time they got to the Democrat, they would be so tired of the whole thing that they wouldn't stop and listen to what she was saying. The Republican ended up losing, but it was a lot of fun. Tuesday night we stopped by the Brickner party for a short time, and then went back to PHC.

Unfortunately Brickner ended up losing too, so it was the second year in a row that I've worked on losing campaigns. :( I had hoped to be posting pictures from the weekend when I wrote this, but I can't seem to get them from Allis. Once I get them, I will post them.

The rest of last week was pretty much playing catch-up. The Biology quiz on Wednesday, Latin exam on Friday, and History quiz on Friday all went pretty well. I feel confident that I knew what I was supposed to know.

Last night, I went to see PHC's Eden Troupe in their last performance of Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw. They did a wonderful job. The convincing acting, stunning makeup and costumes, and beautiful sets combined to produce a very enjoyable presentation. The show is a romantic comedy and everyone in the audience found it hilarious. The message was to be always true in life and love, and it came across very well. Well, I better get ready for the 12:30 church service...