on being gifted and other such fun

dude, so last night was fun... instead of thursday night, friday's the night this semester for no math nights. chicken parmesan at jared's followed by sheepshead for awhile... it was fun, although i got a little loud and bossy towards the end before i left... not mean bossy, just i need to work on not being carried away/too hyper around my friends here because they're all way too nice and let me get away with it for a bit.

so i left early anyhow because i had to be up super early... the earliest i have to be up any given weekday is 9:50, and that's just a 10 minute drive away to class... today i had to be at church at 9 for an all day spiritual gifts workshop, which was a whole 30 minute drive away... all that adds to up after a fun night, i had to be up and going well over an hour earlier than i normally am on even my earliest mornings... it's been a long day just from that and i'm tired!!!

but yeah, it was good... there were 14 of us around for this workshop... we spent the day going back and forth between large group discussion and video watching and small group discussion (and i finally met the lady in charge of the altar guild team i'm on in my small group -- yay =P)...it was a productive day in self-understanding.

very concise summary... we each have a unique passion/set of spiritual gifts/personality combination, and it's figuring out what those are that will help us each fgure out how we can serve other people with our gifts... for example in talking about what my passion was, the 5-7 most significant events in my life were not events, but people... talking about it in my group and thinking about it more, what i really really enjoy is making people laugh and being able to listen to them/help them however i'm able... so in a way, my "passion" is encouraging or cheering up people.

as far as personality traits, apparently i'm slightly more people oriented than task oriented and slightly more desiring of flexibility than of structure.

the spiritual gifts part was the interesting part... we were supposed to kind of "score ourselves" on various traits of 20+ spiritual gifts referenced in the Bible... my highest score was 15/21, but i had 3 that i had that score for... given no scale is perfect, but part of the system was after we assessed ourselves we were told in the next week to go and ask at least 3 christian friends to fill out a similar evaluation of those same gifts and what aspects of them they see in us... i won't say exactly what i came up with for myself until i hear back from my people, lest they read this before they answer impartially =P

we also talked a lot about other more overarching concepts like how diversity is not division, unity is not conformity, the difference between servility and servanthood, etc. like i said, it was a good and productive day.

now, i have some more stuff to do on my own, like i said above, some of my friends have some stuff to fill out, and a month from now i have a 45 minute meeting with pastor to discuss the whole process and talk about what i plan to do about it. should be good stuff... big thoughts to process/organize in the meantime... will also be interested to see how the people who have it respond to the survey.

in other news, since i was gone to old bridge (town where church is) all day, i've not done any homework at all... i only have two classes that have assigned it so far, but they're the two harder ones in my opinion... (1) analysis (which was my worst subject last semester) and (2) lie groups (which started out above my head the first lecture, the book isn't in yet, but i have 12 problems due on thursday!)... everyone else played basketball this afternoon while i was at church, and then got together for homework about the time i got home to rest for a little... they're making tacos and playing cards tonight, but i think i need to make a nice cup of chai, and get busy and to work for a bit. *hopefully* i'll be brilliant and figure out at least something... if not, at least for analysis, jared promised to be my buddy and explain what i don't understand to me tomorrow afternoon... for lie groups, i'll just have to catch up with leigh, colleen, or maybe even just bug greg on IM if i can't seem to make heads and tails of it... but first i actually have to get to work! dude...

ok, so that's that... more another time... vislat!