Jessica’s blog

Well, God is stretching my faith in new and radical ways!!! Someone on the team has a friend who has been laid on my heart. I've prayed and prayed for him to run after God with all his heart and God gave me and a couple of the girls visions. Mine was of him reading the bible and you could see his hunger for God and he couldn't get enough of His word!!! I just believe it will all come to pass!!! I just want him to love Jesus!

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Anywho....

We are painting the float for the parade tommorrow and I have to say that I really hate painting!!! But I made it fun but I did ruin my new jeans and shirt!! But I may get away with still wearing them!!!

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So I really like the word vintage.....

and I like Jesus

so put the two together and you have two of my favorite things!!!!

Mcdonalds made me so mad!!!! I wanted a chicken Biscuit and instead I got a sauage Biscuit!!! I am so Christian.....so I wanted to rant about it......ok so I'm a BAD Christian sometimes. But I guess the biscuit I got was filling and I'm not going hungry.....and I worked at McDonalds back in the day and I got my orders mixed up and messed up too.

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anywho.....

I love God.....we made morning prayer and it was so cool to see that the first years lead prayer and people were declaring things over others lives, their lives. The power of God does not rest on how old or what year you are, it rests on the ones who are willing to grap that God given power. I didn't realize until now how powerful our words and prayers are, and there was a freedom that was released today. We are a people rising!!!! Victory is ours and the enemy has been defeated!!!!! Proclaim it in your own lives.....take ownership in this word!!!!  

Desitny Masters Commission has a great track for missions!!! We are looking for two people to spend three months in Scotland!!!! and at no extra cost to you! I love missions and I'm not personally looking into go down that path but I love the idea of sending and supporting people with a heart for missions!!! I believe that Destiny Masters Commission....this is now another reason to come to Masters Commission!!!!!!

I miss Indiana a lot and I want to go back sometimes!!! I miss my family and at least having them around and boy do I miss friends!!!  but anyways, enough of my silly feelings.....

The Indiana trip was so cool! First we went to my home church(and it was hard to leave!) then we went to The life Center and I met Crystal and Mike for the first time and I have to say that they are the greatest!!! I also met Crystals mom who is a woman of faith, let me tell ya!! Then we went back to Indy and hung out with Homeless people and went to their homes and met them where they were! Then we had Hide and Seek and it was the greatest thing in the world!!!

 After all that....we work a nascar event!!! I really didn't like the event but when you check everyones bags before they enter the event and point out random things like slim jims and tell them they can't have them.....is pretty funny!

and thank God for free stuff! I love when random people give me free stuff.....what did I get....a starbucks coffee, white Castle, pretzel, ten dollars, candy and some other stuff.....all because, well, I checked bags!!!!!

Well, everyone is back from Scotland and I really loved that they came back in time to do the ReThink Conference. Tommorrow we are going to Indiana and the First stop is in my own town! Indianapolis here we come!!!! During the trip we are also having a Hide and Seek Service, so Columbus we are so excited!!!! 

Well, just in Masters Commission is now extending the April trip!!!! After the Indiana Trip, we are going to St. Louis and doing the Nascar Race and will raise some money!!!

Thursday we will be going to my home church and seeing my mom!!!

150,000- this is the number of people who die daily

1.3 million abortions are performs each year

A child is abused every ten seconds

4 million child are abused each year, and those are just the one's that are reported.

the homeless

Drug addicts

EMO kids

Our hearts are moved and we are passionate about TALKING about it......but what is being done?

150, 000 people will die today and that makes you sad but what have you done today to ensure their eternal destiny?

and in the 30 seconds it could you to read this.....three children have been abused........are you passionate about that cause? what are you doing about it, or are you still just talking about it? o look another children has been abused and at least two or three people have died as soon as you are done reading this sentence.

We jump on the band wagon of passion yet accomplish nothing because all we do is sit and talk or we may be one of those few people who speak about it on stage and get others motivated to care about it but never offer ideas on how to improve it.

I'm not impressed with passions with no actions in my own life anymore.....or in anyone else.

I have been studying how women are treated around the world and I found an article that I wanted to share.

Olivia Ward
Foreign Affairs Reporter

The image of the 21st century woman is confident, prosperous, glowing with health and beauty.

But for many of the 3.3 billion female occupants of our planet, the perks of the cyber age never arrived. As International Women's Day is celebrated today, they continue to feel the age-old lash of violence, repression, isolation, enforced ignorance and discrimination.

"These things are universal," says Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of New York-based Equality Now. "There is not one single country where women can feel absolutely safe."

In spite of real progress in women's rights around the globe – better laws, political participation, education and income – the bedrock problems that have dogged women for centuries remain. Even in wealthy countries, there are pockets of private pain where women are unprotected and under attack.

Some countries, often the poorest and most conflict-ridden, have a level of violence that makes life unbearable for women. Richer ones may burden them with repressive laws, or sweep the problems of the least advantaged under the carpet. In any country, refugee women are among the most vulnerable.

So widespread are the disadvantages that it's hard to pinpoint the worst places in the world for women. Some surveys rate their problems by quality of life, others by health indicators. Human rights groups point to countries where violations are so severe that even murder is routine.

Literacy is one of the best indicators of women's status in their countries. But Amnesty International Canada's women's rights campaigner Cheryl Hotchkiss says building schools alone doesn't solve the problem of equal education.

"There's a huge range of barriers women face to getting an education," she says. "It may be free and available, but parents won't send their daughters out to school if they can be kidnapped and raped."

Health is another key indicator, including the care of pregnant women, who are sometimes forced into disastrous early marriage and childbearing, as well as infection with HIV/AIDS. But again, statistics fail to show the whole, complex story.

"On a rural lake in Zambia, I met a woman who had not told her husband she was HIV-positive," says David Morley, CEO of Save the Children Canada. "She was already living on the edge because she had no children. If she told him, she would be kicked off the island and sent alone to the mainland. She felt she had no choice, because she had no power at all."

Putting power in women's hands is the biggest challenge for improving their lives in every country, advocates agree. Whether in the poorest countries of Africa, or the most repressive of the Middle East or Asia, lack of control over their own destinies blights women's lives from early childhood.

Here are 10 of the worst countries in the world to be a woman today:

• Afghanistan: The average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males.

• Democratic Republic of Congo: In the eastern DRC, a war that claimed more than 3 million lives has ignited again, with women on the front line. Rapes are so brutal and systematic that UN investigators have called them unprecedented. Many victims die; others are infected with HIV and left to look after children alone. Foraging for food and water exposes women to yet more violence. Without money, transport or connections, they have no way of escape.

• Iraq: The U.S.-led invasion to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls. The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are unable to earn enough to eat.

• Nepal: Early marriage and childbirth exhaust the country's malnourished women, and one in 24 will die in pregnancy or childbirth. Daughters who aren't married off may be sold to traffickers before they reach their teens. Widows face extreme abuse and discrimination if they're labelled bokshi, meaning witches. A low-level civil war between government and Maoist rebels has forced rural women into guerrilla groups.

• Sudan: While Sudanese women have made strides under reformed laws, the plight of those in Darfur, in western Sudan, has worsened. Abduction, rape or forced displacement have destroyed more than 1 million women's lives since 2003. The janjaweed militias have used systematic rape as a demographic weapon, but access to justice is almost impossible for the female victims of violence.

• Other countries in which women's lives are significantly worse than men's include Guatemala, where an impoverished female underclass faces domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies left with hate messages.

In Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, few women escape the torture of genital mutilation, many are forced into early marriages, and one in 10 dies in pregnancy or childbirth.

In the tribal border areas of Pakistan, women are gang-raped as punishment for men's crimes. But honour killing is more widespread, and a renewed wave of religious extremism is targeting female politicians, human rights workers and lawyers.

In oil-rich Saudi Arabia, women are treated as lifelong dependents, under the guardianship of a male relative. Deprived of the right to drive a car or mix with men publicly, they are confined to strictly segregated lives on pain of severe punishment.

In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a vicious civil war has put women, who were the traditional mainstay of the family, under attack. In a society that has broken down, women are exposed daily to rape, dangerously poor health care for pregnancy, and attack by armed gangs.

So the team is coming back from Scotland on Thursday....I think? but the people that stayed here had so much fun!!! I have to say that I don't regret not going to Scotland(not that I would have had the money anyways) It's been so qiute and peaceful at the dorms and I've been hanging out with Belinda and we've had a lot of fun last night at Bricktown going to random places and ending the night with ice cream!!! WHOOT!!! anyways, Tonight we are having another girls' night at Renee's house and I'm pretty Stoked!!! Zack got a new hair cut and he is convinced I hate it because I seem to laugh everytime I see him....but zAcK your hair is fine.....But today is Tuesday and I'm going to enjoy the dorms while they are peaceful before everyone gets home. I'm going to miss the dorms being to peaceful and no one saying "don't sit on my bed!!!!" or " I want to punch you right now" or........HEHEHE anyways, TO sonya, Chantel, Belinda, Angie, Scott and Greg, you are the best and my favorite none Scotland people ever!!!! I gonna miss just hanging out with you guys!!!!

THen I colored my hair black..........scared ya! well it is black with brown, and another color. It's really cute!

O yea to the Scotland people hope your having fun and I give you permission to stay another week or month or three months! just kidding about the week.....please stay a month!!!! AHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHa!!! anyways see you whenever and if I'm sleeping when you get home.....don't wake me up or i'll send snipers to snipe your families. Just eat, go to bed and recover from jet lag!!!!

I love life in the Pairie land......Peace, love, and peanut butter whoppers!!!

I had convictions and commitments. I had standards and I had stuck by them.

I came to MC and things changed my thoughts were not the same and it's not a bad things. but something I'm learning and I encourage everyone, never forget what you believed and your standards but only improve on them and let God define and shape them, don't lose them.

I believe in rules and commitments

I stand by my thoughts on what moview and music I chose to see and listen to.

I stand for the causes I believe in

* The people around me may not have the same convictions and comittments and that's ok, but I will not leave mine behind to look like everyone else.

But this to be continued, because I'm still finding what I "left" when I came to MC.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

In Natoma, Kansas, it's illegal to throw knives at men wearing striped suits.

While in some countries the penalty for driving while intoxicated can be death (yes, death), in Uruguay intoxication is a legal excuse for having an accident while driving. "Please believe me officer, I really was drunk."

According to the federal Center for Substance Abuse prevention, "For kids under twenty-one, there is no difference between alcohol and other drug use and abuse." Incredibly, it makes no distinction between a self-reliant 20 year old toasting his love at their wedding reception with a sip of champagne and a drug-addicted 20 year old doing crack cocaine!

One lady had her husband's ashes made into an egg timer so that even in death he can still "help" in the kitchen.

The first ambulance service was established in Cincinnati in 1865.

It is commonly understood that Paul Revere said "The british are coming, the british are coming."

However, Revere never said "The British are coming," this would have made no sense at the time since they considered themselves British.

Revere instead said, "The Regulars are coming out! The Regulars are coming out!" But, that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

 Have you ever been so absorbed in a book or tv that you weren't aware of somebody entering or leaving the room? This is one of many definitions of a trance state

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

What color is a polar bear
Polar bears really have black skin and their fur isn't white it is a see through

The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis(which means lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica dust)

There is a two-foot long bird called the Kea. The kea lives in New Zealand and just loves to eat the strips of rubber around car windows.

The worlds most smallest octopus, the Blue Ring, is also the worlds most poisonous.
More than 40,000 people each year die from Toilet Injuries. These could be from drowning in the toilet to tripping and knocking their head on the toilet.

The ball of chewed food in your mouth (before you swallow) is called a bolus. Introduce this fact to the dinner table in polite company.