awww..... from an old student

hey ms. wu its me stepahnei suarez omg yeah i know I MISS YOU SO MUCH!!!!!YEP SO YEAH WHATS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE ?AND ALSO OMG WE SHOULD GO SHOPPING LOL I MEAN IF YOU WANT OH YEAH AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN MARTIN AND EVERY BODY ELSE WANTS YOU TO COME TO MY PARTY ITS ON OCT.30

6:30-11PM YEAH SO THE address is [ ] if you want to come and if your not busy yeah i put a clown since halloween is coming up lol bye please write back

faith

this is pastors' appreciate month! i am incredibly thankful for my pastor and all the leaders at my church. i was just reflecting today on how far God has brought me and that just a few short years ago, i was still in the throes of clinical depression and not ever imagining that i could live a full and joyful life.

for those of you who knew me back in high school and/or college, and for those that didn't... i was so depressed that i slept like 14 hours a day, barely got my homework done, hated doing anything social, hated being around people, lived in my own world of escaping anything painful... and i didn't think i could ever really live a life free of my depression. everything revolved around it... and revolved and revolved and i hated my life and hated myself.

well, people had been praying for me even before i became depressed - my family, my youth leaders at EFC, my christian friends... and they prayed for me while i was going through my 9+years of depression...

i went through anti-depressants, therapy, and it's awesome and beautiful how god has brought me to a church that has seen people delivered from drugs, from gangs, and from selfishness because i saw the power of god firsthand in my own life.

being free of depression is not a one-time experience. it's an ongoing molding and stretching and shaping by the Holy Spirit. it's learning to be disciplined in the face of emotional rollercoasters, it's dealing with interpersonal issues instead of ignoring them, it's learning to hope and trust that our present troubles are momentary in comparison to our eternal glory... and all this came from the power of prayer. the prayer of faith is indeed a spiritual weapon that this world cannot stand up to.

in fact, what can we do without God's power? and what can't we do without His power?

i want to encourage you to pray with faith today. lift your voice and declare your trust in God and watch Him do the impossible for your life.

the unemployment sagas

so i've filed for unemployment. i'm technically employed by chicago public schools, but i have yet to work.

well, so there's this clause in the unemployment benefits that if you resigned, you may not be eligible for benefits unless you did everything in your power to continue to work. i sure didn't know that, otherwise i would have asked my principal to fire me. it would all be semantics anyways.

today, i talked to a lady from the illinois unemployment office on the phone - about why i resigned and what i did to avoid not having a job. it should have been a nice and easy talk, routine questions and such, but it was actually really terrible. in a funny way.

she had an accent - i'm not sure of which origin, but it wasn't spanish or asian. i couldn't understand half of what she was saying. then when i asked her to repeat herself, she got really frustrated, and kept saying the same thing, but louder - and still as unintelligible.

also, she asked questions that were really hard to answer in a yes/no fashion, such as, "did you do everything in your power to resolve this situation?" which doesn't make sense in my case because i needed to quit for the sake of my sanity. i didn't know what to tell her, and instead of giving me helpful advice about how to answer this question, she just repeated it louder and louder (in that accent!) until i said, "yes." if it was recorded, i would totally play it for you here.

my goodness, why does the government hire people like this? we were both so frustrated at the end of the conversation. and i'm probably still not going to get any of my unemployment benefits.