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.

back to..... school?

no, sadly, not back to a masters program or something... i've finally resigned myself to the fact that my website will not make me millions (at least in the first few months) and i need to work.

so i'm declaring myself available to the chicago public schools to substitute and make some money so i don't have to move back in with my parents. that is actually a huge motivator because i can not move back in with my parents.

well, so i'll be sharing lots of funny stories with you guys here on this blog because substituting is.... can we say, going to keep things interesting.

sigh......

Still in my pjs and glasses

Hehe... I love working from home! Well, you can't call it work because I've earned.... $0.32 so far for all my work. But I feel like I'm being productive.

So it's 8:57 a.m. right now. Most people who work would be in their offices, getting their coffee, checking work email, stuff like that.

I basically rolled out of bed at 6, read my Bible, prayed, watched the sun rise... and I've been really productive for the last 2 hours!

I could get used to this.

What am I working on??? Well, I'm trying to have it up and running by tomorrow (Friday). It being my website. It's about worship music: playing by ear, music theory, new worship and Christian artists.

I'm fasting from TV media this week and praying over how or if God wants this website to be used.

I'm hoping that it could be my main source of income, from product referrals and ads and stuff.

I'm gonna go brush my teeth and get back to work. Heh.

If you want to start exploring, go here: listenwithhelen.blogspot.com

What are you doing these days?

That's what everyone keeps asking me.

Well, I'm doing lots of stuff these days (I say defensively). In August, I was out of town for 3 weeks - 2 in Guatemala with the youth for a missions trip, and 1 in LA with Jamie and my family for the Hillsong conference.

Since I've come back, I took about a week to recover from traveling - Joe, I know how you feel about just wanting to sleep in your own bed, and getting back into the swing of things at church.

I'm on the roster to substitute teach for the Chicago Public Schools, but it's only been one week, and no teacher in their right mind is going to take time off of school their first week.

So, what am I doing instead of substituting?

There's a website in the works. I'm a little embarrassed about it right now because it's my first website and I'm trying lots of stuff out. Lots of trial and lots of error.

But when it's ready to go public, you'll be the first to know. =)

camp: the best week of your life

so i've been away from civilization for a while now... and it's taken me a long time to adjust back to it. last week i was at youth camp with 33 of our church kids, in addition to 900 youth from around illinois. why is camp the best week of your life? well, there's no distractions there, no phones, internet, bills, jobs, other responsibilities - just you and God. i went as a counselor, and even though i'm there for the kids, i always meet God at camp for myself.

this time, our speaker, ron rhoads (www.ronrhoads.org) gave a life-changing sermon for each night we were there, and the Holy Spirit touched everyone's lives in a different way. for me, God confirmed certain purposes for my life, and helped me to see that ministry is all dependent on His timing and His power.

one really cool testimony is that one of the girls in my room came from a different church, and at first i wasn't sure why she was in my room. but as she shared what she wanted God to do in her life this week - to confess to her parents about her relationship with her boyfriend - another girl from our room (from our church) was able to use her testimony of the same thing, and really speak to the other girl's heart because of it. that's all God's sovereignty, putting them together like that.

another testimony that i heard later, is that a youth from our church was playing a game with guy from another church who was being really disrespectful to him and everyone else. so our youth talked to the other kid and asked him why he was at camp - to which he responded, 'to win for my team.' and our kid kept sharing with him throughout the 5 days, about how God worked in his life last year at camp, and his relationship with God... and there was a salvation altar call, and this other kid went to the altar. i know it was directly related to our kid planting those seeds in his heart.

3 of our students from church received salvation this week! and countless more learned how to pray and worship with earnestness and faith.

i wish everyone could go to camp. it is not for the faint of heart, though. every day was a 20 hour day... and i'm still fighting off the cold due to exhaustion. but it's all worth it! i feel like i ended up going on a missions trip after all.

there's pictures and videos of camp on my facebook. check them out!

the biggest point i left with is that the people around us who are not alive in christ are dead spiritually, and they need us to, in a sense, bring them back to life. the dead don't know they're dead, and they count on the living. read the story of paul and eutychus, who fell out of the 3rd story and paul raise him back to life - acts 20. the last night, over 100 kids received salvation, and all 900 of us were on our faces praying for the people in our lives who we love and don't yet know christ. we don't know the hour or the day Jesus will come back, and we definitely don't know the time or day when God says our time is up. it's morbid, i know, but eternal life or eternal death is THE bottom line. even us christians forget that, and we implement all sorts of great social work projects - but don't preach the gospel. as we love the whole person, let's not forget to love their souls that were created for eternity and relationship with God.