This week what grabbed my attention was our music theory class.  I have had many music classes in the past, so I remembered a lot of what Mr. Dave taught us, but one thing that I didn’t know was the circle of fifths.  I have heard about it, but never learned it.  At first glance I was totally confused, but as he explained it I began to understand it.  It is a great formula for knowing and learning key signatures and somethings that I will most certainly use and hopefully remember.

I learned key signatures a bit differently.  The way I learned I pretty much had to memorize each key.  The circle of fifths makes it possible to learn without memorizing.  It is a sequence of key signatures that are spaced equally apart.  All that is required is to know the whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half pattern.  Once this is known all key signatures can be determined. On the outside of the circle is the major keys and on the inside are their relative minors.  Rotating clockwise around the circle the 5th interval can be determined. Moving counter clockwise the 4th interval can be determined.  Learning to read the circle is the difficult part, but once it is known it is a piece of cake.

Sasha

Body shop. . .

Once again this week my body shop hours were taken care of by our morning workouts.  This week we did three days on the track of Liberty High School.  We walked, jogged, and ran around the track.  We did this in several different ways.  Some of it we ran with our team, other parts we did as partners.

We also did some additional things to running such as push-ups, and exercises with the weights, weight ball, and pole.  One of the things we did was hold the weights directly in front of us with our arms straight.  We held the objects out as long as we could before our arms gave out on us. 

This week I was able to do much more.  Consistently pushing myself has payed off.

In one of our body shops this week I was having a really hard time catching my breath.  This caused me to not only slow down myself, but my whole team.  I wanted more than anything to keep going, but my lungs kept stopping me.  I was so frustrated that I was the week link holding my team back.  I pushed as far as I could but just didn’t have enough strength in me to keep going.  As I started to slow down Tim came up beside me and told everyone to go on ahead of me.  In this moment I felt defeated.  All I had left was 200 meters, but I couldn’t make it.

Just like this example I have had multiple times of defeat and failure.  I am learning that sometimes it necessary to not make it, to fall short, to stumble.  We are nothing in our own strength.  When we do life on our own we fail.  This is the way God intended it to be.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.  He gives us breath to fill our lungs and sustains our lives.  God is our ultimate power source of which we have full access.  In order to grab a hold of this we must know that we need God in everything we do. By ourselves we can’t make it. When we do life ourselves we fail, always.

This week body shop was not an option.  We all worked out together to work to improve our team work skills.  It was tiresome and required a lot of hard work, but together we all made it through the week.  All the days began to run together, but here is a list of some of the things that we did.

Running the track
Walking
Jogging
Running the bleachers
Jumping
Push Ups
Lunges
Relays with the weight ball
Push Ups with weight ball
Bicept Curls


We did all these things and more Tuesday through Friday.  My three hours of body shop was most definitely met. ll these exercises improved our team work as well as benefitted our physical health.  Needless to say we were all pretty soar after a couple days of these intense work outs.

Ministry Hours. . .

For my first four ministry hours I tagged bathrooms, but this time I was not alone.  My mom and my sister helped me out.  We made the cards and then went to several different locations posting the cards in bathroom stalls.  My whole family went to Applebees and when we were about to leave my mom and I posted some more in the restroom.  It was so fun being sneaky while brightening someone’s day. 

This simple act of tagging can do a number of things.  First, it is so much fun.  Second, as we made the cards we were reminded of God’s love.  Lastly, the people who read the cards are given a little bit hope.

For the other four hours i spent time with my grandparents.  This may not seem like much of a ministry opportunity, but it most definitely is. Both of my grandparents are not believers and my grandma is suffering from Alzheimers.  Because of this and other reasons my relationship with them has been a bit distant.  I had the opportunity to really talk to my grandpa about my beliefs.  Even though we may not see eye to eye he at least supports me in what I do.   He has become so much more open and accepting. I also talked to my grandma and even though she can not remember if it is hot or cold outside I know that the things I speak to her about God will not be forgot because it is a matter of the heart rather than the head.

Body Shop.. .

For all of my body shops this week I went to the gym with my mom.  It was so much fun to workout with her.  We encouraged each other to keep pressing on.  It was also quite funny because everything my mom does is hilarious.  Anyways……

First we did 30 min of strength including, arms, legs, abs.  There were machines in a circle around the room and each one was timed.  Once the light turned green it was time to start, when the light blinked it was time to move to the next workout.  At first I didn’t think that the time spent on each workout was enough but my body told me differently the next day.

To prepare for the leadership bike ride I decided to give the exercise bike a try.  I peddled two and a half miles.  This really gave my leg muscles a work.  I realized I probably should have been preparing for this a long time ago. 

While my mom went to do her red light therapy, I peddled some more and more and more.  I went another mile and a half before I called it quits.  I have to say that it is much easier to work out while listening to music or watching tv.  I guess it just gets your mind off the pain.

Running is my biggest struggle; it is the thing I hate to do the most.  If I had the choice of running or writing a paper, I would choose the paper, and I hate papers.  So despite what I want to do I did what I should do so. . .  I ran.  I must say running on the treadmill is not as horrible as normal running.  On the last physical fitness test my time was over 11 min.  I wanted to try to run 1 mile in under ten minutes. . .and I did it…Yay.  It was hard, but I’m still alive and that’s all that matters.

Including warm up cool down and stretching all of this adds up to about 2 hrs and 40 minutes.  With my remaining 20 minutes I did crunches, and arm workouts.

Body shop. . .

My First body shop I started off with stretching and a quick warm up.  Next, I did arm exercises to tone my arms.  After that I jumped rope for quite a while.  It looked like so much fun and it was for a little while until my heart was beating out of my chest.   It was an excellent cardio workout.  After jumping rope I ran down the street and through a neighborhood.  I ended my body shop with a cool down and more stretching.

For the next two body shop’s I did a combination of running and walking.  I am working on building my endurance by running, but it is a long process.  I run out of air before I am even tired of running.  I am hoping that by keeping it up it will become less of a struggle.