Thoughts on Life
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Life Update. Including a Soon-to-Be Wedding!
The last time I wrote or published anything for this blog was in September of 2020. Life has changed so much since then but it has been too busy for me to find the time to write. I even promised a friend a blog post that I just simply never got to (Kate, if you are reading this, I am sorry) because life became about priorities and writing was near the bottom of the list. A New Job God worked so wonderfully in my life towards the end of last year. I was starting to feel some anxiety about the fact that I was nearing the end of my degree…
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Hi, My Name is AJ
Hi, my name is AJ. It’s nice to meet you. Let me tell you some basic things about me. I am a 23 year old woman who lives in the beautiful country of South Africa. I am not a missionary kid, I was born here and so were my parents, and so were their parents. I like the colour purple and I like to eat out of yellow things. I like to read, and to read about reading. I am a crocheter and spend many hours making items in front of the TV. My favourite shows are Friends and Gilmore Girls or true crime documentaries. I don’t like to exercise,…
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21 Things to Do During Lockdown
South Africa is going to be in lockdown for 21 days and here are my suggestions for what you can do during your extra time at home: Read the Gospel of John. There are 21 chapters so you can read one each day. Write a letter by hand. Particularly if you know an older person who is needing some love and encouragement Knit/crochet a square. Many charities accept squares which they sew into blankets and give to the less fortunate. There are videos online which can teach you how and the website https://www.knit-a-square.com/ explains the details. A square is a very easy way to learn the art of knitting or…
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How I Am Choosing to View This New Year
We are already 3 weeks into the year 2020. If this had been previous years I would have long forgotten my New Year’s resolutions by now and I would be back in the slog of doing life exactly the same way as I had been previously with not much improvement on myself or progress on my goals. This year I treated New Year’s Resolutions a little bit differently. As 2020 approached I actually didn’t have any idea what my year was going to look like. I had been pursuing an internship with an organization close to my heart but I didn’t know if I would actually get into that internship.…
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Happy Moments
Today was a fun day as I got to take my cousins to a theme park for the day. We rode many rides and it was their first time on proper roller coasters. I loved soaking up the sun and realizing that summer is on its way. As I sit in bed I am tired and my feet are sore from having walked more than 8 kilometers but I am grateful for the happy moments.
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Encourage One Another
Compliments are a big deal to me. Although words of affirmation aren’t one of my top love languages I still love receiving words of encouragement and affirmation from others. I think all of us do if we’re honest. Words can build up or they can tear down and we often don’t realise the length of impact our words can have, whether positive or negative. In fact, being a person who encourages others can go far in being a light to the world. People are attracted to positive, encouraging, joyful people. In following the biblical principle of putting off something and putting on another to replace it, we should be replacing…
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Elijah and Self Care
When I was in Bible college one of my professors read us the following passage of Scripture: “(Elijah) went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ’It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life for I am no better than my fathers’. And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat’. And he looked, and behold, there at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay…
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Life’s Juggling Act
Recently life has felt somewhat crazy. Between work, ministry, family and studying I sometimes feel like I don’t have enough time to get everything done. Prioritising has been difficult but necessary and so I have unfortunately let my writing slip and I haven’t published on this blog on over three months. In the juggling act that is life, the ball that I allowed to drop was my writing. This is not the first time that I have allowed my writing to take a back seat and last time it happened I didn’t write for close to a year. I don’t want that to happen again as writing is important. In…
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Setting Goals
Setting goals for myself is one of my favorite things to do. I love to make new years resolutions, monthly goals, weekly goals, spiritual goals, September resolutions, last week of the year goals… you get the picture. At the beginning of the year I made the goal to read 100 books in 2019 and make at least 1/3 of them non-fiction and also to finally read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Unfortunately, I have only read seven books so far, and so according to Goodreads I am ten books behind (but that’s okau, I plan to keep making my goal 100 books until one day I make it, even…
