Africa Beth: Life After Africa: I'm back!: Life after Undergrad

Here I am. It's been a while. Eight months to be exact. Where have I been? In Azusa mostly. A lot has happened in the past eight months and I'm not even sure where to start, so I think I'll just start with today. Who am I today and what am I doing. More importantly, what am I learning?

Today I am a graduate of Azusa Pacific University with my Bachelors in Biblical Studies and Youth Ministry. I am an employee of Dr. Paul Shrier and the APU1899Cafe (yes the Caf has in fact had a name change). I am a roommate in a state of flux as people and animals come and go. I am a resident of Azusa, California. I am a student in the MA in TESOL program at APU. I am a daughter, niece, granddaughter, friend, cousin, student, worker, child of God, and LEARNER.

Mostly I am realizing that my primary job here is to learn. I have a lot to learn inside the classroom about how to teach, English grammar, how to appropriately allow my faith to affect my work, and how my culture plays a part in my teaching. I have even more to learn outside the classroom about how to be in healthy relationships with the people I love, how to have a healthy view of cultures and religions around the world, how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and most importantly how to experience God in all of this. I don't have the space here to express all I have been learning in the past three months since graduation, but I can say that God has been working in me. College was a time of growing but it was also a time of brokenness, here in the aftermath I feel God putting me back together and healing me. I know this will be a slow process, but even just since graduation I can see God transforming my attitudes, opinions, and actions into something a little morereflective of him (at least I hope...). I'm so far from perfect, but I think what I'm realizing is that instead of getting caught up in how far away I am from perfect I need to focus on the little steps that bring me closer to being a reflection of God.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Thinking about where I want to end up after this year, how I feel about being an American, what I really believe, what hobbies I am really interested in, who I want to be, what I want to be known for. I don't have time to talk about them now, so I'll just leave it at that and include a few pictures from the past months. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can remember to really post in this blog and reflect a little bit on those areas. For now this is just a re-introduction to my life. I do in fact still exist :)

I'll leave you with this quote:

‎"Perhaps what is truly extraordinary is that people looked at this average, ordinary man and saw God. The extraordinary message of the incarnation may be that God is to be encountered in the ordinary." ~Darby Ray