im here.

I don’t sleep well on airplanes. I am sitting on the right side of the middle row of an Airbus A-330 600 flying 34,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. I am sitting next to a woman from Germany with two adopted children from Guatemala. She speaks English; not well but she still speaks it. I am sitting on the second story of a two-story airplane.

It has all kind of hit me at once. Preparing for an internship that was rather ambiguous in it’s description has looked like Michael praying that God will “prepare”, and “provide” him for what lies ahead, whatever it is that is lying ahead. When I say it all hit me at once what I mean is that I think God chose to wait until I was on the plane heading to Prague to give me a solid reason for why I raised bookoos of money to go to a foreign country to ” build relationships” with people and hopefully share the good news with them.

This morning at the World Harvest sending center all the full-time staffers gathered with the London and Prague interns and prayed over them before we left. They asked us to share specific prayer requests concerning the next two months.

---Hold on. The little Guatelmalan girl, Rosie, just laid her head on my shoulder and is ------snoring. Very adorable.

I have been struggling over the past two months to well, justify, me going overseas at this point in my life. I shared with the WHM staff that I not in a totally financial secure position and as a result really was having mixed feelings about my eligibility to raise support to do the Lord’s work when I could be working to solidify my fiscal standings. They were very understanding and encouraged me and prayed for me; that I would turn from fear and cling to faith, that I would really believe in the Lord’s provision and sovereignty. It’s hard, you know?

So I was sitting next to Rosie and we were watching “Horton Hears a Who” on our little T.V.’s that we have. As I was watching this movie, a rather shocking dichotomy was set before me. In this movie, Horton the elephant finds a speck of dust and hears a voice eminating from this speck. Upon further investigation, we find that this speck is actually the world upon which the Who’s of Whoville exist. There world was so small compared to Horton’s, yet he was inextricably drawn to protect them and make sure that they went on existing.

It is so easy for me to get caught up in my small world. I easily freak about monetary security and it is easy for me to forget the goodness of God when things are tight. The realization that hit me was this: I am going to where I am going to have my small world stretched to a completely unrecognizable, new size. So much of this internship is about the Lord using other people to teach me, as opposed using me to teach others. If I succeed in the latter it will be a miracle. Oh, and Im not saying that Horton is a Jesus symbol.

Rosie wants be to play her gameboy, so I am afraid I must indulge her. I’m not even in Prauge yet, but I’m going to do a top 5 list anyways (sorry will, it’s a good idea).

Top 5 things I have seen after leaving home.

1. The smiling face of Christopher Taylor and Grant Withington in the Chattanooga airport. Topher and I ended up making the entire trip to Philly together.

2. The 300 dollar travel voucher that Northwestern airlines gave me for overbooking my flight from Detroit to Philly. I was delayed an hour and a half, so the way I see it I got payed over 100 dollars an hour to take a refreshing afternoon nap in the Detroit airport.

3. The Elvis impersonator that sat directly in front of me on my first flight.

4. A German mother of four that was laughing uncontrollably with her children as they ALL exited one of the bathrooms downstairs in the plane. Those bathrooms are tiny.

5. Sienna’s face upon arriving in Chattanooga. What a good stay I had.

Easters, and beyond.

Major happenings: Easter break has just occurred, and I have returned to school safe and sound. Safe definitely, sound not so much. I have 3 tests and two papers, all happening in this 4-day academic week. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but it is and I am seriously debating whether or not I have the time to write this post.

Easter was excellent, friends came from near and far and good food was et by all. We had hours of fun on the ping pong table, the trampoline was enjoyed often, going for walks and sitting and smoking away the day on the front porch was one of the preferred pastimes. Oh and not doing anything productive, did I mention that?

This picture is dear to my heart, it shows the incredible flexibility that my friend Kyrie Howard is capable of, and I think it pretty much captures the attitude of our easter break. More amazing flying pictures after the jump!
--->FLICKR<----

Spring Breankuet

So I have to topics to cover: 2 weeks ago was my spring break. Myself and Sienna drove to Sumter for a couple days, then we drove up to Cambridge and chilled there with her fam for a couple days. We made a detour up to Philadelphia to see the wonderful Brae Howard before she took off for China, and that was divine as always. Secondly, this past weekend was Covenant College's Spring Banquet at the Hunter Museum of American Art. There was good food, good jazz, and a mediocre d.j./sound system; all in all it was a spectacular night.

Thirdly, I bought a new camera today. I have been sporting a digital SLR for a while now, and it just became a little too cumbersome so I went out and got the Canon SD750, a very highly reviewed 7 megapixel ultra-compact. It has made me very happy, just in the few hours i've owned it. Check out the flickr for more examples, they should be appearing more often now then they have in the past...

Minor Keys for Major Problems.

Sergei Rachmaninoff published his Prelude in G minor no.5 in 1901. That was 107 years ago, but it still sounds futuristic to me. This piece is one of three I am working on for my sophomore platform in April. Check out this wonder of piano repetoire.

Chop Shop

I cut my hair, and I can finally take myself seriously again. Except for the mullet that I left dangling at the nape, it actually looks pretty legitimate.

East of....hmmm. Eden?

East of Eden is the novel that I have been reading. It is one of Steinbeck's finest, and it is probably one of the best books I have ever read. The character development is unparalleled; I am afraid that he so accurately uncovers the wickedness of the human heart (especially the FEMALE human heart) that I will be driven to avoid becoming friends with any more women to avoid entangling myself with one of his characters. I have about fifty or so pages left, and I'm thinking about staying up later than 2:30 A.M. to finish it.

I have been home from school for about two weeks now, and once again all the critics in my mind agree that Sumter, SC is the most recuperative place for my soul to exist. Not much can surpass the warmth of family and friends coupled with the time to pursue non-mandatory things that actually, dare I say it, are enjoyable to me? Today the life of Michael Kendall looked like this:

Wake up around 9-9:30.
Eat breakfast with Mom in front of the fireplace.
Shower, change clothes.
Change oil on my car (while narrowly avoiding destruction when my car fell with me underneath it).
Make sculpture with my stick welder.
Practice piano.
Read Steinbeck.
Practice more piano.
Read more Steinbeck.
Take Sarabeth out for a smoothie.
Watch a movie, have a smoke, go to bed.

Please, contain your jealousy. Feel free to stop bye, I would love to entertain you. I think tomorrow I am going to go shoot guns in a field. By myself.

Still life with Apples on a Pink Tablecloth

This painting is one of my favorites. It reminds me of home by way of reminding me of mother. She is a watercolor painter and can recreate beautiful still life's in almost as fair a fashion as Matisse. At this point in time it is Sunday afternoon on December the eighth. I have only 2 exams left and there is only half a paper left to type. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday I will turn in 6 project analyses for Music Theory, a paper for Music Theory, and a final project, also for music theory. I didn't think I would finish this last week alive. I have been getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep consistently for a week now, and I am more than ready to break that pattern. As I sit here at my desk with my Henri Matisse still life on the right and my favorite novels and texts directly above, I find myself wanting to crawl in side one of their stories, or to try and reach into his painting and grab one of the apples and taste it's brilliance for myself. When one is constantly engaging in academic toil for two, three weeks at a time with hardly the spare second to think, they become covered with what I would define as the academic sweat. It is an exoskeleton made up of runoff from fluorescent lighting, computer screens, and dusty books in rickety study carrols. It diminishes the subject's ability to sample the brilliance of existence by distracting him with the mundane. This is not so much a tangible physical film that can be washed with soap and water, it is more a mental cloud that descends upon the subject of toil and doesn't leave until that individual is displaced into an atmosphere of calm, peaceful thoughtlessness. Thoughtlessness in the sense that results for an absence of scholastic toil and hardship. I cannot wait to return home to peaceful Sumter and engage the minds of my family with the acumen I have accrued this semester. I also can't wait to not have to think about whether or not I can afford (timewise) to blog...