Oh man. When did I run into those stupid Ebola monkeys?

Man O Man. I am so sick. From 11pm Saturday night til about 6am this morning I have been so sick. I didn’t even go to church yesterday, and it was my set up day! How Grrr is that? But it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t actually fall asleep until like, 6am on Sunday, and didn’t wake up until about 2pm. Grrr! And I still have a sore throat from all the coughing and throwing up. And don’t even get me started on the insomnia. This weekend has…not been my favorite. Those stupid Ebola carrying monkeys must be in town again. LOL.
Hmmm. Ok so I am well enough to update my livejournal, but after this I’m going right back to bed. So. Lets see what I can think of to update you on how my life has been going since last I updated. Just to let you all know, I was planning on using LJ cut, but decided against it. Ok, I’ve changed my mind. Yay for the cut!

My Birthday
Ok. Heres the final little tidbit on my 23rd birthday. It went pretty well, if I do say so myself. Turns out the Sadrs and Connie ended up coming over last Sunday and surprising me, and my mom was even able to talk the Conns into letting Rhema come over for a couple hours. How awesome is that? Lets see…. what did I get? Well, I got lots of money, a tee-shirt, an engraved leather journal, some snack foods/drinks, lots of dandruff products, an iPod mini, and a TV hookup for my iPod mini. Yay for me (I know what you’re thinking…. “wow, he made out like a bandit!”) And I couldn’t agree with you more.

Work Stuff
Well, I didn’t get the trainer job. That you already know. But… I did have a long talk with my boss about it, and he says I’m still going to be able to train people and that when our new trainer comes on board he is going to be using me as a great resource. Turns out that my technical skills superseded any of the potential candidates, but my leadership/training experience left a wee bit to be desired. The new trainer might not be as knowledgeable as me, but he had just a little more training experience. Oh well. Not the next time around. I know I’ll get the job. Jeff actually told me that the interview board was very impressed with the extent of my knowledge (turns out I knew things that nobody else knew! yay me!) They also said I interviewed really well. So yeah. I’m taking this as a learning experience, and next time the job come around, I’ll be even more ready than I was last time.

Church Stuff
I haven’t been to GCC in two weeks. I’m really sad about it. I know I said in my last post I probably wasn’t ever going to go back, but I’ve been majorly re-thinking that. For a short while I was thinking about going to another church, but lets face it–I love GCC and can’t think of a better place for me to be right now. In fact, I was actually going to go back yesterday, until the Ebola virus decided to wreck havoc on my system (FYI.. for those of you worried about me, I don’t really have the Ebola virus. It’s just something I say when I’m really really deathly sick)
I’m glad that I took that first week ‘off’ though. It gave me a lot of time to pray and seek God on what I should be doing(continuing to go to GCC or to go somewhere else).
Ever since I found out that church and caregroup are the only times I will be allowed to talk/see Rhema, I really wanted to take a week off to kinda ‘re-new’ my focus and ask God to help me have pure motives for going to GCC. I know it’ll be much harder now to resist the temptation for my motivations to change, and I really don’t want to catch myself thinking “Yay it’s Sunday! I get to talk to Rhema today!” I want my focus to be on God–and up until now it has been. I guess I am just a little worried that my focus will change with these new circumstances. But I really love GCC and the reason I was/am going has never been because of Rhema(being able to see her there was just sort of an ‘added bonus’) so I really felt it was appropriate for me to take that Sunday off and really just spend that time in prayer and ask God to help me in that area.
Ofcourse, now I’m upset because I got sick yesterday and wasn’t able to go to church, and I’m a little scared that people might be thinking it has something to do with me being bitter/angry at the Conn family. Well, I can only hope that nobody is thinking that, and if they are, I know God will set ‘em straight.
Grrr. Which reminds me: in my sickness yesterday I completely forgot to call the setup team and let them know I wouldn’t be there. After I finish updating, I’ll have to send off a quick e-mail to my leader letting him know whats up.

Conn Stuff
And with the completion of the church update, I feel it’s only appropriate to make my final update on the Conn situation. (Dun dun dun!) And, now that I think about it, not much has changed since my last couple of posts, save a couple of cool surprises. The first being (as you all know) that Rhema was allowed to come over last Sunday for my birthday party! It was way awesome and weird at the same time, I hadn’t spoken to her since our ‘final-final’ conversation that Tuesday evening when she was at alpha. (Even though our ‘final’ conversation happened on Monday, we talked for maybe a couple minutes Tuesday evening basically to say that this is going to be really hard and even though we don’t agree with her Dad’s decision, we still need to respect and honor it, and that we couldn’t go around sneaking phone conversations or meetings (you all know how it goes: obedience wins the favor of God and her parents, where disobedience pretty much just screws everything up)So yeah. Seeing her on Sunday was really awesome. AND….. then came surprise #2 when her parents said we could go see the new Star Wars movie together! How cool is that? It’s like, a mega answer to prayer(we’ve been dying to see this movie together for like, as long as we knew it existed, and I was really sad when I found out I wasn’t going to be able to see her outside of church for it) We went with two of her brothers and Mimi and her brother.
Man, if you haven’t seen that movie, go see it right now! Just stop reading my LJ and go buy tickets. And then laugh at the stupidity of Obi-Wan Kenobi (you’ll understand what I mean once you see the movie) So yeah. Seeing her this past Thursday was cool.
But it’s been really hard. I’m used to talking to her like, every day, and now I can only see/talk to her on Sundays(well, and every other Tuesday) I really really hope this break isn’t going to go on for much longer, but theres no way to tell.
I have been reading this cool book lately though(well, I am reading lots of cool books, but I’ll only talk about this one for now…) it’s called “I Gave Dating A Chance” and it’s by Youth Pastor Jeramy Clark(no, I’m not related to him!). It came out about the same time as “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” but it didn’t receive as much fanfare (probably because everyone was too busy reading Josh Harris). So I’ve been reading it and highlighting and praying and studying it. When I’m done I’m going to mail it to Rhema so she can read it. After that, hopefully she can give it to her Dad. I’m not trying to change his decision here, but he told me on the phone he had been reading Josh Harris so I figured whats the harm in seeing if he’ll read a book on the other side of the argument? At the very least it’ll give him a ‘complete’ picture and not just a one-sided view. And who knows? Eventually this ‘break’ has gotta end, and we’ll be right back where we started. Maybe this book can help in that area.

Wow. Look at all those LJ-cuts. Man its bringing back memories of my longer LJ entries. Oh, and now that I have a paid account, I should be able to post some pictures! Hehehe. This thing is only gonna get better. Now excuse me while I go back to bed and give my tummy some relaxation time.

Peace Out.

~Nick
1 Timothy 1:15

Just another update

Well, If any of you weren’t aware, Thursday was my 23rd birthday. Yay me, huh? Mom says we’ll have the whole ‘gift opening’ thing today later in the afternoon. I pretty much already know what I’m getting (yay iPOD mini!), and I know it won’t arrive until Monday or Tuesday, but oh well.

For all of you curious about how my job is going, I applied for a promotion to a trainer position and just found out yesterday that I didn’t get the job. I’m pretty bummed, but after the huge crushing blow dealt to me on Monday by the Conns, nothing surprises me anymore.

Speaking of which…things still haven’t changed with the Conns, although Mr. Conn allowed Rhema and I a phone call on my birthday (he said he thought it would be ‘appropriate’), but only if someone was in the room with her to make sure we didn’t say anything bad. (WTF is that all about?!?!?)

So yeah. Now it’s 2am Sunday morning and I can’t sleep. I don’t think I’m going to go to church today. Actually, I don’t think I’m ever going to go back to GCC. I have reasons for this (and it’s not out of bitterness or anger) but I’m really unmotivated right now and I don’t feel like typing.

~Bye.

It's over…. for now

Well, Rhema’s dad called me last night. After much talking he said his answer was no. We are not allowed to court. He then went on to say that we can not see each other outside normal church activities(which would be Sunday service and caregroup every other Tuesday night) and that we can no longer talk to each other. Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Nick went all the way to Leesburg to ask Mr. Conn if he could court Rhema and Mr Conn didn’t even have the courtesy to tell him the answer face to face? And the answer was no?!? What a wimps way out.’ But at least he allowed me one ‘final’ phone conversation with Rhema.

So that’s how it is. I don’t really see what he thinks it’s going to accomplish, (though he actually tried to explain it to me over the phone and in all honesty it was all ‘mierda del toro’) and Rhema and I are very shocked and we both think he’s making a very hasty decision. But theres nothing we can do about it. So we’re going to respect and honor her parents wishes. And we’re going to wait. And we’re not going to talk. And we’re basically going to not be friends anymore just because her parents don’t want us to. And somehow when her parents feel that shes ready to pursue marriage, I’m going to find out about it and we’re going to be right where we were a couple weeks ago, only then he won’t have any stupid excuses to give me. But ofcourse we don’t know when she’ll be ready. Chances are it’s going to be ‘years’ from now based on the way her dad kept talking to me about how “so very immature his daughter is”.

Yeah, I am very disappointed. And sad. And angry. Shes like, one of my best/closest friends and he didn’t even care about that. He like, WANTS us to take a break(for an undetermined length of time–yeah, he couldn’t even give me a time frame for that either!). So we can ‘cool down’. What is up with that?!?! As if theres anything to cool down about. He even thanked us for how we’ve handled the situation thus far and for having such a pure relationship! And then he asked for forgiveness because he felt him and his wife led us on into thinking that they’d actually be ok with a courtship at this time. Grrr is all I can say. Theres so many emotions going on inside me and so many thoughts it’s hard to process them all.

What a great birthday present the Conns decided to give me.
I just need to go.

~Nick