Interlude

Last Friday I went home from college because I had some stuff to do.

The main item of importance was formally receiving this Sav A Center scholarship of $1,000 that I got through my job this summer. It was a really cool banquet hall type place with chandeliers, mega-expensive floors and ornate paintings and all...

The coolest thing was the quartet, with the stand-up bass, drums, sax, acoustic guitar. It made me wish I could visit the big band era days...just hang out in the 1930's for a little while.

The food was fanastic...salad, soup with crabmeat, veal with bacon and cheese, green beans, a killer baked potato, iced tea, coffee, and luscious chocolate dessert with rich raspberry sauce.

Plus the guest speaker (whom I briefly met and shook hands with) was none other than Bobby Jindall, the Christian conservative who lost the Louisiana governor's race last year to a liberal democrat. Anyhow Jindall served as the chair of the Louisiana Health and Education Dept. or something...has worked with President Bush...is an awesome speaker...classic success story...from India...and worked his butt off to establish the American dream in his own life...and is an overt Christian. As you can tell, I think he's a cool guy.

The following day I went with my church to minister in a juvenile correctional facility (i.e. prison). There were about 50 kids...who chuckled and went to sleep at first but softened at the end to where over 1/2 accepted Christ at the altar call. I was kind of hoping to not have to speak or anything but all the sudden I was called upon to share...just looking out at the sea of faces and feeling the Holy Ghost wave of compassion gave me the words. The words I spoke were choppy at first but then began to flow out of just an aching heart for these guys (and girls). God especially moved through a guy from our church, Quincy, who actually had been in prison for a couple months on false charges (!), we'd been praying for his release, he was JUST RELEASED days before this...and imagine the impact of having him speak to these prisoner kids. He'd literally been in their shoes days earlier. Anyhow...the whole thing was powerful.

So here I am Sunday night (almost Monday morning), posting from an LSU computer lab in my dorm hall (because my computer is taking its merry little time downloading updates). By the grace of God I made it through two more chapters/books of Homer's The Iliad and got an "A" on an online Business Calc. quiz I just took...and I'd better go get my rest, which I haven't been doing enough of, sadly, as usual.