Went to newsong this morning – was a really good topic. He started a new series called Xealot. It’s about not being just a spectator but being an active participant. You can choose to make a trial an opportunity for growth or an obstacle. It’s up to you to decide how to approach life and what you can glean out of it. You can play the blame game but that will get you nowhere. Everything should be viewed as a learning opportunity.

He also said you can’t have any spiritual growth if you don’t do anything proactive. He said knowledge renders itself meaningless if you don’t apply it. You can educate yourself till you’re blue in the face but what good does that do anyone if you don’t use that knowledge to help others. If you want to have impact on others, to make a difference then you need to put yourself out there. He really spoke out to me. The only problem I had really was that you may know that that is what you have to do but knowing what to do is a different story. He brought up the tsunami victims but really I don’t know what I can do to help. So we just donated $100 for them through the church. We were gonna donate money to the red cross also but I read on Sol’s lj that “Red Cross, on average, uses 85-90% – that’s 85 to 90 cents of every dollar – for its non-cause expenses.” She also said they got a lot of flack for 9/11 so er … no. X_x That’s a high percentage for non cause expenses so that’s not what we’re looking for so we’ll probably donate to MSF and Unicef. Al’s work will match any charitable donations _except_ red cross. His work already donated 25k to red cross so they feel like matching would not a desirable arrangement as they have already donated to them.

We cleaned out garage today and that was cool. Threw out a lot of stuff. Need to throw out more though. x Pack rat yes. Resolution of 2005: simplify my life and lose that pack rat syndrome. =P