Miso! Miso!

It seems I have neglected this blog for long enough.

What's happened since last time I wrote?

Violett passed her 365 day mark ... aka first birthday:

Her favorite things to do include reading, playing in the sprinkler, and being cheeky in general.

If you ask her where her belly button is, she will gladly show you, as well as lift your shirt up to gain access to your belly button region, which is one of her favorite spots to tickle. She does this accompanied by saying "tickticktickticktick". She can also show you the location of her ears, nose, mouth, hair, eyes, fingers, and toes upon request.

Little Goopy's favorite words are shoes, fish, up, NO!, oh no, gentle, vroom-vroom (car), mao (cat), and dirty. Violett absolutely hates to be dirty. She manages to get dirty quite easily, but when she realizes she has a crumb or tiny speck of dirt on her hands, she may throw a fit until you wipe it off. She may or may not have adopted a complex from me in which everything needs to be clean. She regularly takes the towels from the kitchen and attempts to scrub the floor, or place miscellaneous items (actual trash or otherwise) in the rubbish bin.

Other happenings include Violett, Hope, and I all getting stung by scorpions this summer. We had an ... infestation ... and they tend to camouflage well with our carpet. Luckily no one had an allergic reaction to the sting. Violett may have handled it the best out of all of us ....

In June, Violett and I accompanied KP and David to Sierra Leone to work aboard the Africa Mercy, and JP joined us after about two weeks. It was great to be back, but so so different from any other time I've been. Violett loved the social atmosphere and a more structured schedule than she's used to at home. I struggled a bit, but did enjoy my time on the whole, and was happy to reconnect with some old friends, especially Hannah Lewis!

After five weeks in Sierra Leone, V and I said "au revoir" to Africa, and travelled to Paris, then London. The traveling segments of this summer trip left something to be desired ... like a noose ... but once we arrived at our destinations, we were fine. We spent 16 hours in the Paris airport on layover, and due to the lack of sleep I achieved due to the refusal of a certain Violett Ingrid Peterson to sleep on our night flight from Freetown, combined with the confined space of the airplane, and general lack of comfort sitting in the airport, we were two semi-grumpy, and incredibly tired migrants. Hannah picked us up from the airport in London, then we journeyed to the West Midlands, and finally arrived at her home. All in all, from the time we disembarked from the Africa Mercy to the time we arrived in Bromsgrove with Hannah, we had been traveling for a grueling 30 hours.

This is how we spent some of our time whilst in the UK:

Girls night out

Visit to Wales

We attended the wedding of my beautiful friend and former roommate, Emily

Reunion with my soulmate, Carolina Zoia

Visit to Hyland Park

London sightseeing with Carolina, D, Helena, Kyle, and Lala

After all this, unfortunately it was time to return. There was another horrible journey home which included 12 hours in the Heathrow airport, a 10 hour plane trip - 4 hours of which Violett screamed on my lap, and 9 hours of which I was crying like a baby, and a 5 hour car ride home from Houston in a car with no air conditioning in 110 degree heat. It was great to see my crack-sibling again. Isn't she adorable?

About two weeks after we returned to Texas, JP made her way home, and about a month after that, KP arrived. David decided to stay on board until the end of field service in December. Being that David is the most social person I know, I wasn't surprised that he found ship life to be greater than or equal to social paradise. Alas, I really miss my broski. And V needs her uncle back.

I've bided my time since then with work and college (taking Financial Accounting and Mathematics for Business aka calculus) which have proved challenging, but interesting. Steve is here also so we've been spending a fair amount of time together as well.

Blink-182 concert with Steve

Basshunter gig with the girls

AAV (Annual AJay visit)

Things I'm not looking forward to ... Steve going back to England.

That's it.

Peace out.

Questions...

This isn't a "light read"; so if you're not wanting to face the dark and slightly depressing questions I may or may not bring up, than stare at this picture and then google videos of laughing babies.

To paraphrase a famous elf from a famous movie, "a shadow and a threat has been growing in mind". Please don't read this and assume that I've lost my faith; I've simply had these looming questions and doubts, which eventually lead to a much bigger question.

That question being, why do we exist?

I've gotten a few answers, all of which resemble this, taken from the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Q. 2. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?

A. The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.

Apparently, we exist to glorify our creator. Which to me seems simply selfish. The Bible claims that God is love. If this is true, how is God showing his love to us by placing us in a world that is filled with pain, suffering, and death? If God is all powerful, and combined with his love for us, why does he make (or allow) earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and other natural disasters to ravage the world, causing death and destruction in their wake? Evidently, the state of the earth is the consequence of the fall of man, tracing back to Adam and Eve falling into temptation and disobeying their creator. So I suppose you could say that natural disasters are a fault of man.

But if God is omniscient, then he would have known that we would use our free will to disobey, and therefore, pain and evil would enter the world. It's all around us - we hurt each other accidentally, we hurt each other on purpose. We have physical pain; our bodies are broken, dying. We feel pain when people we care about are hurt, dying, leaving. Of course there are good things in life. There is beauty and joy. I'm not saying that the good isn't worth dealing with the bad. I'm just saying that if God is everything they say he is, why did he create us, and put us in a violent and turbulent world with inhabitants that are equally violent? If he knew all that would occur, then why? If we hadn't been created, than we wouldn't experience the beauty of this life. But if we hadn't been created, than we wouldn't know the difference, would we?

In speaking to a friend about this issue, her response was "Well God is God. He doesn't have to play by our rules." (Don't read this part, Grandma) That's bull shit, I'm sorry. I'm going to need a better answer than that.

Don't think I'm depressed and unhappy. I'm going through a difficult time, I admit that. But I have many blessings in my life. These are just questions I consider fairly important.