hello kitty is taking over my life!

..and i didn't even take a picture of my hello kitty sticky notepad. and im pretty sure my sister could beat me on this. she's got a hello kitty travel mug AND went to hello kitty land (china). it's just that,everyone on campus figures hello kitty is for five years olds so they have nOThinG hello kitty and then there i am.. overflowing with all my pink hello-kittyness. fun-nay stuff.

thankyoukatieB!

We Won!

We won! and got 30$ for Carter Christmas. The building we live in is called Carter (and my dad actually lived in this building when he went to Covenant :) and on Thursday night each hall (15 halls in all) had to comleatly get decked out with a theme and most halls took all day decorating. Then in the evening everyone from the rest of the campus comes through all Carter's halls to see the show on each hall. Our hall, 4th south, did carnival christmas and had loud carnival music playing all night long (I know, it's a bit freaky) but WE WON!! We had the tallest person in the world, the shortest, clowns, a muscle man, a acrobat, a kissing booth, a fortune teller (teling people what they'd get for christmas), sword swallower and santa and santa's elf. Kyrie was a clown and I was Santa's elf! Although I doubted it would work, it was a HIT!

finals :(

I've got one word for our blogspot fans:

PRAY! (for us)

family time!

...with the new apple computers!

tartan office has apple computers!!

endless hours of fuun!

i adore her

yep, she's a keeper. these are all from thanksgiving break this past week. pretty much joined at the hip the whole time.

i especially like this last one cause chalice looks so young with her shiny eye and big old pink hat that covers all her hair. for the record, the shiny-ness is not from crying..it's neosporin cause she spilled hot cheese on her face the day before i came home. 2nd degree burns! pretty intense..hm? ouchers.

"Thick" burgers are nasty!

this poster was soooo gross!! Why would you ever want to buy that?? Just stick with the 1$ cheeseburger at Mcdonalds...you really can't beat it. :)

lookin for pennies

the pastrana side of the family (my mom's side) always has a a big second thanksgiving after the real thanksgiving. My mom and all her nine sibling's families get together to eat and play games. We play hard. Danny, my cousin, splits all 50 or so of us into four teams. We compete in mind games, riddles, math problems, word problems, relay races, dodgeball, scavenger hunts and egg races. We had a new activity this year: hunting for pennies! It's so funny because we all actually do it and put our heart into it. Cheating abounds. it really cracks me up cause we all really want to win. There were 40 marked pennies in the lawn we were playing in, so between events we all had our eyes glued to the grass. I found ONE! my team found TWO in all. next time, we need to do nickles.

"When you dig another out of their troubles, you find a place to bury your own."

This is a poster I am planning on putting up around my campus when I get back to school after Thanksgiving break. While I was in Africa this past year I had a roommate from Norway, named Signe. She became a dear friend of mine and since I’ve left we’ve continued to stay quite close. Signe had an office job on the ship, like me, but during her evenings and weekends she was hugely involved in an Orphanage about 1 hour away from the ship. She worked on this place for the entire 7 months we were in Liberia. There are 100 kids, many that resulted from the recent 14 years of civil war, that live at Fatima Cottage Orphanage and before they met Signe, they had been sleeping on concrete floors with no blankets. Signe and two other girls raised the money for bunk beds and mattresses. Then they organized a group from the ship to come down one Saturday and paint the orphanage and they provided the children with some food and raised more money to purchase textbooks for school. They fixed their roof so it didn’t leak during rainy season, when they slept. They started a kitchen and had a well put in with drinking water. They’d spend their Saturdays there just playing with the kids, sometimes spending the night and living their lives with them, showing them love and care…something these kids know very little of.

Signe left the ship, a couple months after me, after 10 months of service. Her heart is still with those kids though and she’s determined to get back to them. She wants to finish their kitchen, bring them blankets, and materials to start a garden and teach them the skills of agriculture so they’ll have an on-going food supply. Signe is planning on returning to Liberia in March for a couple weeks to finish these projects and visit her kids but she needs help to get there. She’s been telling their story, in Norway, ever since she got home and now I’m telling you so you can think about contributing to their lives with your money. Sometimes it’s hard to see how our little bit of help can actually make a difference but Mother Teresa said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

Anything can help. 1$, 10$, 20$.... anything. Please pray for Signe too and these kids. If you’d like to help Signe get back to Liberia you can send your donation to me.

Sienna Howard #557
Covenant College
14049 Scenic Highway
Lookout Mt, GA 30750

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ~Mother Teresa

a couple days before I left Liberia, Signe asked me to come to her orphange to get some pictures of her and the kids...

You can visit www.fatimaorphanage.com to read more details about Fatima Orphange in Monrovia, Liberia. It's a website Signe and a couple other of girls made.