Over the Thanksgiving holiday break from school, I went to visit some family and friends like a good little boy. I worked until 5:00ish on Wednesday and come home to pack everything for the trip. I rolled into my mom’s driveway in Ellis at about 10:00 if my memory serves me correctly. Not a lot happened that night, but the next afternoon we headed to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving dinner and a general family get together. It only ended up being seven people: me, my brother Matt, my mom, my stepdad, my grammy, my aunt, and my uncle. It really wasn’t all that exciting, so after lunch, Matt and I took a walk around the “big” town of WaKeeney where we both grew up. This walk was only notable for two reasons: first, we wasted a good two hours walking around town; second, we realized how run down the town looks. We were both trying really hard to remember if there were as many abandoned buildings when we lived there as there are now… neither of us could really remember. Maybe that’s one of those things that you don’t really notice until you have been away for a while. The ride back to my mom’s was nice and tight since we had three guys in the backseat, but I could lean my head back and look out the back window to see the clouds. It was a pretty night with broken clouds that looked neat under the full moon.
On Friday I talked my mom into cutting my hair and did some wonderful discrete math homework courtesy of Dr. Lin. This class has been a real bear, but I’m happy to report that it seems to have gotten much easier this last third of the semester. My hopes of getting a good enough grade on the final for an ‘A’ in the class are coming way up from where they were two months into the class. I should only need somewhere around an 80% to reach that ‘A’ mark. After watching most of Shrek 2 with my mom and Matt, I got myself ready to go out on a date. I’m thinking that this is the first clear cut one-on-one date that I’ve been on since my last girlfriend and I broke up about 14 months ago. It ended up being a little embarassing because there is a complete lack of things to do in Hays, America, especially on the night after Thanksgiving. All was well though, as we were more than able to fill the night with conversations ranging from past experiences with family to our faith. I learned some of the reasons behind practices of Catholicism that I didn’t know before from her, and I have to say that I’m a lot less bitter towards the Catholic church as a whole now. Apparently my family just managed to end up in parishes that weren’t very good, but there might be some decent Catholic churches out there :). Anyway… it was a great night… nuff said.
Saturday I headed to my dad’s house, and I took the opporunity alone in my Jeep to pray for a good portion of the trip to Ellsworth. Once I got there, my dad and I got to talking for a little while about God, churches, and the Catholic campus center at Fort Hays State. Apparently it’s always been a pretty darn good Catholic church. I’d like to attend there sometime to see what it’s like. I think I have once, but it was before I really cared much what was said in church or remembered much of it (seeeeveral years ago). We got to talk about someone that my dad and I both know and how her spiritual life is going. I’m really scared by what I heard from him, but it didn’t surprise me at all. The way that some people stick their head in the sand instead of opening their eyes to the Truth really hurts me, and I can’t help but become a small bit frustrated when time after time they refuse to give any consideration to the Gospel: “everybody who’s good goes to heaven…” … WRONG! …. Anyway, we ate a nice supper at the schoolhouse in Smolin, and Matt and I headed on our way back to Manhappiness.
All in all, it was a very good break from school, and church this morning was an excellent conclusion. Father, thank you so much for blessing me with the friends and family that I have and the conversations that we got to have this weekend about You and Your will for our lives.
–Cole
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