Now here's a thought.....

All throughout orientation and in various Chapel sermons, we have been discussing what is appropriate and what is not. There aren't a lot of rules at this school. We are adults and they expect us to act like adults. Part of being adults would be having consideration for those around us in the way we act and dress, the music we listen to, the activities we participate in, and so on and so forth. We as Christians have freedom in Christ. I may like a certain kind of music that is worldly, but it may not be a stumbling block in my Christian walk. However, it might bother my roommate. What do I say? Stop judging me! The Bible doesn't say that I can't listen to this! Is that a Christian attitude? I think not. What if I think it's okay to have a drink every now and then. (Don't worry, ya'll...alcohol is off limits...it's just an illustration.) Do I scoff at my friend's immaturity when he gets offended at my participation in drinking? Well, you obviously have a ways to go in your Christian walk, my friend...don't you know that Christ drank wine!? We sometimes end up adopting the attitude where we say "My relationship with Christ is stronger now than it ever has been in the past....THEREFORE I can have a drink (or listen to this music or dress this way...fill in the blank) and know that I am free in Christ to do so." That is all well and good when it is kept between you and God. However, when this way of thought begins to creep into our lives, we often end up flaunting our "freedoms." So now, here is the question I have for you: Is it possible to be a slave to our freedoms? I've been turning that thought over and over in my head over the last few weeks. In being free...we have the tendancy to turn right back around and put the chains back on. Of course we have many freedoms in Christ. Amazing blessings that are proof of His love and His desire for us to enjoy the life He has blessed us with. But it defeats the purpose if we abuse those privalages. We can enjoy many blessings that some can not, but we should never choose to participate in a "freedom" at the spiritual expense of a brother or sister in Christ. Deferance. That's the bottom line. May we never be so proud that we can't give up or temporarily set aside our own desires in deferance to a brother or sister in Christ.

Finally brethren,

....build one another up in love and in mail. It doth be the will of the Lord that ye be steadfast in sending mail to Grace. A manuscript, an epistle...yea verily, a postcard or sticky-note doth be sufficient for thee. We are free in Christ and in the United States to send mail whithersoever it doth please us to send mail. Let us use this freedom frequently and with joy. I write this unto thee with mine own hand. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
~Grace





p.s. Thanks for all the comments! I'm more excited to write when I know people are actually reading it. I'll write some more thoughts tomorrow.

New perspective...

Last year, our college group, GAP, had the wonderful opportunity to take a day trip down to San Diego to see the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit in the San Diego Natural History Museum. Talk about a once in a lifetime experience! It was so amazing to walk through and see all the carefully preserved pieces of leather and papyrus with the precious words of Scripture that have been passed down so carefully and delicately for thousands of generations. I'm reading a book called "How We Got The Bible" by Neil R. Lightfoot for my Bibliology class. It goes into detail about the processes that men have been involved in for centuries in order to accurately preserve the Word of God. I've been studying ancient manuscripts...what the difference is between the Sinaitic Manuscript and the Vatican Manuscript and all kinds of other stuff that I would have never thought would even really be important. Human beings are so cocky and proud.....throughout the centuries, thousands have come forward with arguments to refute the validity and accuracy of Scripture, but every time something comes up, God allows us to discover manuscript after manuscript that blows their arguments out of the water. Knowing the attention that was paid in painstakingly copying every word of Scripture for century upon century, I appreciate my Bible so much more. One thing that I thought was cool is that, when scribes were copying the Bible, they would often choose one word in the middle of the manuscript to help them measure exactly how many lines and words they needed in order to make an exact copy of the page. They didn't just copy the words, they made each page look exactly like the original. They knew and treasured the importance of the documents that they were copying and went to extreme measures to maintain perfect accuracy. There has been years of extremely precise work, beyond anything we would ever imagine, just so we can have the Bible. How many Bibles do you own? How many translations? In how many languages? When I went to the Resolved conference in June, I was sitting in the middle of 3500 people and the speaker told us to open our Bibles to a certain passage. The first thing I have written in my notes for that whole conference wasn't the speaker's name, topic, date, reference, or anything like that. The first thing I wrote was "I'm sitting in a huge room filled with thousands of people and each one of them has at least one copy of the Bible in their language." We take the Word of God so much for granted! We wouldn't have any of that if God hadn't provided us with so many faithful men over the years to copy, preserve, and eventually translate the Scriptures. I wish I could go back to the San Diego Natural History Museum and see the Dead Sea Scrolls again. I thought they were extremely cool when I saw them last time, but know I understand how unthinkably amazing they are! It's kind of like thinking Johnny Reb's is an amazing restaurant and then being introduced to Lucielle's!! Whoa!!!!!!!!!! Then you travel to Santa Maria and eat a steak at Jocko's and you're like.....WHOOOAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course, that illustration is on an infinitely smaller scale, but you get the idea. :) Let us move forward in our Christian walk with a new appreciation for the treasure that we often take so much for granted: The Holy Bible.

"The grass whithers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever!"
Isaiah 40:8

Yes, yes, yes I'm still alive...barely.

You: So Grace, what have you been up to?

Me: Oh nothing really....just homework. Oh, and homework. Oh yeah, and more homework!

Yea verily, in accordance with prophecy, it doth be true. This isn't a bad thing though, because I'm loving every second of it. I don't have very long to write because, well...I have to do homework. Ha! I'm going to just share a few thoughts that have been going around in my little brain for the past few days that have come from what I'm studying.

~In studying Bibliology, we get to know the importance of Scripture to a Christian and how important it is for us to have absolute confidence in the Bible. We need to have complete confidence in the Word of God or our faith will be undermined, shaken, and shattered. We can appreciate the light of the Bible in that it causes us to realize that we're in darkness...it then guides us in the correct way to eliminate that darkness, sometimes in ways that we would never dream of. "The closer you look, the greater the Book!"

~Think of your favorite song. You play it all the time, right? If you listen to that same song, but without the words...only the instruments, you would enjoy it more than someone who hadn't heard the song, because you know the words. Even if they aren't being played, you still know them and therefore get more out of the instrumental version than the other person. Well, we stand alongside many non-believers and see nature and the awesomeness of creation. What's the difference? We have the Bible, the Word of God. We have the "words" that go with the song of creation and therefore get much more out of it. That alone should inspire us to share the "words" with those who don't know them!!

~Satan is relentless. We will always have circumstances that give us a "reason" not to move forward in faith. That's exactly what he wants.

~Many times, the only thing that stops us from doing something stupid is the fear of punishment...not remorse for what we're about to do.


I'll stop there for now. One other thing though....I went to community college for 2 years. I put up with a lot of junk there and eventually accepted the fact that my faith and my God would be bashed on a daily basis. Today, my Evangelism teacher, Chris, came into class and told us all to stand up. We then proceeded to open class by singing "How Deep The Father's Love." No accompaniment.....just 80 voices in a small, crowded classroom declaring "His wounds have paid my ransom!"
What a different atmosphere from Cerritos College. Did I mention that I love this school? :)

I almost forgot!!!

On your 21st birthday, what are you supposed to go do??? Have a DRINK!!
My roomie Kaylee took me out for my first drink as an official 21 year old. We drove to the Jackson Coffee Company where I enjoyed....................drum roll please..................

A STRAWBERRY SMOOTHIE!!!!! It was amazing. Who needs alcohol when you can have ice and strawberries? hm?!


So we stayed there for a little while listening to the live music that was going on that night....

Aaand Jenna and Alysse stopped by for a few minutes to sing "happy birthday" to me really loudly.....and dance a little.....



And then Kaylee, Katie, and I finished off the night with a picnic in our dorm. We watched "The King And I" (which we sang along to...quite loudly) and ate more food than any normal person would eat at midnight. It was fantastic! Thank you Jesus for blessing me with amazing roommates and a ton of lovely new Christian friends! I wouldn't trade any of this for the world!!

Picture time!!

Let me start off my introducing ya'll to my roomies.

Angie, Me, Jenna, Katie, and Kaylee

Pointing at.......?

We don't have beds in our dorm. We all sleep on this couch.

And sometimes that makes us cranky and we get angry.

But life is good in the end. We have a fantastic time together!

So, in various parts of the country, they have Civil War reenactments. No really....they do. Hundreds of grown men spend the day dressed in Civil War garb shooting fake guns at each other. It was truly phenomenal. I enjoyed it greatly! I totally wanted to go out on the battlefield for a closer look....but don't worry, I contained my excitement and stayed put.


This was the funny little infantry band. While we were listening to them, I was thinking...these people have to get together and practice sometime......can you imagine being their next door neighbor?! In the middle of the night you hear the "oom pa pa" of Yankee Doodle for 2 hours. haha I laughed when I had that thought.



This would be the part where they shoot the fake guns at each other. It was slightly hilarious. I thought I'd make the pic black and white so it would seem a little more authentic.

This is my favorite picture. You can see all of the "dead" men on the battlefield. haha!! The "battle" took about an hour so some of them just stayed there on the ground for most of the time. It was funny, because several of them took the opportunity to catch up with each other and chat it up a bit. There were huge bangs from cannons and muskets going off and dudes running and riding horses all over the place while shouting at the top of their lungs, and here these guys are on the ground propped up on one elbow just having a grand old time talking to each other. It was great. haha


Katie, Alysse, Bill (aka. Billiam), and Me walking back from the stimulating event.


I have more pics of both my roomies and the Civil War on my facebook for those who are so inclined.

A day at New Tribes...

Going to NTBI isn't like going to any other school. It's like a ginormous family and everything works like it would in a family. For example..today. I got up at 6:30 (yes, it's true. I did.) got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. Even though I don't eat breakfast, this week is my week to do the dishes. When dishes are done, I ran to class. Classes are all held in the same room for each year (freshmen, sophmores, etc.). Somewhere in the middle of classes, we take a break and go to chapel. After classes are done at noon, we have lunch. After each meal, students rotate weekly being on dish crew. After lunch, everyone spends the rest of their day doing homework and chores. Yes, chores. In order to keep the cost of the school low, every student is assigned a job to do. My job is to clean the kitchen and bathroom in the toddler daycare room. So I go in there every day for about 45 min and do the dishes, sweep, disinfect everything, clean the bathroom, etc. It's not very fun cleaning the toilets in the toddler room because, as we all know, 3 year olds still don't quite know how to aim..... Altogether though, I lucked out with my chore. It's relaxing after a 4 hours of classes.

Walking through the halls of the school, you really don't pass anyone without saying hi. If you do, you're kinda rude. For the most part, everyone knows everyone and calls them by name, but for the new people, we smile and nod....actually 90% of the time, you introduce yourself. Within 2 weeks, I know that everyone will know everyone by name. The teachers make it a point to stop you and find out who you are. A lot of the staff members have been studying our pictures that we sent in on applications so that they'll know us faster. I was studying outside in the backyard with my friend Whitney last night and one of my teacher's wife came up and brought us dessert. Like I said......once you enroll...you're part of an amazing family that you never know existed.

It's also very diverse. Just today, I met someone from Ontario, someone from Belgium, someone from New Hampshire, and someone from Korea. That's just today. It's a lovely example of the Church as a whole. It doesn't matter what you look like, what language you speak, or what culture you come from, we all have Christ in common and therefore we all have no trouble bonding. I was talking to my RA a few days ago and again to one of my teachers today about how one of the major benefits of being in a school this small and this close is that you get to see all the parts of the body of Christ working together on a daily basis. That's what makes this place go. Most of the time, we just go to church a few times a week for a few hours and a lot of times it's easy to forget that we don't even see a fraction of the big picture that God sees! Here, I'm able to grasp it a little better and it really does make me desire to jump in and do my part as well.


Last but not least, thank you to all of you who have sent me birthday wishes!! I was kind of bummed that I was going to have to spend my birthday so far away from home, but it's been a great day! My roomies woke me up this morning by singing "happy birthday" in harmony. It was truly beautiful! haha Some of them had put cards on my desk for me, and my roommate Kaylee bought me a NTBI mug. I've had staff members stopping me in the hall all day to wish me a happy birthday. And on top of all that, I had to empty both my text message inbox and my voicemail inbox because I got so many wonderful messages from all of you at home! Thank you so much!! I love and miss you all!!


Time to go listen to the thunder...........it's loud. :)

Classes started today..

I have some amazing classes to look forward to! However, I just finished my homework and it took me 6 hours. It's time for bed, but I'll fill ya'll in on today's nifty events later on. For Elisabeth, Astrid, and Ashley who had the nerve to laugh at my when I said I was going to exercise, I'm getting up at 5:30 tomorrow morning to swim laps with my roomies! ha!

The thought of the day....

One of our speakers taught on courage today. In one of his illustrations, he was pointing out that we need to look beyond this life to eternity. He talked about how he was going to drive home to Pennsylvania today. During that drive, he would probably stop at some point in some small, no name town to get a bite to eat. He would probably spend all of 45 min there. How ridiculous would it be for him to call that town home? It was just a small part of the long drive home. Therefore, why would we get comfortable and focus only on this life when it is only a speck on the time-line of eternity? Life is a stepping stone that gets us on toward eternal life with Christ, therefore we should be courageous in using it well for the Kingdom. If God is with us, why should we be afraid to sacrifice comfort to reach out to others and make this life worth while?


Classes start tomorrow. :)

Today was our first day of orientation. I can already tell that this is going to be an amazing semester!!! It's taking a little getting used to, but everyone, including the teachers, calls one another by their first name. There's no Mr. or Mrs. anything. The staff joined the freshmen in a survey game where we went from person to person asking random questions from a list we were given....I learned that the most popular movie right now is Batman....big shocker. And then we all split into teams and went to the gym where a group of lovely people duct taped me to the wall. The goal was to see who stuck on the wall the longest, but after 15 minutes of being suspended in the air, my feet started turning blue and my hands got numb. SO I stayed on the wall while three of my team mates massaged my hands and my feet to get the circulation going! haha Most people have to pay $100 for that, so I didn't really mind hanging from a wall and getting it for free. My hands are still kinda numb though...it's been 2 hours. Definitely a new experience. Welcome to NTBI!




This is a picture of the school. The tree is kinda in the way...but yep, there it is!
















This is in my dorm. This is our "living room" I guess. We each have a desk of our own...mine is the one in the corner with the suitcase in front of it. And the shelves are the best part of the room...that's where we store all our food. Yeah!












This is my bedroom. I'm on the top bunk for a change and it's fabulous because I get to look straight out the window. I can't wait for the leaves to change color! Then I can wake up each morning and see all the pretty colors!













So that's what the dorm looks like. I stole these pics from my roommate Kaylee's facebook. Shhhh..don't tell her. But the credit for the fab photos goes to her.

I'm going to end with a quick story. We had a missionary by the name of James Comancho come and speak to us today. He was telling stories of the difficulty of cross-cultural evangelism, especially in superstitious countries. There was recently a group of missionaries sent to a small tribe in Brazil (I think it was Brazil....) and they were shocked at how horribly they were being treated by the natives. They had been asked to come to the tribe, but when the natives talked to them, it was in a very angry, demeaning, and plainly mean manner. The missionaries were so frustrated with their efforts seemingly being wasted on the natives, that they were ready to pull out. It turned out that the tribe's traditional belief was that there was an evil spirit who would hurt them by hurting or killing the ones they loved. Therefore, it was customary for them to speak in an angry and cruel manner to the ones that they truly loved. The natives treated the missionaries "hatefully" out of pure love for them and joy that they had come to their tribe. There are millions of people out there who have such a twisted perspective on reality and spirituality. That's why we're here. To be trained to reach them, whether they be in a remote tribe or our next door neighbor.


I love and miss you all! Send me mail! :)

It's official....

I am now a registered student of New Tribes Bible Institute. I got my room all set up today....most people seem to think that the room space is limited, but I think it's enormous!!! My assigned space in the closet is bigger than what all 3 of us share at home. I have fabulous roommates and my RA is one of the sweetest girls on the planet! We took a tour of the school...it's not very big, but they have an indoor running track! I was pretty excited about that...I may exercise once or twice just because it's nifty (but nothing is set in stone).
I registered for my classes today too. For those of you who have been asking, here's the list:

-Bibliology
-Old Testament History
-Biblical Foundations
-Pentateuch
-Proverbs
-Evangelism in a Postmodern World
-Hermeneutics I
-Geography of Israel
-Emerging Church

I'll have my plate full, but I've never been more excited to start school! Many of you know that I've never really had a love for school. At all. I'm beyond excited to see what God has for me this semester!! As my mom and I were driving back to the hotel this evening we were listening to the song "Speak O Lord" by Keith & Kristyn Getty. I usually like to listen to or sing this song in preparation for a church service or Bible study, but I now hear it and get excited to hear Him speak on a whole new level!

"Speak, O Lord" Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music Speak, O Lord, as we come to You To receive the food of Your Holy Word. Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; Shape and fashion us in Your likeness, That the light of Christ might be seen today In our acts of love and our deeds of faith. Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us All Your purposes for Your glory. Teach us, Lord, full obedience, Holy reverence, true humility; Test our thoughts and our attitudes In the radiance of Your purity. Cause our faith to rise; cause our eyes to see Your majestic love and authority. Words of pow'r that can never fail— Let their truth prevail over unbelief. Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds; Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us— Truths unchanged from the dawn of time That will echo down through eternity. And by grace we'll stand on Your promises, And by faith we'll walk as You walk with us. Speak, O Lord, till Your church is built And the earth is filled with Your glory.

I don't enjoy thinking of these titles...

Today I saw the school for the first time. It is indeed tiny. All in one building. THEREFORE....when it's freezing, I don't have to set foot outside. I will only have one roommate....that's a first! The people there are super friendly...I can't count how many people just walked up and introduced themselves to us. The problem is going to be remembering them when I see them again....
If I ever had any doubts or worries about going to NTBI, they are now eliminated. God is so good and so faithful. I can't wait to see what He has for me!

Please continue to pray! I move in tomorrow. :)

I'm here!!

We flew into Detroit this evening. When we got here, there were a few clouds in the sky, but Mother Nature must think we're on vacation because the thunder storms rolled in within an hour. For those of you who don't know, Baldwins are cursed with rain and bad weather whenever we go on vacation. Thankfully, it just passed us, but I've never seen a storm in the distance where you can actually see the rain falling! I hope Michigan realizes that I'm here to stay, so the Baldwin vacation curse won't continue!!

On our flight from L.A. to Dallas, I sat next to the sweetest elderly German lady. Not only did she make pleasant conversation and keep my mind off the whole nightmare of flying, she invited me to visit her either in Germany or in her summer house in Italy. Hmm...maybe I need to forget Michigan and head to my native country. Heck Yeah!!

Last night, my lovely friends Antonia and Zeek visited me to say goodbye. They had just come from Coldstone where all of my ex-employees had gathered at 10:30 at night to put together a scrapbook for me. It was full of pictures, letters, and a ton of good memories!!! It was by far one of the greatest gifts I have ever received!

To everyone who has called me today, I have received your messages and I'll call you all back when things settle down a little bit. Thanks for your prayers and please continue to pray as we get the ball rolling out here.

I love and miss you all!

Last day...

I've spent the last two days at the beach. I'm not going to see it for a while, so I've gotta get as much of it in as I can!!! Now it's time to pack!

A great day!!

I am known as the Baldwin comma. If ever anyone is going to be forgotten in a Christmas card or pretty much anything, it'll be me. Cards addressed to the family are addressed to Bob, Linda, Elisabeth, Peter, Becky, and Julie. That little symbol in between Becky and Julie represents me. On Saturday, over 70 people crammed into the Baldwin house to celebrate the birthday and wish bon voyage to the Baldwin comma. I was so grateful and so blessed! That day, as Gabe would say, I was the 75 font comma!! Thank you to everyone who came to be a part of the celebration!

Hard day...

Julie left for camp today, so she was the first goodbye that I had to face. I knew it would be hard, but she's one of the reason I've never really entertained any thoughts of leaving California. She's the best baby sister anyone could hope to have and I'm going to miss her like crazy.

This story made my day!

In 1986, Dan Harrison was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Dan approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it..

As carefully and as gently as he could, Dan worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments.

Dan stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.

Dan never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.


Twenty years later, Dan was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenage son.

As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Dan and his son Dan Jr. were standing.

The large bull elephant stared at Dan , lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Dan couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant.

Dan summoned up his courage, looked to see if any guards were around and then climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.

The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Dan's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

3 Great Things

So in order to get myself into this whole blogging deal, I figured I needed to practice. SO, I'll go ahead and share 3 really great things that have happened in the last week.

Two of them happened at the retreat that my sisters and I went to over the past week.
1) While I was introducing a song about heaven, I encouraged everyone there to go outside that night and just look up. The night before, my sisters and I had been in complete awe at the number of stars that we could see. When you live in Los Angeles, you kinda forget that there are even any stars out there. So anyway, I encouraged them to look at the millions of stars and the beauty of the sky above us and know that if we can see something that amazing here on earth, just think how much greater heaven is going to be! Later on that night, we were all walking back to our cabin and about 10 of us ended up having a "star party"....we stood out there for a good 20 minutes just looking at the stars. You could see the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Orion's belt, the Milky Way! ( that was my personal favorite) and tons of shooting stars! Who can look at that and say it was all an accident?! Beautiful things like that prove to us that we have a Beautiful God!

2) Here I am at a retreat with 40 people whom I've either never met or have only seen once or twice in passing. After two days of being with them, we all felt like part of the family! It just goes to prove that it doesn't matter what church you belong to or what people you fellowship with, we're all children of the same Father and therefore all part of the same family. When we were packing up and getting ready to leave, I was stopped by this guy named Tim. Before the retreat, I had never met Tim and had no idea who he was. He, however, knew exactly who I was. He knew that a year and a half ago, my college pastor and good friend Mike Gardiner passed away in a car accident. He knew that Mike's wife Amy had survived. He knew that the Sunday after Mike's passing, our whole college group went to his church because we didn't really have any place else to go that night. After over a year, he remembered every detail. And not only that, he has been praying for our college group GAP and for Mike's wife, Amy, ever since. I didn't even know what to say, I was so blessed and grateful. God is so faithful to provide prayer and support even when it seems like everything and everyone have moved on. He never fails to surprise me with the most unexpected, yet wonderful blessings!

3) I love Subway. Most people know that. So when I was working at Coldstone about 3 years ago, I used to go to Subway almost every day. I went so often, in fact, that the employees knew me by name and could prepare my order without me saying anything. My affinity for Subway sandwiches gave me the opportunity to become great friends with one of the employees named Arem. I invited him to come to church with me and he came weekly for quite a few months. Then we all went to the Harvest Crusade and Arem went down and asked Jesus to be his Savior. After that, I lost touch with him. I've often wondered if he continued to follow Christ and I, along with my GAP friends, have prayed for him for over a year. He randomly resurfaced yesterday and I was so excited and thrilled to hear that not only is he still going to church, he is involved and serving there and he is excited about Christ and growing in Him. He told me yesterday that it all started when he came to church with me, 3 years ago. It's amazing how God can use something silly like my ridiculous love for Subway sandwiches to bring a dear friend to Christ.

I though that was pretty awesome! Our God is awesome!!!

Day 1

I've never tried this whole blogging thing before. However, most people know how horrible I am at making phone calls and/or keeping in touch. I'm leaving to go to school in Michigan next Thursday (as you all should know), so in order to keep everyone somewhat updated on my grand adventure, I've decided to attempt to blog. We'll see how good I am at it!