Reflection Paper

Faith in Christ has given me a unique life filled with optimism and purpose. From a young age, I have been raised in a home where I was taught about the love of Christ. Not only at home did I learn about Christ, but at school and at church. Thus, my life has been filled with experiences that have amplified my faith. For example, when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I found that my relationship with Christ grew. Through all of the difficult circumstances that I have faced, faith in Christ has given me the encouragement that I need to persevere through any situation. Additionally, faith has influenced my decision making, which is why I strive to make all my decisions and live my life according to faith-based principles. This means

I grew up in Maui Hawaii with my parents and younger sister. My mom has been walking with the Lord since I was born, but my dad has never walked with the Lord. I accepted Christ as my savior when I was very young, yet didn't really grow in my faith until much later. I grew up going to church and started attending a Christian school in 3rd grade. From this point on I began to really understand what the Bible had to do with the God I trusted to protect and care for me. I also saw examples of adults who were mature in their faith and following Christ. It was through my time in Christian school (3rd- 8th grade) that I began to understand my personal faith and trust Christ more fully. It was these examples that allowed me see what life handed over

My leaders started to notice me and care for me in a way I had never felt before. Finally that summer I decided to go on a camp trip with them. Little did I know that the speaker that week would tell me a message that would open my eyes to concepts I had heard but not realized were truth. I heard that the Lord loved me unconditionally as my Heavenly Father. I learned that he cared for me, every second of the day, no matter what. He cared for me so much that he sent his only son to die for me. No matter how broken I was, he continued to give me attention and care I lacked as a child. That week I found hope in Christ. I had decided to start my new life and relationship with

My parents decided to visit the church that we were a part of when I was a baby.  The worship was a bit old fashioned, but it was good.  The Wednesday of that week I told my mom that I wanted to go to the churches youth group that met that night.  She let me attend and the pastor's wife introduced me to the youth pastor and his wife, along with some of the youths or students as they call them there.  They welcomed me with open arms and warm hearts.  In that youth group, I not only met my best friends but gave my life to the Lord and got my life back on track.

This year was a struggle at first, but out of the struggle I built perseverance and I grew in these 3 categories. The first one was I grew in a stronger relationship with God. I also grew in academic skills and my ability to communicate my faith to others in my class, even the whole school and sometimes people I didn’t know. I pray for the reader of this essay that they will be touched by it.

I was raised in a Christian home, and all I ever knew growing up was Church. I am thankful that God kept me from a lot of stuff that kids my age fell into. That being said, I was still in need of a Savior. Growing up in Church I knew about Christ, but didn’t know Him. I knew the Bible stories, but not the God of those amazing accounts. I was at a youth New Year’s Eve lock-in at my home Church, and we were having fun playing games and eating. The youth leader called us all together to “pray in the New Year”. It was at that time that God really dealt with my heart. Sure, I had “given my heart to Christ” at a very young age, but that night it was different. I prayed, confessed my sinfulness, and asked Christ to forgive me. Close to midnight, December 31, 1988, Christ came into my heart, and I have been following Him ever since. It was during that time that God began to reveal to me, that although I never did the “big” sins of others, I had the elements of those sins in my heart. It was only by His grace that they did not come together to produce such an evil harvest. He began to show me that I was just like the Pharisees that, when seeing the Messiah they had been praying for, did not recognize Him because of their self-righteousness. I am thankful to God for my testimony, and for His saving Grace.

One of the individuals that largely impacted my faith was one of my second and third grade classmates named, Erica Sears. Erica and I were best friends and we talked about everything with each other, one of those topics always being God. Erica was already saved and had dedicate her life to Christ and her hope was that I would one day do the same. I would always respond to her urgings by saying that I will do it one day, but internally I was uncomfortable making that big step of walking to the front of the church, despite having attended that church all of my life and being an active participate within the church. I would leave school every Friday promising that this would be the Sunday and return to school every Monday having to face my best friend, telling her I chickened out. However, she never judged me, she would continuously encourage me and pray for me. Then one Sunday, I raised my had and church and walked to the front of the church to give my life to Christ. I remember it being one of the scariest, yet exciting moments of my life walking down the aisle to the alter. I finally did it! At the age of 8 I officially dedicated my life to Christ and I was

During the duration of my first semester at GRCC I was given the opportunity to grow as a writer in my English 101 class. This course gave me more knowledge of numerous different elements in the writing world. One example would be my use of transition words and integrating quotes. Before my papers were full of “she said” and “she would say”; which was boring and showed poor ability to lengthen my word choice. I also had a tendency to just throw quotes in and not integrate it into my writings. By the end of my English 101 class my papers began to present with words like “the author noted”, or “she stated” along with many other word choices and proper ways of using quotes. Here is an example from my final research paper:

Looking back at my life even just a couple years ago, I would have never thought that this is where I would be. I was born in Florida in 1999 and have lived there my whole life. I grew up in a wonderful home with Christian parents. My mom worked at the church and we went every week. Both my parents have always been huge spiritual role models, when I look at them I can see the love of God in them. They always point us to God and remind us that he is what is most important in life. Ever since I was little my favorite part of my week was going to Church. Growing up in the Church I got to know a lot about the Lord and hear all the stories in the Bible, but it has been the past few years that I have grown my own faith and relationship with God. In 2012 on a beautiful day it was super bowl Sunday, I made the decision to get baptized because I knew that I wanted to live the rest of my life with Jesus knowing that I Could not do life without him. I remember going to my dad and telling him that I wanted to get baptized and he would sit down every night with me and tell me the reasons we get baptized and we would go over stories in the Bible.

Unlike Paul, I've always gone to church. I grew up in a Christian household that held strong Biblical values. As a kid, I read the courageous acts of Esther, the perseverance of Noah, the obedience of Abraham, the desire to follow God in King David. I have always thought that they're great stories. I would sit in services on Sunday listening to the songs sung, the scriptures read, the three-point sermon preached. But in all of it, there was no personal connection. Here is the story of how I came into an intimate relationship with Jesus.

Even though my Baptism was not my conscious decision, it technically began my spiritual life. Ever since that moment, I slowly began to develop a relationship with God. As I got older and matured, my connection with and understanding of God has grown and become stronger.

During this course I have learned many things from the units, but there are also many outcomes that I have learned. The five outcomes I have learned are rhetorical performance, research process, style conventions, multimodal design, and reflective interaction.

Love is often linked to your heart and with your heart it generates a lot of emotions. I know for me when I first met my husband; I was giddy, clumsy, and shy and could hear my heart pounding in my chest. Nevertheless, as time passed, my heart began to have a normal beat. Often times there are those who heart beats to different drum. In addition to the difference of the heart beat there are many ways love is reciprocated. First sign of love you have an irregular heart beat and even mentioning name of the person who you love will cause your heart to beat irregular. There is no feeling like being love and having someone to share that love with. Love causes you do many thing but there is one love that searches the heart and bring clarity to you. God loves does causes you

When I was tasked to write this paper, I tried thinking of people that I didn’t know well, but I knew would have interesting stories to tell. I asked one of my professors, he asked for his name to not be used, for an interview. Before I listened to his story I asked him questions about himself to get a sense of who he is. He puts a very energetic and social face when in public, but he is more introverted in private. Also, he really holds honesty and respect close to his heart, and his story shows why this is so. His starts his story during his high school years; telling of his life and relationships. Then after a falling out he picks up the story in college and his interaction with an old friend there. Then the traumatizing even happens and he reflects and gives anecdotes to further explain his thoughts on the matter.

In the video we see an elementary teacher, teaching a reading strategy called summarizing in a whole group lesson. In the video I observed her use strategies such as direct instruction, modeling, cooperative learning, and independent practice. She begins the lesson by setting the objective of learning and using the summarizing strategy when reading. During this whole group learning, she is modeling the summarizing strategy in order for her students to mimic the strategy so they can internalize it, in hopes for the students to use the strategy when reading in order to become self-regulated learners. At one point of the video, the teacher uses a peer sharing strategy where the teacher ask the students to turn to their neighbor and come up