Marvelous Happy Things

Those of you who know me know that I love my school. It's a Christian university, and it's difficult to imagine myself being anywhere else. This may be extremely biased. Probably. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who are believers who go to secular or what I usually call state schools for college. They love it. A lot of them are involved in Cru. They are there praising the Lord, and that's awesome. And then here I am. Living in what my school calls an "intentional community." How is it different from Cru (used to be known as Campus Crusade for Christ)? Well, for starters, a lot of my classmates are believers. Even if I don't know them that well, for the most part we have this in common. Then, besides an RA, we have a Discipleship Assistant (also a student) who plans a worship and prayer gathering on a weekly basis and small groups that we can attend. Each DA is chosen by the hall director and members of the Residence Life staff. My friends at state...

I have chosen a difficult task for this post: to sum up my grandparents, Danny and Patty Danielson. We'll see how this goes. My grandfather was one of the most efficient and kind-hearted people that I've ever known. He was what some might call a master negotiator for most of his life, but I'm going to focus on the aspects of him that I enjoyed the most as a grandchild. He made an effort to get to know everyone in the room; of course, without relationships, you have no basis for a deal. He would ask us about topics that he knew we would be interested in or that affected our lives in some way. If it wasn't politics, it was religion mixed with school or current issues of the day. His prayers before meals were legendary, any Danielson grandchild will tell you that. They lasted for a long time but always said so much. My grandfather passed away in his mid-90s, so we as grandchildren have great tales from his later years. He was prone to mispronouncing sports figures' n...