Learning

...to listen to Him, to obey Him and ultimately, to love Him.

Now I realize the importance of writing a testimony down almost immediately...At least for me. Otherwise, because I am weak, I forget exactly how God displayed His power. I forget all the miraculous things that He did over the past week. It was such a short time ago and yet I've lost a lot of the spirit of thanksgiving and praise that I had when I first got back on Monday...a spirit that is definitely needed when I write down what I saw God do...I've learned my lesson in that as well...

Now onto my testimony from this past weekend.

There is much to write about but I will try to keep it compact.

Friday (3/28) and Saturday (3/29)
- My mom and I drove to Memphis (about 5 1/2 hours...I drove the whole way) and arrived Friday night. The festivities didn't start until Sunday at 10am but we wanted to get there 2 days earlier because we wanted to go condo hunting.
- We found one and decided just yesterday on a deal. You guys can look at it here: Condo
I will need to look for a roommate. If you guys could, please pray that God provides someone that is a strong Christian...He provided for me all throughout college, I don't doubt He will provide for me when I'm in med school.

Sunday (3/30)
10am: Meet N' Greet the other scholarship finalists and our hosts and hostesses who are current scholarship holders. I wasn't in the mood to be social this whole weekend but God totally helped me to get beyond that. I didn't feel drained or tired at all after each day of the activities on Sunday or Monday. Praise God for that...it was actually an amazing blessing to talk to some of the current med students and finalists because a lot of them were people who either had a career in something else and then switched to med school or some of them just decided to take a year off after undergrad and just travel around. That definitely relieved a bit of the fear that I had from also having not been in school for so long and now going into med school...I am a little worried about not knowing enough biochem though so I'm considering picking up a biochem textbook and just reading it this summer =P...I actually even met a former high school classmate (well, he was a year under me) and we got to catch up a bit so that was nice.

11:15am: It's near the end of the 1 hr+ Meet n' Greet. I start talking to an extremely intelligent (though slightly older than the rest of us) current first year med student who's name was Patrik. He was from Czechoslovakia which I found so fascinating. So I asked him why he decided to come to the US. To make a long story short, his reply had to do with universal health care (a topic of great interest to me ever since high school) and we started talking about the pros and cons to such a system. He summed up the con of the universal health care system in a way that was so concise and so right on target that it was absolutely beautiful. He said, "The major con of the universal health care system is that instead of providing high quality care for a select group of people, you end up providing only mediocre care for everyone." I was amazed at that statement and so I filed it away for future use...little did I know, God gave me that conversation and would use it in a way that would ultimately show His power later...

1:30pm: After having lunch at the Memphis museum of art (it's not as nice as Cleveland's =/) with all of the interviewers, I start talking to one of the interviewers, Dr. Watsky. He wasn't one of my interviewers but I was trying to be charming and talk to everybody nonetheless =P. While I was talking to him, I let it slip that I had basically decided to (and committed to) coming to UT-Memphis for med school. BIG MISTAKE. Why? Because almost all the other scholars were undecided so, this weekend's purpose was to try and attract these top students to come to UT (money is always a tool for this). So, why would they want to offer a scholarship to someone who's already committed to coming? Man, I was kicking myself in the head for that mistake the whole day afterwards...
The rest of the day went by uneventfully.

Monday (3/31): The day of the interview
The day even started out pretty frazzling because I spilled tea on my white dress suit (but the stain disappeared later in the day) AND I discovered a little too late that I had a huge hole in my pantyhose too. It just goes to show how little I had to do with all of this and how much God had to do with all of it.
So here's how the process worked. The interviewers were divided into 5 groups of 3. Some of the groups had a med student in them who was also on the scholarship committee. Each group was going to interview a total of 3 students, each at different times. They told us that the winners of the 5 full scholarships would be contacted later on Monday. There was also a half scholarship available so technically 6 people would be contacted. But they told us not to get nervous if we didn't get a phone call cause if someone turned down the scholarship then they would give it to the next person on an alternate list.
Now I had not gotten nervous the whole time leading up to this interview nor did I get nervous at all before, during, or after the interview...which was an AMAZING miracle by God. I was a tad worried about being interviewed by 3 people at the same time but it actually didn't get to me. My interview was at 10:30am. So I and the other people who also had that time slot went for a tour of St. Jude's Hospital (which is absolutely AWESOME). I had heard a lot about my interviewers...one was supposed to be really nice...the other was a student...and it was the third one that I was maybe a tad bit apprehensive about because he was famous for throwing random quotes at students and wanting them to interpret them (he's a psychiatrist...go figure =P....I always seem to get interviewed by psych people lol).

10:30am: The interview was only 30 minutes long but it was an intense 30 minutes because I think I was asked about 15 questions. Each question either seemed easy to me or I was already asked that question before. I never had a brain fart or had trouble forming a response. Anyways, one of the questions was what I thought about the health system in America today and what can be done about it. Here I was able to explain about universal health care which led to one of the interviewers asking me what the major con was to universal health care. Wow. God totally prepared me for that question the day before. It reminded me of Moses and his speech problem (I definitely sympathized with him cause I was never one that was eloquent) and God's response to that: Ex 4:11-12 "The LORD said to him, "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

On the car ride back to Knoxville, I was just thinking...maybe the way that I'll get this scholarship will be because someone turned it down and UT-Memphis will go down their alternate list and I'll be called sometime in May. It's amazing that after so many things, I still had a little seed of doubt and unbelief. How weak is Your servant, Oh God, that I don't believe in the fullness of Your goodness to Your children!

You should have seen my amazement and surprise when I got that phone call at 6:30pm. Sometimes it still feels surreal...looking at the list of the winners I was surprised at who got it and who didn't...All the people that were finalists were all extremely qualified and wonderful people...I don't know how the committee came to their decision so quickly. It just goes to show that "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. [God] does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back His hand or say to Him: 'What have You done?' " (Dan 4:35)

To God be the glory. Period. That's the point of this testimony.

One random thing that I want to interject here is the fact that I haven't gotten into a single fight with my mom yet which is a huge miracle and shows how much God has worked in my life in just the past 2 months.