Battlefield of the Mind FOR TEENS

I just finished a book by Joyce Meyer called “Battlefield of the Mind FOR TEENS”

This book talks about how we fight a battle with Satan over our thoughts. It tells that what people think about is how they live, with a Biblical perspective.

It offers Biblical references to help guard your thoughts and follow God in your thought life.

I really enjoyed this book because it offers clear, relevant points that are easy to understand. When I read it, I realized that a lot of it applies to my own life and that it has content that I use and learn from in my own life.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to get closer to God and knows that their thought life influences their physical life.

"Our Father"

Have you ever seen a little kid do something so cute or funny that you want to tell everyone you know, and wish you had caught it on tape?

This little girl is exactly that moment, caught on tape. Although I don't know this girl, I have watched the video several times in a row just because she is SO cute, and can imagine my little sister or some friends' little girl doing something like that.

Enjoy the video!

Sunsets

Sometimes you see an image or a place or a sunset or a waterfall or something that was so breathtakingly beautiful that you will never in your life forget.

For me, it was a sunset.

This sunset happened in October two years ago, right after the soy beans had been cut and the air was thick with dust and ladybugs. My dad was gone but the rest of the family had taken their customary places in our living room in front of the big picture window to watch the sunset. We waited, and our waiting paid off.

Even at the very start of the sunset, we could tell that it would be beautiful.

The sun was painting colors in the sky, at first, pale, rosy colors, but then deepening until the climax of the sunset.

As we looked out our picture window, the sky was lit on fire. You could see the flames reflect off the clouds and the smoke curl at the bottom off the ground. The trees were displayed out against the flame-filled sky, stark and black. If you looked closely, you could see, in the distance, the power lines standing out against the rich colors of the sunset.

I'm always going to remember that awe-inspiring sunset, the only time I have ever seen the sky on fire. Some things you can't forget, like a sunset on an October night

Not Your Normal Transportation

When I was 6 years old, my parents, my 7 year-old brother, my 4 year-old sister, my other 2 year-old sister, and I moved across the ocean to live in a tiny country called Holland that is right next to Germany and Belgium. We lived in Europe for another 3 years, and moved once within the Netherlands, and once to England.

Having lived a large part of my childhood in a different culture, speaking a different language, eating different foods, and being with different people, it was somewhat of a counter-cultural experience when we moved back (with one more kid) when I was 8.

In Holland, the forms of transportation were more different from America’s than you might think. For the first six months we lived there, we didn’t own a car. We biked, rode the bus, walked, or, the one I remember most vividly, rode the train.

Riding on a train was an experience I’ll never forget. At one stop in Paris, we were crowded in so close that my little sister, on the floor, couldn’t breath. However, that wasn’t the norm. On most of the trips on trains, we would walk up to the counter, ask for 2 adult tickets, and 4 child tickets. The teller would hand my dad the tickets, along with 4 activity booklets that you would get with each ticket. These booklets contained mazes, games, punch-outs of trains, word finds (in Dutch) and things like that. These were the highlight of our train trips and would occupy us for at least five minutes after we boarded the train. Once we were on the train, it was a simple matter of sitting back and enjoying the ride, although when I was six enjoying the ride did not include sitting back.

One of the best parts about the train rides was when we got on a train with two levels. All of us kids would scramble up to get the best seats by the window. The worst time that I have ever been on a train was when we were riding from our own small town to another small town near us. I was crunched up near the door, and finally the train stopped. As the flood of people poured out the doors, I stepped out with them. I thought that that was our stop, but when I looked over my shoulder back at the train, and saw my family still inside, motioning frantically with their hands and calling me, I realized that I was wrong, and it wasn’t really our stop. I stepped back inside easily enough, but my heart was pounding and I never did that again.

However, for the most part, the trains were an enjoyable part of our life in Holland. The train stations were a different story.

In the train station that was near our house, there were elevators to get onto the different levels of the station. These elevators were not regularly cleaned and often when we rode in them, there would be old rotting food or puke on the floor. One time we were in a train station and there was stuff all over the floor of the elevator. I was six and didn’t think before I spoke. When we were going up in the elevator, I sniffed the air and then remarked, “It smells like a zoo. Are we in a zoo?”

My family never lets me forget that time in the elevator, and the only thing that was really important to me about that experience was that the elevator really did smell like a zoo, and elevators shouldn’t, in any country or place, smell like zoos!

Now, having lived in America for another 6 years, cars are the normal transportation, and trains are just a memory of a different place.

Welcome to My New Blog

Hi!

My name is Katie and I am 14 years old. I love reading good books on a rainy day, swimming in my grandma’s pond, and eating mint chocolate chip ice-cream!

I have recently opened this blog and I think that it will be a good way to learn to write better and show people my writing.

I hope to learn about good writing and good writing techniques as I write. I want to be able to develop a writing skill that I will be able to use throughout the rest of my life. If I develop this skill now, it could prove valuable and important later on in my life.

I want people to read it because I want my posts to make an impression on the way people perceive things and affect them by my writing in ways that I wouldn’t be able to by speaking. I hope that when people read my posts they will think more deeply about things that they haven't really thought about before. I want to be able to use my writing to have an impact on people and cause them to reflect on what I wrote.

Here are a few of the areas that I would like to write about over the course of having this blog are:
Christian Faith- I would like to write some about what I believe and Christianity in the rest of the world; Literature- I would enjoy writing about some books that I’ve read and how they have affected my life; World View- Different countries I’ve either visited or want to visit and what they mean to me; America- How I feel about what’s going on in our country and what I think can be done.

Thank you for reading and I hope that this blog will be meaningful for you!