Prayer

Why do we pray? The reasons I used to pray was because I wanted something. Praying is when you get to talk with God and build a relationship with him. I would go days without talking to him but when I had a game coming up I would pray for us to win and when we came short I would wonder why. The big question is why can’t we as humans go to prayer every day and thank him for all that he has done for us. I mean hey we always talk about how good we are at sports, school and just any type of work but we lack the greatness of praying to our One and Only God that has given us the opportunity to be here on Earth and for all of our talents. When you pray thank him for all he has done and ask him to help you along the way with getting closer to him and just ask for him to help everyone. Don’t lose faith in God, the Bible shows that he can do amazing stuff like the blind seeing and the dead walking. Ecclesiastes 5:2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. When you pray, rather let your heart be with words than your words be without heart.
When you pray bring your problem to God and keep the problem God centered not problem centered. Supplication where you are honest and tell God that you need his help. Focus on God and not just the problems remember our prayers need to be God centered. Thank him because you know you can go to him at anytime, he loves you and that he is concerned about you.
 Samuel 12:23
When you pray you need to remember Three Things.
●    Faith- We need to have complete faith in God.
●    Obedience - We need to obey God completely.
●    Patience- We must wait patiently on God.
Now back to where I said that I would always pray because I wanted something. I can say now that I have a relationship with God I pray for my loved ones, for me to get closer to him, and I thank him for sending his son to die on the cross for our sins. I can also say I even thank him for the days that are bad because even when life is tough I know that he has a greater plan and I shouldn’t worry because he will provide. Matthew 19:26 Jesus says With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Can't be Tamed!

Oh my gosh you are fat. You are stupid. These are words that can really hurt people's feelings. Words are extremely powerful and can make someone have a good or bad day. Proverbs 4:24 says “Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.” What this verse says is wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech. Scripture tells us to do away with irrelevant and improper speech. One of my favorite verses is Psalms 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” To me this verse is just telling me that the words I speak should be pleasing to God and I shouldn’t go around making people sad. What I need to be doing, just like everyone else should be doing is be kind to one another and tell people what God has done for us. James 3:2 “ We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.” I know for a fact that no one is perfect so you would be lying if you said you have mastered the tongue because the only way to do that is if you are perfect. The tongue is no small weapon. It holds a power few of us realize. I have trouble controlling my tongue at times and I just know when that happens I need to praise God and ask for his forgiveness. The last thing is ask him to help guide you in the right path and grant you the blessing of having meditations and speech that is pleasing to him.

Movie Review: Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows is  based, though somewhat loosely, on a drama of the same name that ran on TV screens from the mid-60s to early 70s. This film comes to us from the Tim Burton- Johnny Depp duo thats films are usually hit or miss with their audiences. As of now the film has a 54% viewer approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie is a comedy that follows Barnabas Collins, a vampire who was cursed by a witch who was heart broken by his rejection and vowed to destroy him and his entire family. Barnabas is trapped coffin and buried underground by a angry mob some time in the 1700s or so and is released by accident in 1972. He discovers that his descendants are dysfunctional at best and that the family business and wealth are in shambles because of the efforts of the witch. He must try and bring the family back together and restore their family business to its former glory.

The movie was not particularly horrible but it was not great. There was a few chuckles here and there, but it was not that funny unless you have a extremely dry humor. The characters are alright but the only ones I really liked was the were the kids, David and Carolyn, and they had thirty minutes of screen time tops. The basic idea of it was alright but I was just disappointed that it was not as good as I was expecting it to be. I would recommend just waiting until it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray and getting it through Netflix or Pay Per View. 

ACL tears of 2011-2012!

Above is a comparison photo of a normal ACL MRI to a torn ACL MRI.
The picture on the right is my MRI.

 
 You could tear your ACL when your foot is firmly planted on the ground and a sudden force hits your knee while your leg is straight or slightly bent. This can happen when you are changing direction rapidly, slowing down when running, or landing from a jump. An estimated 150, 000 Americans suffer from ACL injuries ever year, and a growing number of them are female athletes. Girls are four to eight times more likely than boys to injure the ACL because their hips widen during puberty, which puts strain on the knee, plus the joint itself loosens due to hormonal changes.





   There have been a lot of professional athletes, and athletes at Spring Valley, that have torn their ACL.  Mackenzie Morris, Spring Valley basketball player, tore her ACL and MCL during a basketball game this season while landing after a lay up. Amanda Artrip, Spring Valley basketball player, tore her ACL and had minor meniscus damage after her foot stayed planted to the ground while she turned her body. Hunter Waugh, Spring Valley baseball player, tore his ACL while running to first base during a sectional baseball game against Midland. Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls; Wilson Ramos, Washington Nationals; Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees; and Tiger Woods are just a some of the athletes that have torn their ACLs. That’s just a hand full of the athletes this year that have torn their ACLs, and it’ll just keep growing.

   You can try to prevent this from occurring to you by building up the muscle in your thighs and butt by doing multiple exercises and workouts at your house. In my case, I also have to practice landing straight down equally on the balls of both of my feet after I jump. An ACL injury can happen to anyone, and it doesn’t just have to happen to athletes either. This can occur by just stepping off a stair step, ladder, step stool, and etc wrong. My advice to you is just pay attention to where you’re stepping and how you’re stepping in the future.

Book Review: The Pledge by Kimberly Derting

The society that The Pledge is set in is based on a caste system and ruled by a monarchy with a female head that is strickly against male rule even if it means servering the family line. The classes of people are based on the language you speak, the unnamed lower class that is not allowed to speak at all, the Serving class that can only speak Englaise, Vendor class that speaks Parshon and Englaise and the Council class that speaks Termani and Englaise. One cannot even look at someone speaking a language different from their own without the threat of death which makes things very different for our heroine, Charlaina, who can understand all languages even those she has not heard spoken before.

War has broken out over their country and the queen, Sabara, seems very close to death and only holding on until she finds her replacement, the one of the Old Throne, which makes life in the Capitol city very difficult for it inhabitants, though, it really does not seem like that much of a burden. They never really give the pretense of the war occuring, only giving name of the opposing ruler and the parts of the country already taken over, so, I really do not see why they bothered to mention it when it did not actually hold a role until the middle when the raids started to occur. But, we never saw any enemy soldiers or even see Queen Elena. If they would have just called them the rebels and spoke nothing of another queen it would have made more sense to me.

Queen Sabara is supposed to ba this insidous, omnipotent ruler but I never felt that from her because she is present as a frail old woman that simply wants to continue her reign. Since, they basically give it away in the first chapter of the book I am going to go ahead and give away the big "surprise": the queen does not truly die. She simply transfers her concious or how she cutely puts it her Essence into someone elses body, makes them queen and then continues on where she left off the last time which seems cartoonish to me. Seriously, simply the idea of that seems like something a Disney villian would think up while twirling their beard or whatever it is they do to help themselves think.

Charliana, or Charlie as she likes to be called, seems a little dull to me and her narrative is slow and borderline uninteresting at points. Sure, she has some interesting traits such as her gift of language and such but really beyond that there was really nothing that drew me to her because she was not particularly strong. Also, she seemed rather dense concerning her best friend, Brooklyn, because she was shocked when a few revelations were revealed about Brooklyn when they did not seem that odd concidering the personality shown to us. Her want to protect her family and friends at any cost is admirable but really it is a cliche trait. Now, if she was all about throwing them to the dogs to save her skin I might be a little more interested because you do not see the ruthless, apathetic heroine enough and a dystopian novel is the perfect time to use a character like that.

Though, I found things to dislike about the novel it was not a complete loss because the basic plot and society created were not terrible just poorly executed in my opinion. If you do not mind a borrage of uninteresting characters and an unsatifying antagonist then go ahead and read it, you might be more entertained than I was. I would probably go with reading this offers other series, The Body Finder, instead of The Pledge.

The Avengers Movie and what I expect

    The Avengers! This movie premiers May 4th and I have never been more excited. The plot from what I gathered is Thor's Asgardian story line. In this story line Loki, Thor's brother is causing havoc in our Earth realm and it is the Avengers duty to stop him. This should prove to be an amazing movie and I am looking forward to Thor fighting Iron man and Captain America. The Avengers should be action packed and full of drama. From what I've seen in the many trailers this is correct to the comic books except for Hawk-eye's foldable bow. That just kills me. It looks like Hawk-eye and Black Widow also appear to have their romance.
 
  I have not seen the movie yet, nor will I let myself watch the leaked footage of the end of this movie At first it seemed to me from the trailers Loki was using the Scrolls for his army. This lead me to believe that God Killer Scroll, the female one would be the main antagonist in the second Avengers movie. Then, after I shot that idea down, I was thinking Ultron could be the revealed villain at the end of this movie. That theory was proved pointless when I realized it would be too difficult for them to introduce Ant man, who created Ultron.
   

Thanos

 I am positive that the end of this movie the surprise villain everyone is talking about is Thanos and his infinity gauntlet. This gauntlet can punch through reality itself. This is the hardest fight the Avengers have had. It will make a excellent sequel.

Now the Hulk is controversial as to whether or not he will be in the sequel. In the comics he left the Avengers multiple times. If they can not keep the actor consistent he wont be in The Avengers 2. Otherwise I see no reason to cut him. He is a crowd favorite and the powerhouse of the team. Also I have been hearing a lot about how co-creator Jack Kirby is not mentioned in the Avengers credits. People are blaming Stan Lee for not having them put his deceased partner in those credits. Stan Lee commented by stating, "I'm credited as one of the executive producers because that's in my contract. But Jack was not an executive producer. So I don't know what he'd be credited as. Again I know nothing about that, I have nothing to do with the movie's credits."

Despite some minor complications, The Avengers is going to be a good time and action packed. A comic book fans or any ones favorite movie. I urge every one to go see it and enjoy.

Amber Stewart & Taylor Stacy are offically signed to Wesleyan!

Amber Stewart and Taylor Stacy signed to Wesleyan University to run track on Wednesday, May 2nd!  Amber and Taylor have ran track and also played soccer for a long time, and they have dedicated most of their time into sports.   Both of the students from Spring Valley are very athletic and have accomplished many of their goals in athletics and acedemics.  Wesleyan University is very lucky to receive these two student/athletes into their program.

Kenova's Website Undergoes Construction

Kenova, West Virginia is a small town. Kenova is actually the most south-western city in all of West Virginia! While Kenova still has somewhat of an old fashioned and very homey feel, it is showing signs of becoming more technology-friendly. Several SVHS students from Judy Sato's Webpage Publishing class with the help of IT specialist Terry Carpenter have completely redone the City of Kenova's website. The students were honored on Thursday night at the City Council meeting. Our students Ashley McNeil, Chris Seidel, and Rebecca Barnes all received certificates of honor for their hard work on the site. Mayor Ric Griffith presented them with their certificates and expressed his gratitude by saying that the kids had done something for Kenova that had been needed a long for time. McNeil presented the council with a preview of what the website would look like and feature when it goes live in the next few weeks. Mrs. Sato's kids have really put a lot of dedication into this website and deserve every ounce of recognition that they have received

. Keep up the good work!!