The movie then shows Richard's struggles at seminary. Richard has no real intention of becoming a minister, and doesn't even want anything to do with God. All he wanted was to study hard and get good grades so he could finish his probation and get back to his computer job, but he quickly discovers that the school president has more in mind. The school president wants him to pave the way for future black students at the seminary. Shortly after arriving at seminary Richard meets Samuel, the gardener, and over time they develop a friendship that in someways resembled a father-son relationship. Throughout his time at seminary, we see prejudice on several different levels, and Richard's struggles to rise above it. Ultimately, the story is about redemption and doing what is right regardless of the cost.

I've been mulling this over for the past few days, trying to flesh out this post in my head before sitting down to write it. I knew what I wanted to write about, but never quite figured out the details. Today it morphed into something a little different. Namely, a post about my 2011 Goals. I've never been big on making New Year's Resolutions, but I certainly have a number of things I need to be working on in my life so I figured this is as good a time as any to get started!

-Become better organized. This one just occurred to me the other day while I was digging through one of my many piles of paperwork, looking for a receipt. I spend so much time searching for this or that piece of paper. Receipts, bills, insurance records, user manuals, notes, and so on. If it exists in paper form, I probably have it or something like it buried in a pile somewhere in the house. Part of my problem is that I save a lot of paperwork that really doesn't need to be saved. I need to learn to discern better what paperwork I really need to keep, and what I can safely throw away.

-Work on my spiritual walk. Over the last month or so our pastor has preached a number of excellent messages that were geared towards helping us improve our spiritual walk. Most of these were part of a series titled "Loving God Holistically." He preached a message each about loving God with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our body (strength). I felt like I gleaned quite a bit from these messages that would help me in my spiritual walk, but as of yet I haven't really taken any of that information and worked on it in my own life. The new year is a good time to focus on this aspect of my life. I'll probably write a little about some of those sermons in the future as I work through applying them in my life.

-Physical health/weight gain. Over the last couple of months I have all but stopped working on gaining weight and exercising on a regular basis. I actually dropped a few pounds during that time period, so now I have to work all over at putting them back on again. I also plan on getting back to using the weights and hopefully something for cardio as well.

Tonight I keep thinking back to this night exactly one year ago. My wife and I enjoyed pizza from our local B.C. Pizza for dinner, and then later that evening went to bed wondering (as we had every night for the past several weeks) if this would be the night that our son would make his entrance into the world. It was now several days past his due date, and we were rather anxious to meet him! Little did we know what the following morning would bring.