Night time prayer time is my favorite prayer time

My morning time prayers are important and a foundation for my life. But sometimes they can be rushed, especially depending on my schedule. My night time prayers are usually my favorite. I spend a good hour at least and I’m not rushed or stressed because it’s the end of the day. I find that the better I pray, the better I sleep and the better I wake up. The better I live.

I realized that in recent years that I’ve been talking about regaining my fitness, and now realize that I’ve been trying to regain my youth. Specifically my youthful energy and vitality. I’m aging, and I confused it with being out of shape. It’s true that I’m out of shape but that’s not the real issue. I have wrinkles, droopy elbow skin, and thinning gray hair. There’s no going back from this, I’ll just learn to enjoy it. At the gym this dude said “Asif give me some tips, how did you get that chest?”. Somehow I dumbbell pressed my way to a ripped and larger than average chest muscles which I’ll enjoy while I can because they say that it’ll start to get saggy after a while and turn into man boobs.

My neighbor, a man, got ultra massive pec implants. I don’t know how he found a doctor to put in such big implants. And I get it, hitting the gym every day is hard and doesn’t always take us to our goals. But he’s got a normal thin / athletic frame and a terminator chest. He walks around town shirtless. Everyone just gawks because it looks so incredibly unrealistic, like a special effect.

At the rate I’m going, I won’t finish my bachelors degree for years, lol, but at least I’m doing it debt free. My friends make fun of me but at least I’m doing it, and I’m paying as I go so I won’t have student loans. I was advised today that since I don’t have a high school diploma, (I dropped out around age 15 or 16) I’ll have go take a GED exam so I can then be granted my degree. Doh!

The last time I was in high school, the teachers were giving me money because my team was replacing their old computers for really really good new ones. I was wearing sneakers, bluejeans and a suit jacket with the label still on the cuff. A science teacher told me that had to be cut off. My English teacher, concerned about me dropping out asked me if I was earning at least $100,000 / year, which I was not. I did have a job offer on the table for $60,000 and it wouldn’t be long after and I would be offered a job of $80,000. It would be a good long while before I would see $100,000 / year. But I was happy.

Little Sleep

For the past while I haven’t been sleeping well. Yesterday I woke up at 2:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep so I lounged around…ate some snacks and then at 5am went for a bike ride and prayer time.

This morning I went to a different park to pray and enjoyed the outdoor gardens. I wanted to visit the greenhouse but it didn’t open until noon.

I’ve just finished another round of fasting.

Baptisms and April and being the first

Mom and sis were born again in late 1999 several weeks apart. And on March 26 2000 they were baptized with about 250+ people there. Pretty cool! It was good to see those prayers come to pass. I set aside every Sunday for about 2 years to fast and pray for them. Sunday is probably the worst day for that because most of my friends want to hang out on Sunday. Now I can focus on praying for others!

Actually, family members of mine are giving their life to Christ every couple of months. Which makes me both a hero and scumbag in my family, depending on who you talk to. When you’re the first person in your family to do something different, something generally frowned upon, it’s going to kick up a lot of crap. Being the second is nothing.

I’m talking to a lot of people about Jesus, and I’ve helped lead a few people to Christ already this year, and last year, and the year before. I’ve already been beaten up and threatened with death several times. This thing (following Jesus) will eventually cost me my life. And I’m okay with that.

My friend Lucy says that the proper way to sneeze is through your mouth. You say achoo and cover your mouth with your hand. Then you wash your hand. I’ve been trying this technique for about 2 weeks and I have to give it mixed reviews. Most of the time it makes my mouth hurt. Achoo. Ouch.