Late Post 2: My Notebooks

I have always been a sucker for paper products. I go crazy in office supply stores. And I know I’m not alone. There are many like me.

Unfortunately (for my money situation), I happened to move to Asia – the part of the world with the most amazing stationary you will ever see. And I CANNOT STOP BUYING CUTE NOTEBOOKS.

Notebooks, notebooks, notebooks.

The weird thing is that I don’t ever do anything with them. I mostly just arrange them in different orders on my desk. I like looking at them. I like having them. I like smelling them. I just like them.

This is starting to sound like a creepy notebook fetish, so I’ll get to the point.

I finally decided that if I am going to buy notebooks, I HAVE TO USE THEM. So I did. Well, I started using the more practical ones. Some other ones have cute pictures or little Asian-y drawings all over the pages. They are fun to look at and they make me feel like a giggly little Asian girl inside. But they are not nice to write in.

So I took the blank notebooks, and I incorporated them into my New Year’s Resolutions. Now, for the first time in history, I present to you some of my favorite possessions – my notebooks.

Notebook 1. This sleek, stylish model is not any ordinary little black book.

For starters, it contains no phone numbers. No, this is the notebook I use when I do my daily Al-Kitab and Al-Quran reading. I use it to keep track of what I’ve read on what day, and I also use it to create lists of all the words I don’t know along with their translations. I use this little notebook every single day.

Clearly, some days are better than others…

I also usually have this little guy in my bag with me wherever I go. It’s a very small notebook (less than 4 slats tall, as you can see from the picture) and takes up hardly any room. If there is ever a lull in a conversation, I pull out my notebook and start asking my friends the differences between certain words. I mean, Genesis 1 in Indonesian uses THREE different words that all translate to creep/crawl! For all those creepy crawly animals God made.

Notebook 2 has my all time favorite color and design. This is the first one that I started using regularly – at the beginning of the school year.

I decided that I should be more financially responsible, and I’m using this notebook to track all of my expenses. I’m not an extravagant spender, but living in a third world country really makes you more self conscious about what you have in comparison to oh, say, your entire neighborhood. I recognize that I have a different standard of living than most of the rest of Indonesia, but while I know that I’m living within MY means, I also want to make sure that I’m not living wildly outside of theirs. So every single thing I purchase, I write down in here.

Basically, it’s my accountability buddy. Before I buy something, I remind myself that I will have to write it down in my notebook. And it will be part of the weekly total of what I spent. And will I be disappointed in myself when I see that total? It helps me make sure that what I’m buying is really what I need. And through this process, I’ve found that I can generally get by on $30-$40 a week. And that includes tithing and eating!

OK, enough about finances. On to notebook 3. This is the one that has been in commission second longest. I’ve been going to Indonesian church for a few years now, and awhile back I finally figured out that taking sermon notes actually helps me focus more, understand better and remember things long term! I know, I know, I was a little late to the game… But at least I arrived. Eventually. So yeah, I started taking notes on index cards, and after the sermon, I would just tuck them into my Bible. But sometime last year, I decided to start using an actual notebook. Mostly because I kept losing the index cards. So this is my sermon notebook.

This notebook is noteworthy because it is the only one that I bought with a pre-determined purpose. I had to have a notebook with blank pages because I wanted to be able to fit each sermon on one page. I knew I wouldn’t find a lined notebook that would allow me to do that.

Since I have tiny handwriting anyways, this notebook is the perfect size! The date and the name of the person preaching go in the top right corner. Then each sermon’s notes are on the right hand page. The left page I use for other things. Like if I learn any new words during the sermon, I write them down there. Or if we sing a song that I want to remember the lyrics to, I jot them down. All of my notes are in English. Hearing in Indonesian and noting (??) in English really helps me process what I’m hearing, and it keeps me on my toes throughout the entire sermon. No zoning out… Also, fun fact – I have stared at the cover for soooo long, and to this day, I cannot figure out what it says. It’s like a part of some poem or something written in really scripty writing. But I can only make out a few of the words.

Notebook 4. My mom actually mailed me my credit card hidden inside this notebook! That was a good idea, because nobody at customs found the credit card, and also, that was the package in which Lindt chocolate exploded and coated everything. I was able to wash off the notebook, and it was displayed prominently on my desk for quite awhile, but left unused.

Until at the end of last year when I was reading through my Bible and wished that I had a way to have all of my favorite verses in one place. And voila – the favorite verses notebook came to be.

Sometimes they are in Indonesian…

Sometimes in English…

And sometimes, I include entire paragraphs or even chapters!

This is definitely my favorite notebook to read through!

Notebook five is the last one for now. This was a Christmas gift from a friend, and I decided to use it to help me with my New Year’s resolution to pray for my leaders.

I’m also trying to be more focused in praying for other things as well. You know how when people say, “Hey, I could really use some prayer.” and you say, “Oh, I will totally be praying for you.” and then you completely forget? No? Is it just me? I hope not. Anyways, I don’t want to be that person anymore. So I’m using this to write prayer requests down in to help me remember. Every request gets its own page. And each day, I look through the notebook once. And I don’t necessarily pray for everything in it every day. But I have a written account of things I’ve said that I will pray for. Like my leaders. Here they are.

And if I’m being honest, I know that one of the reasons it is hard for me to be faithful in prayer is because I struggle to believe in the importance and effectiveness of prayer. God is God, and He knows what is best. So why should I pray for something that I want to happen when it might not be what is best? And so on the first page of the notebook, I wrote down some verses about prayer and what prayer should be and what prayer is for. Because no matter what my head thinks about prayer, I believe in my heart that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. And He has some things to say about prayer. So on the days when I really don’t feel like praying, I have these verses to remind myself of what God thinks about it.