10/06/05 - Silver Chips Online - Montgomery Blair High School

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12 ADS Francesca Kerby is really hott. Good times hanging out over the summer. Thanks for giving blood babe! Adios princesa! ’007! Hey everybody! It’s the brothers ick! We are the American Monty Python! –H. ICK Happy Birthday, Samantha! I’M HOLLERING BECAUSE I LOVE BLAIR TENNIS! Lucia and Gaby, I will forever love you two! hugs n kisses. Lulu I love your haircut! Shout out to team Gasolina and team SF- we completely dominate everyone- long live the prank war. Love, Sean and Hayley Shout to Lucy, Joey, Umpa Lumpa, Mayra, Natalie, Dadee, Sindy, Maria, Jocelyn, Dory, Dania, Eddy, Juan, Johnny, Yendil, Brian, Patrick, Peter, Christian B, Christian P, Susy and Class of 06!! Holler at Lucia who is amazing at selling these shout-outs! Oh sevennnn. For my Lucia, now you no longer have a reason to hate me. Love, your favorite senior, EH. Hey, man! This one goes out to my afro! We miss Business ‘05 because Chris Stavish was amazing! and cool. and Tiffany and Yasmin were hot. ʼ06 Holler Back! Happy birthday to Sophia and Johnathan, and Yasmin the part from what I remember was FUN! Luv ~Stephanie HOLLER AT THE INDIAN M! and Ms. Thomas- WOOT! Alright, Sarah too. POLYGAMY For K-los, Victor, Brian, Rita, Noah, Rodolfo, Michael Jackson, Walter, Chicken Wings, jesus, god, south park. Oh my noodles. Coconuts! Shout-outs to the Blair Girls’ Volleyball Team! Dig it, set it, SPIKE IT! For K-los, Sam, Vicky, Brian, Emily, Victor, Inez, Walter. I LOVE YOU GUYS! SIKE, but I do care about you. Shout out to Brian, Kenny, Jet Li, Walter, Rodolfo, Victor and Sammy. Also to my brother Noah. Arf arf. oo! Francois! Stop being so violent! Haha! Just kidding! We heart you!...by the way you have a big head. Hey Andre Bruto give me my $20. Now. UHH yeah. Thanks ANDRE! Yo Lu, this is Gu. Shout! Silver Chips rocks my socks, dude! We’re finally seniors! Time to party! October 6, 2005 HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANA! Megan, Rosa, Jessie n Dana lunch buddies 4ever! Shout out to varsity girls soccer 07 run it Mariel, the love of my life...I took a dump yesterday...Lucinda is sexy! Ashley owes me & Sammy some chicken Happy Birthday to my “little sister” and Stephanie L. and JonJon Love yah PARTY TIME! Ciao I’d like to give a shoutout to all the members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Ol’ Dirty, we’ll miss you. Hey to my girls ’06 can’t believe it. All the crazy things we go through. I love you guys. Lets party! Ciao Bellas I
ilverCHIPS October 6, 2005 FEATURES 13 ringing home the message of God In search of answers, inspired Blazers from nonreligious families commit themselves to faith By CHELSEA ZHANG For senior Joe Lorenz, the first stirrings of passion came years ago. He toyed with the idea, researched his crush and prayed every night before going to bed. Then, last January, curious flirting escalated into infatuation. As he asked his friends for answers, he sensed an emerging intimacy and felt his fears fade away. Lorenz was in love with God, and he was sure that God loved him back. He experienced God’s love in the Bible and breathed it in everyday subtleties, like an uncollected homework assignment that he had never started. Lorenz’s conversion to Christianity relied on a self-described, selfdiscovered “highly irrational” belief — he comes from a nonreliious family. Lorenz belongs to he 80 percent of teens oday who follow one f the world’s major religions, according to he ongoing National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). The study reported that teens’ religious choices tend to follow those of their parents. But first-generation religious Blazers like Lorenz stand apart from the rest in their personal need for faith and their pioneering relationships with God. The light in the distance One Sunday six months ago, God reached down and found a convert to Christianity in junior Andres Recinos. Recinos, whose father was nonreligious, was reluctant to go to church, but on that morning, he succumbed to his mother and sister’s insistence. At church, he remembers, the preacher spoke about sin and asked the congregation to feel the Holy Spirit. Recinos fell to the ground. He felt a hand pressing down on his face, keeping him flat — except it wasn’t a hand, he says. It was God. For Recinos, that moment held a revelation. “It was like a cleansing. It was insane,” Recinos says, recalling the tears he cried. “I felt like I was missing something, and then God touched my life.” Spirituality revealed itself more gradually to junior Jordan Turner. Jordan had contemplated conversion ever since the summer of 2004 when, out of curiosity, he started reading an English translation of the Qur’an and brows- he recognized the urgency of the situation. “People thought they would ride this one out,” he says. “We knew we had to leave.” Now, Fortenberry reminisces about the pieces of his hometown that he feels Silver Spring can nevr replace. “I miss everything,” e says. “I miss the people, the ood — oh my God, the food. I iss Bourbon Street. They always ad something going on Bourbon treet.” Back home In Algiers Point, phone lines are down, and flooding has detroyed mobile phone towers. ortenberry cannot get in touch ith his uncle, who decided to reain home, hoping to ride out the torm. Fortenberry’s five-year-old win god-sisters are missing, and is extended family back home is till reeling from the disaster. “My randmother doesn’t want to eat,” ortenberry says, staring at the oor. “My whole family is complaining about starving.” Fortenberry has just begun conacting his friends back home, anicipating the tragic news that has onstantly plagued his last five eeks. “Three of my friends are one for sure,” he affirms, gazing cross the room. “One was shot by ing through pamphlets about Islam. He began to pray regularly in February. By July, he had made up his mind. Jordan took his shahada, the declaration of belief required of all converts to Islam, in an office at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, the mosque he now attends several times a week. He stood in front of a few other Muslims and the imam, the leader of the mosque. “I bear witness that there is no god but God; I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God,” Jordan recited after the imam, first in Arabic and then in English. Minutes later, his certificate of conversion bore four signatures: his own, the imam’s and those of two witnesses. As the witnesses shook Jordan’s hand and one gave him a hug, he felt grateful for his new sense of belonging. “It wasn’t like I had totally become a new person, but it was a great feeling that I was being welcomed into a new community,” he says. Adil Khan, the imam, whose home, work and cell phone numbers are all stored in Jordan’s cell phone, has taught Jordan prayers and customs over the past few months. Khan describes Jordan as enthusiastic and mature, pointing out that his conversion was a voluntary and well-informed decision. “The most important thing is to understand what he’s doing and not to have any false notions,” Khan says. “That’s what we teach. We don’t force people [to convert].” Breaking with tradition Clergy usually carry less weight than family when teens make religious choices, according to Christian Smith, a lead investigator for the NSYR. In his book “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers,” he writes that “the single most important social influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents.” But Jordan comes from a family of “casual Christians”; his parents have not gone to church in years. The void of religious influences in his family allowed him to research Islam with an open mind. He realized that Islam resonated with his developing philosophy — his disapproval of smoking and alcohol, for example tify those who need housing the most. “They give you a hard time; if you make a single mistake, they won’t let you through,” he says of the survey. “I’m lucky I answered half the questions right.” While Fortenberry reiterates his appreciation for FEMA’s efforts to house the thousands Katrina left homeless, he blames the Bush administration for its delayed re- — and that the true religion reflected none of its violent portrayal in the media. His mother, Roma Turner, was less confident in his choice. She had reservations about Islam’s treatment of women and Jordan’s speedy submission to the faith at age 16. Still, she accepted the invisible newcomer to the family that came in the shape of the Qur’an and the language of Jordan’s prayers. As the metaphysical pres- or Katrina refugee, a new address means a new life from KATRINA page 1 “I felt like I was missing something, and then God touched my life.” -junior Andres Recinos a man who wanted something he had on. The other two drowned.” Too little, too late Fortenberry commends both FEMA and MCPS for providing him with a safe place to live in this time of disarray, though he is amazed at FEMA’s scrutiny with questionnaires intended to iden- Junior Jordan Turner browses a bookshelf at his mosque, the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, on Sept. 14. Photo courtesy of Leah Turner Senior Carl Fortenberry, a Katrina evacuee, makes a fresh start at Blair. Photo by Hannah Rosen action. “They took too long,” he says. “Before you make long-term plans, you need to feed people.” Even with warnings in the days before the hurricane, many New Orleans residents did not take the evacuation advisory seriously. “I really think people thought it would pass over us,” Fortenberry says. “New Orleans never sleeps — there were people partying on ence taught her more about the global reach of Islam and about her son, she gradually made peace with his decision. While his parents had qualms about his conversion, Jordan believes it was right for him. “My parents and relatives said that I should have done more research before converting, but I can’t picture myself as see RELIGION page 15 Bourbon Street right before the hurricane came.” In addition to his criticism of the government’s response to Katrina, Fortenberry suggests the city was lax in its evacuation efforts. “New Orleans wasn’t trying to get people out,” he says. “A lot of people were just stubborn, but some people just couldn’t leave.” Just hours before Katrina hit, the sheriff of Algiers Point came on local television stations for his annual birthday appearance. Traditionally, people from the area would visit the sheriff on his birthday and hold festivities throughout the day. This time, though, his announcement was not one of celebration but of urgency. “No one come out to see me today,” Fortenberry remembers the sheriff saying. “Get your families out of town.” A new life Fortenberry estimates that another 10 to 12 months will pass before he can return to a fully restored New Orleans. Until then, he is looking at months of support from his new school, his new neighborhood and his new friends. “Everyone has been great,” he says of the Blair community. “Right now, you need people to comfort you, and that’s what I’ve been getting here.”
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10/06/05 - Silver Chips Online - Montgomery Blair High School

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