I Live Here.

Hello from the United Kingdom!!!

Here is just a little taste of where I get to live for the next 3 months...

More to come...

  

Bring On The Jetlag

Today is the day.

I'm leaving the country.

Today.

7:50 PM Local Time.

Oh geez.

Bags are packed.

(Well, almost)

10 hour flight approaching.

I'm ready.

I think...

Problem Solved

Ok this just happened and was too great that I needed for people to know.

Here was the problem.  I have this amazing green North Face backpack that I love and am going to bring with me to England.  Well the front pocket zipper is broken as you can see here:

No good.

So I set out on a mission to try and figure out a way to make some contraption that would allow me to close it.  I just sat there starring at it trying to come up with something.  Then...

LIGHTBULB.

Materials Needed:
~Tie Dye Duct Tape
~Large Ziplock Bag

Seriously.  These pictures say it best:

OPEN

CLOSED

I can't believe that worked.

  

I Will Follow

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow...

All Your ways are good

All Your ways are sure

I will trust in You alone

Higher than my side

High above my life

I will trust in You alone

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

Light unto the world

Light unto my life

I will live for You alone

You're the One I seek

Knowing I will find

All I need in You alone

In You alone

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

In You there's life everlasting

In You there's freedom for my soul

In You there's joy, unending joy

And I will follow

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

~Chris Tomlin

JOY

6 Days.  That's it.  S...I...X. 6.  I can almost count the days on one hand.  Yep, I'm most definitely freaking out.  As it draws closer and closer, I realize that this is actually happening...and soon.  Very soon.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, and the salvation of your souls.

~1 Peter 1:3-9

'Inexpressible' and 'glorious' JOY.  That is something that I have been missing for so long.  But I feel that I am beginning to find it again.  Last week, I was able to finally catch a glimpse of that joy, that joy that only comes from God.  All I can say is, oh how I've missed it.

I mean, just look...

I love snow.  That's no secret.  It is my favorite thing ever.  Seriously...ever.  I love it.  And to be able to experience it and play in it with people that I love in a place that I love, well I think I may love that even more.  Let me just tell you what happened...At the end of December, I got to go up to the beautiful Camp Del Oro which might be my favorite place ever.  It really feels like home to me.  It was a really great getaway for a bunch of family and friends.  It was so great to be able to go up to camp and see it in the cold winter time instead of the hot summer time and just relax and play games and enjoy the company of everyone.   (Oh and locking my keys in my car...but that's just a whole other story.)  The next morning we all got up bright and early and went to go ride down some mountain sides.  I was SOO incredibly excited the whole car ride there.  I loved watching as the snow began to build up on the sides of the roads and on all the trees all around us.  I was freaking out.  If anyone was asleep in the car...they were not asleep for very long when I started seeing that snow.  

It was so great to be able to play in the snow again because it was the first time in a year that I was seeing it.  That is a LONG time to go without snow...especially for me.  So needless to say, I was pretty happy.  Afterwards we went back to camp for some dinner and just more hang out time.  This was a great night for me for 2 reasons:

Reason #1 - The most epic Yahtzee game of all Yahtzee games.  Here's a little background real quick to help you better understand the situation.  My cousin, Claire, and I play Yahtzee a lot.  It seems that we are both equally skilled and equally competitive in all of the games we play against each other.  So our Yahtzee games are pretty intense all the time.  You will know when one of us gets a Yahtzee.  So this game we played was quite possibly the most intense and the most amazing game we have ever played.  Just writing about it doesn't do it justice.  All I have to say is me and my lucky cup did real good... 

Reason #2 - For me, the snow and the mountains and the trees, that is where I feel and see God the most, in the beauty of it all.  That is where I find the kind of joy that cannot be explained any other way than it coming from God.  It has been so long since I have been able to find that joy.  It is so incredible that this God, this God that created all of this beauty, loves me enough to create that for me to enjoy and find joy in.  I was finally able to really see and believe that God has everything under control and that through all the difficulties I've faced these last 2 years, God knew exactly what He was doing.  He has been preparing me for the crazy new adventure that I'm starting in England.

He knows the desires of my heart.

One More Month

Oh geez. 

It's coming real soon. 

I might be starting to freak out a little.

Yes, 

Yes I am.

  

I think I need to start packing....

Fortune cookies and Ace of Cakes

I like Chinese food.  It's true.  I have my favorites that we always get when ordering out.  I always get the same thing.  I'm a very picky and plain eater so I don't usually stray too far from the foods I already know.  But I try sometimes.  Anyways...there is one thing about getting Chinese food, no matter where you go.  They always give you a fortune cookie.  I kind of have a love/hate relationship with fortune cookies: First of all, they are NOT cookies.  That's very misleading.  I also like trying to take the fortune out of the cookie without taking it out of the bag while only breaking it once in the middle.  (Try it, it's fun).  I love them because I love reading the fortunes.  But to be honest, I don't really like the taste of them too much.  I'll eat a couple little pieces and then realize that I still don't like the taste of them enough to eat an entire cookie, even though I've heard that if you don't eat it, the fortune won't come true.  I beg to differ.

All of this to say it is most definitely clear to me that I am supposed to go to England with YWAM.  I have never been so sure of anything in my life.  You probably could have already guessed that by all my previous posts but I am just continually reminded of how true that is.  I will give you 2 examples:

Example #1: This is a real fortune cookie that I cracked open one night:

I got this the day that my visa got approved.  The approval of my visa made it a 100% for sure thing that I was going.  How crazy is that?  This fortune has definitely come true.  Today I got home from work to find a very generous check from a couple that I have never met before.  They work with my parents and just decided they wanted to support me.  That is just so incredible.  I must be doing the right thing. 

Example #2: I keep seeing things that have to do with England.  It happens almost every day.  Like tonight, I was watching Ace of Cakes and they were in London making this cake for the Globe Theatre.  No joke, I was smiling the whole time.  About every 3 minutes I would think to myself, umm, that's a big place to go to all by myself.  What am I thinking?  But then that would just make me even more excited.  Then the commercials would come on and I would relax and and breath for a second and then it would come back on and my smile wouldn't go away.  Overall, it was a good episode and I think it's safe to say that I am so incredibly excited.

HOPE

Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion.

~Philippians 1:6

If something comes easily and without sacrifice, it's rarely significant.

~Cameron Strang

The not yet will be worth it.

~Rob Bell


Set us free to trust the mystery until our eyes are clear enough to see You
Where You lead us, we will follow.
~Jars of Clay

APPROVED!

Yep.  That's right.

My Visa has officially been approved.

Nothing says 'APPROVED' like Kristen Wiig...

Target Lady

Finding my Here

"The only thing suitably quenching is the nearness of God."

~Praise Habit - David Crowder

I'm starting to very much dislike my job.  It stresses me out.  All the time.  And I never used to get that stressed out to the point of wanting to cry.  Seriously, it's been pretty bad lately.  The holiday season has officially started and so has the craziness.  And that craziness will last for the next 2 months.  The early mornings (as in 5am), and the long hours take a lot out of me.  It's just not somewhere that I want to be.  This isn't where I want to be, this isn't where I want to live my life.  I don't want this place to be my Here.  Let me explain:

I noticed something this past week.  Most of the people I know are in the place where they are going to live their lives.  They have a job, they're going to school for a specific thing, they have a significant other, they have all their family and all their friends, they have a purpose - Here.  This 'Here' is where their whole lives are.  Now I know that all of that can quickly change (as in my case) but I'm just saying, that is something that I have noticed with the majority of people around me right now.  It's not a bad thing at all.  In fact, it's something that most days, I wish I had for myself.  But I don't anymore.  I used to, but that all changed real quick.  And that has definitely been the most difficult thing that has happened to me.  Now, I have no Here.  Most days, that's pretty upsetting.  But there are times when I can smile about that.  I can do whatever I want.  I can go wherever I want to...like England, for example.  I know that someday, someday I'll find my here.  Now is just the journey to find that.

Bless our God, O peoples!

Give him a thunderous welcome!

Didn't he set us on the road to life?

Didn't he keep us out of the ditch?

He trained us first,

passed us like silver through refining fires,

Brought us into hardscrabble country,

pushed us to our very limit,

Road-tested us inside and out,

took us to hell and back;

Finally he brought us to this well-watered place.

~Psalm 66:8-12 (The Message)

I really like how the NIV finishes off this passage:

...but You brought us to a place of abundance.

I can't wait for that abundance.  Seriously.  In that abundance, I'll get to do something I've missed so much:

Dance.  Dance until we can see your soul.

~Praise Habit - David Crowder

But I think before I can find my Here, there is a lot to be learned.  I want to learn more about God.  I want to learn more about who I am and who God created me to be.  I want to learn how to love God and loves others and love myself.  I'm anxious and excited to learn.