30 second blurb about 3 months

Sarah and I leave today. After embarking on nonstop adventure for three months, getting on a plane seems like a normal next step. Diving back into American culture does not, but it does spark excitement in me. Matt asked today how our trip was. We love Matt for the depth of these questions. Kidding, but in all seriousness, being asked "How the trip was" is more than a difficult question. Giving one sentence or five minutes to describe three months is not adequate and does not give justice to what we have experienced. The trip was exciting, difficult, powerful, eye-opening, uncomfortable, fun and adventure packed. I experienced an incredible community, a fulfilling taste of the Lord that left me hungry for more, and a foreign country that I have grown to love. Matt also asked if the trip was what we thought it would be. I told him not at all. When I pictured this trip I saw it in a light that is similar to the way that I watch movies. Everything was comfortable and within control, with the bathroom down the hall and pizza just one call away. Any duration in Thailand longer than a layover will not be like the pleasant-vill I just described. However, it will be moving. It moved me known Jesus in a deeper way. It moved me to value people in a higher fashion. It moved me to know myself. It moved me to look beyond circumstance and trust the God that I have dedicated my life to. I have sighed deeply in Thailand from pure joy and from extreme frustration. I will treasure those very sighs for the rest of my life, along with the memories and friendships that have been made here. I have been deeply changed and touched by my time here. What an incredible experience.

Finally a post! :)

Hi readers! First off, I wanted to apologize for not writing in a while. I have been in an out of Internet service, but I am excited to share now!

In the last few weeks, my team and I have seemingly been all around Thailand. We said goodbye to our angels at BHJ on the 5^th of November. As you could imagine, it was sad saying goodbye to our girls. We have looked at pictures and missed them a lot already, but we are thankful more than anything for the months we spent with them. I don’t think I could ever forget them, even if I tried. I completely fell in love with those girls.

After we left the orphanage, we went on a five-day spiritual retreat. I had been excited for a long time about the retreat for a number of reasons. First being that we would be spending large amounts of time dissecting the Bible and our own faith and doctrines, and I love that. Secondly, we were going to have an entire day of silence, and that turned out to be glorious and refreshing. And lastly, I was feeling the cabin fever after being out at the orphanage for a while. The retreat, as a whole, felt like jumping into a cool pool on a hot day. My heart felt filled and my spirit was ready to jump back into exploring and our coming adventures. Reading the Bible does something to my spirit that nothing else can imitate. It draws me closer to the love of my life, and fills me up. Spending five days feasting on that love and filling was like spending an afternoon at a golden corral buffet, leaving me full and happy. As simple as a day of silence sounds, it was a treasure to me.

On the final day of our retreat, we ate some breakfast and packed our bags. Our next destination was Bangkok. We boarded an overnight train to Bangkok at about 5:00 PM on the 10^th and started one of the sweetest experiences yet. I have never been on a train like that before, the kind where you have a sleepover on it. We made a friend with one of the attendants and she ate a large portion of Matt’s dinner, which kept us laughing for a while. We played cards on the mini-tables until we were bored. We told jokes about pranks and made it clear to all of our surrounding train friends that we were American; loud and giggly. We called it a night after a very odd bathroom experience and of course, me ”proactiving” in the train sink. When it came to sleeping, they made it near impossible to actually get sleep. Between the slamming doors, overactive aircon and bright and shiny lights, I’m pretty sure one of us was up the entire night. Rereading that last sentence makes it sound like a real drag, but it was the kind of annoying details that just make you laugh because they are so far out of control, and laughing becomes the best option. The train was full of those laughs, and other laughs, and I loved it. Not to overuse the word, but again, that memory is a treasure. Overnight trains are a riot.

Bangkok as a city was a rough visit for me. I am not going to share too much, because I’m sure that you can hear complaining from any other person in your life, but as a whole, Bangkok is not my favorite place in the world. In a nutshell, Bangkok is a city that is known for prostitution, the very problem I came to Thailand to fight. I saw the girls, saw the faces, saw the men. More than anything I wanted to do something to help, and besides prayer, I had no way of contributing. I have known that prostitution is a huge and overwhelming problem the whole time, but my visit to Bangkok put an illustration to the facts. But enough about that. We all know what happens in Bangkok.

When we got up at 6AM on Sunday to leave the city, I was ready. I’m far from a morning person, but I was up and ready to head on out. We arrived at the airport around 7:15 and I learned quickly that we were not checking bags. Matt had mentioned that detail to all of us, but somehow I missed it. Usually I do fairly well preparing my 3oz liquids, but because I acquired the knowledge that we were “carrying on” at the airport, I was the psycho girl running around the airport with all of my liquids falling out of my hands. I switched my proactive into smaller containers, laughed at my outrageous loyalty to the system, and walked through security a half hour later without problems. We had a great flight down to Phuket. We flew in staring out the window at the water and the shoreline. As soon as we got off the plane and to where we were staying, we threw our bags into our bungalow’s and we were out on the beach.

Today we head to an island outside of Phuket to spend the next six days. I am actually writing on the ferry ride, which is fun. We are winding down this week, preparing to re-enter our culture. The infamous “debrief.” It is weird for me to think that in a week and a half I will be re-entering the relationships and life that I cried about leaving. I have literally dreamed about hugging my Momma and best friends. It’s an odd reality to accept that this trip is coming to an end. I have learned so much, loved so much, seen so much. I have loved this trip from the first day that Matt invited me a year ago. It has been nothing like what I thought it would be, but it has been just what God planned. I’m so thankful that we are taking time to unpack a little here, where oddly; things seem normal, before we head home. What I can say, pre-preparation, is that I have been touched and changed from this trip and that I am excited to hug my parents. J

For my prayer warriors- thank you for your incredible support for the last three months. Will you continue to pray for my team and I’s refinement and passion for the Lord. Will you pray for my buddy Court, as she has an odd Thai stomach issue, and myself- I have a nasty cold that is distracting me from where I am and making me want my Momma. Also, that the eight of us would be present for the last week and a half, and that we would walk off of the plane into America with as much preparation as possible. Thank you for reading, as always. J Can’t wait to tell stories in person.

Sleeping Beauties

Also- Just posted a new video on my facebook :) Check it out!

When I dove into Christianity, I learned that Jesus was important. It may sound like an understatement, and it is, but I was working off the basics, trying to get the gist of it all. As I started unpacking what my title of “Christian” meant, I got to know the character of Jesus. Since that point, you could say that things have changed a bit in my character, because of my knowledge of His. There is an earth shaking, eye-opening, hold-your-breath-then-gasp experience that took place when I realized that I had been communing with the God who is fully Man, and the Man who is fully God. I was hit with the reality that I didn’t have to use fancy words, but at the same time, I needed to take a second to acknowledge who it was that I was talking to throughout my day. The more I learned, the more intrigued I was.

I used to wear a necklace that was a Fender guitar pick, and I loved it so much. Engraved under the famous “Fender” print was an addition to the picks’ message; it said, “I love Jesus.” Again, understatement. In observing my walk with the Lord and walk through life, I have learned that about every month or few weeks, I am hit with a reality that opens my eyes to Jesus. Whether it is His love, His epic message, His strength and courage of dying in my place, or a new mystery that He uncovers and then leaves within my reach, I fall for Him, more and more.

As I spill this next blurb, my insides are giggly at my vulnerability to share this particular ideology of my life. However, it is not from embarrassment that my butterflies stem from. It is from an excitement to share the lesson I learned and how it all fits together.

So, for years I have thought that the best example of experiencing the love of God is in romantic relationships. I have seen Christ in friendship in my life most, and those experiences have illustrated a huge concept of what His love looks like. With that said, thinking about a different kind of relationship topping my experience thus far, that is a pretty exciting thought, yeah? As Jesus put it, the church is His bride, and we are the church. He outlined that marriage is the closest we will come to knowing His love for us (and then I said “Even more than friendship?!”.. yep!). Naturally, I have been excited about this minor detail, you know, getting to experience God through romance and marriage, and thus looked forward to the season in my life where I see, feel, and experience the love of Christ through another person. Please know that the description that you just heard was a very logical version of the excitement that usually squeals out of girls when they talk about marriage. Point being, I have been excited for something that I thought would not happen in a large extent until marriage, and “that something” being the depth of love. Well, my friends, that something came and hit me smack dab in the face today. Listen. To. This.

Today we got to go to the girls’ church with them. We met in front of their dorm at 9AM and all 53 of us piled into three pickup trucks. (If you are a real seat-belt stickler, don’t do the math). After church we went out to eat, celebrating Sarah’s (one of my fellow interns) father’s birthday (good luck tracing that one.) Following a HUGE lunch and watching the girls giggle and gorge themselves with having the CHOICE of what they wanted to eat and how much, we all packed back into the trucks. I called one of the sweet girls to sit on my lap as we made our way home, and that my friends, that is where it happened. She climbed up and clapped my hands with her own for a few minutes, and without me even knowing what was coming my way, put her head on my shoulder and drifted into a magical seven year old dream land. When I felt that she was sleeping, I tried so hard not to move and to absorb the bumps on the road, so that it wouldn’t wake her as she slept. I wanted so badly for her to be comfortable, and something inside of me was melting as I watched her sleep. I relaxed as the truck continued its journey, and just held her. The more she sunk into me, the more my heart sunk, finally settling in a deep puddle of the sappy and abundant love that I have for this girl. Before she even awoke I was writing a full analysis in my head of if this is how much I love a little girl, who isn’t even mine, then how much more does my mom love me. And if my mom loves me more than I love this girl, which seemed impossible at the moment, then SOMEHOW, God loved me and my mom, and this little tiny child, even more that all that love combined. It began to blur, trying to capture how vast and abundant His love is. When she woke up I felt like I had just been let into a sacred and precious secret. I looked at her and she swung her little pigtails and hobbled out of the truck. And that was it. Similar to what I have pictured a marriage/ God like love to feel like, I felt. Somehow, I got to skip the steps of romance, of marriage, of pregnancy and childbirth, and there I was, standing in the most brilliant rain of love, heavy with nothing else but joy, and a new understanding.

Times like this affirm that God has me right where He wants me. It puts rest to any striving that I have, wanting to dive into what the future holds. In the quiet of her small body sleeping, His whispers surface with a gentle “Be still” straight into my soul. I feel full today. I feel like the younger sister that got let into a secret that I can be trusted with. I feel loved, and I recognize, today, that God. Loves. Me.