Merry Finals

Its finals week, and I'm scared. You might think that I'm scared because I'm stressed out beyond belief and haven't slept in days. Well, you're wrong. I'm stressed out because my finals have been so easy! First of all, I've only had three. I feel like theres a class or two that I'm forgetting about! Second of all, two of my finals were presentations, and I aced both of them today...All I have left is my math final, which I've been studying for, since Sunday. Yesterday I slept in, turned in a paper, watched a movie, took a nap, went to dinner, and watched Prison Break. It felt so wrong!! I'm even helping my friends study for their classes because I feel so lazy, and guilty. This might sound strange, but I hope that my finals are really hard next semester so I can get rid of this guilt that is consuming me! My only consolation is that last week was horrific. Last week I turned in three papers, and had two tests. Phew! Anyways, I think I've decided to just be thankful for my lack of hard tests, and I'm just going to concentrate on packing for home :] As you all know, its snowing up in lovely Gresham. And down here in lovely Riverside, it is actually raining! Thursday I was complaining because it was 82 degrees while I was at Disneyland. It was just too weird to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt with all of the Christmas decorations around me. But now, I'm not even thankful for the rain! I'm just jealous of the snow...but at the same time I'm worried about getting home on Thursday. I want the snow to be there when I'm home so I can join in the fun, but I don't want it to interfere with the plane ride home. Hmm...so many things to think about! Thankfully, worrying won't do me any good, God will take care of everything. *sigh* I'm excited to be home! Last night I watched my family (including Sarah) decorate the Christmas tree on the webcam, and felt like I was there! It was lovely. Also, thanks to my best friend Abi, and my brother Morgan, I had a play by play of the snow all day long :] I was showing all my friends down here the pictures of the snow. Some of these poor Californians have never seen snow fall!!! My roommate saw it fall for the first time yesterday on the webcam when my brother pointed it outside to the falling snow. This webcam invention is definitely amazing!!! Well, today I have to do some studying for my one math final, and my two presentations. And once I'm done with all of this, I will head for home! See you all soon!

Thanksgiving, Life, and Christmas!!

Its been a while since I've posted on here! I thought I'd give you all an update. I went to many places during my Thanksgiving break. My friends and I calculated, and we traveled a total of 1200 miles!! First, I went to my friend Alyssa's house for two days, in Jackson which is near Sacramento. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, we all went to a friend's house in San Francisco for Thanksgiving meal. Right after that (literally, it was 3pm), we drove to Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz I worked on the youth staff for the Mt. Hermon Christian Camp. It was quite an experience!! We had about 50 students, and five staff members. I led a small group with all of the junior high girls, there were 14 of them. It was a blast, but also a challenge. We had kids from all different backgrounds-one was a drug dealer, one is on probation, one tried to kill himself a few weeks back, one is in rehab for cocaine, and the list goes on. By the end of the weekend most of them had broken down, and it was really amazing to see the changes in their lives. It was a huge reminder that we have lost people right here in America!! On that note, this summer I am going on an International Service Project trip through my school. There are about 22 trips, and 400 participants. I will be leaving May 11th, and returning May 31st. I cannot actually say where I am going on here, because it is a closed country, and is actually fairly dangerous. What I can say is that I will be learning Arabic while I am there. If you want to know more, send me a comment on here, and I will mail you a letter that will give you a little more detail. Unfortunately, I will not be able to completely satisfy your curiosity, and cannot share the exact country I will be going to. My next topic is Christmas!! I am going home in a week!!! I am so excited! I recently got a Disneyland pass, and have gone to Disneyland twice since then. I am also going this Friday, and on Monday. I just can't get enough of Disneyland at Christmas time!! I also went to Yule this past weekend which is a fancy dinner at the Disneyland Hotel. Don't worry, I'll show you pictures of my date and I! Again, don't worry, I don't have a boyfriend :] Well, I miss you all and will see you soon! At least, those of you living in Oregon!

Knee!!

Hey guys,

For everyone that is wondering, I injured my knee last week. I was running (I've been doing about 7 miles a day for the past couple of weeks), and I popped out my patella. That would be my kneecap. I've done this before, and according to the doctor it is because my knees are too high. Unfortunately, I decided to just get a knee brace and keep on running the next day. It hurt so bad that night that I didnt get much sleep. So Friday morning I went to the athletic trainer on campus and she said that I had popped out my patella and that some of it was breaking off. She told me not to run and to continue wearing my knee brace. My mom and I decided that I should probably see a doctor too. So I went in and had a few x-rays done. Turns out I not only popped out my patella, but I tore some ligaments. I'm wearing an immobilizer for about six weeks, and have to use crutches and a scooter to get around campus faster. I might need surgery, so I'm going to see an Orthopedic Specialist in the next few weeks to get an MRI and see what needs to happen, if anything. It doesn't hurt too bad, and I'm having fun with the scooter, so I'm not worried about it!!

The Great Adventure

This past weekend I went to Laguna Beach with three friends from school. Holly, who's from Seattle, Drew who's from the Bay Area, and Adam, who's from Northern Cali. Laguna is about 45 minutes away from CBU, but when we were on the freeway, and had just reached Corona (15 minutes from school), our tire completely ripped off! So we pulled over on the side of the road. Thankfully Drew knows how to change tires...unfortunately, the spare tire that came with Adams Honda was way too small for the car. So while we're standing there, trying to figure out what to do (I suggested ditching the car and walking to the beach...) a nice older man pulls up. Turns out he's a mechanic! So he took our ripped tire back to his shop, fixed it, came back, and followed us to an ATM so we could pay him. So, the moral of this story is, even though it was a bummer that we got a ripped tire, God was amazing and sent us someone to help! After this little complication that took about an hour...we drove on towards Laguna. Now, this was one of those random weekends that had rain in the forecast, but we wanted to go to the beach anyways, and all of us were used to the rain, so we went. When we reached the "beach" we saw the ocean but couldnt find an actual beach. So I stopped a woman along the side of the road and asked her where the sand was, she pointed a couple of miles opposite of the direction we'd been walking. We finally found a beach, but there was so much seaweed that we couldn't put our towels down anywhere! Drew suggested moving the seaweed, but I immediately thought of when I was little and my parents told me not to touch the seaweed because the smell would stay on my hands forever...so I said that we should just keep walking until we found a spot without seaweed. Well, we found a nice spot and we settled there for about 2 hours until it started raining...then we threw on some sweatshirts (good thing I actually brought one...I guess I'm just used to Oregon beaches) and stayed a little longer until we decided to head to In and Out for dinner. So anyways, it was a very fun and eventful day at the beach!

College Pictures

Hey all,

I was thinking about you guys yesterday, and I realized that most of you don't have facebook or myspace, so you haven't seen my campus or anything like that. So here ya go :)

The college life!!

Yes, college has begun. The first week was filled with orientation fun. We went to a camp in the mountains for three days and had a lot of fun! Try to imagine 700+ college students...yeah. Thats all you need to know. But really, we worshipped a ton, played many messy games, went swimming (by the way, we have African students, and none of them can swim and one almost drowned...I am now trying to teach 14 Rwandans to swim along with the rest of the freshman class!!) and played a ton of "get to know you" games. Unfortunately for me, I am horrible with names, and always end up looking ignorant for not remembing the name of the person I threw an egg at in messy games!!

After those three long but fun days at camp, we came back and got to go to an Angels game. Now, if you know me, I hate bandwagons...and this was a big one. So I decided to root for the Texans in this game...and then they lost. But no worries, we all got free backpacks and sang "baby shark" to the entire stadium just for fun. Oh how I love college! By this time I have already established an amazing group of friends. And just for the fun of it I will give you their names (there will be a quiz at the end)-Ashley (my roommate), Elizabeth (my roommates twin), Becca, Mike, Adam, Caleb, Slater, and Nate. I absolutely love my group of diverse friends. We all have different majors, interests, and hobbies, but the fact that we all love Jesus, and are all poor college students, has brought us together. I feel like I have known them forever, and it has been so fun to hang out with all of them individually and in our massive group.

I started classes yesterday, and was actually surprised that I enjoyed them! I have a pile of general education classes and just assumed that they would be boring. It is such a different experience for me to be in a Christian school where we pray at the beginning of class, memorize verses for extra credit, and do devotions as a class of 150 people! So many people here have grown up in Christian schools, or just in an area where its "cool" to be a Christian....amazingly enough most of them fail to understand that it is definitely not the cool thing where I am from. Its been almost surreal to be in an environment where most are Christians, and all are assumed to be Christians whether they are or not. I love it, but also miss being at home. I miss the challenge of having to actually live your faith for everyone to see rather than just talking about it and not having to live it. Here, most people say they are Christians, but very few live like it. Thankfully, in my group of friends, we are holding each other accountable with music, movies, and actions since our parents aren't here to watch our every move anymore.

Thats about it for now...I want to thank you all for your prayers!! Also, just so you know, I do miss you as much as you miss me...that is assuming that you do miss me :) Lastly, here are a couple of pictures for your enjoyment. They are from orientation when we went bowling (i dont usually dress like that, we had to dress weird to get in) when we went to a free concert with the band Disciple at my new church Harvest (those are my friends Caleb and Elizabeth), and a picture of my roommate Ashley and I.

PA (Post Africa)

Africa was absolutely amazing. I remember that after returning from Africa two years ago, I kept using the word amazing to describe so many things. Well, be prepared, I still have not found a better word to describe my experiences in Africa. I want to share just a few stories from my trip, and I'll start with one of my favorites. A day or two after entering Tanzania, we stopped in Iringa. If you didnt know, Iringa was where my team stayed two years ago. I knew that we were going to have the opportunity to visit but I didnt know that one day would change my heart forever. When we reached the church, we were about an hour late to the service (this happened alot since there are 32 of us..and we got used to "africa time"). Anyways, when we stepped inside the church, the small choir, made up of mostly children (did I mention that not only are African children the most beautiful kids in the world, they are naturally extra beautiful when they sing?) and I recognized many of them. The one that I remember the most was Rama. One our last trip, Rama was the youngest of nine orphans being taken care of one of the missionaries, Miss Jackie. Rama had some learning disabilities, and the other kids shunned him a lot of the time. I ended up spending a lot of time with him, and fell in love with that little boy. After the church service was over we all gathered to shake hands and greet each other. When Rama came up to me, I asked him if he remembered me (last time he didnt know any english, but I wanted to give it a try anyways), and he nodded his head! I put my arms out to him, and he hugged me and started crying. For the rest of the afternoon he had the biggest grin on his face, and so did I! I was so happy that he not only remembered me, but had grown to love me as a sister, just like I loved him! At the end of our time I said goodbye to him, and we had an older boy translating, since Rama barely knows English, and I barely know Swahili. He told me that he would be praying for us when we went to Mafinga. Then he asked me if he could come with me. I told him that it wasnt possible and he started crying. I gave him a big hug and told him goodbye, but the other boy had to pull him away from me. I want to tell you a little bit about Rama, so you can understand why he was so devastated. His mother has many mental problems and is unable to care for him, and his three younger siblings. She is a prostitute, and when Rama was younger she would sell him to men. Finally he was brought of the streets by Miss Jackie, but ever since then he hasn't been trusting of men or women equally. Its hard for him to let people love him, and get near him. But at the same time, he has never experienced trust and love from others, and he craves it. The past couple of years he has really gotten better and is now living with the pastor and his family, along with his younger brother Salum. When he saw me, he thought that I was coming back to take care of him, since two years ago I had said that I might not be able to see him again. I ended up writing him a letter at the end of this trip, and had one of the missionaries give it to him for me. I told him how proud I am of him for going to school, and for helping take care of his brother. I told him to keep practicing his English because I believe that he will be very good at it someday since he is so smart. And I told him that I am honored to call him my little brother. When we left Africa to come home, I honestly felt like I was letting Rama down for the second time. I hope that I can return again, but maybe to stay next time.

B.A. (before africa)

It is amazing to me that we leave for Africa in 35 days. That is barely over a month. I have been waiting for this for so long. I remember, over a year ago, a friend came up to me and said that Lance, my youth pastor, was thinking that we might go back to Africa. I immediately started crying, and then called my mom. And now, here we are, about to leave for a trip to my favorite place in the world, to see my favorite people in the world. Almost two years ago, the country of Tanzania stole my heart. God called me to missions during the last trip to Africa and I am excited to see what He will continue to do through every member on our team. I cant help but be reminded of my favorite verse from Hebrews-"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." This trip is going to stretch me, and challenge me in more ways than I can imagine. In the same instant, it will be a life changing and amazing experience that I will remember forever.

Our missionaries that we worked with last time we were in Africa, were home for a few weeks this year. In April they came to our church and spoke to us about our upcoming trip. During that time I spent a little while reminiscing with them about our last time there. They said that the orphans we had spent the majority of our time with, are still talking about us, and cannot wait until we come back. When they said that, it not only brought back memories of the time I had spent with those children, but it also reminded me that God had not only impacted our lives, but had changed the lives of young children. I am excited to go back and to be with the people that have been on my mind, and on my heart constantly, for the past two years. God can do amazing things through us, if we only let Him. I am planning on letting Him, not only during this trip, but for the rest of my life.