Why Africa?

Family and I at SeaTac airport.


I am currently at the small Dulles Airport Starbucks. The time is 8:30 AM DC time and I have until 3:15 PM until I meet up with my fellow Ugandan Studies Program travelers. What do I do for 7 more hours!!!... Actually, what can I do would be the better question. If I had it my way, I would have my private body guard watch my luggage, throw on my running shoes, and take off with my other body guard runners and explore the great outdoors of DC. However, sadly, of all the things my parents helped me with, they forgot to find me body guards: P. So my options decrease to riding the baggage claim belt, walking up and down the airport with a 30 pound bag on my back, and a 50 pound suitcase trailing behind me, pick up my future husband, find some kids to play hide and seek amongst the hundreds of chairs, hop on a random flight, buy some rollerblades and skate up and down the airport, ride the little motor carts, run up the down and down the up escalators….hmm what else…

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I think I might have a mild case of ADD or just addicted to running because after sitting since 6pm yesterday (11 ½ hours) minus the walking between connecting air flights, my body is screaming, run! Move! But I really can’t so I will have to persevere through this suffering :P.

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Really, the reason for this blog while I am waiting to go to Africa, is to write why I am going anyways. I am actually not exactly sure to be honest. My dream to travel to Uganda, Africa specifically started in the 8th grade. At a summer camp, the speaker called up people who felt called to the world. I felt called, and I don’t know when God said Uganda, Africa, but through watching the Invisible Children Documentary, and being drawn to further research on the LRA, I began to only see Africa.

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To say the least, this passion grew, but actually going was put on hold as I was finishing high school and getting through the first part of Community College. Before graduating high school, I had a plan in my head to get my transfer degree, and then do YWAM in Africa. When it came time to follow through with this plan I rigorously began searching through hundreds of different YWAM bases that specifically did their outreach to Africa. However, there was another big option to weigh as well. Further school. Honestly, I hate school. I struggle through it. So it did not look appetizing to me. I had these two decisions weighing on me for awhile during my last couple of months at Everett Community College.

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I prayed and had many frustrating times of asking God what he wanted me to do. I would go back and forth from school…to YWAM. Making a long story a little less long… I stopped being torn by the two and just chose one, YWAM. (Who wouldn’t when the option was up against a big missions trip… your dream…traveling….or back to school?) I pushed away running scholarships, and even my parents influence to finish school. However, it was after I chose, and took a step in the YWAM direction, that God revealed to me where he really wanted me to go. As they say, God can’t drive a parked car. Once I chose YWAM, I don’t know how to explain how, but God stopped me in my tracks, clearly putting a red light up in my heart to where, if I continued through with YWAM, it wouldn’t be the step he had for me.

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After eating a couple slices of humble pie, I can confidently say that switching to school from YWAM had to be God. I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own will. And oh geez as I am sitting in the airport upon boarding my flight to Africa, (what I intentionally wanted to do all a long) I am overwhelmed by the hand of God at work in the change of my plans. If frightens me as to how my life would be different if I didn’t listen to God’s tugging on my heart. I am sure that he would have still been with me through any decision with no doubt… but would it have worked out as well? Countless blessings have flown from switching direction from YWAM to school that I would have never dreamed of. Running xc with a fabulous new supportive team :). Great coaches. Experiencing dorm life, and Oregon and a Christian school in general. Studying Abroad in Africa for 4 months. The school basically paying for my trip. (Its cheaper to study abroad then stay a semester at NCU.) Super supportive parents :). Doing school at same time. And I am sure more then I recognize with my small human brain. And I am not even in Africa yet. :)

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I learned a huge lesson this year from these events. When you can’t figure out what God wants you to do and you don’t feel like God is being clear in a specific direction, just go. Keep moving. Choose one of them. If it’s not his will he will put up a clear red light. Just be open to his redirecting. He knows us fully and loves us fully at the same time, which means he won’t leave us hanging :).

For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”- Jeremiah 29:11

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I give God all the glory to everything that has gotten to me to here. I am definitely not the brightest (not said in a putdown of self) and if it wasn’t for God I would be doing a whole different thing… struggling with how I was going to raise money for YWAM… and who knows what else. There is no way that I got here on my own is what I am saying.

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I am also especially thankful for my parents. I wouldn’t have been here either without their encouragement to continue school and their devotion to me and each of my siblings. Mom and dad, thank you!! Just to touch base on a few of the things they have helped me with… My dad spent hours upon hours getting this laptop that I am writing this blog on working. My mom busily helped me get paperwork in on time, shopping for the dress code there, skirts and other business like dress wear :P Lots of hugs and kisses. Tears when I left. I love you mom :). I could drown out this blog with everything they have done. They love us lots, and it’s obvious not in just the things they do.

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Friend support. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for all your encouragement and prayers :). And Oregon friend’s who each wrote words of encouragement in a special journal. Dan, your devotional journal you set up for me and other support will carry me through even more! Thank you guys!!

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This blog is long!! I get lost in reading long blogs….so I apologize….I hope future ones aren’t so long. I am not really good at the whole blogging thing…but I have to get good, so any suggestions to writing good blogs would be much appreciated. In the mean time, prayers that I make it through my last 6 hours of waiting until a 13 hour flight would be awesome :).

Photo Blog!!

Here is a few of the things we have done on break :)



Making a gingerbread house with Carly, her friend Hannah, and mom :)

Facial glue masks :) Crazy peeling it off! haha so funny I will have to make a seperate blog on it.

Downtown Coupville with sister Lindsey, grandma, and mom- Looking at the little stores.

My grandma came over and spent a couple days with us :) My grandma is such a trooper!

She broke her nose not too long ago..and yet you can't even tell now!

Classic Crime concert in Seattle :)

Carly's choir performance at Home Connection winter party. ( I loved their shoes :P)

Catching up with old friends :) Coffee, Running, Movies....

Carly's choir performance :)

Thats it for now!!

Home for the Holidays

So it all started when we had a great idea of making these cookies from a blog recipe, called Ugly Cookies. They looked and sounded super good on the blog... Made of grahm crackers, carmel, chocolate and walnuts..we decided to go for it.

However, in the midst of cooking them for too long we failed.

After a quick run to the store to get more butter, and a long discussion in the dairy isle as to what the difference between salted and unsalted butter was, I finally allowed my brain to snap back into school mode and decided that salted has salt in it and unsalted doesn't... Lacey had a good laugh at me :P

And back to the cookie story... My mom (note it was just her this time) remade them while we watched and chiseled or scraped...the burnt ones off of the cookie sheet.

And the moral of this bonding time of making cookies (Since there always has to be a moral) was...

If there were never burnt cookies in life..how would you know the difference between the bad and good ones? :P

The End.

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Quiting Points -
Wayne Cordeiro

"Because God chooses us to be his hands and feet, Satan wants to do all he can to destroy us. He makes us want to quit." - Wayne Cordeiro

Today Wayne Cordeiro came and spoke at our Chapel service at NCU. He spoke on our quiting points in our lives. As this was perfect timing, I was thinking about this in my life. Lately I have been struggling through as season in life of feeling super discouraged and have been allowing all the things that Satan knows gets at me tear me down, leaving me sitting. It makes me want to do nothing but the minimum and be isolated and sleep. I have been pushing through this season wondering why I am falling into this roller coaster life of emotions. Through talking to friends about feeling so down, and unloved, unworthy, and an "outcast" where ever I go at times... to seeing counselors... to considering depression pills or vitamins to level out the chemicals in my brain, I didn't know why I was feeling like this and letting myself be so tossed up in confusion.

All I knew and would scream in my head was, "I WANT OUT!". I don't know how else to explain it, but that I felt like I was fighting this big thing that in reality wasn't really there. It hurt. It sucked. It ruined me from living life and interacting with people. It was not me.

Although it has not even been a week since I started feeling done with discouragement...I honestly believe that God is healing me completely. Through my times of crying out to him in question and confusion and hurt, I am noticing his rescue daily.

He has shown me the Truth and light of the emotional trap I was falling into...

He brought to light the reality of me going to Africa in 49 days for a whole semester! If you don't know me that well, this has been my only dream that I have had since like the 7th grade. I am not one who has their life planned out to the tee with the job that I want to have, or even the future besides doing something in Africa... not that anyone really does. But I a lot of times feel more clueless than most. However, thats besides the point..The point is that Africa is the only vision that I can firmly say is from God, even though I don't know why and how he is going to use me there, and because its a vision, Satan has been destroying my confidence upon going through drawing my attention inward.

God has also been revealing to me repetively through books, people, sermons (Wayne Cordeiro) that Satan will do eveything he can do keep me from pursuing my dream...or upon going, destroying any confidence or opened eyes to a future after this Africa step. Satan desires me to do the bare minimum. He wants me to not dream on. He wants me to just go to Africa and come back unaffected....untouched by the people, and unwilling to do anything in response to my time there. He wants me to leave my heart at home and not follow it. He wants me to believe all the lies.

"The Devil is defeated but not stupid. He knows exactly where to puncture your heart, to get you and keep you down. He can't get at Jesus... So he gets to his kids." - Wayne Cordeiro

I am done falling into discouraging emotional traps of the Devil! My God is my strength and I can't let Satan take over my life any longer. Even if I fall, he is capable of picking me back up and reminding me of what he really thinks of me. I have absolutely no clue as to what I am going to be doing for God in my future. But I don't want to miss what he is calling me in today or even the next through believing Satan's lies. In reality my life is soooooo good right now! And I am sooo blessed!

Just to name a few: I am going to an amazing school right now :). I have an awesome family with awesome parents :). I have amazing friends and still being blessed with more where ever I go :). I can run where ever and when ever I want to :). I am going to Africa :). I can read my Bible and actually hear and feel God nudging at my heart :). I am going to be an aunt soon :). I have no medical problems (minus weird tail bone injuries that just make me laugh) :P And even if circumstances don't go well and are at their worst, I can still have a Godly deep joy that exceeds all of my understanding (Philippeans) :) How much better can life get on earth?!?

Thanks be to God, my hope, joy and constant savior. :)

I got mail!!!...

I got a love letter from my little sister Carly in the mail yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!! :)






The End.

THERE IS HOPE FOR ETERNITY.

EYES OF.... THE SAD.

THE HURTING.

THE SECRET.

THE DEEP.

THE DOUBTFUL.

THE SCARED.

THE HELPLESS.

THE INNOCENT SADNESS.

THE MISTREATED.

THE ABUSED.

THE STRONG HEARTED.

THE INNOCENT.

THE BROKEN. THE ABUSED. THE SCARED. THE UNSAFE. THE DESPERATE. THE LONELY. THE NEEDY. THE HUNGRY. THE LOST. THE WEAK. THE HURTING. THE SAD...

LOOK INTO SOMEONES EYES TODAY AND LISTEN TO WHAT THEY ARE SAYING OVER THEIR WORDS. OUR HEARTS ARE ATTATCHED TO OUR EYES. ALTHOUTH THEY DON'T SPEAK WITH A FAMILIAR VOICE OF WORDS, THEY TELL US MORE THAN WORDS COULD EVER.

TELL THEM THERE IS HOPE.