Let it Shine--- Psalm 21:13

Tonight was eye-opening. Sorry for starting close to every post with some variation of that statement but that's sort of how my summer has been going. It has been a constant onslaught of realizations about myself, God, my relationships and Christianity. It's AMAZING.

Okay, so onto tonight! This evening we got to enjoy an "International Dinner". Unfortunately, because they want to be able to keep this a surprise for future SDSP members, I cannot give you full details of what went on. What I can dish out however, is that it was extremely enlightening. One of the countries that I specifically got to focus on tonight was China. At first, i'll be honest, I was disappointed. My heart is for Europe and the countries there like Germany, France and Italy that are so terribly dead in their faith. It breaks my heart. Now, most people know that Chinese are known for being hard workers and doing well in school. We've definitely got that stereotype down, but that stereotype stems largely from truth.I won't delve into stories here, but there are quite a few about kids doing horrible things because they failed to meet expectations. For me though it was not until tonight as I was learning about china and thinking of the stories I've read and heard that that reality truly sunk in. Perfection is an idol for the Chinese. Suicide is one of the biggest problems in China, and the reason can often be traced back to a failure to meet the standards of perfection society and families have set up for people.

As all of that was racing through my mind tonight, I kept coming back to how blessed we are. Do people in the US struggle with the need to be perfect? Absolutely. In fact I go to a school where many people feel the need to have done something great with their lives by the time they've graduated, a school where people literally camp out in the library for days at a time, and a school where i have seen people in tears over getting a "B". So, when I think of China that's what I see. Kids who are asked to meet a standard that is unattainable and pay for it in countless ways. It's a predicament that is so incredibly out of the realm of my understanding. Even when I see it at my university it's hard for me to comprehend. Let me give you some background here: my parents are teachers. Trust me when I say I know what it feels like to feel the need to do well. But, on the other hand, my parents are also the people who, when I flip out over a bad grade in a class, tell me that there are bigger problems and that failing one class doesn't matter and that, in the end, school and grades are NOT WHAT IS IMPORTANT. Do you need to graduate to get a good job? yeah. it'd help. But in the end, as Christians we are called to something so much greater than worrying about grades.

 It breaks my heart to think that within the Chinese culture the idea of grace we hold so dear within Christianity is really an unheard of concept. The idea that regardless of what we do we are loved? Nope. That doesn't make sense. But then, I guess it is crazy isn't it? Christ calls us to a ridiculous love. It's nonsensical. Loving people who don't deserve it. Loving people who mock and ignore and curse us. Yet, when you know that love, there's nothing more you want others to experience.

And so, began my second thought explosion....   Isaiah 6:8
 If you know me at all you should know that travelling is something i'm passionate about. I cannot even begin to imagine a life with the inability to travel. TORTURE. There is so much to do, see and experience in this world. So many cultures to explore and stories to hear and people to meet. I've always known I loved travelling but it wasn't until a couple days ago when I realized how much I desire to help others get that same experience. I LOVE watching people experience something completely out of the realm of normalcy for them. It's simply incredible. hahah i'm smiling just thinking of it. I don't know how that's going to work into a career for me. I've kind of been assuming I might end up working with a tour company, or maybe a study/work/volunteer abroad organization. But this evening, I realized that regardless of where my passions take me I have one more unshakable passion that will always work it's way in. I want others to know the love i feel in Christ.

I am broken. I have been hurt. I have seen immense pain. I have experienced terrible situations. I have hated myself. I have hated others. But, more importantly, I have been loved

Loved in a way  that cannot be completely described other than to say it makes you want to sing to the God who created it. So, no matter what I end up doing, I pray that God will continue to work through me and allow me to be apart of others getting to know the love that takes care of everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79055I6o-NQ

Open the Eyes of my Heart Lord...

Part 1:
The past few days have been insane. God has been calling me out on stuff left and right. But more than anything He's been calling me to give it up to Him. What's "it"? EVERYTHING. My relationships, my worries, my family, and probably most apparent is my future and career. I'm such a planner and it's so hard to allow God to step in and take the reins. I'm stubborn and i love waiting until the last possible moment to admit I need help, and it's no different in my relationship with God. But over and over again this week God has made me so aware of his sovereignty and how much I need to let things go and allow His plan to take over. If God is love, and God is sovereign then God's sovereign will is going to stem from that love. Repeatedly in the past few days i've been convicted of how much I try to handle on my own and how little I trust god's ability to work things out for the best. Yet, in the end, there's no way around it. God knows what is best for us and regardless of how we drive our lives He will use our actions for his glory. Trust me when I say that believing God can take the worst situations and make them good is something i've struggled with just as much if not more than other people. But He does. Over and over God uses our mistakes for the glory of His name and though it may be hard there is no doubt in my mind that if I can just give up my worries to him He will do it again.

Isaiah 25:8

Part 2:
God is crazy. He has opened my eyes so much in the past few weeks. God works life out in ways I never would have thought of. I sort of stated this in my first post after getting here...but let me reiterate something. I am living in a condo with 11 other girls. Let me break this down a little further. Out of all the girls i'm living with....there is not one person who is all that similar to another. I can hear you saying "duh, of course you're not". NO. I mean we are different to the point that I came in thinking "oh my gosh i'm gonna go insane if I have to live with these people all summer". We are girls that might know each other casually at school but would never in a million years hang out on a regular basis. THESE are the girls I live with. But, here we are more crazy in love with one another than you can ever possibly imagine. We come from RADICALLY different backgrounds, from Christian homes, drug abuse, missionary families, alcoholism, and even abuse. We struggle with different things, we fear different things and we have completely different personalities based on our upbringings, yet, we are all best friends. These are the girls I hang out with on a regular basis. These are the girls that know my whole story. We have cried in front of each other, we have prayed with one another and we have laughed over unspeakable things together. The only way I can explain this is to say God is INCREDIBLE.

HOME.

First, an overdue update, then a little tribute to home.

Last week, we got the awesome opportunity to go to Mt. Soledad for a night of prayer. I'm on the prayer ministry team here, so I got to help run it. Basically we walked around the top (which happens to have a giant cross) and each direction we faced we prayed for something different. Campuses, Beach outreach, believers in other countries, missionaries, and San Diego itself. It was an awesome night of worship in the midst of God's incredible creation.

The other night we did a bonfire on the beach. There was supposed to be worship but we lack coordination. So the best we got was a spontaneous rendition of Amazing Grace. STILL pretty awesome=]

cheezin'

One of 18 gajillion jumping pictures.

It's funny, how here, in a city I've been to only once before I feel so close to home. Parents, I blame this on you. Today, as I got on the bus to go home a quiet, motherly, Hispanic woman sat down a few seats away and my stomach flipped. She reminded me so much of home. I started to think of the hundreds of people just like her that have entered my house. Of the heavy accents and quiet strength of mothers and fathers as they try out their battered English for the first time. Smiles that stayed on their faces as my mother hugged, laughed and loved more loudly than any other person they'd met here. It made me think of the faces of those women as they take in my mother's unstoppable joy when it comes to others. It made me think of the little kids my sisters and I would babysit growing up. Smiling faces running around that would giggle as we tried to repeat words in Spanish, Arabic or whatever other languages they may have spoken. Which reminded me of Claire and how much she loves to care for others. How good she is at playing mom and caretaker of small children and what an awesome mom she's going to make one day. And all of this of course, reminded me of Tess and her insane ability to speak Spanish and her passion for the people of south america and what a wonderful caring personality she has.

                        

But don't worry, I haven't forgotten my dad. I'm just reminded of him in an entirely different way. I think of him as I go to UCSD and see swarms of brilliant people. I think of my dad in college with a bedroom that consisted of just a mattress surrounded by piles of books. I think of my dad now. Not all that different, sitting in his office surrounded by hundreds of books (all of which he's read) and 18 boxes filled to the brim with papers and projects. This city is a few thousand miles a way from where I live and yet everywhere I look I feel completely content. Home came with me=]

Jobs and Jesus.

So guess where I now work. Victoria's Secret. Yeah, that happened. =] It seems like a weird choice I guess for a summer project, but I think it's going to be an awesome place for me to start getting people to talk about faith. My first day was this past wednesday and I worked again today. I LOVE WORKING. I mean, story of my life. I cannot imagine having a time of my life where i'm not working in some capacity. It's honestly one of the things that I truly feel purpose in. I love getting the chance to help others and meet new people. What better place to do that than at work? =] So, what you should be taking from that is that I love Victoria's Secret so far. My boss is nice (and organized!!---well mostly...i'll get to that in a bit), my coworkers seem great and I get sweet discounts. It's going to be a good summer with them.
Downside? Yes. 
1-I work 45 minutes away by bus which means that if i need to get there by 9am I have to get up at 7ish to catch the bus on time. this wouldn't be frustrating except that by car it's like 15 minutes if that.
2- My boss doesn't understand my schedule yet. I have specific restrictions on when I can work because of all the other things we're doing while we're here. So I am unable to work past 6pm (except for saturday) and I can only work tues-saturday. Because of the weird way in which I got hired my manager and I didn't really go over all this during my interview other than to discuss that I did have restrictions. SO, today I checked my schedule for the upcoming week and i'm on sunday, monday and tuesday. FAIL. And 2 of those days i'm working in the evening. It's just really frustrating. I HATE being that person. The person who has to back out of tasks when people need me. It's the worst. UGH. It's really frustrating. Even more so because I talked to my manager about my hours on wWednesday. As in I SAT DOWN with her and WROTE OUT when I could work. If it were any other circumstances I would absolutely work all 3 of those days, but I'm not allowed to and I know she really needs me to. I hate failing people. So I'll be praying that everything works out the way it needs to on this one and my manager doesn't flip out.

Other than that little bit of insanity, life has been good. I've gotten a chance to really get to know some of the girls I live with. It is ridiculous how God works things out. When we were placed in rooms the staff didn't know our personalities, who we were or anything that might help them and yet God completely came through in helping them make the right decisions. The girls i live with are WONDERFUL. Besides being exactly the type of people i need to truly challenge me in my faith and just general outlook on life. It's crazy to sit there having a giant chat sesh with these girls and realize how similar many of us are in our struggles and how much we balance each other out in different areas. So  many things have been tested since I've been here. My patience, my preconceptions, my trust, and my relationships. Yet, in each of these God has picked me up and shown me what he wants me to learn in those areas. I wish I could explain in detail how and why that's happening but it's too much for one blog post. So, for now, i'll leave you with the knowledge that God is incredibly faithful even when we aren't.




Update: Since my little flip out over my boss' inability to create a schedule I called her and she fixed it completely. God is amazing.=]


Romans 3:3-4

Loves like a Hurricane, I am a Tree...

So, i'm here and it's FABULOUS. I cannot even begin to tell ya'll what a wonderful time I've had so far. That is to say I have so much to say I have NO idea where to start. So here we go...

I'm living in a condo with 11 other girls. Let me throw that out there again. 12 Girls. 1 Condo. 2 Bathrooms. YEAH. It's gonna get ridiculous as the summer goes on. But, for now at least, it's working out really well. I ADORE my housemates and the girls in my small group. It is going to be a wonderful albeit challenging and draining summer.

So here's a rundown of the last few days:

DAY 1: Move In

I got to enjoy the luxury of waking up at 3am eastern time to hope on a plane that  stopped in Salt Lake at around 10am Central time to get into California at 12:30pm Pacific Time. Yeah. Let's talk about jet lag. Afterwards, well, we moved in, obviously, and got to slowly but surely meet our housemates and do all the fun logistical stuff. OH WAIT. Backtrack. Did I mention that the first thing i did when I got here was ask someone to borrow money? Classic. That's what happens when you fail to calculate cab costs accurately. Some lovely gents helped me moved my stuff up to my apartment and then I just hung out with the girls until we had dinner and an opening welcome meeting/game janx with everyone later that night.

DAY 2: Soul 2 Soul

Wednesday pretty much entirely consisted of more get to know you stuff. I mean really though, let's just relieve our childhood. I'm pretty sure we played every get to know you game I've ever heard of. We spent the afternoon with our DNA groups (small groups basically) sharing our stories. It was INSANE. No matter how many times I do this my reaction is consistently the same: amazed.  Maybe it's because my story isn't too ridiculous. I mean yeah, i've dealt with some stuff but there was never any ridiculous life-changing turn around.  But i've heard some INCREDIBLE stories since being here. It's cool to see people that seem just like you and find out how absurdly different their faith stories are from your own. Trust me when I say that if you can imagine it, i've heard a story about it personally affecting someone I know in the past 4 days.

SIDETRACK-->  today another awesome testimony-sharing time happened in my condo. One of the guys walked up and we were all chatting and he just happened to share his story. Here's this group of 10 college students listening to this guy tell an insane story about running away, drugs and God COMPLETELY being faithful in His pursuit of this guy. Afterwards one of the girls asked if we could pray over one of his friends who is still into some bad stuff and it was just an amazing reminder of how much God has blessed me. Here I am getting to live with people who barely know each other and yet feel comfortable enough to love on one another through prayer. God is GOOD.


DAY 3: Job Search and Evangelizing...


Okay, i'm just gonna go ahead and skip the job search. It wasn't exciting, just tedious. Although I did get to meet an awesome kid from New Mexico (Tess--marry him. ya'll would be perfect, just sayin').


EVANGELIZING-- So I just want to start this off by letting you all know that while I LOVE the idea of telling others about the AWESOME love we have in Christ, I HATE the idea of beach evangelizing. The picture I got in my head was that of people wandering around yelling at others, standing on street corners passing out booklets. All that to say, I have never seen beach evangelizing done well. So, that's sort of what I expected, or at least something similar when I came into it. SURPRISE! (okay that word looks ridiculous when spelled--side note) But that is absolutely NOT the type of evangelizing we're doing. It's actually completely opposite. Yes, we walked around the beach and talked to people, but that's exactly what it was; talking to people. Me and 2 other girls got to go around and the second group of people we walked up to happened to be 2 girls from London (God knows me well=]) and we just sat down and got to chat with them about who they were, their travels, and of course faith! It was an AWESOME conversation and God was absolutely working in those 2 girls lives. One of them (Grace) mentioned that she wanted to start reading the bible and we suggested that she might want to start in John to get a good idea of where Christianity is coming from. How does she respond? Oh, you know, someone just happened to have handed her a Gospel of John. God is amazing right? God is ALWAYS pursuing us, regardless of whether we see it or not and I cannot help but pray that she continues to feel that pursuit in her heart. So if ya'll are throwing out some prayers tonight do a quick one for Grace and Zoe and that God continues to weigh on their hearts and minds. They're amazing girls and i'd love to see them again one day and hear how life went=]


DAY 4: Job Search
I won't bore ya'll with the details of friday...we literally just wandered around San Diego looking for work. Okay, wait we did do a man hunt around San Diego, which, if you haven't done one before just means that the staff dressed up ridiculously and we had to run around the town attempting to find as many as we could.

OVERALL:

Ya'll overall, this has just been a crazy wonderful experience. I've got 2 job interviews lined up and with a little bit of prayer hopefully a 3rd. God is already teaching me so much about who I am and bringing to surface who I try to be.  I came in with a lot of preconceptions both about people and certain aspects of what we were doing and God has just shattered them. I am constantly being made aware of how God is working in my being here, in the girls i've been placed withi in my condo, in the ministry team I was placed on, and in my DNA group. God knows who I am and exactly what I need and that becomes more and more evident everyday. I cannot WAIT to update ya'll as more insanity happens. I love you all!

---also, i just realized I skipped like 2 days....but, i promise nothing spectacularly awesome happened that ya'll need to know about so don't worry about it=]

Psalm 16