Fruit Cake

Love is important to everyone 

but we need to redefine it because the world has a skewed image of what Love is  choosing the highest good for others, despite the negative emotions or effects it may have on us.

love is a matter of the mind instead of the heart not emotion. 

seek the best for others

The world will know you are my disciples by your love for one another. 

what distinguishes the church is that their love is different, what credit is it to you if you love those who love you.

joy - inter happiness that has nothing to do with our circumstances. 

joy come from whose you are joy in what was suffered for you.

there is no good thing withheld from me - my life is good.

I am in a relationship with God how can it get any better than that?!

it is as good as it gets if you are in a relationship with Jesus Christ, weather in India, weather graduated, weather in America, Weather in a ditch, weather sick or well.

peace- inner calm and rest God is watching over me protecting me and delivering me. No matter what situation you are inyou can handle it. 

long suffering/ patience - calm willingness to accept the hurt or irritations of people and this world .... suffering long in marriage, suffering long at work....

what if God was not patient with us? scary

the spirit can bear these things out in my life, I can not do it. 

examine yourself, be polite. 

goodness - the action of kindness doing kind things, show your love doing good things for people

faithfulness - being trustworthy in all matters, its the small things that set us apart from the rest

gentleness - meekness, a person who is willing to deny there rights me-ek coming to the understanding you are a sinner saved by grace, not thinking highly of yourself

God will give us a new heart...please Lord let your spirit take over my life make me meek = me-EK

Let love be Genuine

“Let love be genuine”

I am starting my blog post again, I stopped for a while after I returned from India but would like to start up again to sharpen my writing skills. 

Something I have been thinking about lately, we are loving others when we put their needs before our own and looking out for what is in their best interest. I really like this definition of love "unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another"

Serving others willingly not because we have to but because we love them serving with Joy. I made a list of ways I could love my roommate this semester and do it with sincerity of heart. Not because I have to but because I want to. 

1. Keep things clean (I know she does not like things to be cluttered so I hope in this way I can show her I love her)
2. Respect her, be willing to understand where she is coming from even when I disagree, be considerate.
3. Listen, Really listen.
4. Being willing to put her needs before my own
5. Be Honest
6. Be Humble

I hope this semester I can come up with new ways to show others I genuinely care about them and let Christ’s love flow through me in that way.

Unbound and Liberated

Hello Dear Friends and Family... I come home in less than 2 weeks 6 months goes by so fast...slow when you are in it but then looking back when its over it goes by so quickly. The Lord has really blessed my time here and I am looking forward to coming home but it is very bittersweet for me. Everyone here is like family to me so it will be very hard to say goodbye to all my new brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Please pray for grace for me in this I know i am going to cry but also know this is Gods timing and that gives me peace. I had a dream a few days ago and in the dream I was tied down with ropes and in a dark room and I felt like I just had this heaviness upon me like a heavy burden i was carrying and then someone came into the room and unlocked the door and cut of the ropes and brought me out into the sun. It just reminded me of how I was once a slave to sin I was a sinner and on the road to hell separated from God and Jesus Christ through the shedding of his blood on the cross has made me free! I think it was the His way of reminding me and making me once again thankful and grateful for my salvation because once you have been a slave to anything and then you have become free after a while you forget what it was like to be a slave in the first place and it can feel as if you have always been free. Christ has been reminding me of that and its really been making me think...I have been set free I am unbound and liberated through Christ. John 8:34-36

Please pray we are having a women's meeting in a tribal area this saturday Monika will be speaking

Pray Gods will for my last 2 weeks here will be accomplished

Pray for the hospital land pray that they would have favor with the government and that they would be able to start building soon

and the kids at the childrens home are having Exams this week (which is a big deal in India) and they are a little stressed out. 

Can’t wait to see all of you and hear about what has been going on in your lives these 6 months. Thank you guys so much for your prayers and your support it means a lot to me and makes a big difference. 

Valleys and Villages

Sorry it has been a while since I last wrote a blog post things have been very busy here we have been doing a lot of traveling. A week and a half ago we all traveled to Araku valley for the weekend just for some vacation time. It was beautiful and very fun it was a 3 1/2 hour car ride with 12 people we traveled with an Indian family. On the way up we stopped and went into a cave with monkeys everywhere. Later in the week we went to yesupadams village where he grew up as an untouchable in India. It was in Srikakulum the car ride took 11 1/2 hours. I was so blessed to see where he was born and where the Lord has taken him since then. It was such a testimony how If we honor the Lord with our lives He will honor us. He walked on streets that as a child he would have never been allowed to walk on just because of his caste. Tomorrow we will be going to Vijayawada for crusades at night that yesupadam will be speaking at, we will be there for 3 days. The Lord has been preparing my heart for coming home. I will be so happy to see all of you guys when i get back and share in detail what the Lord has been doing here in my life. Please pray that the Lord will give me grace saying goodbye to my new family here all of the kids and the people i have worked with it will be a bittersweet day for me. Please pray for direction as to what i should do this summer where i should live and that the Lord would provide me with a Job somewhere. I really just want to concentrate these next three weeks on seeking the Lord. I start online classes March 19th and need two more books that i do not have the money for right now so please pray for Gods provision I know He will He has before and will again. 

Once again sorry this has to be so brief there are so many things going on right now. Thank you everyone who is praying for me.

It's almost February?

So its the last week of January ... How did that happen? Since I last wrote so much has happened I don’t have enough time to touch on it all but I do want to write about two things in particular. So since I got here in September i have been working at the school everyday in LKG (Lower Kindergarten) being a teachers assistant there are about 58 kids in LKG. In the beginning of my time here it was so overwhelming to me going there everyday and trying to teach these kids english because they understood nothing I felt like a failure and like they were not getting anywhere. Week after week i would go in and try to teach them there ABC’s and 123’s and always had to hold the pencils for them and it seemed like months went by with it being like this and them just not getting it. This week we just gave the kids there Exams and now they can all write by themselves and speak to me in english and actually understand when I tell them to do something. The progress was not something that I saw with my eyes because I was with them everyday but when It was actually time for them to take there test i thought about how much they have improved sense the time I started. It just taught me a big lesson to not give up and just keep on keeping at what your doing even if you don’t think your making any progress. I know God taught me this lesson because I struggle through out my life with just giving up to easily and when i feel like i can’t do something or it gets to hard or i don’t see results i will just want to quit but God has really showed me to be faithful and just keep doing it even if you don’t see fruit right away the fruit will come. 

So much more i could say about my time at the school but The other things i wanted to talk about was part of my discipleship Monica has asked me and the other girls here to make a list of the things we want to work on in our life's during the rest of our time here and self-reflect and ask ourselves and seek the Lord about bad habits we want to break, things in our life's we struggle with, do you see any weak point with your relationship with God that you want to make stronger. It just made me think Wow why haven’t I ever sat down and made a list like this and ask people in my life things I need to improve upon before. So maybe anyone reading this would want to make a list to and share it with a spiritual mentor in your life or a friend. It has really challenged me and God has been revealing areas in my life that I need to work on. Please be praying for me as i start to think about coming home and as i have seen people come and go here I have also seen  how when they get home sometimes they will go through a depression phase of adjusting back to the states, so please pray I that the Lord will give me places to serve when I go home I start school on the 19th online and am would like to go back to Liberty residentially next year and take the classes i need to get into Liberty’s Nursing program. The Lord has also taught me to view my school work as ministry and something I’m doing with Him and that He will use. So much more I want to write! But I have to save some stuff to tell you in person otherwise you will be bored of all my stories. Also please pray for sickness one girl who is here might have a parasite she has been having stomach problems and is getting tested today! I really don’t want her or anyone else to get a parasite ahh!

Love you all, thank you for your prayers.

Summer Winter Spring and Fall

On the 22nd I will have been in India for 4 months now. I remember the first day I got here and getting to my finial destination and thinking I don't know if I can do this Lord and having many struggles the past 4 months from spiritual struggles to emotional to physical and I can't say that my situations have really changed recently it really is more that I have changed. The Lord has been doing a good work within me and changing myself so now although my situations are the same I handle them differently and am able to look at them from a different perspective. I have gone through so many different seasons since i have been here seasons of business, discipline, quietness and rest, failures and successes and am so grateful that the Lord has placed all of those seasons in my life as they have grown me I feel like during my time here I have really grown up which has been one of my prayers in the past year I will be turning 20 this year and its nice that God is doing this with in me while I am still young teaching me to serve, teaching me humility, and being submissive to authority all important life lessons I would have had to learn at some point and time and am very grateful I have gotten to learn those things here. I have no clue what the last 2 months of my time will bring for me here but I know God is in control and does not waste anything. I really enjoy my afternoons here as I get to spend time in prayer and in the word God has really been revealing himself to me and speaking to me about my life and giving me vision and direction for some of the plans he has for me. I will be starting classes online march 19th and have some majors in mind I have narrowed it down to 3 that I have in mind. God places many seasons in our life but the whole point is no matter what the season is we have to learn how to be content if we can not learn to be content where we are and find our contentment in Christ we will never be truly content and no matter how many times you move location or relationships or jobs you will never be content until you have learned to be content with Christ alone and the hope that is found in Him. God has been teaching me to be content no matter what the circumstances. I have meet many people sense being here from all over the world from Singapore, Germany, Canada, Philippines, and Korea it is hard to see them come into your life and then go but I am so blessed God has given me all of these opportunities and Is growing and changing me so much I am not going to come back to America the same way I left.

One of my LKG kids Jyoshna who I teach english to I love these kids, she always comes up to me every time she sees me and says one second and whispers in my ear I love you, and to me it is like Christ speaking through her.

And Mackenzie if you are reading this I love you and you are one of my nearest and dearest friends. I will miss you so much but know that your time here is done, can’t wait to see where God takes your life and how He will work through you. I love you and am praying for you. Will see you this summer for our roadtrip

Me and Mackenzie spoke at a Church in the city and afterwards they honored us with flower necklace and cool blankets. I love India