today

I ate parts of chicken feet and chicken head.

It’s safe to say that it was a new experience for me.

If you’re wondering, it really wasn’t too bad. You just eat the outside skin, and it just tastes like normal chicken. I didn’t eat the eyes or anything (although they WERE there in the chicken head).

Pictures will come some time in the next week.

My dad is here right now (Yay!) Things are pretty busy. We are doing relationship evangelism and so far it is going really well! Today we visited with a woman named Saulina in the afternoon. She was sick and had lost some of her sight. We prayed for healing for her. We are trusting that when we see her tomorrow, God will have healed her! Especially for the next 2 days as we visit with her, pray for her if she comes to your mind….for healing and for God to work in her heart and life.

Expecting GREAT things from God…for HIS glory.

a taste of home

Tomorrow, my dad will be leaving Jacksonville to come visit me here, in South Africa, for 2 weeks!! Please pray for him and the other families coming tomorrow and on Sunday as they travel here.

I am excited to see him! I can not WAIT to see all God does in the next couple of weeks!!

(And the American goodies he is bringing won’t be too bad either…mmm, Cheezits!!)

enough for me

The beginning of our LaunchPad class today looked a little bit like this for me…

Me: “Hey, Lefu. How was your week?”

Lefu: “It was good.”

Me: “Good! What did you do?”

Lefu: “I read and I prayed with God.”

(FYI: This is the same Lefu that I wrote about in the post “Growing by Leaps and Bounds”. He is a small group leader and is always SO excited for class!)

…..I LOVE teaching LaunchPad. I am thankful for how I can see God in our students. And I am thankful that I learn just as much from them.

picnics, lakes, and ziplines

Tucked away on the base, there is a small lake that has a zipline. Before this year, I had never been on one. This weekend, we had a surprise picnic for Crystal’s Birthday, and several of us got to go on the zipline. This is the second time I have gotten to go this year. Yay!! It is finally warm again! No more winter!!! (Hopefully…)

a black and white affair

Last night, a couple of the interns threw a “Black and White Affair” for the girl staff and interns! Everyone dressed up and ate a lot of junk food. This is the most dressed up we’ve been in a while!

This is me and my roomie, Shannon!

almond bars, hair cuts, and waterparks

Last night, I dreamt a lot. I am a very active dreamer, and I remember a lot of my dreams…and I love that. Going to sleep is a bit of an adventure.

Last night, I had 5 dreams that I could remember when I woke up this morning. I won’t share them all, but just for fun, here were some of the main topics: almond baked goods (that have the capability of saving people’s lives), weird hair cuts (particularly bleached hair in a mohawk), a waterpark, a burglary, and more…

But I did experience something kind of weird…in one of my dreams, I knew I was dreaming. I remember that clearly. Weird how our minds work. How is that possible? I have no idea. But I am SO glad that God made us with some really awesome quirks.

a highlight of my week…

On Wednesday, I saw an African teenage boy walking through a field in Qwa Qwa….

with an accordion.

Enough said.

take a walk

When I take walks, they are very productive. I LOVE to think. So when I walk, that is all that I do. I savor every moment to think. (Sidenote: That is also why I love car rides…so much thinking time). I think I figure out a lot about my life while I am walking.

This was the thought that consumed the walk that I took today….

Here is one of the questions that I would like to ask Jesus…What was the hardest thing about living on earth?

For me, it is community. That has definitely been the hardest part of this year. And for me, it is arguably the most difficult and frustrating thing about life. There are a lot of things that probably contribute to that. I just find it to be so…..hard. But the fight is worth it. It is the devil who wants us to be isolated, for that is when we are the weakest.

I must be intentional about fighting for it.

I love that Jesus can completely understand all of our frustrations, because he has been through them. It is comforting to me that Jesus knows my difficulties with community, and I am sure he can relate. He had 12 disciples with him all of the time for the years of his ministry. He knew their hearts, their thoughts, and every sin that they had or would do against him….yet he loved them still.

That kind of love…the love that knows yet still loves completely….that love amazes me. And that’s the love I want to have for others.

Lofty goal, huh? I’ll be working at that all my life. But it’s worth it.

on repeat

let me preface this with: I never do this.

I never post the lyrics to a song…when other people do, I rarely read it all the way through.

But this song is….beautiful. If you have never heard it before, you should go find it. It has been on my repeat for a while. And I think it might last. It just may be a favorite of mine for a while.

“Everything” by Lifehouse

Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That’s leading me
To the place where I find peace again.

You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose…you’re everything.

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won’t let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Cause you’re all I want, You’re all I need
You’re everything, everything
You’re all I want, you’re all I need
You’re everything, everything.
You’re all I want, you’re all I need.
You’re everything, everything
You’re all I want, you’re all I need, you’re everything, everything.

Lay’s Cracker Crisps & Apple Pie Cream Savers

A mission team is with us right now from Life Church in Michigan. They brought a TON of snacks from America…..including a new thing called Lays Cracker Crisps and all of these new flavors of Cream Savers (and that’s only a couple of the new things they brought)!

It was one of those moments when I realized…I have been in Africa for more than 7 months.