2 Year Reflection

Thirty. Single. Living with my parents. Working a part-time job. Driving a car from the 90's. This is not where I hoped or thought I would be at this point in my life.

While I was in Germany, it seemed like everyone who moved back to the states had everything work out so well for them. Found significant others, got married, got great jobs, lived in exciting places, etc. (these are still the same things I continue to see from people who have moved back from Germany since I did). I just assumed this is how it would work for me, too. After all, I gave up five years of my life to serve God on the mission field. Surely He would reward me with these things like so many others. ("Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." -Philippians 2:3-4). It's not that those hopes were my motive, it was just a subconscious thinking of a benefit that could come from it.

When I moved back two years ago today, I had planned on living with my folks for up to a year while working a full-time job to save enough money to move somewhere else (preferably the Seattle area). Finding a full-time job was not so easy. I not only thought God would reward me for having spent five years on the mission field, but thought that employers (especially at churches, ministries, Christian schools) would love to hire someone with that experience, too. Turns out, doesn't make much of a difference. I ended up getting a part-time job at a coffee shop run by a church. I figured if I had to resort to a part-time job, at least I was still working for a church in a ministry setting. However, working at a coffee shop was literally the last thing I wanted to do when thinking about moving back to the states. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful that I have a job and for wonderful co-workers and the relationships I've built with customers, it's just not what I was hoping for.

After starting work at the coffee shop, I started to realize just how good I had it in my last job. It was one of those things that I didn't realize what I had until it was gone. It was a job that was ministry based, involved working with and ministering to people, doing a mixture of administrative work, and utilized many of my gifts and passions. I also loved the people I worked with, felt so fulfilled by being able to use my strengths and from being appreciated in the work I did. Ever since, I have wished for a job that could make me feel like that again.

These last two years I have applied to many jobs across the U.S. and every time I didn't get it, I said to myself, "that just means God has something even better in store for me". Yes, I do still believe this is true, but it sure gets harder to think and say with every rejection. ("Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." -Proverbs 3:5-6)

I continue to look for jobs and apply to anything that seems interesting and that I'm qualified for. I still hope and pray for something ministry related as that is where my heart lies, but strive to trust in God that He will lead me to what He has in store for me in His timing. ("Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." -Philippians 4:6) I also continue to slowly purchase things for my own future residence with dreams of what it will be while filling up my parents' den.

I not only struggle in waiting for things to happen in my work life, but also in my personal life. Everyday I jealously see posts of others getting engaged, married, and having kids. I long for that to be me. I think that's what makes it even harder to still be living with my parents. Yes, I would love to have my own place, but I would love even more to be setting up a home with a husband. I so often feel "behind" as many people my age are not only married and having a kid, but have MULTIPLE kids at this point. Trusting God in this can be even harder sometimes as I wish I didn't even have to be looking for a full-time job. What I really want is to be a stay-at-home mom raising kids and volunteering at church rather than working for one. One night recently at work, there were multiple groups of women meeting up. Many seemed to be friends from church. I got this feeling like I am left out of some kind of "club" because I am still single. I am the same age and older than some of these gals, yet because I'm single with no kids, I'm not a part of these groups. It's become painful to see women my age (worse when they're younger) come in to the shop with kids or being pregnant as the jealousy and pain can be so strong. When this happens I silently ask God, "why? why can't this be me coming to a coffee shop with my kid(s) to meet up with a fellow mom rather than working here as a single gal?". Did I mention my coffee shop is also next to a bridal store? Talk about a daily reminder.

Through it all, I hope and pray that one day soon I will be able to say, "This is it! This is what the wait has been for!". In the meantime, I have to go through the hard times that will one day make sense and be able to show God's goodness and plan for this time. Patience has never been my strong suit.

Fun in the Sun

I was in charge of the parent letter again this weekend and thought I'd share with you all what I shared with the parents of our girls for an update on our happenings over this last weekend. I added some side notes if I thought it needed it to make more sense to you all. So, here it is:

This weekend was full of warm weather and lots of fun times. Friday, after dinner, Amy (my co-RA) walked with a few girls to a nearby field where you can pick your own flowers. They enjoyed the beautiful weather and bought some flowers for the dorm. The rest of the night was mainly spent relaxing and we put on a movie.

Saturday was filled with sports. First, the 7 girls who are in track had to leave at 6 am to head off to Heidelberg. Many of the girls from our dorm achieved their personal record in their event that day. The track girls were gone all day and got back around 11 Saturday night. On a nearby field, the soccer games started at 10 am with varsity girls. The soccer teams were playing a base called Patch who is known to be one of the best. The games continued throughout the day with varsity boys next, then JV girls, then JV boys last who were the only ones that won that day. Many players and spectators got sunburns from their time outside. We are providing lots of Aloe Vera! They did a great job and played their best. Saturday night we enjoyed some pizza and watching the movie "Inception".

The weather was beautiful today, Sunday, too. We headed off to church this morning and came home and had a delicious lunch that Amy headed up by making and grilling bruschetta chicken. We also celebrated Rachel and Taylor's birthdays which both occur over spring break. Many girls took advantage of the beautiful weather by working on homework in the backyard. Our backyard has many beautiful flowers blooming in it right now and the girls have been enjoying it.

Tonight, for dorm fellowship time, our dorm was invited up the hill to the girls' dorm Blauen. They made baked treats for us and put the movie "Cool Runnings" on a big screen. We had a lot of fun fellowshipping with their dorm.

This weekend was a great one to have as our last one before spring break (this is the last school week). All the girls are getting very excited for their spring break plans whether that means getting to their parents, serving on MTrips or the many other things they will be doing. This year has been great so far and we look forward to those last 5 weeks we get to spend with the girls.

Hope you all are enjoying your spring too!

Long Weekend

Every Sunday one of us staff members or our student dorm representative writes a letter to the parents that we post for them to read and catch up on what our dorm's been up to. This last weekend was my chance, so I thought I'd just also post it onto my blog for you all to see what our last weekend was like too. So, here it is:

This weekend has been an extended one as there was no school today (Monday). It has been crazy, fun, long, interesting, beautiful, busy, and overall great.

Brant and Laura(the dorm parents) had their weekend off which went from Thursday through Sunday. Micah and Heather Powers came to stay with us to help Amy and I out with cooking, driving and such. It was a home basketball weekend, so on Friday everyone stayed after school to cheer on their dorm sisters Taylor, Helen, and Kat in their games. Along with the games they also had a coffee house going on for a junior class fundraiser with Starbucks coffee, baked goods, and live music. At the same time they also had a book swap going on where you could trade in books and/or buy them for very little money.

We all got up on Saturday morning to go see the second day of basketball games. All of our teams lost all of their games this weekend, but our girls played especially well on Saturday. They were just up against a very hard team. Saturday night we relaxed a bit with a movie and some popcorn.

On Sunday we had church and a wonderful supper made by Heather. The weather was beautiful, so many people got out for a walk and enjoyed the sunshine. We also had a mandatory 2 hour rest time in the afternoon in preparation for Superbowl night. Amy and I decided since the weekend had been so busy that we would watch a movie for dorm fellowship Sunday night. We all had a great time together as it is very rare for everyone to get together like that.

The boys' dorm HBR had invited anyone that wanted to go from our dorm to come over for the Superbowl Sunday night (technically Monday morning). We headed out at about 11:45 pm and the game lasted until a bit after 4 am. It worked out well since there was no school today. It was a very quiet morning, needless to say, and we made some frozen pizzas around 1 when everyone was starting to come around. It was another beautiful day, so many enjoyed the outdoors before heading off to the Sadie Hawkins dance. It was a dance where the girls asked the boys and a couple from the community led them in Swing dancing.

As I said, it was a very busy and jam-packed weekend, but it was a great one with some amazingly beautiful weather.

Here are 2 pictures of one of my girls and I enjoying the abnormally beautiful weather on Sunday-

UGANDA at OneTrueMedia.com

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

new pictures and weekend report

First of all, I have added a bunch of new pictures for you to look through! So, check those out by clicking on the slideshow of my photos to the left.

This weekend has been my co-RA's weekend-off. Friday night there were class parties where each of the grades have their individual activities going on for 2 hours. During that time I was able to hang out at one of the dorms that are in the same town as the school and chill with some other RA's until it was time to go pick-up the students. After we got back we popped in Father of the Bride 2 to have a bit of chill time before sending the students off to bed.

Saturday morning I had to go pick up a girl from her friend's house in town and run by the pharmacy. We stayed busy picking up from brunch and just organizing everything until the boys' dorm HBR came over in the afternoon. Our seniors wanted to invite them over for a game of flag-football and dinner. Unfortunately, the weather has turned very cold and wet lately, so some still ventured out to play football, but the other half of the group stayed indoors and played group games. We then had hotdogs and brats, veggies, and potatoe salad for dinner with the boys. I had also made two large batches of brownies in the morning for dessert which worked out well because two of the boys from HBR had their birthdays that day. We decided to show the boys how we sing/celebrate birthdays by turning out the lights in the dining room, bringing in the brownies with candles lit and sang very loudly with pounding on the tables. It was definitely the loudest our birthday song has ever been since I've been here!
Some girls went off to play at the school gym for a bit and then we wathced Spiderman at night. I was quite tired by the end of the day with keeping busy and hostessing.

Today, Sunday, we went off to church as normal in the morning and then we had the great pleasure of being guests at someone's house! The family of one of our girls from last year now lives in the area and the parents work at BFA. They were kind enough to invite our whole dorm over for lunch! This is quite the feat when it means feeding about 23 extra mouths! We had amazing lasagne, salad, garlic bread, and apple pie with ice cream for dessert. We all even fit around 1 large table (made up of a couple tables). It was a great time with all the girls and quite enjoyable to be the guests instead of the hostesses!

I hope all is going well for you all wherever you may be!

Back in Deutschland!

I am back in Germany for my second year of being an RA in Witt @ BFA! It is definitely weird to be one of the “returners” instead of a “newbie”. It’s also been surprisingly comforting to be back here and know how to live here and what’s going on. It is sad to not have those who have moved on from BFA here anymore and to not have our seniors from last year, but there is excitement in having new, fresh faces and looking forward to those of our girls who are coming back. My travels went much better getting back here then they went going home for the summer. So, thank you for all your prayers!

When I first got back, us RA’s lived together in Storch dorm again until our dorms were available to move back into. It was fun being with the other returners again and getting to know all the new ones. Unfortunately, the internet was not working in that dorm while we lived there, but now that I’m back in my dorm I have easy access to it. I am all moved into my new room in the dorm and thoroughly enjoying the way I’ve been able to set it up and make it homey. I’m very excited for the girls to get here and see it and hopefully spend lots of good times hanging out in it.

We have 11 returning RA’s and 6 new ones. The smallest girl dorm is short one RA until the new one can raise enough support to get here. Please be praying that her support comes in quickly so that their staff can get the other set of hands that they need. One of our boy dorms is also short a female RA. Please also be praying that God will provide the needed help for them.

I have a new RA with me this year and her name is Amy! She is from Ohio and seems very well fit for this dorm. I’m really excited to see her with our girls once they get back and to spend this year serving alongside her.

I have a friend who was an RA the last two years she’s been here and is transitioning into teaching elementary school for BFA this year. Unfortunately, she is having difficulty raising the new support she needs. Please join me in prayer for her support to come in soon as I’m sure it’s hard to be in the states when her heart is here and ready to teach.

I know I have mentioned many prayer requests in this post, but I do have one more. The burden that is constantly in the back of my mind right now is trying to figure out what to do with my student loan. I would not trade my time at Corban for anything, but it is difficult to deal with the debt I have accrued from being there. I have deferred paying my loan several times out of not being able to afford the monthly payments and the end of my last deferment period I requested is coming to an end in September. Please pray for wisdom on if I should request a longer deferment or if God will provide the money I need to be paying them off. Having these loans definitely plays a part in figuring out future plans for whether or not to stay on the mission field if I can’t be paying them off while serving. Please pray that God will provide the money to pay them, or grant a longer request for deferment, or provide some other solution that I can’t come up with in my limited, human mind.

Thank you all for your prayers and support in what I’m doing here! I love these girls I serve and can’t wait for them to start coming back in less than a week! (Please also pray for us as we prepare for them!)

End of the Year CrAziNesS

First of all, I have added a bunch of new pictures, so be sure to check those out by clicking on the slideshow.

This past weekend has been my last weekend off. Yesterday, though, I was able to go to a special event for the senior girls. It is a mother/daughter tea and all of the senior girls are able to bring either there mother (only possible for a few) or invite someone from the school to come with them as their "mother". I was honored by two of my girls who asked me to go with them. Here is a picture of the 3 of us.


The event was at a Rose Garden and it was perfect warm and sunny weather for it. We had a great time of tea/coffee and little snacks. One woman from the school got up and spoke a little to the group and then each of the senior girls stood up and said where they will be going next year for school and what they would be studying. Then most of us who came with girls took turns giving a blessing/prayer to the group. I read Colossians 1:9-12 to the group.

There are many events like the tea going on lately as the year is coming closer and closer to an end. Graduation is on June 11 and some students start leaving in the days before that. Our girls have been starting to pack all of their stuff too. I'm pretty sure I mentioned before, if not in here then in my newsletter, that our dorm was supposed to be moving to a new dorm next year. I don't think I've mentioned since I got the news that we are no longer moving! God worked a miracle out for us to be able to stay here. It works out perfectly for the school because our landlord dropped the price immensely, so we are saving money and it saves them from having to find a place for a middle school dorm that they are wanting to start back up next year. So, they are going to use the dorm we were going to move to for middle schoolers next year. Our girls, and us as staff, are very happy to be able to stay here and it makes the end of this year A LOT easier then it would have been. I also don't know if I ever mentioned that my co-RA, Cara, has decided that she will not be coming back next year. She is going to move back to southern California where she is from. So, please join me in prayer that God places the right person to work in this dorm with me, the dorm parents, and our girls.

Please pray that we can finish out this year strong and enjoy these last days with our seniors.
I will be home in 23 days! Please pray that my trip goes safely as it will be a very long day with multiple legs of travel.

Don't forget to check out those pictures! Here is one more from the tea with all of our seniors, me, Cara (my co-RA), and Laura (dorm mom).

this past week

We had a busy week this week preparing for and many participating in Candle Light Dinner. Candle Light Dinner is it is an outreach event for locals in our community. The narration was all in German and it was geared towards reaching non-believers. On Wednesday night there was a dress rehearsal that everyone who was going to be helping had to attend leaving our dorm with only a few students left. Many of our girls helped by serving, hosting, and performing in the show. I was able to attend the dress rehearsal since I wouldn't be able to see it during the weekend. Candle Light Dinner was on Friday and Saturday night. They were nights filled with van runs to get girls back and forth, but it all worked out and everybody seemed to have a good time. We heard good reports about how it went from the gal who organized it on Sunday at church.

This weekend was Cara’s weekend off, but we were blessed to have a student teacher, Sarah Sax, come to stay at the dorm to fill in for her. The girls seemed to truly enjoy having her here and getting to know her on a more personal level outside of school. She was a huge help to us as well since it would’ve been only Brant and I otherwise.

We ended the weekend with watching the Canada vs. USA Olympic hockey game. There are many of us from America and some (mainly one) from Canada, so it was fun to let out our patriotism. Those with no loyalty to either country chose a side (most chose Canada). Flags from each country were brought out to represent on either side of the TV and many bore their national colors. It was a great game to watch and a lot of fun with the girls to cheer our countries on.

The biggest change to recently happen is that we gained one more girl! She arrived late Thursday evening from Korea with her mom. Her name is Jeewon (Jessie). She has already finished her freshman year, but will be auditing, in a way, freshman courses for the rest of this year and jumping into her sophomore year next year. At dorm fellowship last night we had a chance to go around and tell her who we all are and at the end she was able to repeat back all of our names! We were quite impressed. The girls are very excited to have her here and have been great at welcoming her with open arms.

Prayer requests:
Our dorm mom is still in the states finishing things up from her mother's estate. Please pray that she can return soon and safe.
The whole high school is off to high school retreat this weekend. Please pray for their safety and for spiritual growth from what they hear from the speaker.
Please also be praying for our new girl, Jessie, and her transition into life here and for us, as a staff, to have wisdom on how to make her feel welcome.

Praying you all have a great week!

Erin

P.S. I have uploaded some pictures from our dorm Christmas party, my Christmas break, and from my weekend off last weekend when I spent two nights in Strasbourg, France with 2 other gal RA's.

Washington State NOT D.C.

I am on the last day of my first weekend off. I have been staying at my friends', Becky and Alyssa, home in Kandern at the same place I stayed over Christmas break. It's been very relaxing and refreshing. They are both art teachers at BFA. Last night I had the chance to go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Lorrach (a bigger town nearby) with Becky and some of her and Alyssa's German friends from their church. Thankfully there were a few who spoke English which were the ones I talked the most to. Becky is very good in German so she talks to them in a mixture of German and English. It was, sadly to say, the first time I got to meet and socialize with German peers. It was really fun and I hope to get to hang out with them again on a future weekend or day off.

So, for a funny story...Today I went into Lorrach to get my German driver's license. A lady at the school fills out all of our paperwork for things like this and then we just each had to go and pick up our license's as soon as we got a card in the mail saying they were ready to be picked up. Cara (my Co-RA) thankfully came with me because I wasn't sure where the place was and how it all worked and such. Instead of waiting in a large waiting room and then going up to a window like the licensing places in the States, here you wait in line and then go into someone's office. So Cara and I went into a ladie's office when it was my turn and I told the lady right away (in German) that I don't speak much German. She spoke at least a little English which turned out to be helpful. She plugged some of my information in on the computer and was looking at my Washington driver's license and started making a couple phone calls and then went over to someone else's office. I wasn't sure what was going on because I knew that Washington state has full reciprocity for getting a driver's license over here. She came back into the office with another man and they started to say that I needed to take a test. As we start to talk about this, with basic and slow English, Cara catches on to the fact that they are talking about Washington state vs. D.C. Ever since I've got here I'm always careful to say that I'm from Washington state because I know that they will assume D.C. if I just said Washington. But now the lady is saying that they need proof that it is Washington STATE. I tried to explain that because it's the state's name that the license isn't going to say state on it. She starts making more phone calls, meanwhile Cara is on the phone trying to get someone from BFA to explain in German to these people the difference between state and D.C. The lady leaves the room again and Cara sees the guy who had come in to help Google Washington state with a look of "awww" come over his face when he started to understand. Thankfully, when the lady came back in she said they sent a fax or something over to Washington (not sure if she ment state or D.C.) and they confirmed for her that I was in fact from Washington state not D.C. This was a HUGE relief because they were tring to say I would have to take a test in German, which is very expensive, if I couldn't prove I was from the state. During part of the confusion Cara said to me, "you would come from a confusing state" and I said, "I know, I know." All this to prove that D.C. really has made it quite confusing and hard for us TRUE Washingtonians.

pictures

I've added some new pictures from the Holiday season! We have been keeping very busy. I included pictures from our RA Thanksgiving (we celebrated as RA's on the day of American thanksgiving), Christmas banquet, and a flag football game our girls played against another girls' dorm. This is the last weekend with the students and they all start leaving on Thursday and Friday for their Christmas break. I will write more and add more Christmas time pictures after they leave and things will be calmer then.

fun weekend

This last weekend was a fun one! On Friday night, the high school had their annual Fall Party. Each year they have a theme and this year it was 'opposites'. Many of the dorms do some form of skit or performance to represent the theme and ours decided to do a dance off performance of nerds vs. girly girls. We had a lot of fun and apparently the judges liked it too because our dorm won! We were very shocked, but also excited.
On Saturday we left some open time during the day because we knew there was a lot going on the rest of the weekend. One of our girl's parents came to visit who live outside of Paris and they made Mexican food for our Saturday night dinner! It was truly amazing! We do not get much of any Mexican food here, so it was a blissful occasion for those of us (particularly me) who have a deep love for Mexican food. During the day, Cara (my co-RA) and I moved couches and comfy chairs outside to set up for an outdoor movie! After our Mexican fiesta, one of the other girls' dorms (Storch) came over to watch Sister Act II on a screen we put up on the side of our shed outside! We served popcorn, hot cocoa, and cookies. It was a seriously awesome time.
On Sunday we went to church and then afterwards stayed in town for a town festival (that's the only word I can think of to describe it). It is called Budenfest and they set it up in the Blumenplatz (kind of like the town center area). Budenfest is pretty much just a bunch of booths selling different types of food. All of the dorms stay in town after church and all of the kids and staff get 5 euros each to buy our own food. It was definitely a fun German experience.
All in all, it was a great weekend! It was also very tiring with all of the activity, but it was well worth it. I have updated my pictures with some of the things I talked about such as the Fall Party and the outdoor movie.

new photos!

I have figured out a way to show my photos on the slideshow on this page! The slideshow you see on the top right titled "Wittlingen" are my pictures from the dorm. This is where I will be updating my photos. If you click on a photo during the slideshow you can look through all the photos yourself.

photos!

Go to this link to see my first photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2007791&id=124400046&l=c6adf7dda7

the first 4 days

I am safe and sound in Germany! I arrived last Monday night and was welcomed by the rest of the resident life staff! It wasn't too long of a trip with the flight from Seattle to London being between 8-9 hours and then from London to Basel being less than 2 hours. God blessed me greatly by not feeling much of any jet lag! I've been able to sleep each night and make it through each day just fine.

It is VERY beautiful here. Kandern is the town where the actual BFA school is and all of us res. life staff have been staying in one dorm in a village called Holzen. We all needed to stay together because Janz Team has English camps for local kids and they have been using the other dorms.

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As I said, I arrived on Monday night and then jumped right into the schedule on Tuesday. The basic schedule for each day this last week was me and the other new staff went to a German class in the morning, came back to the dorm for lunch @ noon, had devotion time with everyone @ 1, driving practice in the afternoon, then dinner altogether back at the dorm. We then had some down time at night. There are 3 other new RA's, but only 2 of which are here yet. The 3'rd is hopefully coming this weekend. We did not know which dorm we were going to be in until Thursday. The Howe's (a couple who are the head of res. life) sat down and got input from the dorm parents on Wednesday night and then they made the official decision on their own. We were told are dorms then at devotion time on Thursday.

My dorm is.....Wittlingen! The dorm name is the same as the village it is in. It is a very nice and small village and a very easy drive from the school. This is a picture of it >
There is one other RA I will be with who is a returner. She isn't here yet, but I have talked to her before. She will be here on Monday. My dorm parents are a great couple from Texas. There names are Brant and Laura. Brant took me on a tour of the dorm on Thursday afternoon while the kids from the camp were gone. We will be moving into our dorms on Tuesday.

It's been a crazy, but awesome week with lots of new experiences. The German language hasn't been too hard to pick up on because the class we took this last week was very helpful. Please continue to pray as I keep practice driving as I had not been an experienced driver of a manual car before here. I am starting to pick it up and find my way around, but it will still take a little more time for me to get it down. Please also pray that my co-RA, Cara, will arrive safely and that we will bond quickly. I already know she is going to be a wonderful coworker and friend because she had gifts waiting for me before she even knew who would be her new co-RA! (She's pretty great!).

Today we have some down time, so the returner RA's are going to take us to a town nearby to spend the day and hang out there. We were going to go on a field trip, but it is rainy today, so the plans have changed. Last Wednesday night we were able to go into Basel, Switzerland to walk around while the dorm parents met here. It is a very cool town and it was neat to walk around it. I haven't taken pictures yet since it's been so busy, but I'm going to start today! So, I will post a link to them once I get them up and running. That's all for now!

leaving Sunday from Seattle!

I have WONDERFUL news! As of this morning, I am officially leaving for Germany! in 5 days!! The Lord provided 80% of my support to be filled and I was able to get a plane ticket out of Seattle for Sunday evening! I leave Seattle @ 6:50 pm and fly straight to London to arrive there Monday morning. I then have a short layover and fly from London right into Basel, Switzerland/Mulhouse, France. It is very nice that I don't have to connect many places and also that I get to fly straight into Basel where I will be picked up rather than having to take a train into there. I was also blessed to be able to fly with British Airways who have wonderful missionary fares and gave a good deal on the flight and best of all...allow a free 3'rd bag!! This makes packing a lot less worrisome.
I am also grateful that I get to be home 1 more weekend and get to say goodbye to my church family on Sunday. Since I don't fly out until the evening, I am going to church Sunday morning and then my parents will drive me up to Seattle right afterwards. It all worked out wonderfully! Of course it did, God DOES know what He's doing ; )
It's been amazing to see God work through this whole process. I was tested with faith to stay strong and believe He was going to get me there on time and it feels wonderful to have that faith pay off and come true.
Please be praying for my travel, packing, and adjusting to life "across the pond". Also, please pray for the relationships and new friendships that I will be making over there. Thank you to all of you for your prayers and support!

2 weeks until training!

Hi everyone! I am now 2 weeks away from leaving for Minneapolis for candidate training with other new Janz Team members. I will be leaving on June 13 and coming back on June 20. I was actually able to get plane tickets out of Pasco for just as much as flying out of Spokane. I was particularly happy for that since I will need to drive myself to the airport and since it is an early morning flight. My flight back also worked well because it will be a nonstop and it doesn't leave until later in the day. Janz Team told us ahead of time that if we want to visit the Mall of America, we could try to get a later flight on June 20 so that we can go to the mall first. So, now I get to go to that too! I am very excited to go to training and meet the other new members with some of those also going to be going to BFA. I have a few things I need to do and prepare before I go, but it's not too much.
I have been working throughout the month of May at a job I did last summer when I was home too. It has been going very well and I have been able to get many more hours than I expected to which is such a blessing (especially when it comes to paycheck time). I have also been able to spend some time with family including going to my favorite camping spot over Memorial day weekend at a place at the foot of Mt. Adams.
I am also excited to be able to go to a roommate's (from college) wedding in mid-July. The only thing that messes with the excitement for that, is that it also means I will be leaving for Germany very soon after that. Which is of course a very exciting thing, but also a little sad with leaving family and friends. It certainly helps knowing I have a friend from college who has already been an RA at BFA for a year and will be there when I am there.
As for a support update, all of my start-up costs have been covered through one-time donations! What that means for any new one-time donations that come in is that they will be divided among the 23 months I will be serving to go towards the amount I need for monthly support. I am also now up to $760 pledged per month! Which puts me at about 42%. I will need 80% to actually leave for Germany, so please pray with me and have faith with me that the rest will come in soon. It has been amazing, especially the last couple of weeks, to see that amount come in. God has been pushing me to just have faith (not just say it, but have it) that He will bring in the needed amount. I have also been encouraged through readings in my devotional. One, in particular, was talking about having such faith that God will come through, to thank Him now for what He will bring later. That has been a big change in my thinking. Another thing that has been an encouragement is when someone reminded me that God has known for a long time that He had this in His plan for my life, long before I ever knew. Remembering that helps me to know that He knew He would have me serve at BFA which means He also knew that He would bring in the funds needed so that I could go where He calls me.

The Beginning

Welcome to my new blog! I wanted to make this blog so those of you who are praying for and thinking of me as I prepare to go and once I am in Germany can keep updated one how things are going. I was able to briefly talk in church yesterday morning and it seemed to go very well. I also had a table set out in the back with prayer cards and BFA brochures and things. I was able to talk to people before and afterwards about what I will be doing and got a very encouraging response. I had 24 people sign-up to be prayer partners for me already! That was very exciting. Please pray that God will move in people's hearts to give to Him through this opportunity and that I will be able to continue to talk to more people about where God has planned for me to serve. I will continue to update you on how my support raising is going and how my preparations are coming along. Thank you for your prayers and support!