Tacoma!

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't been the best about updating what I've been up to. I have been home for a couple months now, I am living with Cailyn, Nathan, and Jane Aune, and loving it! I cannot believe the things the Lord has allowed me to do. I often wonder how He can top going on my mission trip. I think back and can't believe the things I got to experience and the people I met, the friends I made. I am currently working at Starbuck's saving up some money. My goal at this point is to save up some money for school! I decided I would like to pursue a career in massage therapy, but do not want to have a lot of debt. Being back has been so much fun! It does come with it's challenges, but it's home. I have no current plans of going back out on the mission field, but would love to sometime in the near future(one of the reason why I don't want school loans). I am so thankful for where I'm at, I am growing and changing and figuring out who I am, and who I want to be. Thank you so much for all your support! love you!

I/M HOME!

I arrived back in the U.S. last saturday, but had a week of debrief, and then got back to tacoma yesterday evening! It is so good to be home, I am getting settled, setting up my room and seeing friends and family. I will start work June 10th and will just be hanging out until then. I had so much fun and learned so much on outreach, I will be writing again soon with some more detail. I love you all and can't wait to see you!

one more day in thailand!

I cannot beleive out-reach is over! ahhhh!! i have had so much fun! thailand is beautiful! ministry looked a alot different here than it did in india, it was a lot more laid back. we did a alot of shows, where we would do music,dance,and drama, it was a lot of fun. we taught a few english camps, went to a couple villages. we are currently in bangkok, the team leaders wanted to bless us so they got us a hotel to stay in for a night! hot showers and beds!!!! we will be leaving tomarrow our flight is technically saturday morning at 1:30 a.m., we will fly into korea and have a 12 hr layover, and then a flying to seattle and having a 9 gr layover, and then a short flight to montana! we will get into montana at 2a.m. so all together i think we will be traving for 40hrs! i am really excited to go home, but i will miss traveling and miss being with my team! it will be weird going from sharing a twin bed with claire and never having alone time to having my own room and my own life....whoa! i am excited to see you all and love you so much!

thailand!

our team is loving it here, it has been a great week of both hard work and rest. we have put together a couple of english camps, its an 8 hour long camp and goes on for two days, we play games, teach english, perform drama's and dances for them, and just have fun and hang out. we are staying in a house in a small gated community, there is a pool down the road, and a place that sells bubble tea all hours of the day, pretty close to what i would think heaven is like. The tempature is a bit hotter here i would say in between 100 to 120, but less humidity, its nice. we all love the food, some is very spicy, but you suck it up and eat it anyways. My favorite is probably som tom(not sure if spelling is correct) its papaya salad, it has papaya, peanuts, cucumber, carrots, and its spicy! We flew into bangkok and stayed there for a few days, i absolutely love bangkok! i would love to go back and see more of the city! we stayed at the ywam base(first place we have stayed with ac) it was fun to get to know them and learn about the different ministries they have there, we met a fellow ywam montana guy, he was just on the last DTS before us and his outreach was in thailand and he decided he wasnt going back to america for 5 years! he's goig to stay in thailand and head up a ministry that goes out and talks to foreigners who come there for the red light district, he's only 20yers old. pretty cool! we are now in rachenburi, more of the country. it is beautiful! everything you would imagine, green, peaceful, big stretches of land, crops, i love it! so all in all life is good! tomarrow is our day off, so we will go to the floating market(its all on water, and you have to take a boat everywhere) we will also be riding elephants, seeing bat caves, a trip out to the coast, and some shopping, big day, but it will be fun! tuesday we will be on our way to sufanburi for two weeks and then we are done. crazy! love you all and i will try and write soon! thank you for your prayers and support!

i made it!

we are officially dont in india, we had an amazing last few days, and left feeling like we did what the Lord asked of us. we got to spend the last day at a water park! it was the most refreshing thing of my whole entire life! we are here in thailand and it is beautiful and the food is amazing! i may gain a few lbs here. hope all is well at home! love you!

bodh gaya!

whoa! what a week we had! bodh gaya was amazing! we have only seen the cities in inda, which are cool, but seeing the country made me realize how beatitul india is. we took a ten hour train ride to get there, which i can, with all confidence say that it was the scariest time of my whole entire life, its like being in prison, but worse because you put yourself there. we arrived wedesday morning and took a tour of the city, it is where buddah was enlightened so its a pretty big deal. there are a alot of temples and the biggest statue of buddah i have ever seen. they took us to where we were staying which was amazing! it was a guest house with small room, we only had two to a room. which may not seem like a big deal, but when you have had six roomates and one bathroom for a month your appritiate the small things. i roomed with claire, it was so refreshing, she is probably one of my favorite people in this world(which i believe accounts for more now that i have been in a different country). during the days we were able to rest, which was just what we needed considering we have all been sick for awhile(p.s. we are all doing a lot better, we are all at least able to eat) then at night we would go into differnt villages and share with them about Jesus and what He has done in our lives. it was the first time i had ever used a translator in front of a large crowd. the places we were going the villagers had never seen white people before, that was kinda cool! the response was great,many people got saved and we were able to hang out and play with kids. they would always make us dinner afterwards, the cool thing to do was to eat on rooftops, which is always fun and exciting! real indian food made by villagers, kinda sketchy, we just didnt ask any questions about what we were eating...its better that way, both for our politness and our emotional stability. so all in all the week was amazing! however we did end with a very interesting train experience. so just a tiny background about indian culture and the way things work here, there is not rhyme or reason to how things work here, people just seem to go with the flow and whatever happens happens and nothing is completely dependable. something else to keep in mind, peoples lives are not very valuable here like they are in america. so we arrive at the train station at 9 p.m. our train does not get there until 9:50 so we wait patiently. the train is late, however this is not unusual here so there is no announcment as to when it will be there or why it is not on time. my friend(who will remain nameless) lays her head on my lap to rest because she has taken a sleeping pill to lessen the pain of the ten hour train ride that awaits us. i notice there is a bug in her hair so i got to pick it our and notice about five others. come to find out about half our team(including me) has lice! this is our life...lol. the excitement doesnt stop there, the train arrives an hour and a half late, something else you should know is that they dont stop for long and will not wait, we cant find where we are sopposed to be and we are trying to get there before the train takes off. the train starts moving. twenty white people including four kids take off running, we get split up and have to jump on a moving train with all of our luggage! we have no idea who has made it and where everyone is, most dont speak english..awkward. our friend mackenzie to the rescue, she and three others managed to find our car, she spots an emergency alarm and pulls it, the train stops long enough for us to jump off and run to our spot! crazy! no one got left behind and there were only a few cryers. so we've got lice and crazy trains! what next? so we settle ourselves down get out our beds and try to rest peacefully with the rats and cockroaches only inches away while there are a plethra of indian people staring at us. we finally get to sleep and we hear a scream, all of us jump out of our beds and run to find out what happened, at this point we are thinking the worst. come to find out kortney a girl on our team had a man reach in the window and take her purse with her passport in it! we prayed and asked the Lord for peace, we could not change our circumstances but knew we would need a miracle both so we didnt go crazy on the train and also because we were leaving for thailand in a couple days and did not want to leave her and another team memeber here in india until she could get another passport. the rest of the train ride was ok, we did not sleep too well, but we all made it safely. it was one of the most challenging parts of our trip, i needed the Lord to be very real in those moments because there were circumstances that i so desperately wanted out of, but could not, i needed the Lord's peace and for Him to change my heart towards the situations we found ourselves in. He was faithful and showed me how He is in control and that He will always have the victory, kortney got her passport the next day from the ambassy and we have all emotionally recovered, and we are in the process of getting rid of the lice. whew! we are back in kolkata now and will be leaving for thailand tomarrow morning! i am so excited for what the Lord will do in and through us! p.s. i rode a mechanical bull today! i love you all! thank you for all your prayers!

india is coming to a close..

i cant believe our time is already coming to a close, we have about a week left before we fly out to thailand. tomarrow we will be taking a ten hour train ride to a place called bodh guya(still in india). we are not exactly sure what we will be doing, but then after about a week we will come back to kolkatta for two days and then head out to thailand. it has been an amazing process here in indian, i think back on the past three weeks and cannot actually believe i was here living in a country so different from our own and learned not only how to survive it, but how to love it. we would wake up to breakfast already prepared for us, in consisted of toast, porridge, a banana, and tea, we liked this because it was the only consistent thing in our life(other than the Lord). then we would head off to our different ministries, we worked in a couple different mother theresa homes, kings kids, life connections, and us dancer were able to teach some dance classes at night. my favorite by far was teaching the dance classes, it was a little challenging because all four of us were sick, but it was worth it. the little girls we taught were so precious and the older ones we were able to build a relationship with. who knew i would ever have friend in India!?! i also really enjoyed kinds kids, they took about 30 homeless kids off the street and fed them, bathed them, and taught them about Jesus, it was so much fun to hang out with them and give them the love they don't receive from their parents, it is not uncommon in india for a child to be on their own at a young age. the transportation here is insanity! we had to figure out how to get around, the most common are taxi's and rickshaws, but we also figured out how to take buses and the subways system. there arent really any laws here for the streets so you really have to watch out because its easy to get hit, and sometimes its even scarier to be in a vehicle because the driver has no fear. the food here is great, we had to lay off for awhile because we were all getting sick, you have to be careful of where and what you eat, for exaample, they dont refrigerate dairy here..so dont eat or drink anything having to do with dairy! we learned a lot the hard way, but we learned fast. we were responsible for our own lunch and dinner, we would get an allowance and figure out life on our own, i think its a great method because we learned to get around all of kolkatta by ourselves. we have made a lot of friends here, its amazing how fast a group of white people draw a crowd and they are perfectly happy to sit and stare for long periods of time, we took advantage of that and built friendships. the Lord is teaching me a lot about how its not always about doing, but just loving those who you come into contact with. this culture does not teach love, they are hindi and hinduism is big on only taking care of your own and not helping others, they beleive it interferes with kharma and reincarnation, it draws a huge crowd when we stop to talk to beggars or street children, its kinda fun. it has been a challenging month or so, but it is worth it and i have forever been changed by what i have seen here, it has caused me to appreciate what i have at home. i love and miss you all! thank you for your prayers and support!