The New Year rang in....

Wow! 2009.
It has come in a flash.
Leaving the country really threw off the whole Christmas season and end of the year for me. The semester started and ended and began the new year before I knew it.
So much has happened in the year that I cannot even begin to write about it all. The year of 2008 has been full of ups and downs, and fortunately I believe majority of it has been ups :)
I have enjoyed time with family and friends. I was able to serve the Lord all summer at a summer camp being a counselor. I was able to have fun goofing of with kids and playing games with them but also helping lead them in their spiritual life and even having the amazing privilege to lead a few to the Lord. I then had the awesome opportunity to try to serve my tennis team girls as chaplain this past semester. I have been able to grow closer to the Lord, closer to some friends, and make some new ones! People are so very important to me; life would be so much less enjoyable without all the lovely people in my life! Then Jeffrey Howard came into my life, and that was a wonderful, unexpected addition to my year! Just a couple weeks ago I was able to again have an amazing opportunity to serve the Lord over in Africa. I felt called to be a part of reaching the Nations....a nation that was not my own....somewhere out of my comfort zone where I could be stretched....somewhere when God moved I could not give myself credit because I was so inadequate to have done something like that. On that trip I was able to meet so many amazing Africans and hopefully encourage many of the Christians there. One of the many blessings of the trip was being able to baptize a 15 yr old boy that is HIV+.....knowing I was a part of symbolizing that sickness, sin, death, disease.....nothing was going to be separating this adolescent from eternity with our Lord where he would feel no more pain, have no more sorrow from dead parents, and wouldn't have to be constrained to a damaged body one day!
Our God is amazing, and I thank Him for stirring up my heart and head when I begin to neglect Him. He is the most important thing in my life, and I need to show it.
I hope 2009 is full of me growing closer to my Savior and having him be the center of my school, my activities, my thoughts, my motivations, and my relationships!