My year in review

Dear Everyone,

     With the chaos and craziness of summer schedule, I have really struggled to stay up to date with my blog, and I've realized that in the next couple of weeks, it's only going to get HARDER to stay up to date, so I figured that now would be a good stopping point. This blog has taught me so much during my year of transition, mainly it's taught me that there really IS always a silver lining. If you look back on days like the day I didn't make it into Wheaton, you can see just how fast people gathered around me, and loved me, and it has taught me so much about what it means to have a thankful heart. Secondly, it has given me a way to keep friends back home in the loop, I have heard over this year from so many different people how they love reading and seeing pictures of our new life here in NC. This blog was an incredible blessing for me, though if I'm being honest, I will say there were days where I did NOT want to sit and write about how my day was. I am so glad that God used my friend Kady, who first inspired me to do this, and put it on my heart to carry it out much longer than a month. I look around at my "new" life now, and I can see how God has provided for our family in so many awesome and unique and special ways. Take Adrienne for example, Adrienne is the ONLY person I know here outside of my family who understands the struggle of NOT having Tate's Ice Cream on a humid summer night downtown, so when I'm missing home, I go to her. If I'm confused, and I'm looking for direction as to where to go from here, I turn to Katie, the ultimate planner and most organized person I know. When I'm having a crap awful day, and I just need an extra hug and someone to listen to me rant, I go to Patricia. Lastly, when I need someone to just laugh and be goofy with, I go to Jae or Cassie. Each of the people that I have met here and truly gotten to know and love serve a different role for me in my beautiful mess called life, but like a magnificent puzzle, when all the pieces come together, they make something beautiful. Whether they are a corner piece, a side piece, or a middle piece, the puzzle wouldn't be the same without them. 

     Moving forward this summer, lots is going on with me, my friends, and my church, and we are in need of prayer for many things. Next week starts our annual Lenoir Area Missions Project(or LAMP for short) that is a collaboration of middle schoolers from churches all around Lenoir that spend the week together serving their community. I pray that God would give me strength and endurance and patience to work with these students all day every day, especially when the exhaustion and frustration begins to kick in. I pray that God would use me to break through and speak to at least one of these students, I pray that the joy that I find in Jesus shines for these kids. I pray for Adrienne, as she preps for LAMP, VBS(the following week), and the high school trip to Costa Rica in mid-July. I pray that you would give her peace of heart and of mind as she plans for these massive trips and projects, I pray that you would show her just how amazing she is at her job, and remind her of how much her students love her. I pray that I will continue to find peace and joy enough to battle each wave of grief and homesickness that comes this summer. Lastly, I pray for the church. Many of you don't know, but our church is in the midst of leaving the presbytery. I pray that even during this time of transition and uncertainty that we would continue to be a blessing to the community. I pray that the people in Lenoir would know, we are not bible-bangers, we're not southern baptists who will make you uncomfortable, we are not better or worse than you, we are PEOPLE who genuinely want to love and serve other people. We are people who have a heart to share the good news with other people, but we are ordinary people just like you. I would so appreciate you joining me in prayer for these things, I know it's a LOT of things to pray for.

     This coming year, I DO plan to create a new blog, though I probably won't be posting on there NEARLY as often as I have posted here. I will be taking classes at the Caldwell Community College, which means I very well might share classes with Cassie or Katie, or both, and I am very excited about that. I want to thank each and everyone of you who have read this blog, or lifted my family and I up in prayer, or sent letters, or talked on the phone, or video chatted, or even just texted, it means SO much to me that I have many back home who will always love and support me, no matter how far away I may be. This year has had it's ups and downs, good days, and bad days, laughter and tears, and trials and triumphs, but in the end, I have come out of this year a better, stronger, happier, more confident, and more independent person because of it all. "I can do all things, through Christ who gives me strength."(Philippians 4:13)

God bless!
<3 Always,
Rose