What a Good Day Off

Almost every Tuesday I have chosen to go into town, whether is be to Rungai, Galleria, or the Animal Orphanage. Those have been fun, but today I chose to stay here on campus and boy was it nice. I got chocolate cookies made for Pastor Kent's birthday. Got the apartment cleaned (which needed it oh so badly, including cat box). Watched Sahara while cleaning and The Kite Runner well, while not cleaning. Had a good work out (Insanity is insane! hehe) and finished the night by having Kenyan tea (which I haven't had since Egypt, go figure) while watching Madagascar 2 with Tyson and Jess. Yes, good day.

Tonight while I was writing in my prayer journal and doing some reading I found 2 verses that I think are really great and relate to us here at Maxwell, and myself, well.

"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." ~1st Corinthians 15:58

and...

"Do everything in love." ~ 1st Corinthians 16:14

 The first verse was just really encouraging. I've started counting down the days here at Maxwell. Not because I want to leave but, well its just a habit of mine. And granted knowing that graduation isn't far away helps remind me of what I still need to do here. Sometimes it's easy for me to just be like, oh well, there's always another day. But there aren't many more of those other days. I need to do the work that God has for me NOW. I don't know...I just liked it.

The second one was just a good reminder. It's hard sometimes to love these girls when they are rude to you. It's hard to love the people we work with when they don't do things the way we think they should be done. It's hard to love when, well, sometimes we just don't want to. 

I've started praying a lot more the last couple of weeks. And not just requests but just talkin with Him. Not just praying for myself but for others. Even for some people that most think I wouldn't need too. But ya know what, there's power in prayer. I'm starting to see that a lot clearer than I use to. It makes me wonder what would happen if I actually started praying for Bill. I don't know how I would start. Honestly I don't know how my heart would take it. But who knows, I mean what could it hurt? 

The thing that I find so amazing and cool is that I have such peace after I pray for someone or about something. I mean I just have this feeling that ya know what, Gods gonna take care of it. And He's gonna take better care of the situation than I ever could. 

Ya know why?

Cause He's awesome like that :)

God is Good

Things have changed quite a lot since my last 2 posts. When I wrote those I was feeling done, finished, and worn out. But God always has good timing. Last week was Week of Prayer and Nadine Nelson came from Union. I had met her when I looked at Andrews when she was still working there. She's a very helpful, fun lady, who I thought was so cool cause she's from South Africa and had a cool accent. The week was about facing our Goliaths, and boy, did she hit home with a lot of things. Not only with me but with the students as well. Almost every night she would ask them "is there a friend you need to talk to?" "do you need to go apologize to a dean?" I never knew that God was going to touch some of my girls hearts the way that He did. We went to Brakenhurst for the weekend where we ended the Week of Prayer. On Friday night we had foot washing and talked about how we may need to be humble with someone people and ask for forgiveness. I never thought that this would happen, but one of my girls did just that. She apologized for the way that she has treated me, and told me that she wanted/ needed to tell me this before it built up to much to where she couldn't. Ive very proud of that young lady. I know that God is really reaching for her heart. Of course she and I aren't buddy buddy I think both of us feel more comfortable around each other, an well if she doesn't I sure do. I had two other girls on Sabbath write me letters through an activity that we did for Sabbath school. One was another apology telling me how she's like for us to be friends. The other one was saying thank you for being their for her (and this came from the girl that had be balling my eyes to the Raymonds.) Since coming back from spiritual retreat to me, it feels the McKee Hall has stopped holding it's breathe and has breathed a sigh of relief. Of course there are still things going on; there will always be drama in a girls dorm. But some how there's a peace that is here.
I feel like God has really helped me tackle some serious Goliaths through this. One, I really needed to hear those apologizes and thank yous. He knew that I was getting warn down, and He knows that I hate the feeling of not accomplishing anything. Thanks to those comments, I now feel like I really am making a difference here. Secondly, I found out Jared is dating someone. I'm glad. And I pray that both of them are happy, and that she can help him find where God wants him to be as well as bringing him closer to God. Was it a shock? In a little way yes. It's always weird seeing someone you dated with someone else. But it's all good :)
And thirdly, I think some of my walls have come down. Darren has been telling me that I have walls, that I don't really let people in. And yea, I do have them. It was a defense mechanism that I started using when things went wrong with my family. I thought I had gotten over it, but in some ways especially when people are trying to get to know me...well they come up. But ya know what? I'm  ready for a new start. I'm ready for a better walk with God. I'm ready for a better outlook on Andrews. I'm ready for good and new relationships.
Since I've come to Kenya I've been waiting for God to show up, and ya know what?...I think He finally has :)

Animals, animals, Jesus made the animals :)

So just a recap on all the animals I have  encountered since being in Africa.

1. Petting a giraffe

2. Holding a crocodile & tortuous at Momba Village

3. Feeding monkeys (Vervets and Sykes)

4. Petting cheetahs

5. Riding a camel

6. Riding horses (on the beach)

7. Meeting my friend the water buffalo Buchanan 

8. Being bombarded by baboons

9. Petting a baby elephant

10. And as of yesterday...holding a lion cub!!!

:-D

So Much

I'm realizing that one of the main times when I blog is when things have been tough...and I need to change that. Even though I will talk about this weekend (not so hot) before I do that I think I should say how amazing Mt. Kenya was. It was our long weekend which we left on Friday and didn't come back till Tuesday. I'm discovering too that I LOVE camping. I want to do it more when I get back to the states. But besides that, yes it was a lot of fun. Being only with a few students, two of whom were my girls Jo and Joy (yez zer), petting/ feeding Syke monkeys (AMAZING!), and of course climbing a mountain. NO: I didn't climb to the peak, after having mountain sickness since the night before my body was done and decided that climbing to a good spot to see the sunrise was good enough for me.
When we got back though we were hit with hard new. The Mpiima family suffered the loss of there newborn child Lucy at 32 days old. We had the funeral on Wednesday, which the whole school attended, which I was very proud of them for. It was my first funeral of a child and it hit me...hard. It was really bad. And from there things seemed to spiral down.
Since I have been here calling home has mainly been to let them know I'm alive. But on Thursday I needed my Mom. We talked for an hour of everything that was going on from the funeral, to Darren, other things, about the girls in the dorm. It helped. Until the next day.
Things with the girls have been getting out of control. Once again I am hearing that I don't respect them and that I have not authority or right to tell/ ask them to do anything. Sad to say...it's getting to me. I don't like being walked on, I hate it! But here I feel like there is nothing I can do to stop it. You may say well, sure you can, where's the dean? What about the principle?....I guess all I can say in that is I wish things were different in the discipline side of things here. I was so upset about it all that I didn't eat for two days. Just didn't want to. And then Friday happens.
I have another girl who tells me that she will not do what I ask her to do, and tells me that Jesus and church are more important so she stalks out to vespers. I left the dorm around 10:45 that night and was over with Yani and Derek till after midnight balling my eyes out. (I'm very thankful to them, don't know what I'd do without them)
Sabbath was better after letting some of it out, but for the most part I had just turned everything off. It's not hard for me to be an introvert. It's my protection mechanism. Saturday night was fun. The girls club has been doing secret sister all week and that night Winta, Cynthia, Bri and I were putting food together for brunch the next day and hanging out in the office. Lets just say, they were rolling on the floor laughing and I now have two pairs of jeans that have wholes in the butt.
With the brunch and everything going on, I shut down. I did as I was asked, I helped the girls when they needed me, I was where I was suppose to be. Other wise I wasn't there (mentally) I was so mad at the girls. We had been up since 6:30 cooking for them and they are complaining and being so ungrateful. Must be nice to be raised with a silver spoon in your mouth. It's to the point where I just want to be home. I mean I don't want to be home, I just don't want to be a assistant girls dean. It's hard and painful. I don't know how Susan can do it. I guess like Derek said, I just haven't found a way to deal with it.
There's many things that have been on my mind this week. Soo much. Feeling like I've lost a friend (or at least messing things up majorly) to wanting to give up, realizing that it's really time to let go even though it still makes me cry a little. But as I sit here now the big thing that's on my mind is a question that was presented to me twice this week: Where do you want to be in your life?
The first time I aswered I was told it was very generic. Granted that was my answer, and yes also I didn't want to tell something so personal. It takes me a long time to let people in cause once I do, I plan on them sticking around for a long long time. But I've had many who haven't and I'm not ready to cry myself to sleep at night like that again.
It is a good question to ask, and hopefully I'll have an answer one day. But like I told Kent and Susan, " How can I think about twenty years from now, when I'm just trying to make it through today?"
God tells us to not worry about the future for the future has enough worries of it's own. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo.I'm still looking over my shoulder at my past, with my feet in the present but my hand on the door knob of the future. I can say I'm getting better with my past. It still hurts. I can't help but think that something good can happen twice, but I know it can. As a friend pointed out, hopefully I won't put up so many walls that I miss it.