Thoughts on Vision in Visionland this Summer....

This weekend was all about vision. And white water rafting. To say that I didn't have fun would be a lie. I had so much fun, considering I have never been white water rafting before. However, rather than write a blog dedicated to the fun that I had, I find myself thinking over vision more.

What vision is God giving me? I know that my passion lies with women and teaching them that their worth lies in God alone. But what is the next step? I love to write, I love to read, and I love to feel that the words God gives to me, speaks to the hearts of the people that I am talking to. But how do I take that, and live it out? Am I sure that is God's vision for me? What am I doing here on this earth if I am not carrying out God's vision for me? What am I doing right now if I'm not seeking out what that vision is? I'm wasting time. And since I am a slave to Christ, it's not my time to waste. When I surrendered, I took on the will of the Master, and His will involves vision. To not be seeking the will that He has for me, is to disobey the will of the Master.

una noche del rio (a night by the river)

basking in Your glory

i close my eyes to the

wonders of Your

creation.

roaring rivers

of rapturous rapids

race past my window

tracing the toes of

marvelous mountains

that touch the sky.

the Heavens abound

in starlight

perfect ambiance

to the sleepy, silhouetted

earth made of Your hands.

i am in awe of

the God who

whispers breezes

who created green

and blue

the world explodes

in song

of Your magnitude

they speak of the

God

whose essence

pours on this earth

like a waterfall

whose beauty sways

like a coursing river

whose might stands taller

than the mountains

Your beauty and imagination

echos,

resounds...

i breathe it in

feeling my chest expand

with Your creation

i close my eyes

and let Your breeze

kiss my face

within my rapt

silence.

No Fuego Aqui

Last night was my dinner challenge for the internship. And considering that the stove did not catch on fire or blow up, I considered the challenge throughly accomplished. However, God has a higher standard of attainment and for that, I concede that our evening was quite perfect, if I am allowed to make the assumption that near perfection is obtainable.

As for problems, the biggest ones we had were the cake stuck to the bottom of the pan (to which the solution was to spoon it out onto the plate and cover it with a nice swirl of whipped cream) and we were ignorant in how to make coffee, which may have cost us some since coffee is equivalent to manna in this country. But since God was in control, our dinner was fantastic. Our first quest, Carolina and her mother showed up only 45 minutes late, on the standard of Dominican time, I thought they were quite early. On a side-note, one of the biggest difficulties that I have with the Dominican culture is the time difference. And it comes from their attitude versus our attitude. I for one, love their laid-back attitude, but it does play havoc with my internal United Statian way of upbringing. I simply need to be more flexible. But nonetheless, we ate our dinner of spaghetti and salad minus two guests. But it was fun. Carolina and her mother were so sweet and it made for a nice dinner. When we had finished, we went to take a piece of cake to our gate keeper, and when we reached the bottom of the steps that lead to the street, who should be coming up our walk, but one of our missing guests plus two friends.

So back up we went, taking Carlos, his sister Jacyln, and their cousin Moises. Our food was cold, our salad... a little wilted, but we sat the three of them on the couch and filled their hands with a plate of cake and a fork. About this time, the rest of our group decided to come back to the apartment. But it worked to our advantage because entertaining became a group thing. Our group had icebreaker questions which we posed to our Dominican brethren, and they in turn had a few questions for us. Conversations about what superhero powers we wanted, our greatest fears, embarrassments, weird things we had seen floated back and forth across the room in excited and loud spanish and english. It became an evening of bonding and breaking barriers as spanglish became our official language.

We praise God for a good dinner challenge. We praise God that we still have a stove. We praise God for good fellowship. And we praise God for San Pedro.

Dios te bendiga

San Pedro Update

I don't really have anything to write at this moment. We're in the planning stages of all our ministries such as English camp and our outreaches.

For outreach, my group has the college campus, the beautifully landscaped USE. I am really excited to have the opporutunity to be able to minister to the college students, since its what I do back in the states. We have been asked to plan a Bible study on the campus, which makes me even more happy. I keep thinking that our girl's study back at Lewis has now been going for a year. Its grown and dwindled, but as a group we've grown closer to God and to each other. We've become each other's support and accountability which is something one needs during their college years. And thinking about the girl's Bible study back home makes me even more excited about the one we're going to start on the USE campus. We meant to visit it the other day, but it was closed. I am hoping that within the next day or two we can go and visit and do a Prayer walk through it.

Tonight is the dinner challenge for my group and my biggest prayer is for the stove not to blow up. I know I have left the door wide open for an entire array of other problems to arise, but I think that I could handle those. A stove catching fire/blowing up will send me over the end. Period. So in a few famous last words: tonight should be interesting.