Girls Night

So, once I returned from Moldova, there hasn't been much time for me to blog. I spent most of my time at work until my deadline passed. I did get a chance to see Mandy and Co a couple weeks ago for Jered's ceremony. Please see her blog for an update on that...lol.

Tonight, a few friends and I went to dinner. I took my camera in hopes to share a few pictures of the girls that have been blessing my life recently. Here are a few photos from our dinner.

THE GROUP


THE ASHes


KIKI and ME


MEGGO, ASHLEY and ME

TWINS


TWIN SANDWICH


VICKI and ME


ASHLEY AND ME


CRENSHAW SANDWICH


GIRLS JUST HANGING OUT

Moldovan Royalty

On Saturday, July 31st, we got to go shopping downtown. When we were done shopping, we got some ice cream and walked around downtown. We ended up in this park that had a booth for dressing up and taking photos. Here is what my group ended up looking like...

Pictures Coming Soon...

Ok, I have had a lot of requests for photos from Moldova. I don't have as many as I wish, and I don't feel like it tells a complete story, but I will try to post what I have tonight. I look forward to getting a better selection of photos to put together more of a story of my experience, so keep an eye out for this too. Hope everyone is doing well!

Also, I added a new blog on my Buddies. Bethany is the photography intern in Moldova, so her blog is definitely worth checking out!

Moldova Update

Hey All!!

I am here in Moldova getting ready to head to bed before church tomorrow. We are going to enjoy our last day here and leave on a plane at 2am tomorrow night. I just wanted to give yall a quick update on the amazing things that the Lord has done while we have been here this week.

The camp went extremely well for us. We had more and more kids show up each day to play sports and see us act completely ridiculous in American Club. I have been completely amazed by the ways the Lord has used me this week. My first experiences in evangelizing have blown me away. I was so nervous about it being that I have never done it before. God definitely has shown me that he is capable of using anyone for his purpose, even if you are unprepared or unskilled. Thru the help of the wonderful translators here in Moldova, I learned how to transition from sharing food to sharing spiritual food to the elderly here. We visited the poor elderly residents in the nearby apartments and used the opportunity to share Christ. After a couple of visits to the apartments, I was blessed to experience sharing my testimony and the Gospel with a lady in her home, and she asked me to lead her in a prayer to receive Christ. I can not express how moving it is to see a sister in Christ joining our family.

As for the work that God has done with the youth here, I don't know that I can express what wonders he has accomplished. I have developed so many wonderful friendships, and I am surprised and amazed at how much I have connected to the teens here. As some of you know, I spent some time creating a little photo album of family pictures. I thought that this book would be more for me remembering home than anything, but God had other plans. This book ended up being a tool for me to share my life and testimony to the teenagers. God has blessed me with a way to really connect with some of these kids... a lot of it was thru them laughing at my crazy silliness... rofl. We had a lot of fun just hanging out and playing badmittion and volleyball.

After our last American Club day, we had a chance to share more with the teenagers in small groups. The Lord laid it on my heart to share my testimony at this time, and it was awesome to see their interest light up and ask questions about Christ. Two of the teens over the next two days sought a private conversation to ask me more about my faith, Christ and what it is to be a Christian. I feel so undeserving and extremely blessed to have developed a closer relationship with these two kids. Thru our talks, these two amazing young individuals went from curious to excited about Christ... and they asked Jesus into their heart. There are not words to express the amount of love and spirit God surrounded us in these conversations. I don't think that these paragraphs can even begin to cover the amazing things God has done while I have been here, but I hope it at least gives you an idea of how much the Spirit is moving here in Moldova. Thanks again for your prayers and I will see you back in the States soon!! :o)

Lemonade Stand Award goes to…

Melanie gave me a blog award: The Lemonade Stand Award! All I have to do is answer the following questions with a single word answer and then pass this along to five bloggers. Here are my answers!

1. Your Cell Phone? Hero

2. Your Hair? Shorter

3. Your Mother? Loving

4. Your Father? Caring

5. Your Favorite Food? Pizza

6. Your Dream Last Night? Nice

7. Your Favorite Drink? Rootbeer

8. Your Dream/Goal? Heaven

9. What Room Are You In? Office

10. Your Hobby? Church

11. Your Fear? Dissapointment

12. Where Do You Want To Be In Six Years? Settled

13. Where Were You Last Night? House

14. Something That You Aren’t? Tall

15. Muffins? Love

16. Wish List Item? Vacation

17. Where Did You Grow Up? Corpus

18. Last Thing You Did? Email

19. What Are You Wearing? Tank

20. Your TV? Awesome

21. Your Pets? Nervous

22. Friends? Amazing

23. Your Life? Happy

24. Your Mood? Excited

25. Missing Someone? Mandy

26. Vehicle? CRV

27. Something You Aren’t Wearing? Hat

28. Your Favorite Store? ATL

29. Your Favorite Color? Green?

30. When Was The Last Time You Laughed? 2pm

31. Last Time You Cried? February

32. Your Best Friend? Mandy

33. One Place You Go To Over And Over Again? Work

34. Facebook? Enjoyable

35. Favorite Place To Eat? Chuys


Lemonade Stand Award goes to…

Mandy

Becky

Tiffany

Annie

Karen

and Mom, I know you would enjoy this one, so you can email me your answers! :o)

My Visit to VA Beach to see AMY!!

This past weekend, I had the absolute pleasure of visiting my dear friend Amy in Virginia. She picked me up at the airport around lunchtime Thursday, and that is when all the fun started. Once we ate lunch and I got settled in, we started working on a puzzle! This is why I love hanging out with Amy... we can have fun doing just about anything. Before we knew it, it was dinner time. We went out to one of Amy's favorite places on the water called Chicks. They had wonderful seafood! We got souviner tshirts too. After hanging out there for a while, we ventured over to Amy's PT job and played some pool. That night we started our three day slumber party. We spent the night in the entertainment room watching movies! It was so much fun!!

The next day we headed to the beach for a while, and of course worked on the puzzle some more. :o) After we cleaned up from the beach, we got all dressed up and went to a nice restureant on the boardwalk. It was goregeous! We had a lot of fun until I got cold...lol. Then began night two of falling alseep to movies!!

Saturday was our busiest day. We got to go to this private WWII airshow! I had a blast seeing all the classic planes take off and fly around. They had all these different areas set up like the different branches of the military from back then. My two favorite planes were the P-40 Warhawk (painted like a shark... so cool!!) and the P-51 Mustang (Cadillac of the Sky!!). There was also music playing from that era, which was delightful to sit and enjoy like they did back in the day. After the airshow, we spent the evening watching more movies and having a mini spa treatment. What a fun day!!

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time on Sunday to finish the puzzle... in fact I even left the border unfinished. Amy promised to keep me apprised of the progess on the puzzle. I will have to post a photo when it finally gets completed. All in all, it was a wonderful little vacation! I am so glad I got to spend some time with Amy! :o)

Great Weekend!!

This past weekend was amazing!!

My parents came up on Friday night after work. We went to Chuy's for a nice dinner, then back to my house to sleep. We woke up in the morning, and I had the pleasure of making my parents waffles and bacon. It was such a joy to host a breakfast for my parents!

After breakfast, we drove up to San Marcos to celebrate my cousin, Matt's graduation from grad school. I won't even begin to explain the thesis he worked on. I still claim the title is written in a foriegn language. :o)We had lunch with the family and headed back to SA. We had a little bit of time before my parents had to leave, so we drove around some neighborhoods nearby my area of town. I found one that I decided Mom and Dad should move into, but we'll see what God has in mind. :o)

Once the parents headed back on the road for Corpus, the mission team headed over. We spent the entire evening cooking and hanging out. I had a blast spending the evening with everyone, and I look forward to serving God with them in July! Our bake sale was a success, with over $300 raised in our Sunday school class. I nice start to the approximately $20,000 we have to raise as a team! God certainly does provide!

Here are a couple pictures of the team that was at church on Sunday. Keep a lookout for this picture in the mail!




And a silly photo thanks to Joe. :o)