We Are Off

I am officially done with my job at Interlink today and right after I finished I went and filled out paper work for Starbucks. Yea!

My flight to Miami leaves at 8am tomorrow so I will be getting up at about 4am to get there in plenty of time. After that I will be in the Miami airport for about 7 hours all by myself. If you are bored tomorrow and need someone to chat with give me a call.

I am super excited about our trip still but sad with the news that Jeremy will not be joining us. He had passport trouble and will not make it in time. I am so bummed! I have not really even met him yet and I was looking forward to it. I am sure God has his reasons but right now I dont like them. We will miss you Jeremy!

Please pray for our trip. Pray for safety, good rest, and God to speak to us of his plans for our team. I will let yall know how it goes when I get back!!!

Thuper Exthited

Today is a THUPER EXTHITING (written with a lisp) day for many reasons! First, tonight is the season finale of the third season of Lost. It is going to be a two hour episode and I cannot wait to see what happens. I am not sure if I have ever anticipated a show so much...not even Friends! Thoughts running through my head are "who is Jacob, who else is going to die, what is the shocking ending they will leave us with, where the heck is Charlie, is Locke dead, and will Kate and Jack choose each other?" We will see in less than 6 hours. Yea!
The second reason I am thuper exthited is because it is my second to last day of work at my first "real job." I am very ready to go and get started on what is coming next but there is a little sadness. They have been super good to me and they even gave me a little gift today. I will miss the students but they can come visit me at Starbucks who I am going to sign papers with tomorrow. Despite what a good job it has been I am ready to move on and hopefully find a job that fits me better than an office job.
The third reason I am thuper exthited today is because in less than 48 hours I will be on a plane to Miami to being my trip to South America. I know I have talked about this a lot but it seems so unreal. I am pretty well prepared and ready to have my packing talk with Ellen tomorrow. I cannot wait to see my friends, sing, speak and hear Spanish and see where I might live in the future. It has been almost two years since I have been down there and that is way too long for me! (You can see where Bolivia and Chile are on the map below.)
Tho, once again this is a thuper exthing day and I am having trouble sitting still. Please pray for our trip to SA and I know I will have a huge update when I get back.

Time Flies

I don't know the exact date, but I know that this week is my one year anniversary of living in Colorado. A year ago this week I drove up here with my mom to start my internship at Lakewood Church of Christ. I had a feeling that my summer at Lakewood had a purpose, but I really had no idea what that was. So I went through the summer, had an AMAZING time and fell madly in love with the teens here. So in love that I decided to stay not having a place to live or a job but God provided.

God has blow my expectations away. He purposefully brought me to Lakewood and in contact with certain people so that I could stay here and have the best ministry training of my life. I have dealt with situations that I never would have encountered had I stayed in Texas. And I have learned so much from them! I have loved my life here so much even though it has not always been easy. I have dealt with fears of uncertainty, loneliness, knee surgery, learning to live and drive in snow, family, friend and Texas sickness, and the huge transition between college and working life.

As I was sitting in Rob's (the youth minister) office last night hanging out with the kids and one of the new interns I became jealous for a moment. I wanted to be the intern again. Last summer was so great and I wanted that to be me. Then I thought about it a little longer and remembered how crazy uncertain my life was at that time and as much as I loved that summer I don't think I would trade it for what I have now. Not that my life is super planned out but I do have an idea of where I will be in a month and back then I didn't.

Today is my last Monday at my job at INTERLINK and Thursday is my final day. As great of a job as it is I am giving it up to work at Starbucks. Am I nuts? Maybe so but I don't care. God brought me to Colorado to do ministry and having a 9-5 job does not allow that (and it drives me crazy having a schedule like that). So I will be living on a smaller budget but hopefully I will have more time to work with the teens and try and do campus ministry.

Also a year ago I had no clue what was going on with my mission team. We had canceled our survey trip and although we were still planning on going it was so unclear when that would happen. Now, four days from now, I will meet my teammates (who I have not seen in a year either) in Miami and we will take a quick trip to South America to see where we might want to live in the future. Ahhh! So exciting!

So happy anniversary to me. I love Colorado so much and even more I love the people and opportunities for me here. Do I know if I will still be here in another year? No clue but that is ok. I am happy for now and cannot wait to see how God will use me this summer. Sometimes I wonder why things seem to work out for me so often. Yea I had knee surgery but I have a place to live, a good job, amazing friends, beautiful mountains, and crazy future plans. All I can say is that I am trying my hardest to be faithful to God and he is doing the same for me. I hope I never take that for granted. Thank you God!

New Favorite Season

So I have live in Colorado for almost a year now. That is so crazy to me. It has totally sped by. I have gotten a chance to experience all of the seasons and I thought fall was my favorite but I am pretty sure now that it is Spring. It is SO beautiful right now. Of course I love the changing leaves of fall and the beautiful snow of winter but you cannot beat how green it is right now. So here is a new song devoted to spring.

Spring in Colorado is so green
I love it so much it makes me scream.
The mountains, the trees, the grass, the flowers
Colors so amazing I could stare for hours.

It feels like a dream and I know it wont last
But now I see outside and I let out a gasp.
I want to not work and go out to play
Stupid job that takes up the day.

Thanks so much for Colorado spring time
And also for words that rhyme.
Season are amazing, a new experience for me
I grew up in Texas you see!

I Got The OK

I am in my 14th week of surgery recovery. To the unknowing eye I look fully recovered but I can feel it is not right with every step I take and every stiff movement I make. It is amazing how such a stupid little thing inside my knee can mess me up for so long. It still pops, does not straighten or bend all the way, gets stuck sometimes when I leave it in one position for too long, and the hamstring is weak.

Despite all of these negative things, guess what! I GOT THE OK TO RUN AGAIN! I have no idea when the last time I ran was but I know it was sometime before December 16th (when I actually tore my ACL) and that is a long time. I have loved running since before Jr. High and although I have been sporadically devoted, I love it. I love the runners high and running a half marathon was one of the coolest, funnest, most rewarding things I have ever done physically.

Last night I was at therapy (working by myself) and I stopped to talk with the head therapist. We got to talking and she decided to check me out so she could give my doctor an update since I am seeing him this weekend. She measured my strength and mobility and then we just talked for a bit about my poor little weak hamstring. I asked her what she thought about me running and after checking with the therapy calendar she said I was good to go. Woo Hoo!

So this morning at my stinkin' early therapy session I did some new, hard exercises and then hopped on the treadmill for my first go. I was a little nervous but quite excited too. I have been running on a tramp but this was the real thing. So I started going and took it slow but it did not feel as weird as I thought it would. It felt great and I went for 5 min. The therapist and I talked and she said I can run outside but I need to keep it on flat, smooth, straight ground so no trail or hill running which is fine. I am just excited to get out there.

All of this might seem insignificant but this whole experience has been a total roller coaster for me. Some days I feel like I am doing awesome and other days I feel like I will never get better. I still look at my skis and have to hold back my tears but being able to run is such an encouragement to me. I am on schedule and doing good. Maybe one day I actually will be back to normal. GO ME!!!

2 AM

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is official 2:06 AM MST and I cannot sleep. It has been a while since I have had a restless night that was not due to being sick. Sometimes I get really frustrated when I cannot sleep but that sure does not help. Tonight is quite peaceful actually. It has been raining a lot and until my roommate just closed it, the window was open making our room chilly and smell like rain. The house is super quiet except for the hum of Coors Brewery I can hear out the window. I think a lot of people find this time to be their most creative time. Too bad I am not creative or I might write a famous song right now or something.

My sleeplessness could be due to the fact that I slept a lot last night but I am still getting over a cold so I should be able to sleep a lot. I think the real reason is because my mind is full and will not turn off. That happens. I am a natural worrier and I try to suppress this and tell myself worrying does not help, but sometimes it just all comes pouring out and I cannot help it. Maybe if I just share with the world wide web the multiple things on my mind, it will help release them into internet world and off my mind so I can go to sleep. Here they are!

We have the usual:
1. My job ends in 3 weeks and I do not have another one yet
2. My roommate is moving out and we do not have a replacement
3. Is my knee healing ok? Will it ever be normal again?
4. What the heck am I doing?

The more recent:
1. My teen girls don't agree on how far is too far and I don't know what to tell them
2. I found out something really bad about a teen and have no idea what to do
3. Do I want to get married and have kids because I want to or because that is what you are "supposed to do"?
4. Would I be ok being alone the rest of my life?
5. How many of my friends will get a divorce?
6. Do I have a fear of commitment that I don't know about yet because I never date?
7. I wonder which suitcase should I pack in for our S. America trip
8. En Temuco ya hay muchas iglesias; es una de las ciudades mejor evangelizadas de Chile
9. How crazy busy will the week after my trip be with recovering from traveling, starting a new job (I hope), a friend visiting, and trying to go to a baseball game
10. I don't want to train someone for my job
11. Poor Rockets
12. To evangelize or disciple?
13. Will he be at church tomorrow?


That was a lot to unload. Not looking for answers because most of those are unanswerable or not even a question. My mind is so full. Lord please bring me a peace of mind. I wish I was better at giving these things to You. I don't want these worries to go away because that would mean my life was all planned out and that is even scarier ( I watched "The Last Kiss" tonight), but I don't want to worry so much. I think it is a part of me.

Now it is 2:42 AM MST. What next? Maybe a snack. I wish there was a way to know if other people were awake without waking them up.

Introducing!!!!

My mission team!!! Some of you may know this and some of you may not, but I am hoping to get to work as a missionary in South America a few years from now. I have wanted to do something like this since my senior year in high school when I went on a mission trip to Honduras. I feel like God has been preparing me for this for a long time and I actually feel called! How cool is that!

In 21 days, or exactly 3 weeks, or 504 hours (give or take a few) I will be leaving Denver on a flight to La Paz, Bolivia and then on to Concepcion and Temuco, Chile. These are the three cities we plan on visiting to see if we might want to live there in the future. Our team is till in the recruiting stages but we would love to know where we are going to go so that we can start planning and dreaming.

Now on to introducing my teammates. On my team there is Wesley and Ellen Shutt. Wes and I were teammates for our short term missionary internship in Buenos Aires, Argentina almost 2 years ago. When we got back he started dating Ellen and they got married this past Christmas. We also have Reid Overall who Wes and I met in Buenos Aires when he was on a South American mission tour with the Aggies for Christ. After that trip he transfered to ACU where we hooked back up with him. And last, but not least, we have Jeremy Tatum (known as missionary Jeremy because I know way too many Jeremy's). He began meeting with our team and is not totally committed because we want him to have a longer term experience before he decides for sure. But we want him with us. He keeps me up to date on the count down.

I got super excited on Tuesday night because I called one of them to catch up and they were all together. See they all live in Abilene and I live in Denver so I am a little disconnected. We talk on the phone and email regularly so I stay up to date but I am left out of things (my decision, no blame on anyone but me). So when they were all together they put me on speaker phone and everyone got to say hi. There were 3 girls there who I have never met so that was cool. I got to hear Reid's voice which was great because it has been a while since I have talked to him. And along with Ellen and Wes (who I talk to regularly) I got to hear Jeremy's voice. I have only met Jeremy once or twice to my knowledge and we are quite good facebook friends so it was super fun to hear him. I know it sounds silly, but hearing voices was great!!!

Anyways, the countdown continues and I am sure I will report back soon on how the trip planning is going. I LOVE traveling but I am kinda a nervous packer so that should be interesting. I cannot wait to go!

Recap

I really have not been in the blogging mood lately. Not sure why but I thought I could just give a little recap of the past week as it has been pretty fun!

I took last weekend and relaxed, played with my ipod, and caught up on my sleep. Saturday night Randi and I went to our first Rockies game of the season and it was a blast! We both took the bus (very proud) and met down there. We got cheap tickets in the Rockpile and enjoyed a beautiful evening. The weather was amazing, the crowd was fun and we got to bring in our own food! It was probably one of the most boring baseball games I have ever been to, but the rest of the night was so fun that it did not even matter. I just love live baseball games!

Randi and I at the game. See how far away our seats were!

Such a beautiful stadium. It has the city on one side of it and a view of the mountains on the other. There is a purple line that runs around the stadium showing where a mile high is.

The next exciting event was the Purity Banquet with the teens from church. We have been studying dating, love, marriage, sex (in that order-alphabetical you will notice) on Wednesday nights with them and this was the celebration at the end. They had a really nice dinner and then a ceremony at the church.

In the ceremony I got to be the bride. At first I was not too sure about the idea, but I borrowed a dress and did it anyways. It actually turned out to be really fun and a great thing for the ceremony. It was not like "oh look Dee is getting married" but because my back was to them it was like a beautiful, pure bride who saved herself for her husband. The image was beautiful! And who does not like to get dressed up and have everyone tell you how beautiful you look right?

I became quite excited to be the bride. We took pics like it really was a wedding.

Such an amazing image! I love it!

Tuesday night of this week was the last Mines Bible study of the semester because finals are next week . I seriously was expecting about 10 people at the most to show up but I sure was surprised. I sent out my regular email telling all the students about our meeting but this week I told them it was just a free meal and playing outside to take a break from studying. AT LEAST 15 OR 20 NEW PEOPLE SHOWED UP! I do not understand campus ministry. Sometimes these emails make people mad and sometimes they really get people. No clue! It was super fun though. About half came and ate and left but the other half stayed around and played frisbee and football. It was a great way to end the semester.

Wednesday I woke up and felt awful so I called in sick to work and took the day off. I thought I would take advantage and play but instead I slept a lot, watched Lost, went to physical therapy, and then took off to church. I hope it is just a cold and not mono.

Last, I just wanted to say how proud I was of our teens and my church last night. We had family night and the teens were in charge of it. The things they did ranged from teaching the children a song, hilarious skits, science experiments, a praise band, a awesome rap video, Bible story telling and my favorite, A GIRL DANCING! I know that does not seem like that big of a deal but it seriously brought tears to my eyes. As the praise band (with instruments, yes) played and sang to "How Great Is Our God" she did a ballet dance and it was so beautiful to see a young girl using her talents to praise God and it was ok. There was no lightening bolts and hell did not up and swallowing us all. Amazing huh? The teens did an amazing job and I was so uplifted to see them step up and lead the church this way using all of their talents.