Trick Candle

(NOTE: This accidently turned into a LONG blog. So maybe don't read it until you have a bit of time. And a bowl of popcorn and M&Ms in your hands is probably not a bad idea either.)

Do you know how much of a bummer it is when people get to the end of the B-day song and your candle already went out? And when you thought and thought and finally settled on a good wish and can't make it? I'm going to be honest. That's how I felt this past week+. Burnt out. And a bit disappointed at random things I had been wishing for. 

Luckily, in the past 24 hours, God has completely re-lit, refreshed, and restored me. Its like I was a trick candle the whole time, and the flame just popped back up. All the joy and excitement is back - horray!

Anyways, that's not to say the whole week was lame. Here are a few fun things I have been up to:

- Family Breakfast - A few of us decided to make tons of breakfast foods on a Saturday morning. It was DELICIOUS. (I made peanut butter pancakes with M&Ms :) )

- Small group - This is my small group! We meet every week and this week we ate at a funky 50s diner that is in a train car right down the street. Classy... :)

- Evangelism - this week for evangelism we had a BBQ at the duck pond down the street and invited a bunch of homeless people and such. It was a really good opportunity and atmosphere, and who doesn't like BBQs in the sun?

- FUN DAY FRIDAY! In the morning we worshiped God by painting (who knew?), then a girl came who just spent the last 8 weeks in Calcutta, India and told us a lot about the city. (Calcutta is where I am going on outreach for the first 5 weeks. Oh yes...FYI some of my team (including me) is going to go to Thailand for the last 3 weeks of outreach now, staying near the Thailand-Burma border and working with Burmese refugees. The government is a lot more open to Christianity in Thailand, so we will actually be able to preach and pray and such there. We may go to Myanmar/ Burma for a day or two and visit the rest of my team...we will see) Her talk got my heart so excited to go - only 5 more weeks!

For the next part of the "Fun Day," we went to San Luis Obispo and played at a park for a few hours and had a BBQ. It was super relaxing and an amazing way to spend the afternoon. (It was 75 degrees out, there were lawn mowers in the distance, the smell of BBQ was in the air, I was in shorts and a tank top...you get the idea :) )

Then, at night we got all dressed up and had a "Love Feast." AKA the leaders made us dinner to show us how much they love us!

(See? My week wasn't so bad at all :) I was just pooped.)

This week we are learning about God's grace, and I am stoked. The teacher is good friends with the guy who was my favorite speaker thus far, and I already see so many similarities. I feel like God has been working in me and revealing things to me in these past few days to prepare me for this. Some thoughts that have been hitting me hard are:

-God won't act out of his anger towards Christians. In fact, he isn't angry with us. Seriously.

 

-I think that a lot of the time that people face pain, (i.e. disease, relationship problems, etc) the reason is because the pain is a consequence of the sin that God warns us about. The reason he tells us to do certain things is because he loves us. He doesn't just make rules to be able to mess with us, but to warn and protect us from the consequences. (For example, God tells us to be good stewards of the earth/ take care of it because when we pollute it, there are consequences (such as sickness/ cancer/ etc). This is a generality, but it gave me a very new perspective of the reason for "rules" and a refreshing motivation to follow them.

-Along these same lines, God's "rules" aren't standards. He has hopes for me, but not disappointment/ anger/ rejection when I don't meet his "expectations." And because he doesn't have expectations for me, my love for Him should produce the fruit, not the other way around (me doing works so that I love Him and he loves me.)

I feel like God wanted to establish these things as a foundation for this week, and I know that he is going to use this week to impact me hardcore (and I am so excited and ready for that)!

P.S. (Note: if you are a boy (or maybe even girls), this probably isn't going to be that exciting, so feel free to stop reading :) ) I started getting REALLY bored of my clothes (imagine having a weeks' worth of clothes and wearing them for 9 weeks...boo), and it turns out that all of my housemates are very open to sharing clothes. So this week I am determined to not touch the clothes in my closet at all. It is great!!! And oddly enough, my friend Zahra has pants that fit me like a DREAM (and she is a foot shorter that me, but I guess she always rolls them way up - yes!) I feel like I am playing dress up everyday, because these girls have sweet European and/or artsy/ hippie clothes. Horray for the best housemates around town! (There still hasn't been one bit of drama. Between 9 girls. You go, God!)

Thanks for reading! I'll try to make it shorter next time around!