70% and counting!

Hi friends!  Just wanted to share with you that I am at 70% and counting!  The goal is Costa Rica by May and I need to be at 100%. Praise God for helping me get to 70%!!!

Wanna help me reach 100% by May?

(1)  PRAY!
(2)  Tell your friends who might be interested in joining my support team and being a partner in Young Life Costa Rica and put me in contact with them.
(3)  Host an evening or weekend dessert meeting.  You provide the place and invite your friends, I bring everything else!
(4)  Ask your church, youth group, business or club if they would be interested in coming together to partner with me and Young Life Costa Rica.

How might God want to use YOU to impact kids in Costa Rica for eternity?

Something borrowed

This blog may not always be on point.  Like now.  It occurs to me that I know some pretty amazing people and I'd like to borrow some amazing-ness from them now.

From Lisa, a YL intern in Costa Rica this year, I borrow her blog punctuation style.  Today.was.HARD.  Sometimes I think it will be easier in Costa Rica, that all the hard parts are coming before not after.  And then I get really scared.  What if it's harder?

From my beautiful, eccentric, eclectic, wise friend Eileen, her wisdom shared from South Korea and a character named the Dane.

"When all was manic mayhem and I wanted to give up and go home, I saw two fingers fly up. It was the Dane’s. 

“You see these two fingers?” 

“No,” I grumble. (Silence, while he waits patiently.) “YES, I see them.” 

“They were soft once. Feel it.” It felt like rock sandpaper. 

“Yech.” 

“To play the bass, they need to be hard. For them to become hard, they need to be disciplined. To get them disciplined, they first need to bleed. It bleeds, because you’re playing on them over, and over, and over again. So it’s simple. You’re going through the bleeding process, in order to play your life well.” 

“And those that forgo the bleeding process?” 

“...will never know what it’s like to play life in beautiful harmony. They will always be the spectator of those that were willing to bleed.” 

“That’s deep.” 

“Yeah.” 

When I think about it being harder than today because Today.was.HARD, I will remember this.  If I want to play my life well, I'll have to bleed.  And something else from her:   

"I am not who I thought I was. Charisma, warmth, dressing up... meaningless, meaningless utterly meaningless. It seems that my eyes have been opened and I suddenly feel the urgency of eternity. I feel the brevity of our existence and I am humbled that I am now gravely aware of my narrow-mindedness and self-centeredness."

Gravely aware.  Preach it sister!

And finally, I'll return, as I frequently do, to the wise words of Oswald Chambers.  If you haven't read him, go out now and pick up My Utmost for His Highest.  It will change your life.  

"Sometimes God puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to teach us to hear and obey Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and God puts us into "the shadow of His hand" until we learn to hear Him."

Teach me, God, to be thankful for the darkness, patient in its uncertainty until I hear You.  

Today.was.HARD.  I'm bleeding in the darkness.  May I stay here until I hear Him because if I don't I might miss the beautiful symphony that waits ahead.   (Hebrews 12:2-3)