Support/Packing!

Woo! Tonight I officially received 100% of my support! (Thanks Logan) This $2800 covers our housing and some of our meals for the two months in Santa Monica! Thank you soooo much to all of you who made this happen, I am praying that I can be a good steward of your time and money, and I know God will use it to the fullest!

When everyone has been asking me if I am excited yet, I keep on saying it doesn't feel like I am going. Some of my friends are dying to get out of their houses, and I guess I have just been enjoying my month here at home.  I am completely stoked, yes, and I can't believe that I have this amazing opportunity.  I think this just reflects another aspect of what great support I have here at home.  Some of my teammates' parents are unsupportive of their trips, and some othershave been spending the past month with almost no friends. I'm trying to plan out my last two days here, and there is so many names of friends that I want to make sure I see before I leave! This just makes me realizehow much I love everyone here, and my year away at school just made us closer.  Sometimes I feel guilty for always leaving my friends, but I know God has greater things planned for me.

Ahh, packing! My next obstacle! Packing and cleaning are both kind of therapeutic for me, so I'm not dreading it at all. I just always get a weird feeling whenever I pack for a long time.  Packing up and leaving has become my new favorite thing over the past year.  Packing up and going to college seemed soooooooooooooooo dramatic and sad and life-changing to me just ten months ago. Throughout that time, I learned how to pack a tiny tiny bag for visits home, pack for a vacation in -24 weather, got addicted to reading a blog about these two girls I met called Packing Light that describes their 50 state road trip, aaaand I finally packed everything in my room up (in three hours!) and brought it all home.  All the frequent moving back and forth this year has put me in a completely different mindset than this time last year.  I feel so much more detached to my material things than I ever have before.  Out of my fam, I've pretty much grown to be the neatfreak, and I can throw away stuff much easier than anyone else (case in point: my little brother just paid me $100 to clean his room! :) )/ But I feel like this year has jsut helped me out so much more! I was talking to my friend about how I am going to be calling three different cities "home" this year. Weird! Exciting! The truth is, none of those places are going to contain allll of the things I own. Which is great! Every time I pack, I feel like I get rid of way more stuff. Seriously, try it sometime.  Anyways, I'm going to have to make each place homey, with less and less of my personal belongings in each location.  And the truth is, after lugging your stuff back and forth and throughout different states, you start to realize what is absolutely necessary, and what is just taking up space. It's weird, this is a lesson I've been learning in so many areas of my life.  Ask God to help you figure out what is cluttering your life, in your possessions, your friendships, and your time, especially. 

So, anyways, this is just a completely disjointed post, summing up some of my final thoughts before my trip! I am sooo excited to be doing what I am doing. I mean, I am 19. I want to be packing up and leaving as much as I possibly can! God has instilled a deep longing for adventure in me throughtout the past year, and I pray that I can pursue not only my desires for fun and freedom and enjoying my youth, but that His work would always be my main focus throughout everything!

So, gracias to everyone who has contributed prayerfully and financially! If you still wanted to, we of course are going to need things like gas for transportation, and many of my teammates still have sizeable amounts of support to raise. So contact me! I hope everyone has a  life-changing summer, no matter where you are!
See you in Santa Monica!
Love,
p.b.