There is No High like the Most High

Rain. Finally. This summer, there has been a longing for rain. We've been waiting and it's been so hot and dry in the mean time. We've been in a dry time and it seems like the vegetation has taken a hit as we wonder at how the crops will produce with so little water this year. 


Me too. I've needed rain. I've needed God to be rain in my dry little heart and I've been wondering at how the things God has planted in my heart would produce a harvest as there has been so little to water them. Things planted last summer at camp, last year at school.. so many seeds on such dry ground. 


I've been in a dry season for a while. I don't think I can pin an exact date on it or anything.. but I was for sure dry last summer at camp and I don't remember much recovering over the months. I've had my times of "rain" since then.. but the ground was so dry that it was absorbed quickly and would thirst again. I came into this summer dry. Exhausted. Empty. I knew that I would be taking on a roll of pouring out and I worried some, but I knew the Lord would supply me with what I needed. I was dry, but I had some faith. 


What I couldn't have imagined was that I was about to enter into an oasis in my desert. It's been raining all summer for me and this is my moment. I think as Christians, we all long for the moments when we feel God close and we know He is there and we have an incomprehensible joy. As I feel I've been building up to this moment for a while, my heart is just exploding with joy and I am refreshed. 
This whole summer, while I've been pouring into my work with the Bridge, God has poured back 
10 fold on me. As I've been pouring out what little I had to start with, i've also been finding other things in my heart that could be removed to make room for more of God so that I could pour out more. Does that make sense? It like when you need to water your plants and you find a dirty old bucket and you're like, "this will work" and so you fill it up and dump it on your plants and as you pour the stuff on the bucket, the dirt at the bottom comes out too but it doesn't hurt the plants any because they're just sucking up the water. And then you have a clean bucket because all the yucky stuff came out with the good stuff and then every time you fill up the bucket after it.. the water is clear and delightful and clean. 
I think that is what happened with me this summer. My bucket was cleaned out and I feel new and I joyful and fresh. The more I was used, the purer I became. 
Isn't that fun?? I think it's fun. And that's probably why God was so quick to choose the people who had messed up and weren't most clean people out there. He probably looked around at the religious people and said, "Well,my people need some water and those buckets are already clean but I have these dirty buckets that could use some rinsing outing."And with that He plucks up His dirtiest bucket and begins to fill it with water and pour it out so that it is made clean in the process of Him watering His thirsty people. 


You can find hope in that. If you've got a dirty bucket, God can use you! And He wants to use you! Depending on what you've got in your bucket, most likely He can use you and clean you at the same time. If you've been putting roundup chemicals in your bucket.. he'll probably want to clean you off a little bit prior to using you on His precious people plants, but He can still use you. And clean you. 


I think with this whole idea of having been wandering around in a spiritual desert for the last few months, I think I was coated in sweat and grime and I went through a few sandstorms. It's been SO good swimming in the pools of God's glory and goodness and just washing up and being fresh. 




I have so much joy right now. And I know that you can't stay in an oasis forever..sometime soon I shall have to get back on the road again and continue my journey through deserts and storms and rocks and meadows. We go through a lot as Christians... as people. But, it is a blessing to know that when we need it, God gives us rest. He makes streams in the desert and shelters in the sandstorms. 
He gives us mountains to climb and when we reach to top, WHEW!! It's a great view! It's a high. And of course, there is no high like the Most High. 

Summer Pics

Some of my English Students, refugees from Sudan 

My first quilt! I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but it was a baby quilt :)
I had a lot of fun making it. 

One fine Saturday in IL, we ran into some legit kilt clad bagpipers. 

Learning to be a Light

Hello! It has been a while and I feel bad about not updating more often, especially since the Lord is CONSTANTLY doing something in my life. 
I think I've mentioned before how one of the biggest blessings in working with The Bridge this summer is the fact that we open every morning with prayer. I LOVE this. I love praying with people! It is such a joyful privilege! 


This week is a girls camp called Summer Sizzle. Apart from having sailing for Sizzle in previous years, I really had no idea what to expect when I was told I would be a counselor for it this summer. I had even less of an idea of what to expect after I missed the orientation meeting the Sunday before and found myself kind of jumping in on Monday morning, not even knowing half of the other counselor's names. (I know at least half of them now... I think). 


I am someone who LOVES surprises (most of the time). I quite enjoy the thrill of not knowing where I am going on an adventure or what all I will be doing, that way I don't get disappointed too easily. If I anticipate things, I generally find myself a little deflated as I anticipate way too much and enjoy it way too little. As a general rule, I try to be easygoing enough to roll with the punches and scheduled enough to have some structure. 
So far, my Summer Sizzle experience had been one of the most joyful surprises God has had in store for me!! (This is a big deal because ALL of His surprises thus far have been incredible!) First off, not only do we start every morning with prayer, we also end every evening in prayer as well. We pray for each other and we pray for our campers. I love my campers!

Photo cred: The Bridge

It's still so funny to me how last summer, as a camp counselor,  I cried almost every single day with out fail. During staff training I cried multiple times a day and I kept asking God, "Why on earth am I here?" "Why would you push me this far out of my comfort zone?" "What good will come out of this summer?" Even in the weeks, maybe  even months, after I had packed up and returned home from camp I continued to ask God why I had been there and what good would ever come out of it. A year later I can see how that camp experience grew me in ways I never could have imagined. Growing up a tomboy with only one really close girl friend and 2 or 3 other girl friends who weren't as close and then a ton of guy friends, I wasn't especially talented in knowing how to love girls. I didn't know how to relate well enough to be someone who knew how to respond to a crying girl or a touchy-feely girl, or a dramatic, sassy, hyperactive girl. I didn't know how to do any of that last year, but I encountered all of that and it all made me cry because I felt like I was worthless and helpless. Of course that's when God steps in the most, right? 

I would, by no means, claim that I have any sort of talent in working with girls, still. But, God has grown in enough to know that all I need to do is follow the Spirit's leading as situations arise. 

Yesterday I had such a precious moment with two of my girls. We were out sailing on the lake (with not much wind) and having a wonderful time together capsizing, swimming, splashing and playing "see-how-well-you-can-stand-up-in-the-boat-without-getting-knocked-off-by-the-boom."

After about an hour of being silly and stuff, I began to ask them about what they thought of eternity and how to get to heaven and stuff. This girls are in 8th grade so I assumed somewhat that since they'd been going to church their whole lives they'd heard the gospel. They hadn't. They didn't know anything about Jesus coming to die for their sins or about asking Christ into their hearts. 
At one point I asked, "If there was a way you could be sure you were going to heaven when you die, would you want to know?" I expected to here a cheerful set of yeses but instead there was silence. The girls were thinking. Finally one of them answered and said, "It would be nice to know that, maybe, but I'm afraid that if I knew I was going to heaven than I would be a worse person than I am now because I would just think, 'oh I'm going to heaven anyways,' so I think it's probably better that I don't know."


Wow. The way the enemy works sometimes. I explained to them both how the Spirit changes our lives ones we receive Christ into our hearts and how we don't have to worry about how good we are or how bad we are because we have a helper to guide us in our walks with the Lord. They both wanted to think about that for a while. 


I started drafting this blog yesterday (Friday) before heading into my last day of Summer Sizzle. I didn't have time to finish it and didn't expect that I would have much to add to it after I would get home again. 


I think I walked into my door at about 12:07am...probably the longest day I've had this summer. But! By far it was the fullest and most incredible day as well. I wouldn't have traded any of those minutes or hours to be anywhere else. 

The day was full, it was hot, we worshiped together, we laughed together, we cried. Walls came down, God was with us, and there was joy. I cannot describe the day to you very well because my limited vocabulary is not able to capture the depth of the joy or the power in all that took place. Whether it was a girl who was too cool for school opening up about the brokenness that comes with divorce or looking over and seeing one my girls with an attitude sitting on the floor making conversation with the shyest girl in the group in an effort to make her feel welcomed and loved, I could see God among us. It was as if everything we did was one firework in the grand finale. And let me tell you, there were fireworks of God's handiwork alllll over the camp. It was a joy to watch. To look and see a girl from the Silver team felt loved, girls from the Purple team had become like a family, the girls on the red team were still cheering for all the other teams with spirit and selflessness, there were stories of walls coming down all over the place and girls laughing and feeling loved. 

After such a grand finale of a day, I feel like God had one last special fire work in store, just for me. We did an exercise where we wrote a sin we struggle with on a piece of paper and then through it in a fire and watched in burn up and disappear, and I got to put my arm around the girl I'd talked to in the boat and ask, "So, what did you decide?" and shortly after I found myself and her sitting off to the side on the grass as she prayed for Jesus to be a part of her life and help her to be the lady God made her to be. 

And with that, God lit another candle in this world. One more person entered from dark into light and has begun her most grand adventure with the Father. 

Of course I wasn't the only one who had the privilege of praying with girls who wanted to have a light in their lives. There were many last night. There was a great harvest of which all in which all of us got to play a part. I'm grateful to the people who prepared the soil and planted in the seeds. To those who watered and fertilized. To those who weeded and those who watched. It was all important. 

Summertime Delights

Oh my goodness how this summer is flying by! I know I say that EVERYtime I start a new blog post.. but seriously.. There should be 6 months of summer and 6 months of school instead of 3 and 9. 


Right now I'm waiting for my statlab web page to load so I can study for a stats exam.. :/ Stats is going okay, I think I'm finally understanding it. Comp.... oh comp... :/ We'll not visit that touchy subject for a while. (I'm not avoiding it.. just avoiding talking about it cuz it's evil.)


There are a lot of things on my mind.. not really profound things.. but, perhaps, worth sharing. 
Back in April I posted about all my summer dreams and goals as I was anxious to be on break instead of writing papers and attending classes and lectures everyday. 


Being halfway into the summer and halfway done... I can say that while most of my goals aren't quite what I dreamed them to be, it has been an absolutely dreamy summer! My miles haven't reached much beyond a little over 200 and I've given up running in the mornings for now as my mornings are filled with my quiet times and other things that seem to take up time far too easily. 


But!! Some of my summer goal plantings are starting to produce a harvest of JOY beyond what I could of ever imagined! How I LOVE the amount of people around me who love the Lord!! Honestly, I can't remember the last time I had so many believers around me with the same goal in mind. Serving people as a way of serving the Lord is one of the most joy-producing things there is (at least in my own few experiences) and after half a summer of doing just that, I feel somewhat like God has turned a dry river bed into a fountain. Not that I was incredibly upset and negative prior to starting work with The Bridge, but I was for sure dry; A little empty and a little dead.


My heart, in the last month and a half, has become more alive than I thought it could and I think my passion for people and for serving the Lord has increased as well. I think if I could have only asked the Lord for one thing to come out of this summer, I would have been asking for joy (I always do). And I know that sounds a little bit selfish, perhaps, but I'm come to learn that as a child of God, our birthright is joy. Often times I think I'm doing something wrong in my walk if I don't have joy, but this summer I've been learning about the importance of trials to strengthen our faith that will produce joy later. 


It's funny how I've grew up in a farming community all 17 years of my life before I moved out and I never realized something about rain. I mean, believers refer to our life trials as storms a lot of the time. There are some storms that are greater than others and cause more damage and hardship than others. There are little storms that cause the clouds to be dark and foreboding, but only for a time, and the rain causes mud and, perhaps, will ruin your outdoor picnic plans, but it does not cause much damage and can be pleasantly enjoyed from one's house with a cup of hot tea and a good book (Or a nap). 


These storms, the rains, they're not only necessary for the plants, but they can be needed. If the plants or farmers go too long without rain, that's not good. Just like in life, we can't want our lives to go too long without a trial or difficult time or else our leaves will dry up, our roots will whither and our growth will cease. There are sometimes it seems that life is just starting to go smoothly and I've finally cleared all the difficult hurdles and so life should go well for a while. Of course, that is when the next trial comes along and rocks my boat and I end up asking God, "Why why WHY am I going through something hard AGAIN??" It makes a little more sense to me now that I've been around all these farmers and farmers' wives who are always wanting it to rain so that the crops will grow and there will be things to harvest in the fall.  Being in the city, I've been away from all the farmer analogies, but I've missed them all greatly. 


Another great thing I experienced last night: STARS!! I've always LOVED the stars. I haven't seen them in a while as Iowa City only allows you to see 5 or 6 on a good night. I think I've tried to see the stars so many times in the last few years without much luck that I've sort of given up on looking up at the sky at nighttime. But, at about 11 last night my father invited me to come see Scorpio, which is one of the few constellations I can find by myself. All the lights were off in the house and the yard was so dark I couldn't see the people who were in the middle of it and was depended on my ears to find them. The sky was SO brilliantly full of stars that I was quite tempted to set up my bed outside and stare at them all night. They were BEAUTIFUL! :) It was a God moment. I felt loved when I saw those stars and it was delightful. 




Another joy I've recently had was a trip to Colorado with my family to see one of my dear cousins marry his bride. Of course we took advantage of the opportunity to interact with all the cousins as much as possible as we are all quite close and delight in each other's company. 

Siblings and cousin, Sherlin, at the Botanical gardens

Ferns!

The Kohls love to learn (most of them anyways) I think they spent 15 or 20 minutes next to this giant globe and listen to the museum worker share all sorts of interesting facts about various planets. It was difficult to pull them away to go to the gems and minerals section... but eventually they were coaxed to leave (actually I think it was because the display needed to be shut down for the day).

Also! My hair is making a recovery! If you've read some of my previous posts you'd know that with my intestinal health issues, it was a concern that my hair was thinning and such. I'm happy to say that it has quite improved over the summer and I don't worry on it too much now. :)

With only a few weekends left in the summer, I think I've got them all booked for adventures and delightful memories. I've only been home for a total of 4 weekends and I think that's the best I can do considering my free spirit and desire to pack my summer to maximum fullest full it could be. The trick in managing to write all my comp papers in the meantime :/ 

Life @ The Bridge

2 of my Seneca girls! 

Everyday of VBS we would bus 50-60 kids to Bethel Baptist Church in Newell, these are the 4th-6th graders

We had a water fight at the park center on one really hot day

The Park Center kids loved the water!

Wrapping up June

It is 6:53am and I've been up for close to an hour now. I don't think I've managed to accomplish anything thus far, though. It's VBS week at Bethel and I've been more exhausted than usual (imagine that) and have not been much into accomplishing things this week.

Yesterday I came home from working on Bridge stuff around 5pm and flopped down on the couch first thing and fell asleep within a minute. I can't remember the last time i've been this tired everyday, but I also can't remember when the last time it was 100 degrees everyday either. Haha, the heat and hard work really makes you drowsy pretty quickly. 


VBS is going absolutely marvelous!!! We pick up our Bridge kids in Storm Lake and bring them to Newell. We originated with a small bus and a 15 passenger van full of children on Monday with numbers close to 40 kids. Yesterday (day 3) we brought close to 60 kids!! (58 exactly, i think). SO crazy! The kids are loving it and I'm absolutely loving watching these kids at VBS. 


In fact, the Bridge kids make up the majority of the VBS. I was observing the 4th-6th grade group that I help with the other day and was pleased at our 20+ kids in the age group. I counted only 6 of those kids that we didn't bring. Praise the Lord these kids are having a great time and (hopefully) feeling loved. 


The kids have finally learned my names and I thrill at the moments they say it before showing me something special they received or telling me something great about their day. I also just love the many hugs I receive from the girls who like to be hugged. 
The only hard part I've encountered thus far is that not all people have patience to work with these kids and I'm easily upset by people on a short string. I guess I've learned that I have not patience for people without patience, which doesn't sound right or justifyable. But my thing is, if you don't really know these kids or where they came from or what their home lives are like, don't jump at their throats when their making a little noise during a quieter time or playing wrestling with eachother in the gym. They're not your average church kids, some of them haven't been in a church before, and they're not aware of the social politics of your average white anglo-saxson protestent church. They're kids, and they will be kids. You choose your battles, and you love them no matter what.