My Birthday!

October 25th is my favorite day of the year...because it's my birthday!

I was working at CTC that day and nobody there knew it was my birthday until some beautiful flowers showed up for me:

My dad sent me flowers because he's wonderful! They looked great in my room with my purple walls. When I got home there were 2 packages waiting for me...but I wasn't allowed to open them yet!

My mom said I had to wait until I was on skype with the family to open them. When I finally got to open them, there were a lot of little treats for me including: a scarf, a book, candles, candy, a journal for me and mom's book project, a jar to make bread in, spices to cook with, and some wonderful cards from my family!

After opening presents I had a great dinner with my friends. Heidi and Johanna came over and made dinner and dessert for me and Claire. Heidi made some great cupcakes, one of which I just ate!

I was also blessed by some great cards in the mail, lots of facebook and phone messages, some cookies and a delicious brownie from my roommate Ainsley!

All in all, I felt very loved on my birthday and even though it would have been better at home, it was still a great day!

Russia Reunion

4 1/2 years ago, I got the opportunity to go to Russia for several weeks with the Global Aid Network. While I was there my team visited orphanages, children's facilities and families to deliver aid and share the gospel.

My friend Megan and I in front of the city gate:

At an orphanage:

I loooved this trip and besides the spiritual and educational benefits, I made some wonderful relationships with my team members. Even though I didn't know any of them before I went, I got really close with all the members of my team. It was a great mix of young and old and from all different states.

My team and a couple of our Russian interpreters:

Even though I got close with my team, it has been hard to stay close with them, especially after all these years. BUT, just yesterday I was blessed to have lunch with two of my Russia team members; Linda and Jaye! Linda (in the blue shirt with the hand brace) also lives in Ohio and Jaye (in the blue shirt with the green and yellow skirt) lives in Iowa but was driving through Ohio on a road trip. So, they both came to Springfield and we spent over 3 hours at Bob Evans eating and talking and catching up.

It was so good to see them again and hear about what God has done in their lives in the past 4 years. It was such a reminder that being believers makes us sisters in Christ and that is a bond that surpasses time and distance and everything else. I almost never think about heaven (I get too caught up in the here and now...) but yesterday I was feeling sad about not getting to see the rest of our team, and I realized that we will have eternity to spend together :) It made me so happy because I feel that God has put a lot of short-term relationships in my life. I have many friends from Russia, from Uganda, or from camps or college who I have been close to but don't get to see very often. It is encouraging that even though I am bad at staying in touch now I will have more than enough time to be with them in heaven. God is so good :)

Me and Linda:

Back in action...

Alright, I feel pretty guilty about not blogging in....weeks. So I'm back at it. But, at the same time, I am feeling guilty because at this moment I am blogging in class (yikes!). I should be paying attention BUT....if I wasn't doing this I would probably be almost asleep. (Even after two large coffees!) Also, the prof. is lecturing on a topic that I read thoroughly the other day so I'm not really missing much :)

The class I am currently in is called Social Work practice with Individuals. It's all about individual counseling, which is something I am doing a lot at my internship. The lecturing in this class can be kind of boring, but sometimes he shows us good videos of counseling sessions. The real, good counseling is nothing like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE

I have two other classes that I am currently taking. At 8am on Fridays I have Mental Health Policy, which is very interesting. I think that it will be better than my undergrad policy class where he frequently made us act like we were politicians. My third class (which is from 3:30-6 on Fridays) is called Social work practice with groups. It is about group therapy which is one of my favorite things :) It is my favorite class this quarter because I love the topic and the prof. is really interesting and has a lot of experience. He also has the unfortunate tendency of using the word sh** about 25 times each class. We're not in Cedarville anymore! :)

Even though I am learning a lot in classes, I feel like I learn ten times more each day at my internship (I'll write more about it another day) and I am anxious to be done with classes. I have about 8 months left until graduation which equals about 26 more weeks of class...which will be approximately 208 more hours of class. But, Sarah reminded me the other day that I am already over 4/5 of the way done my college education. Good thing I have such an optimistic friend!