asking

God told me something cool this week.

So I used to believe that God wanted to be close to me more than I wanted to be close to Him. So I knew that if I prayed and asked Him to bring me close and to teach me who He is He would. I prayed this prayer and I saw God do it. When I was a teenager and I heard people saying they wanted a better relationship with God, that's what I'd tell them to do too.

Well the last couple of years have been rather hard, and I think I quit believing that. It's easy to feel like I've gone hopelessly backwards. Very frustrating feeling. But (hurray!) in May God was so amazing! He helped me through a lot of the struggles I was having with Him. Questions remain, but I am no longer feeling crippled by them.

So what did God tell me this week? I was asking Him to restore what we had. Then He reminded me that He still wants to be close, and He values the friendship we had when I was 18. He reminded me that He has the power to change my heart and bring me close again and let me know Him in a new and deeper way. I'm so excited. :D My relationship with God used to be so real and amazing, and it will be again.

God help me drop anything that would hold me back from chasing You...

church, school & work

Basically at the moment the only things in my life are church, school, and work, but someone requested I post so I'll try. I guess with fame there is a public to please. :p

So as a church things seem to going pretty well at the moment. People are pretty envisioned for missions since our trip to France. It was great seeing people pulling together on both sides of the Atlantic to pray for France and seek God's heart for that nation. We have a guest from Saint-Germain staying with us now, Pierre-Elie. You can see his picture here. Well, technically he's staying with the Phillips but is is also a guest of the whole church. It's been fun hanging out with him. We're also getting ready for our Unhindered, our annual missions conference. (Conference is not the right word exactly, it feels more like a retreat except we stay in Frisco.) I'm excited about this year, it sounds like it's going to be good as usual. I always come away from Unhindered very envisioned to live my faith in a deeper way. Personally, this is the yearly Immanuel Fellowship event where God always speaks the most to me.

School, well I'm taking eight credits this summer (and working full time so the blog may end up taking a back seat, I'm busier than I was expecting to be) I'm taking speech, humanities 1, and a landscape painting class. So far I'm really liking humanities and art class. I've never felt very good at doing landscapes and so I tend to get bored with them. However, I feel like I'm getting much better at painting in this class. I'm a bit surprised because I didn't have much painting experience at all. It makes me really want to make a career out of art, I like it so much. I really need to decide what it is I'm going to college for, and what I want to study.....but that's a whole new post.

Work is the same as always. I was a secretary when I was 16 and I was so bored that I promised myself that I'd never do it again and here I am doing it. I paid more than Gap and had better benefits, so what can I say, single girl's gotta make a living. I'm a bit frustrated because I've almost been here a year and I'm still constantly messing up. Office work is not my nitch in life. I feel like more trouble than I'm worth, but fortunately the doctor I work for never fires anyone so I guess I'm not going anywhere.

So, to the person who requested that I post, there's my life for the summer, going fairly well I'd say. No worries, I'll try to make time for blogging; I rather like it. ;)

((I'd like to thank all three readers of my blog, and whoever left that comment, you make me feel loved.))

i did not die

I have wonderful news: I did not die in speech class last night. Surprised? Not half as much as I am.

Let me explain, speech class has been my arch nemesis since I was twelve and it was a required class in the private school I attended part time for three years. It was required every year without mercy. Being the super-shy kid with hideously crooked teeth that I was .... well you can imagine, it was my worst nightmare all year long. 8(

As bad as making speeches actually are there is one kind of speech that stands far below the rest and that is telling my life story. Or telling my testimony, as we Christians like to call it. Arg, I do despise it. Every single time it very bad, really boring, and quite embarrassing. (Okay, so once it went alright but that was a one-time freak occurrence.) I definitely freak-out more telling my own life story than when I talk about anything else.

So today's assignment was to tell about ourselves - to a room full of strangers. (Icky it's bad enough doing it with people I know.) Well maybe I cheated a little because I just told a short story about when I was on a mission trip to Hong Kong. Even so, I completely quit breathing just practicing in the hallway. Not a good sign. I did a little better during the actual speech; I was careful to pause and breath. Though I did everything else wrong; breathing kept me from passing out.

may in paris

Yes, I know, I've been a bad blogger. In my defense I spent the month of May in Paris with very limited time on a computer. It was a great computer - free month. ;)

I was very nervous about going on this trip. Last year was the hardest trip I had ever been on. I really hadn't even wanted to go to France at all this year, but I felt like God was asking me to so I went with many frightened little prayers.

Last year the few of us who went felt led to a suburb of Paris called Saint-Germain-en-Leye to pray. That was our goal this year: to learn about the area and pray for it. Surprisingly Mike ended up meeting some people in the area before the trip even started. A struggling pastor, and a family that caught the vision to pray with us. We have been told over and over on previous trips to France that the French are very closed to Americans and closed to churches that are not part of a larger, very well established organization. Two counts against us. However, we had a lot of friendships with French people just drop in our laps. The last week we were there we were invited into three different homes. We have way more friends than anyone expected. Very cool. God also connected us with people who knew the history of the area. This allowed us to pray much more specifically than we expected. We prayer-walked on every street and around every school.

While we were in France Stephanie came to visit us. Stephanie is a Swiss girl who's been working as a nanny in Summit County and teaching French classes for those of us in Immanuel Fellowship who went to France. She's become friends with a lot of people in the church. Marie and Mike (two of the better French speakers) have been talking to her about Jesus for a long time before the trip, she was very interested but knew it meant a commitment and change. While she was visiting us she gave her life to Jesus. It was amazing to see because we'd all been praying for her for months.

As for me, God spoke to me more on this trip than any other ever. I filled as much space in my journal in this month as I had over the eight months before the trip. I think I'll look back on this month as a huge turning point in my spiritual walk. So much happened. But if I start writing on that this post will get ridiculously long. ;)