Coming down...

Last week was a whirlwind and filled with such joy!  Why, you may ask?  It was the annual biblical counseling training conference that my current church, Faith Church, puts on every February.  I was blessed to sit under 5 solid days of training sessions.  My heart and head are brimming with great truth!

The second, and even better reason for the joyful whirlwind was that many friends from my home church were here for the conference.  I was so blessed to see their smiling faces and spend time with them.  I miss you Grace Bible Church! But, what a joy to spend a week with friends learning from the truth of God's Word, the Bible!

So, I am coming down off of an incredible week.  Today begins a week returning to normalcy.  Yeah, those of you who know me know how ludicrous that sounds.  LOL  Perhaps instead of "normalcy" I should use the phrase "typical routines".  Is that better?  Normal is always overrated!!  :-)

What is typical?  Well, I'll tell you...

Monday:  a day of flexibility, laundry, house cleaning, work out, tea with a friend this week, reading, guitar playing, chiropractic visit, errand running with a resident today
Tuesday: video call to GBC counseling prayer team, work out, sit in on counseling, evening/PM shift with Helen, overnight on-call backup for my roommate
Wednesday: intern meeting, mid-day shift with Rachel, relax, pray/play guitar
Thursday: another flexible day, sleep in! - yay! (only day of the week), read, study, possibly serve, errands, pray/play guitar before bed
Friday: another flexible day, read, study, pray/play guitar before bed, overnight on-call
Saturday: mid-day shift, rest and prepare for Sunday
Sunday: Sunday school/church service, possible additional fellowship or service opportunities, once a month bible study in evening, this week I'll be working an evening/PM shift for a friend

Latest Lessons Learned:
Many hands, excellent organization/delegation, and many years of practice make a large event operate like clock-work!
The importance of local church involvement for a believer cannot be over-emphasized!!!  Local church...if you don't have one, get one!  What a beautiful thing!! :-)
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know!
Regarding prayer...if I don't pray much, I conclude I don't really need to.  Once I begin to practice purposeful/passionate prayer, I conclude that I can't live without it and long to increase more and more.

I have arrived, yet I will never arrive...

Happy New Year!  I had a clear drive on New Year's day down to Indiana.  My poor new friends.  After 10 1/2 hours in the car I was pretty antsy.  Excitement + road fatigue + excitement + new friends + excitement + renewed blood flow to the extremities = hmmm...yep, I'd say I was rather Hammie-like.  :-)  Did anyone say squirrel??

Thank you so much for all your prayers for me!  I have felt them!  It has been a whirlwind week and the wind is still blowing.  The next week will still be crazy with shadowing our shifts, learning policy, learning our jobs, moving in, and getting settled.  Not to mention I'm still nursing my wounds of getting beat rather badly by my mom in cribbage.  :-(  Yep, got skunked one game and barely not skunked another.  It took my mom to school me and put my card-playing pride back in it's place.

Looks like for January Wednesdays will be my busy day.  I start at 8AM (after a night shift on Tues ending around 10:30/11P) and finish about 8:30/9PM.  I'll have a bit of a break in the mornings (1 1/2 hours) a couple of the weeks.  Praying for me on Wednesdays during January would be appreciated.

This post is a bit random, but I wanted to get something else posted before the week gets away from me, especially tomorrow, my first Wednesday.

Latest Lessons Learned:
If someone ever offers for you to "pop" and smell a smelling salts tube, DON'T, put it directly under your nose.  You can get the idea of the item's purpose without singing the mucous membranes of your sinuses.
Chocolate fondue provides great fellowship and relationship development!
Wherever I am reading in Scripture, it is very applicable to what will face me that day!
Spend tons more energy thinking about a person's strengths, uniqueness, heart for their job, and contribution to the team than about ways in which it may seem to me that they struggle or are lacking.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb. 13:8)

I was born a small child in Minnesota one chilly winter day...

Okay, so you don't actually want me to start back there do you?  Well, I don't wish to begin at the beginning, so I'll begin where it gets more interesting.

At 0-dark thirty on December 26 my heavily loaded, and freshly re-tired, Subie rolled out of Bozeman, MT carrying myself and the bare essentials for a year away from home.  Well, so some of the bare essentials may or may not have included a bike, an extra bookshelf, my Hebrew and Greek textbooks, my rollerblades, my backpacking pack, two of my plants, and...you get the idea.  Have space, will cram.  :-)  Thus begins my "Go east young woman!" journey.  Shucks, maybe that's what I should have titled this blog.  Eh, too late...

If you are reading this blog, you likely know where I am headed and what adventures I am about to embark upon.  If you do know the general idea about what I am going to do in Indiana, feel free to skip the next paragraph.  For those who don't know very much about what awaits me in 2013, please feel free to read the next paragraph to get up to speed.

*Optional Paragraph* In April of this year, I graduated with a degree in Biblical Counseling from Montana Bible College.  Beginning next month the Lord has provided an opportunity for me to gain experience and increase my skills in helping the hurting.  I will serve Vision of Hope Ministries for a year as an intern working with young women who are desperate, lost, without Christ’s hope, and without Christ’s rest.  "Vision of Hope is a faith based residential treatment center whose staff and program focus on applying loving, practical solutions from God’s Word to help produce permanent and lasting change in women whose lives have become characterized by negative, life-dominating habits.  The program is designed to help solve complex problems as efficiently and thoroughly as possible, using a relationship with Christ and the direction available from His Word as the basis for change and growth."  You can find their link posted on my blog, and I encourage you to check out their website for more information.

Back to essential reading...so my trip is a long one, across six states (I just counted them on my fingers), and via the company of many family members along the way.  Yay!!  After a slightly icy trip over bozeman pass, the roads were dry all the way to West Fargo, ND.  First stop, my dad's place.  It was a great two+ days together beating him in cribbage, eating, shopping, eating, getting new cel phones, eating, playing with new toys, beating him in cribbage...all the fun stuff you do visiting your dad.  I was also able to meet a friend who lives in the area for coffee and drop off a Christmas card for my brother, also in the area.

Today I travelled smooth/clean roads to my next stop, St. Cloud, MN and my sister's place.  Her husband has flu-like symptoms and she was not feeling too hot tonight (which, I'm certain, had nothing to do with the fact that I beat her in two games of cribbage as well ;-)).  So, if I get sick in the next few days, we'll know why.  Tomorrow's schedule:  church and lunch with my mom, out to the brother's to visit him and his wife along with my mom, and maybe, to wrap up the day, I'll beat my mom in a game or two of cribbage.  Could happen!

Lessons learned so far: 
-When I know what I need to do I can pray about it, but mostly I just need to begin doing it.  I can't wait 'til I feel like it or for the details to all line up, I just need to do it!
-Don't trust the winter road condition internet maps too much.  Trust the Lord and my proposed itinerary more!
-When there are risks to loving and spending time with people, even the risk of the flu, take the opportunity.  Love and spend time with the people.  The flu likely won't kill me, but a forsaken opportunity with others may not come back around.
-Before a long road trip, rethink what I consider bare essentials.