As we are wrapping up our ministry in the colonias and in our internships, nostalgia is starting to flood my head, as well as reminders of God’s great blessings during the year. Rather than rewrite what I wrote in my update, I will post the update letter I am sending out in an e-mail to many of you.
It will be hard to leave behind so many inside jokes, powerful moments and precious relationships, but they will definitely be recorded in many annals (such as photo albums, blogs, letters, facebook threads, etc.). I will be leaving only two weeks after getting home, so please pray that everything I have to get lined-up will get lined up in the 15 days I have at home (I have about 20 things to do in those 15 days!).
Where am I going? N’AWLINS! Or New Orleans, if that didn’t make any sense. I’m going to be a project facilitator for an Adventures in Missions summer project team. What that basically consists of is six weeks of helping with logistics and planning, as well as ministry coaching or leading for six different week-long project groups in K-City. I have no idea what ward I will be in, but I imagine it will be a little like the ward I was in for a week-long project in March of 2006, six months after Katrina.
I am way in over my head I think, but I will be working with three other girls and a couple that is leading the project, so I’m not alone. I am super excited, a little stressed because of time constraints, and a little sad because I am ending an “era”, so to speak – the FYM era.
God has shown me so many wonderful things this week and during the whole mission in general. I will sincerely miss some of the women in the prison. The “memory” type of nostalgia, not just the “miss you so much” sentence on a postcard. I treasure especially the relationship I have with my discipler Rita, our cook, who is one of the most amazing women I’ve met. She wants to start a church here in Matamoros and be a colonia missionary here. I am praying for God’s provision for her dream to serve him in that way.
Thank you all for reading my missionary blog. Hopefully I’ll be able to start another one while in New Orleans to tell of the great happenings there. If I don’t write another blog before I leave, until then, vaya con Dios! May God grant you the peace of Jesus in your heart this week (oh, what a feelin’!).
