Oh, my! Only 5 days before I leave for Africa! Sometimes it's not real to me that I'm going. It's like I'm going to the moon.. I know it's really there, yet it's so far away from everything I've ever known! Sometimes it's overwhelming to think about. It's not very often that someone gets the chance to go to Africa. I feel like God has been preparing me for this for a long time in the things he has taught me these past years. About who he is, and how he has worked in my life and changed my heart. I want to make the most of this opportunity. I don't want to waste this. But then today I realized that this trip is no different than any other day before it. God has set a task before me to reach the people of Mozambique this summer just like he has set a task before me each morning I get up. Yes, the location will be different, the culture will be different, the language will be different, the food will be different, the time will be 7 hours different, I will be surrounded by people I have never met, I will be out of my comfortable little "bubble" but the job at hand is the same. To serve and to obey.

Finish Strong...

Really, I should be doing school right now... but instead I've decided that I'm going to write my first post on here. Ironically, It's going to be about finishing up these last couple weeks of school, doing my best, not slacking off, and of course... NO PROCRASTINATING by doing frivolous little things...

It's at that point where the end is so near that I'm finding it really easy to slack of. It's been especially hard know that I have so much to get ready before my trip to Africa but that I need to finish up school. I definitely got myself in over my head this semester! I'm only taking three classes but it might as well be 10 because I picked the ones that I'm the least "talented" in (that being math and science. ha. ha.) Not only that, but I'm doing them online. I'm not sure what I was thinking... I now realize that Chemistry was never meant to be self taught... and that there was a reason my professor said less than half of us would make it through. One thing is certain though, and that is after all of this, I'm going to be confident that I can make it through almost anything! A good grade will be proof that God still does miracles!

I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to school. I guess the way I look at it is that it's what I've been given to do right now, and I might as well do my best at it. Even if I pretend to hate my classes, there a part of me that just loves the challenge of them! I hate feeling like I could have done better.. I guess those who are faithful in little are faithful in much! Still, as the end draws near, I find myself just wanted to be done. But just like anything in life, it's the times that we don't care that we really have to. It's then that our real character is tested and our true colors come out. I think it's easy (at least for me..) to let how I feel determine how I act. I'm learning to strive to be the one who sets there feelings aside and just gets the job done. Jim Elliot once said, "Where ever you are, be all there". That is my hope, for not only getting all of my assignments turned in, test studied for and passed, or textbooks read, but also my life. I want to look back and know that I've given my all and held nothing back from the one who gave it to me in the first place.

So here comes the point where I take my own advise, and go get to work =)