Patience...ugh

Well you would of guessed that once again God is challenging me to be patient. Right now all I have to say is that I hate being patient. It is the hardest thing for me to do. I don't know how many times God has revealed this to me over the years but I still have yet to learn what true patience is. I think it took me coming all the way to South Africa to really begin to grasp the idea of patience. So I continue on this adventure of learning patience and continue to learn from God what that looks like. There are things right now in my life that is just continually on my mind in where God is allowing for me to learn patience. Right now in my life there are so many unknowns for the upcoming fall and it just stresses me out. I love being able to plan out my future so having the unknown just sitting there with me not being able to do anything about it just sucks. So I only hope that giving over the frustrations and letting go of the need to control the situations it will all work out.

Tomorrow we start Service Sites and I am beyond excited. I am a little nervous just because there is so much that is unknown. I cannot even imagine what we will be learning. I think I am so eager because this is where everyone says you truly fall in love with South Africa and where so much growth occurs. I am just so happy to finally be able to get off campus and enter into the communities. I am working at the organization called RivLife. I will be working along side of six other girls for the next four weeks. I am really excited because the girls that are in my group I do not know super well, so I am excited for the chance to get to know them on a deeper level. What we will be doing there is working with a preschool in the morning and then in the afternoons we will be pairing up with social workers and going out into the community on home visits. We will be sitting in when they are conducting counseling sessions. I am just so excited to see how the community is and to start relationships. We have a class right now that we are doing with our service sites called community engagement. It is a fascinating class where we get to understand how to truly come in and effectively change a community. Our teacher is all the way from Kenya and is just such a joy to listen too. He has a smile that is absolutely contagious. I am honestly just ready to get my hands dirty and to experience the unknown. (Sorry I keep saying the unknown. HA)

So I did something crazy and decided to join my father in running a half-marathon. Yes a HALF-MARATHON, am I out of my mind??? Now here is the thing I am not a runner what so ever, but I wanted to do something for this summer that was literally impossible. Something I never thought I would be able to accomplish. So of course I choose the one thing I despise. I then found out that my dad is doing one on June 4th and he began to get me a training schedule and everything. So now it is official that I am doing this. I am in day 3 of 13 weeks. I am already incredible sore because I am so out of shape. I have already found it to be insanely challenging and every time I run it is a battle to get to the end. I only hope it gets easier. At our campus we have a long driveway about 2.5 miles up to our campus and it is all up hill. I have done that the past two days and almost died. But I did it and made it through. I hope to be able to accomplish it without almost collapsing. Tomorrow I will run 3 miles to Coffeeberry which is a strip mall down the road. I only hope that I will be able to accomplish it. I am fortunate enough to have my best friend Annaliesa to do this with me. She has been such a great encouragement to me and the one getting me up all those stupid hills :) 

Today is the first day of Lent and I am still not sure what I will be giving up yet. I am trying to make it something that will truly be something challenging but will focus me on God. 

I am reading this book called Captivating and am loving it. What I read tonight was just so encouraging. "Beauty is essential to God. No--that's not putting it strongly enough. Beauty is the essence of God"

Good Night from South Africa