Family and Friends and Fall

My weekend trip to Michigan was filled with orange leaves, chilly air, little brothers, ma and pop, close friends, a few tears and lots and lots of love. 

I was able to fly home two weekends ago for the dual purpose of seeing my family and going to see my sweet friends Ashleigh and Josh get married. They are officially the first of my friends to get married as I enter this weird season of life so casually called, "My Twenties." (Holy cow, I want to barf.) 

During the weekend, I got to go to my favorite hot yoga studio (my Grand Rapids friends, click the word "yoga" and then go there immediately); go to my favorite food places (Noodles and Company, Yesterdog, and Bombay Cuisine); get manicures and pedicures with my mom and grandma; see my high school's football game; spend time with two of my oldest friends; spend time alone with just me and the brothers; see my sweet friends get married; dance with some of my favorite people. 

Here are a couple things I have learned from the great state of Michigan and those people living in it:  

Family is the most important thing. I have four little brothers that are my favorite human beings and a mom and dad that are a constant blessing. After being away for so long and realizing the number of weeks a year I'll be living in that house is slowly going down, I am much more appreciate of all the loved ones in the mitten. Shout out to the Feet, you da best.



Pets are family too. One of my favorite parts of the weekend - I wish I was kidding - was coming home and having my dogs and cats recognize who I was. I came in the house while Nelly was still locked up so I could properly hug all my family, but when my mom let her out she ran straight at me to give me plenty of licks. College makes you miss those annoying but cuddly, furry little critters.



Dancing like an idiot is good. At the wedding, I got to dance around with some of my oldest and greatest friends. After watching my sweet friends say, "I do," it seemed only right that we dance it out. Thank God for dancing at weddings. Additionally, when my parents tried to get me to come off the dance floor when they needed to go, my dad came onto the dance floor and basically busted the same caliber of moves Kevin James pulled out in Hitch.

Hard goodbyes are a blessing. I always have a hard time leaving home. Why? Because I love it so much and I love all the people in it. But, I never want an easy goodbye. I never want to be so distant that departing from loved ones is easy. However, I've realized the best friends and the best relationships I have are not ones I have to see every day, but the ones who you don't see for awhile...and then when I do see them, nothing has changed.

See ya in December, Michigan. It was a blast. 

A New Year, A New Look

Welcome to sophomore year! In just about 20 days, I fly back out to California for the beginning of my second year in college. How did I get so old? The adventures of this year include: moving into my first apartment, getting paid for my journalistic writing for the first time in my life, and leading a group of freshman girls while we do life together.

After a summer working at Hiawatha Youth Camp, I am so ready to go back to school. For most of my life, I've gone up to the Upper Peninsula to be filled up with knowledge of the gospel and to be filled with the spirit. Usually, I go home and the "Jesus high" slowly fades until the next summer.

This year, however, I went through a year of consistent spiritual growth. This completely changed how my summer affected me and my faith. Instead of being filled up, I was completely poured, wrung and squeezed out. After so many months of being consistently filled with the Spirit, God was able to use me as His servant in ways I've never been used before.

There will absolutely be more information and stories and retellings of how God worked this summer, but for now...some fun.

These are the success stories of the photo booth photos from my last post! 

Nostalgia and Homesickness

Above: These are my biological brothers (Hayden, Jack and Nate), but I have a lot of boys that I call my "brothers" even when there is no DNA involved. Below: These are just a handful of women that mean the world to me (Paige, Laura, Emily, Morgan and Ali). 

One of the things that I pride myself on a lot is my lack of attachment. That sounds strict, awful, cold and many other things, but it's not. All it means is that I don't get homesick very easily. During my experience at the Island School, I like to say that it "beat" the homesickness out of me. We had no Internet, no cell phones, virtually no contact with the outside world save for one 20-minute phone call a week. 

During my phone call, my friends would go to my house and everyone would sit around the kitchen table while I was on speakerphone. The 20 minutes were never long enough, but never short enough either. It was the perfect amount of time to get homesick enough that you wish you hadn't called or that you could simply transport yourself through the receiver of the phone. It was an incredibly hard process for 14 weeks and I never failed to cry my eyes out afterward. 

This tough love in the form of distance was good for me, however. It taught me how to be on my own and how not to rely on my family as much as I had. So, when everyone else around me thought the idea of moving from Michigan to California was going to be so crazy and lonely, I simply brushed it off. 

Being away from my family did not have a profound effect on me at all last semester, as I predicted. But this semester is way harder. With only five weeks left, I'm anxious to get back to my home state and to be with my family. I have three little brothers who are all growing so fast, which seems impossible that they would grow while I'm away. My mom and dad are the people I love most in this world. I simply have an incredible family. Being so close to see them, but still having to wait is killing me. 

Not only that, but I miss my friends back home in Michigan. I have nine girls and a couple guy friends whose friendship is hard to explain, but irreplaceable. I've grown up with all of them. Those girls know who I am to my core probably more than anyone else in this world, and my guy friends are just additional brothers I count as family. I have a staff at the camp I work at that build me up in ways that I can never explain. There's something so powerful in serving with others. I can't wait to spend the summer with them again. 

I miss the changes of the seasons in Michigan - there isn't much of that here. I miss Yesterdog, my favorite hot dog place. I miss being just a short seven-minute car ride away from Noodles and Company, here I have to drive two hours to San Diego to get to one. I miss my cats and my dogs. I miss the woods surrounding my house. I miss driving down my long, winding driveway past the fields and seeing my neighbors' cows. 

It's incredibly hard for me right now 1.) to be away, and 2.) to even admit that it's hard. Prayers and words of encouragement would be invaluable right now. I only have five more weeks, but it's going to be a long five weeks. 

PS - Tell your friends and family you miss them today. You probably take for granted every day what it's like to have a structured group of people around you. 

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2,160 miles: Day One

...AND WE'RE OFF!

After much anticipation and counting down, my dad and I finally hit the road this morning! Our destination: Azusa California on Tuesday, August 21st. We left Grand Rapids, MI this morning a little before 7:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) and arrived in North Platt, Nebraska at 8:00 p.m. (Central Time). We made it way farther than we thought we would. We planned on stopping in Omaha, Nebraska but actually drove five to six hours past it. Tomorrow, we haven't really decided an endpoint. Before we started the trip, we planned on stopping in Denver, CO, but because we drove so far today, we are only 4 hours away from Denver, instead of the originally planned eight. Right now, we're going to get as close to Las Vegas (our scheduled 3rd night stop) as possible. 

Here is what our complete journey looks like:

Our Drive Today:

Logistics: 

• 15 hours
• 914 miles
• 5 States: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska
• Approx. $85.00 for gas

Other:

• Crossed the Mississippi River!
• While driving 80 mph on the highway (shh, don't tell my mom...in my defense it was a 75 mph speed limit.......), I almost got passed by a semi-truck. That is one seriously fast truck. No big deal, just a million pounds of death machine passing me. Needless to say, it was terrifiying.
• I decided that Iowa is absolutely gorgeous. The hills, the farms, the grass, the windmills, and the beautiful blue sky, it was just beautiful. 

Keep praying for us! We were so fortunate to have made it this far without any issues, and we know that God's hand is on our car. Please pray that it stays that way! 

Come To The River

Check Out The Video Of My Baptism Here:

 http://youtu.be/jo_Aj3RcDpQ

Blog post number two! I just wanted to continue to share a little bit about myself and what this last summer consisted of for me. While working at Hiawatha Youth camp in the U.P. I decided to get baptized. It was something that I had never done and therefore wanted to do, and it was something that (thankfully) my parents had decided to let me choose when to do on my own.

After making the decision to fully commit not only my present life to Christ, but also my whole future to Him and to what He has planned for me, to get baptized in Piatt Lake, the lake that the camp is on. I was blessed enough to have a close family friend who is a pastor baptize me in front of the Hiawatha staff and my parents, which made it even more special.

Here is my testimony that I shared before the big dip: 

As a senior in high school, I was doing what normal high school seniors do during the fall: filling out applications and looking into colleges. I’m being completely honest when I say that God was the farthest thing from my mind when I was applying to schools. I only thought about what I wanted and what college would give me the most success in my future. I had my plan set into place, and no one, including God, was going to mess that up.

But God had His own plans for me. When I went to my first Azusa event, I only went as a courtesy to a friend who was actually interested in going to Azusa. When one of my parents’ friends implied they were wrong for letting me even consider go to a non-Christian school, I was severely offended that they thought they could have any say in MY future. Then, when I went out to visit California to tour UCLA, Stanford, USC and Azusa Pacific (in that order), I had no desire to go to Azusa, I didn’t want to look into their journalism program. It’s campus and size paled in the face of the giant schools who surely could give me a better education 10-fold the one Azusa could provide me.

When my disinterest was the lowest is when God stepped in to kick me in the butt, but I still didn’t notice Him at work because I was too caught up in my own pride. When Azusa waived my application fee, I didn’t flinch. I attributed it to my high grades, my success. I finished my applications and acceptance letters started coming in, I brushed off the fact that a.) I got into early admission and b.) got one of the largest academic scholarships that Azusa can offer.

But finally, when the rejection letters came in from the schools I had planned to go to was when I was humbled enough to see what His plan and purpose was. After a few weeks of being bitter and angry about Him not letting me have what I wanted, I finally opened my hands and let it go. Because even if I couldn’t see it, He was doing all these things for my good because Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

My purpose in being baptized today is to start fresh, to be redeemed. Today, I am cleansed by His spirit. And from this day on, I pledge and dedicate myself to live for His sake and purpose and not my own.