Off to Windy Gap...

Only three days until my month at Windy Gap begins! I am so excited. I'm ready to be settled in one place for a month and get into some sort of a routine. My life has been madness for the last three weeks. And what a great place to be spending a month at, with a "family" to serve with! I can't believe it's already here. I can't wait to write again in a month and look back on all the amazing things that God showed me. It's hard to even write anything right now because I know that my next post is going to be so EPIC! But I feel like I need to write something before I fall off the face of the earth for four weeks...

When I was in Nashville, I had breakfast with an old Young Life friend. She asked me to give her three things that I would like to see God do for me during my time at Windy Gap. My answer:

1. Teach me to be more of a servant. I think that was an obvious one... I'm going to serve, I'd like Him to teach me to be a servant. My job at camp is very "behind-the-scenes"... no one will see what I do, no one will know, but hundreds of kids will be served and blessed because of it. I hope I can keep a servant's attitude with pure intentions of blessing others during my month there.

2. That my month at camp would spark a deeper passion in me to grow in my relationship with the Lord, and that I would have consistency in that relationship. It would be so easy to leave there and get overwhelmed with my crazy life, especially with preseason coming shortly thereafter, and let my relationship with Him get put on the back burner. I think I let that happen last year and I don't want it to happen again.

3. That I would have a change of heart in my feelings about living in Texas this summer. All year I've had this lingering bitterness about that whole situation, and haven't been excited about being here with just my family and no friends. I don't want my six weeks here to be miserable, I want to enjoy my time with my family, because during the school year I miss them a lot.

...so that's how my friend Ellie will be praying for me this month, and if you're an avid reader of my blog (I'm sure there aren't many of you--this is where I shout out to my Dad, thanks for reading), I hope you will too. I'm excited about the adventure ahead of me, and I can't wait to come back and share it with you. Thank you for your prayers!

Texas Adventures!

I'm finally at home in Houston! I haven't written in a while... I've been too busy wandering all over the United States. I guess this post will just be a re-cap of my last week or so, for those of you who actually care to know what I've been up to! I left Nashville on Tuesday, picked up some friends along the way in Arkansas, and we spent a few days at my grandparents' lake house in Crockett, TX. Friday we drove up to Dallas for JR and Britt's wedding... had to be at the rehearsal dinner Friday night, which was a lot of fun. The wedding was on Saturday and it was so precious! I cried like 3 times during the ceremony. The reception was a blast... I was a dancing fool, naturally. Today was kind of sad because I had to say bye to all my friends and Leland. Won't see most of them again until August... working on not waiting that long to see Leland. I'll see him on Friday but only for a little while, he's picking me up from the airport in Nashville, but I'm leaving that same day to drive to Knoxville and break up the trip to camp. It's gonna be a crazy week trying to unpack everything at home and then pack for my month at camp. I'll write something more meaningful later this week, I suppose... for now I'm just going to post some fun pictures from the last week!

The girls at the lake... so fun!

Noland, Kai, Leland, Me, Corbett, Kelsey... what a fun group!

Me and Kai, pre-rehearsal

Me and my wonderful date/drummer at the wedding

The girls and the groom! What a guy. Love him.

Jesus was a nomad

"Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

-Luke 9:58

I like that. The ironic thing about this verse is that the title of the passage it comes from is, "The Cost of Following Jesus." I joke and complain about being "homeless," and roaming around Nashville like a nomad when I'm here, but this is the way Jesus lived. Except He did it on foot! He just traveled around and spread His love. So I think it's cool that I get to do that. I get to be here, and spend time with people, and I have the opportunity to spread His love while I do that. I get to do that in North Carolina, and Texas, and everywhere in between. And I really think that maybe God did that for a reason. I get to cover so much ground this summer, and I get to bring Him with me everywhere I go! So I hope that the people that I come into contact with along this journey that I'm on this summer will see Jesus in whatever I do.

The passage that the above verse comes from talks about two different men who Jesus is calling to follow Him. The first one says, "Lord, first let me go bury my father." And Jesus says to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go an proclaim the kingdom of God." (v. 59-60) The second man says, "I will follow you, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family." Jesus' response is, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (v. 61-62) So pretty much Jesus is saying that nothing, not even burying your dead father or saying goodbye to your family, is more important than following Him. And He takes us on these bizarre paths that we don't understand, but that's "The Cost of Following Him."

Basically, my point is that I think God has me feeling homeless for a reason. And my Mom would probably say, "You're not homeless, your home is in Texas, and you need to stop holding on to Nashville." But I don't think I'm done with Nashville just yet... there are too many people here that are still impacting my life so much, and helping me grow so much, for me to just leave and never come back. I cherish my time here because of that. I had breakfast with a special old friend this morning, and that two hours with her was so encouraging, and I felt like I grew so much just in that short amount of time that I spent with her. And I've found those kinds of people in Arkansas, and I'm sure I'll find them in North Carolina and Texas too. And the cool thing about finding people like that is that those are the people that can make anywhere feel like home.

So what I think I'm trying to say is that maybe God has things to teach me in all of these different places that He is taking me to, and staying in one place just for the sake of "having a home" isn't anywhere near as awesome as the path He has me on. Jesus never really had a home... and if we really desire to be Christ-like as Christians, we shouldn't become so attached to these places that we make our homes, because His plan is the one that matters, and by staying on the path that He has chosen for us, we'll all end up in the same eternal home. That's the place I want to call home.

A Tribute to "The Swedes"...

Now that the craziness of packing up and moving out is over, I want to take a minute to post a tribute to two very special people. This year, we had two girls from Sweden on the ASU soccer team. They were only here for one year, but I'm positive that they made a permanent impact of every person that they interacted with over the last year. They loved to ride in the bed of my truck... in the fall, before it started getting cold, they would stand outside of their dorm and wait for me to drive by to go to practice so they could ride back there. My favorite thing about them was the communication barrier. They both spoke good English, but it was muffled by their Swedish accents. Elin, the tall, blonde, more "graceful" of the two, did a better job of thinking through things before she attempted to say them in English. The thing that cracked me up about her was that she could not for the life of her grasp the concept of the letter j. To her, a joke was a yoke, jogging was yogging, and our trainer John was Yohn. I loved to give her a hard time about that. But she wasn't as bad as Sofia, or as most people called her, Fia. Fia is just this ball of happy energy. She doesn't walk, she bounces. And when she talks she's usually really excited, so nothing comes out right. Some of my favorite "Fia-isms"...

1. Me: Fia, what class are you going to?

Fia: um... retard English!

2. When she had a cold... "Krimm! I have so many sneezes in my nose!"

3. When I asked her if she was going to let me dye her hair... "Um... I will have a conversation with my brain, and I will get back to you!"

4. When she noticed I was having a bad day... "Krimm, why do you have a little sad in your eye?"

5. When we were playing the "vegetable game"... "I don't like this because I do not know any of the 'wegetables'"

...there are so many more that I can't think of right now. I wish I had written them all down all year.

The first time Fia and I bonded was in August when the team went to the lake. We were tubing together, and Fia was not exactly an expert in shifting her weight when the tube got thrown around, so I took it upon myself to keep us both on board. I would throw my leg up over her and pull us both in one direction, and the whole rest of the day the team made fun of me for violating Fia. From that day on, Fia and I had a special bond.

It was so hard to say goodbye to our sweet Swedes. I'll miss the gentle, kind spirit that Elin had about her. Conversations with her were always special, because she always had a genuine concern for how you were doing. I'll miss the way a room lights up when Fia walks in and says, "Hellooooo!" in her Swedish accent. She brightened my day every time I saw her. I'll miss all the strange cultural differences that made it so funny and interesting to be around them. They were such a blessing and joy to get to know this year, and as hard as it was to say goodbye, I'm so grateful for the friendships that I got to have with them for a year. Hopefully they will be back to visit us sometime... and someday when I have the money, I hope I'll get to go see them too. I can't believe how fast a year with them went by. I miss them tremendously already...