T'was the night before the departure...

My Dash

In less than 12 hours I will be on a plane to an unknown place, to live with an unknown family, and do something that is completely unknown to me. I should be scared out of my mind, but I'm not. I'm not because God did some epic things in my heart this week that have made me psyched to get to the DR. 

Sunday morning I had the opportunity to attend Athens Church, which is a plant of North Point Church. They stream Andy Stanley's message from his home North Point Church. The story that Andy talked about came from Mathew 4. It was about Simon Peter dropping everything and following Jesus. Now one could say that this is what we are suppose to do, we are suppose to give up all we have and follow this Jesus guy, even if we have no idea what we are doing. But that's not the whole story. A more detailed account of this story is found in Luke 5. Here it tells us that Jesus had asked Peter if he could use his boat, Peter agreed, probably reluctantly considering he had no idea who this guy was. At this point Peter refers to Christ as "Master", a common, unspecific name for a teacher. After teaching for a period of time, Jesus asks Peter to take him out and to cast his nets into the water. Peter is again reluctant saying that they had already tried and there was nothing. But, then he says, "But because you say so, I will let down the nets". Most of you know the rest of the story. They go to the boat, they catch a ridiculous amount of fish, and it isn't until then and Peter begins to refer to Jesus as "Lord" and makes the decision to follow him. Andy's point in all this was, following begins with information. It begins with listening and learning who God is. We aren't called to a blind faith. We aren't called to go serve a God we know nothing about. We are called to know God, to first trust him, to begin to call him Lord instead of Master. We are also called to do something God's way. Even if we are fisherman and may have cast out our nets a million times, we are called to do it one time HIS WAY, and to see what happens. So this is me casting out my nets GOD'S WAY. I trust him, I let him in my boat and now I'm doing what he has asked of me. I am not going into a foreign country with a blind faith, but rather a knowledgeable faith on the One I serve. 

This was an awesome morning that really made everything click for me. But, God wasn't done with it yet, for he had far more in store. 

Sunday night I was back home and me and my brother went to our church, Passion City Church. Church twice in one day? Yeah, it didn't sound too great to me either especially when I still have not started packing yet. But I went and now I know why. Pastor Louie started a new series called "A matter of life and death", this was kind of the opening overview message. Here's a synopsis of what he said. When we die, we all have a tombstone. We all have a name, a birthdate, and a deathdate engraved on this tombstone. But, the dash between our birth and death dates is the most significant, yet least noticed part of the engravings. A dash is such an underrated symbol for everything we did in the years between our birth and death, but it's all we get. We all get one dash, and none of us know how long that dash will be. Knowing this fact, as Christians, we can't take advantage of any day. We can't let anything hold us back from living the life we want to live while sharing the Gospel. We have to be confident and undying in this pursuit of sharing the Goodnews. 

This rocked me. In a totally good way. It was like God was yelling at me saying "yes! yes Neilly, yes! what you are doing is right and good! Do not waste another day!" I don't know how long my dash is, God does, but that's for Him to worry about and not me. My job is fill my dash with as much Kingdomwork as I can. My job is to not let an piece of this dash slip by me wasted. 

So my work in the DR isn't for college or job applications, it's not to get a great tan, or to take a break from school. It's to do something God's way instead of my way, and through that, to fulfill my one dash that I'm given. And because of that, I can sit here, hours before I leave (still not packed), and have not one ounce of fear or doubt in my body. To be full of joy and confidence and excitement knowing that I can further and kingdom and my dash will not be wasted. 

Ready? Set? Go.

I returned from Canada 2 weeks ago. Now if  anyone knows me, they know very well that I am not one to spend 2 weeks packing. More likely I will spend 2 hours packing the night before I leave. This being said, it is obvious that I have had basically nothing to do for the past 2 weeks. My friends are at college, my mom teaches, my brother goes to school and football all day and my school has school. At first, being home by myself and watching Netflix for 20 hours a day was exactly what I wanted to be doing. But then I finished Prison Break, and I had nothing to do with my life. Luckily I have been able to drive to Athens and Clemson to visit some of my friends and I also went to the lake with my family over Labor Day weekend which also helped with the boredom. But then there were days that I was home, alone, with nothing to do. There were nights that I was sitting in my room looking at all the pictures of my friends at their sorority events. Don't get me wrong, I am so thankful that my friends are having a good time and I want to hear all about their new lives! But it is still hard to try and "be there" with my friends without actually "being there". The past 2 weeks have brought a lot of happy times with my family. It has brought a lot of sad but good goodbyes. It has made me realize that my relationships with my friends will change, but that its ok and in many cases they will only grow closer. It has brought a lot of loneliness. It has also brought a lot of time for me to get excited to go. It has made me just want to be there already! It has given a very positive and happy outlook on leaving. I have 4 more days in the States and I am psyched that in less than one week I will be in the midst of a new culture and new life. No goodbye gets any easier, but each one gets better. Pure excitement is all that fills my heart right now. I can't wait to share more about the DR.

Let's get trained

 Canada eh? 

Before I am allowed to go serve in the DR, the KidsAlive staff sent me to yet another country for my "cross cultural training". For two weeks in the middle of August I was to head up to Calgary, Canada, in the province of Alberta. I learned a lot while there, possibly the most beneficial was the fact that Canada has provinces, not states. Nevertheless, I learned much more than just Canadian culture and geography. Every day we had 4, one hour classes, separated by breaks and meals.We had a ton of down time, which was put to very good use since the place we were staying was out in the middle of nowhere and was beautiful. We went hiking, swimming in the river, had bonfires at night, and played lots of card games.  

Me, Shane, and Hilary exploring the beauty of Canada. Hilary will be serving in the DR with me

I won't lie, I was skeptical at first. I wasn't too excited to travel to another different country for two weeks right in the middle of when all my friends were leaving for college. I was bitter about being there when I arrived. But, that quickly changed when my extroverted personality couldn't hold back any longer. There were 12 people attending the training and 4 adults leading it. It was a small group so it didn't take long to make friends. Once I began to know these incredible people more and more, I was worried less and less about what my family and friends were up to back in the South. Out of all the "cross cultural" lessons I learned here, that was the most impact. We discussed how as life happens, change happens. Change is good and exciting but change is change. Change requires you to let go of the past. It's impossible to pick up new adventures and a new life, if you're gripping so tightly onto the old life. Not to say that I have to forget about my highschool life, but I can't continue to live life as if I'm going to back to highschool in a few short months. I look back on Wesleyan and my time living at home as a wonderful experience. The past year has been the best of all 18 years of my life. That's what makes it so hard to let go. I guess that's a good thing. My transition is so hard because my life is so perfect.
My two weeks secluded from my little Johns Creek world was a perfect way to accept this new change and deal with it. I entered that training program bitter and unhappy, but by the time I was back in the airport, I found myself wanting to stay. There isn't another place I would have wanted to spend those couple weeks.

Hilary, me, Kristen, Jenna, Shelley, and Shane at the end of the course banquet

I have since returned home. Back to the normality of the suburban life for another short period of time. On September 10 I will officially be headed to my new temporary home in the DR.