Dancing in the Rain

So...today is November 16th, which happens to be my half-birthday. That means it is exactly 6 months until my birthday. To celebrate, I jotted down this little list of 25 things I want to do before I'm 25. Granted, since I only have 6 months left, I may very possibly not actually accomplish all of these things. But it was fun making the list... :) (and yes, the idea sprouted from a comment my mom posted on a previous "25 things" list of a different theme on Facebook. :) ) These are really in no particular order! Read all of " The Journals of Jim Elliot " Scrapbook the trip to Bolivia Finish the Beth Moore Bible study I'm currently doing ( A Woman's Heart: God's Dwelling Place --great stuff! :) ) Learn to skate on in-line skates Read all the unread books on my bookcase Apply for the fall 2011 semester at Ellerslie ( http://www.ellerslie.com/ ) Beat my sister at a speed game (Dutch Blitz, Spoons, Blink, etc.) Finish editing my "Let There Be Light...

The other day, I was flipping through some old journals and I came across this, dated March 24, 1994: "I am determined to see Jesus." I was seven years old, not yet saved, and a stubborn brat. I was "determined" to do a lot of things: eat as much sugar (candy, cookies, whatever!) as I could snitch in any given day; do as little school as I could get away with; spend every spare minute (and quite a few that weren't spare) either reading or playing outside; drive my sister crazy by imitating everything she did, said, and wore; boss my little brothers around to get my way; get dirtier than my mother ever dreamed was possible by playing in the mud; keep everyone outside my family convinced that I was a sweet, perfect little angel... etc, etc! OK, so maybe I didn't do all of those things on purpose , but hey--it is who I was! Yet somehow, God was already working in my sinful little heart to draw me to Himself. How amazing is that?! And in the midst of my little ...

Hey, y'all! :) Well, we're actually home (it's hard to believe we've been home a week!), but I decided to go ahead and send out one last update e-mail to fill everyone in on our last week in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It was a busy, crazy, full week (hence the reason I didn't ever get an e-mail sent) as we tried to pack as much into it as we could and spent every possible second with the kids. :) So... Thursday (October 21st) we went to the Cristo, one of the main tourist attractions in Cochabamba. It's the big statue of Jesus up on a hill. Kaley came with us for the afternoon. We rode up on the teleferico, a sort of cable car type thing. Once up there, we took pictures (of course!), sat on the little wall and watched a thunderstorm come in, played on the playground (swings and broken see-saws...), and just had a good time visiting and enjoying the scenery. From there we went to get ice cream, did a little shopping, got trancapechos, and then trekked back to House 1 ...

...has officially arrived; the music in the CD player tells me so. :)