Thanksgiving

Yesterday was thanksgiving!

My thanksgiving was pretty good, my day started out with me working at 6:00 in the morning in the dining room setting up breakfast( cereal and other such goodness) and then I had a little break till I went back to work for lunch which was left overs and then randomly the galley brought out scallops. I'm not much of a fish person but everybody else was very excited about it. When i got of work at 2:00 I went to the beach with a couple of girls from the ship. It was incredible to think about, I was going to the beach in November when at home I would be bundled up in lots of layers. the beach was called El Dorado beach and it was simply beautiful. There are a lot of rip tides here in west Africa so you have to be careful that you don't go to an unsafe beach but here we could get into the water and it was the perfect temperature! When we got back to the ship we all dressed up for thanksgiving dinner which was so good ( not as good as home of course but I'm just glad we actually celebrate it seeing as how its an american holiday). One of my roommates was so excited about it because she is from New Zealand, she thought it was just like a movie haha. After we were all stuffed with food we went to the community meeting which turned out to be a worship service with english music! The only worship i had been to on the ship so far was African which is awesome because they LOVE to dance. African dance is very, very different than what i have ever seen. Anyway so after the worship service we ended the night with a movie and of course it had to be Christmas and I happened to be the only one with Christmas movies so we watched White Christmas. it was beautiful! So that was my thanksgiving! I hope yours was pleasant and I hope you ate lost of food!

i cant believe after all this time that im actually here but guess what...im here!! God has been so good, i started working the first day i got here which was pretty good because it helped me get off of american time and get used to african time. everyone is pretty nice and i am in a ten berth cabin so i am always surrounded by people. i took a walk and it was sooo hot and humid! i hope i get used to it! anyway i just thought i should let you know that im here! its so incredible that i get to have the pleasure of obeying God!

life

sometimes i dont realize how much i miss being home until i have time to think. but i do miss home, i miss my family, i miss my bed, i miss driving and the friends that would be in my car while driving. i miss being able to decide what i was having to eat ( its cafeteria style here ) i miss privacy. all these things that im thinking about im not going to have for a whole year. sometimes i wonder why in the world God called me to this life of the unexpected. its an amazing thing, to have a goal that God has set for you but its also scary because im not really sure as to when this part of my life will be over. so much is changing around me. dont get me wrong, im completely ecstatic that God has called me to africa its just a transition. my gateway class leaves for the dominican republic in a couple of days, we will be there for 17 days so im just praying that God will reveal himself in that amount of time through us. we are bringing medical supplies and bibles and also tooth brushes and toothpaste. its been a real challenge to get everything in 5o pound trunks and not take to much. we are going to expand upon the school cafeteria because they feed the children there for free which is a really awesome thing but they want to fit more children so we are trying to build onto it. we are also going to perform some skits that one of the gateway members has made up and has been translated into spanish. im really hoping that the message comes across clear for the kids. im really excited to go and just build relationships there. well i guess ive come to a ending because i really dont think i have anymore to say.

beautiful morning

today i woke up and just knew it was going to be a beautiful day. it was raining. it is sunday and a bunch of us are going to the cowboy church here which im pretty excited about because e did that last sunday and it was really good. i was thinking about my blog and realized that i hadnt told you anything about what im learning.(oops) the first week i arrived there was only 9 of us here to do our basic safety training which is learning how to do cpr and put on fire gear and rescue someone... and also to put on emersion suits that look like the tella tubbies and jump in a swimming pool into a raft just in case the boat sinks(no worries, this is just a precaution). the second week was all about spiritual warfare taught by dean sherman. it was pretty good but it was alot of discussion because alot of spiritual warfare is confusing. he just kept saying " now remember, there is no specific formula" which is true. i doodle alot in class because it helps me listen and i think i could maybe one day make a living off of it.(joking) so the next week (which was last week) we learned about personal and interpersonal development. we learned about living on purpose, we took a personality test (which was creepy), conflict resolution, and living and working in harmony...very important for someone who is going to work and live with 450 people on a ship. so thats about it so far, my day goes pretty much like this

- class 8
-lunch at 12
-class from 1 to 4:30
-dinner at 5
-some random activity with everyone (22ppl) till we all go to bed

anyway, thats my life here in training!

electric cowboy

tonight was so fun! a bunch of us from gateway went to a place called the electric cowboy which is a dancing place. after we were in and my hands were freshly sharperized we all sat at a table and just started talking and then all the sudden the cupid shuffle came on and we all got up and started to dance. the dancing didn't stop till the place closed down which was at midnight because its a dry county. i talked to an interesting guy that worked there who told me that he wished that Jesus was an Asian man with glasses and wore a Fannie pack and i couldn't help but laugh because today in class we talked about culture differences and one of them was the words we use. Fannie in England is a whole new word... anyway i told him that I'm not sure what Jesus looked like because Ive never seen him but i hope he didn't because that's not what i really imagine my savior to look like. it was quit comical. after Alex learned how to two step he tried to teach me to two step and was actually kind of successful which is pretty funny because he had just learned it only a couple of min ago and is from England. I'm pretty sure he taught half of us to dance( or tried). the place wasn't very trashy and i think we all felt pretty safe there so i think we might go again. anyway i thought i should let you know my story of the electric cowboy before it slips out of my brain!

here i am!

One of the things on my list of what I never thought I would do is blogging, but here I am blogging away trying to figure out if I'm spelling everything right. That's one thing you cant expect to always be perfect it your going to follow my blog, sorry. As I listen to Adele I'm trying to figure out how to tell you my story of what lead me to mercy ships. I'm just your ordinary girl trying to figure out what it is that God has for my life. Ever since I graduated I have been trying to figure it out. I even went to culinary school and became a culinary drop out haha. Anyway so I figured I would just work on my basics in school until God gave me this master plan for my life and one day He told me that I was not going to go to college the next semester but I was going to be apart of a ministry, and through many events He lead me to Mercy Ships where I will be on the Africa Mercy for a year. I am currently in the training program called gateway where i have become apart of a family that I love and adore so much! So that is basically my journey so far and I'm sorry this is kind of dull but what can i do?