My team

Update: Silent Retreat

It was beautiful and a true blessing. The Lord gave me time to know myself and know him better and actually healed me so much from the wounds of my past. I highly reccomend doing a silent retreat, I might actually do a longer one if I have the opprotunity. To just simply be with the Lord as his beloved is beautiful! On this retreat, my wondeful Jesus let me see a glimpse into just how much he loves me. And let me tell you guys, no words or earthly things can even begin to describe it. And he loves us all that way, we just have to let him in so that he can pull us close.
P.s. had lunch with a bishop today and sat right next to him. 2nd time that's happened this year!
P.s.s. Jesus has a burning smile when you see how much he loves you. I pray you one day do.

Much Love: Erika :)

I am engaged!!

Hey guys :) alright so welcome to the November / December blog post! To say the least this month was crazy! After halloween we really hit ministry hard! As you can see from some pictures it snowed November 5th and it was a good 16inches! And it has stayed haha and kept snowing, the arctic Minnesotans say it won't stop till April probably. Awesome!  In other news I have now had the pleasure of meeting negative degree weather, the coldest I have felt so far is -8° which I guess isn't that bad.... ha!
But as I said before this month was a little  crazy and life changing, like all motnhs are with God :) haha but ok guys are you ready for some crazy news??? Ya you are. I AM ENGAGED!!! that's right there is a ring on my left hand and I am engaged to a true man and God. His name is Jesus, you have probably heard of him he is pretty famous, ya he saved the world. Haha but I actually am engaged to Jesus. Here is how... On November 21st 2014 I gave a year of my life (till November 21st 2015) to date Jesus. Why you ask? This is why my sons, Being here on NET has truly let me see how I really didn't know what love was or how to love. And I see the importance of that now. Without love, and loving correctly... I am nothing. And so when i heard that Pope Francis announced that this upcoming litergical year was dedicated to the religious life, I felt the Lord calling me to take him as my love this year. And so I let him. It is one thing to love God and another to be in love with him. I am seeking the latter. And what better way to do that than to date him, to be with him for a whole year as his beloved, trusting and learning what love is about so that one day whether I am called to marriage or religious life I can love fully and know how much i am fully loved. I am excited. Yes it was extremely difficult to decide to do this, and I don't fully know all the reasons why I am doing it but I'm trusting God cuz he put it on my heart for a reason so he must know why I'm doing it. It's sort of exciting to have the beauty of it unveiled as I go <3 ya big news but good news :) haha
Well other than that, we had a great thanksgiving! :) our team went down to Faribault, prenounced fair-bow MN, to our teammate Sam's house and spent a good 4 days just relaxing and eating a million thanksgiving dinners! After we got back our team put on 2 full day retreats and went to a Lifeline (gathering of thousands of teenagers down in Saint Paul ) all in 3 days. It was exhausting. But hey now it's done and we are on the other side :) thank you Jesus. Sidenote: Jesus is wondeful, he helped me give a 30 minute talk to 80 confirmation teenagers the other day. I was afraid but the Holy Spirit truly came upon me and to my aid. Ironic cuz the talk was about the Holy Spirit haha should have known he would have shown up!
And so now I am here, right at the moment I am on a silent retreat till tomorrow afternoon, ya 2 days without talking is a while for me haha but it's actually so nice. I see a lot more than I do when the world is so crammed with noise and I get to know myself better which is really good for Saint Teresa of Avila says that it is crucial to know ourselves in the spiritual life :) i will update you all on how it goes! I will be home very soon for Christmas! 8 days to be exact and then it's the good old Griswold family Christmas for 2 weeks! Socal as the Minnesotans say it... here I come :)
Oh sidenote: I walked on water today... ok it was frozen. But still cool!  Ya buddy! Ya Jesus.

He is coming!
Christmas Blessings:
Erika JJ Christopher

Love

A Rose from my Love.

First snow fall!!

2 ft!

It's a net thang.

Knowingly ate an expired yogurt cuz i was hungry. #itsanetthang

10/24/14

Danced for this sunset tonight. God's romance.

St. Augustine

Hello everyone! Well the five of you who read this blog! :) hi. Wow ok so let me first apologize for not keeping up with this, mission life is not full of free time haha. That being sad, this is mission life! And it's beautiful!

To do a brief summary of my time spent so far I will say that training was absolutely amazing. I encountered the Lord far more than I knew he could take me and I still am. Teams were announced mid September and I was put on Team 5 which is a parish team in Forest Lake MN. To be truly honest I was hoping not to be put on a parish team. I thought that I was called to a traveling team, but there is the phrase I thought and my thoughts are not always God's plans  and for that I am learning to be thankful for :)

So here I am a month and a half into mission life and here is what I currently am doing. Here at the parish my team and I are running things like the bi-weekly confirmation program, the weekly high school and jr. High youth groups, open youth houses twice a week where the jr. High and high school teens can come and do homework and relax after school, we are going to local high school sporting events to randomly evangalize and even taking some of the youth to places like the mall of America to try their hand at evangilizing. We also take teens on one-on-one activities like going to the local bagel shop or the one starbucks they have in town! Haha and this let's us truly minister to them where they are at.

Looking at my mission here and now, I still don't truly know where the Lord is leading me but I have learned some important things while here so far. The first is how to love. Not by my own standards but the Lord's standards. Read 1 Cor 13 and you will see why. The second is obedience. The Lord has a plan for all of us and the role in which you are assigned is not less than or unequal to the role he has appointed someone else. He put you there because he knew only you could fill that role in his plan. Read Gal. 2: 20-21. Which leads me to my last point, trust. Trust is huge, unbelievably huge and can be a monster if we don't let ourselves by vulnerable to the Lord. We can not control what he has planned and his plans are better than our own, we must trust that he will direct us and those around us for the betterment of all of us and his Kingdom, and ultimately isn't that what we want, his Kingdom on earth? Read Jer. 29:11 

St. Augustin once said that "my heart is restless Lord, until it rests in you" I may have messed up the quote's wording but nonetheless it's beautiful and true.

And that's what I am personally hoping for this year. To rest in full love, trust, truth, and wisdom in the Lord. Please pray for me as I pray for you. The adventure continues!

Thank you for reading I love you all, see you in December!

Love, Erika

NET Base!

Beautiful day here in Minnesota!

Ready For Take-off

So hello everyone! Wow, so I'm currently sitting at gate 23 at LAX about to board my plane. This trip has already been amazing just by the preparation I have had to work on this past summer. For those of you who don't know, I did reach my goal and over in my fundraising and never have I relied so much on God but he delivered when I trusted. I have been packing for the past couple days, yes it was a week long ordeal. I literally had to sit on my bag to close it multiple times when I kept finding things I forgot to put in it. I said bye to my family at 5am this morning and boy are they an interesting group to say bye to haha. Dad drove me to the airport and helped me check in (after we both aimlessly wondered for a couple minutes in confusion) and then he said "alright peace!" and hit the road, he does love me :)

It's kinda funny, people all summer have been asking me if I have been preparing and what I hope to get from this trip and I have been asking the same things to myself. To be honest I don't fully know why I haven't backed out of this trip. Let me explain... I'm a chicken and paranoid and have a lot of anxiety on a daily basis when I'm not flying across the country for 9 months, just the fact that I am here and not too afraid is nothing other than God's grace. It's beautiful. I don't fully know yet the purpose of this trip in my life but I have a feeling I will find out along the way and that's the beauty of it.... Airports are really loud. Just a side note. So ya, from here I fly to MN. and begin my journey on a 12 day retreat at a lake in Wisconsin and then train for another 3 weeks. During this time I will be put on a team, find out where I'm stationed and again take-off, to follow God physically and spiritually. Im chasing him and he's chasing me!

Well, I'm gonna board now but you are in my prayers and I hope I'm in yours. Thank you and God Bless You.

Peace and Love: Erika

My First Entry

Alright, well hi everyone!

Welcome to my blog! This is my first entry so this is where the journey begins. Well I guess I will share with you what exactly this blog is for, I'm going on a Mission Trip! (that's boring, don't bore your people- mom) My mom is in denial. But Let me explain more, last august I was talking to one of my god friends about how I felt so stagnant in my faith life, like I wasn't moving anywhere and was restless. He mentioned to me that he had a friend that did this amazing ministry called NET Ministries and was transformed! So I looked into it. NET is actually a Ministry of 135 young adults that travel around the U.S. for 9 months and put on retreats for the youth of our nation. I said to myself "well Erika, you love the youth, you are somewhat an interesting person, and your looking for more in your faith..." so I applied last November. A couple days later I got a call for an interview retreat in March; I went on the retreat and had got a glimpse into the life of a NET-ter and was hooked! 2 extremely long weeks later I got a letter in the mail saying that I was one of the 135 young adults chosen to serve a year with NET! And so, after prayer and discernment I accepted the invitation that same night! I am now raising $7,000 big ones f0or this adventure and its coming along with the help of God. And so, it is June 30th and I leave home for Minnesota (home-base) on August 14th for 9 months living out of a backpack on the road and sleeping on floors and couches of wonderful Host Homes. In all, I am actually really excited for this journey, I have so many people to thank for helping me get here and helping me believe that I can challenge myself this year for the Lord. All I can do now is pray, and ask for your prayers as well! thanks so much for reading I will be posting all year long! God Bless You.

If you would like to donate and be a part of this adventure God is leading me on please go to www.gofundme.com/am60q4 everything helps! Thank you.

Peace and Love: Erika