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