.....It's like I've woken up...I think I was asleep....yet my dreams were exciting....I was just perpetually spiritually and physically tired, running on empty...always in an airport at an event planning, doing, going...going.... it was time to come away with God for a while and rest....
"My stregth in life, is I am yours!"- song in my head and it's very fitting for now!
So here I have been in Phoenix, Arizona.... It's been
literally and
metaphorically a desert season...filled with flowers & springs, cactus & sand, bunnies & babies! In April I finished up a bit early to come home to help my sister who was expecting twins. Aria and Autumn Hall! Well they arrived a month early and oh so small and cute, but healthy. They stayed in the hospital the first month, to get big enough to eat on their own. It was very fun to see my nieces and nephews again and be the best Aunt Elisha Ever! We make cookies, and watch cartoons, and have tea parties, and go swimming, and paint, and make messes, and make forts, and play store, make slime, and look at lizards and watch more cartoons, and color, and go to Peter Piper Pizza which was way better when I was a kid!
So here I am back in America...it's a strange land, but I like it! Everything is so convenient I don't know what to do with myself? You can go to the store after 5 on a weekend! Speaking of stores our grocery stores are gynormous! Do I really need 42 different kinds of mac and cheese? Maybe I want nacho pepperoni jalapeno kaleidescope scooby doo magical easy mac!
So the adventures continued for most of the Summer. I went to an art conference at Bethel Church in Redding, sweet! I felt renewed from my times with God, listened to some amazing teachers (Francesco Sideli extrordinare), and it was fun to catch up with old friends (and new from DTS) and go "home" to California. aw.. Redding is home(it just needs my family)...when I flew in to Sac. it was like coming to America...I saluted my fellow American's on the plane, I stood on my seat and sang the anthem, it was beautiful!
Now let's see what else? I went to LA and saw some crazy
DTS friends, we went to Disneyland and went on the YWAM ride, "It's a Small World" and other good rides like Space Mountain. All the while Angela was either screaming or laughing hysterically making any ride exciting! I had a grand time going to the beach and other random adventures with Angela and Ali and soaking up all that Southern
Californianess!(like cutting up plumb hearts, driving over bunnies way too late at night, and finding gold sparkles on our hands at the beach, which means we stared at our hands for a freakishly long amount of time)
Now let's see so, for most of the time I was in Arizona I was thinking, ok God I know I am supposed to be home for this season helping my sister with all my cute babies! What should I do in life after that? I love missions, but somehow in my mind leaving Perth, I thought this meant I was done with missions, so I started thinking how I could get a job, maybe go to Culinary School and decorate cakes, maybe illustrate children's books. SO I researched all these things seeking God for direction, feeling more and more sad the more I tried to shove myself in "the bag" of doing a job I probably am not supposed to do (at least how I plan).
God told me not too long ago, I've called you to be a Missionary. That's your job. That's what you should do, and then I came alive again! well of course I should be a Missionary! I just don't like that word Missionary, in my mind it conjures up all these pictures of nerdy
prudy ladies with flower dresses
and tennis shoes and buns, living in the jungle, homeschooling their awkward children, who refuse to wear shoes. Now I don't really have anything against homeschooling I am sure it's great (Shauna), just as long as your kids interact with other kids and aren't so
painfully socially awkward that they can only talk about the News and Politics to adults. Heck I don't even want to talk about the news with adults. SO basically I've just never wanted to be a "missionary" it was never cool. Except those guys that came from
YWAM who spoke on our camps, but they were all super extreme and perfect, and well frankly I didn't think God liked me like them, cause I wasn't bold and "
Jesus cool". Well then I forgot about all that and somehow I became a missionary, and I love it! I eat it up, (and I found out God likes everyone like them!)
I loved Perth, I loved staffing
DTS's, I loved the Counseling School, I loved loved loved Outreach, I grew in many different experiences, and made some life long friends whom I was tremendously sad to leave. There at the end I realized I was missing the point. I wasn't close to God like I used to be and I don't know what happened, except I was tired and had just been in go mode... all about doing, because I thought that's what I was supposed to do and got all distracted by people....hmmm. I didn't know how to balance close intimacy with God and leading and stress and ah, and I kept getting sinus infections like nobodies business and then I just was like zombie girl....with times of closeness with God...somethin was missing, my "plumbline" was all wobly...
Now though, God's gotten rid of my sinus infections and told me what to eat and squirt up my nose and it's seriously miraculous!
He brought me to a place of much needed re-focus, re-vision, re-newel....re-close with God!
so....well that's what I've been up to...didn't I go somewhere else? Oh yeah
I went to Hawaii!!!! God said to go to Hawaii (love it when He does that) and to go to the
YWAM base in
Kona where I did my
DTS. He wanted me to visit the Fire and Fragrance 2 School, and to look at staffing
DTS....He said to go check it out...
so off I went to
Kona, my Tiffany in hand we dove into the
turquoise sea...looking for sharks and fishes...I found so much more...
