The Beginning of Something Awe-some

(Note: This was written over the course of a few days so some info is not exactly new as in from today, and some is. Just wanted to sort of catch up to the present.)

The word awesome is a word my sister and I discuss regularly. The stem, "awe" is a noun meaning (according to dictionary.com) "an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like." It's one of those words that we use a lot, in fact probably overuse it. I know I do. And in regards to rather un-awesome things. Like pretty good sandwiches and ironic jokes, which are pretty cool, but not really "overwhelming" with a "feeling of reverence....produced by that which is extremely powerful." I don't know about you, but I don't want to place any weight or power in the glory of a sandwich or any entertainment. Frankly, there is someone else that deserves this exclamation, this praise, this description quite a bit more.

This is technically the seventh day (as in Monday May 25th) of my internship with the University of Texas at Austin's Chi Alpha International Student Friendship Ministry's Director, Kelly Brown. I say technically because it doesn't really feel like I've been doing an internship yet, because for the past five days we have been in Missouri at a Chi Alpha conference. To start at the beginning though as a first post in a series of new posts I promise to document here, I'll begin with the first two days experience and work my way with later posts to a full explanation of the "awe" thing in the previous paragraph, so you have to keep reading. (Muahahahahahahah!) :)

Well, to back it up a bit, but be brief, I decided to do the internship this summer (for six weeks) because I felt really called by God to do it. The past season for me was really dry and difficult. Hillsong has a song that I have been listening to for a long while now called "Dessert Song" that you can check out here talks about the fact that no matter what season you are in God is still God and His promises are still promised to you and me and we are victorious in His Son. (Now that's AWEsome!) The first verse goes like this "This is my prayer in the desert, when all that's within me feels dry. This is my pray in my hunger and need. My God is the God who provides." This past semester and year I have prayed that prayer a lot. God is faithful and at the beginning of April I went to a conference in Austin put on by Kelly Brown called Discover the Nations, basically a time to learn about international student ministry. During the time I was there, God totally rescued me from feeling like I was balancing a huge stack of boxes in my hands. He told me to just let go of them. I also felt like in the next couple of months I was going to learn which boxes to pick up again. Little did I know that not only that, I am going to learn how to let God help me balance those boxes. Yay for analogies! :)

At the conference Kelly asked me to come and intern with him and learn more about better leading international student ministry. I knew I needed to say yes even though it was going to slightly complicate my schedule this summer and I had to raise support to be able to do it. I knew it was where I needed to be. What is cool is that I was dead set on going to China a few months ago for the summer, but after saying, "Ok God, I'll do what you want me to do not what I want to do." I decided He didn't want me to go to china. The cool thing (perhaps AWEsome thing) is that He had this much better plan for me. AMEN!

Jump forward to May 18th.......
So it's Monday night, almost midnight, all my friends just left my house after coming and eating pasta and dessert with me, all except my roommate and my friend Ben who was going to take everything off my huge computer by brother gave me for graduation and put it onto the new/old laptop I just bought from a friend of mine (thanks Suzanne!). We can't seem to figure out how to do this however, plus I'm still packing up my stuff, plus I'm really tired because I just got done with 5 finals the Thursday before, plus the semester has totally worn me down, plus all weekend me and two other friends had to put our stuff into storage, and plus I've had a busy day doing last minute errands (also thanks Suzanne!!!). So now that the situation is set up....basically I didn't sleep at all that night...and my friends John and Ruth picked me up Tuesday morning at 4:30am to drive to Austin (they had to go all the way to San Antonio which is why the early morning). I slept in the car though. We made it to Austin at 8:30am where we met Kelly at his house. That day he showed me around campus (so HUGE!), I got to meet some UT-Austin Chi Alpha people as well as the Chi Alpha Director Scott, and then I went to the apartment I'll be staying at and met my new roommates Julie and Sandra, who then had a bunch of people over which was super fun.

Yes, cool things. Problem: I have been feeling so busy. I feel like I need a day to just get some stuff done and sit and relax. However, these past few days we have been in Missouri at an international student conference and it has been amazing and I'm definitely feeling a lot more energized and charged up, so I can't say that I still feel entirely that way, however that was how I was feeling all through finals weeks, that weekend as we put stuff in storage, and then Mon, Tues, and Wed, just because I had so much to do before coming to Austin and then after I got here a lot was happening.

well, now it is Tuesday May 26th and I arrived back "home" in Austin a few hours ago from the conference. Tomorrow I will get that day of rest and relaxation and some time to do some housekeeping stuff. I plan on wandering around H.E.B. to get familiar with the grocery store I will be shopping at regularly (I love grocery stores! :) and maybe cooking something nice. I'm going to blog about the conference tomorrow as well after a good night's sleep. I feel so blessed as I write this though and want to share how AWEsome God is and just encourage anyone writing this that He does answer our prayers and that He is so powerful and so much better at being in control of our lives than we are!

"Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing
Power and majesty, praise to the King
Mountains bow down and the seas will roar
At the sound of Your name
I sing for joy at the works of Your hands
Forever I'll love You, forever, I'll stand.
Nothing compares to the promise I have in You."