When Things Don't Go as Planned

I love to plan; I plan what I'm going to wear the night before, where I'm going to go and what I will do most days, how I want my room to look, and even what I am going to do in the future. I will also plan out an event in my mind and how I want it to go.

I really didn't have any idea of what was going to happen when I got to Yakutat, but I knew that we were there to touch lives by sharing God's love, and for that I was truly excited. We got our daily schedule on Monday (May 18), where we would start each day with Holy Hour, then daily Mass, then be divided up into groups to go out and do our work projects. I was paired up with Justine and Janae and we went over to Mr. Gene Reily's house to help him out with work around the home. His wife passed away from cancer back in 2000 and he just hasn't had any motivation to clean his house. He has three children; two daughters and one son, whom is named Dene and lives with his father. It was such an honor to work with Gene and learn about his past; where he grew up, how he met Carol his wife, and different stories he had from living in Yakutat. We would all stay on our work sites until lunch time, then we would go back to St. Annes, eat lunch, have some relaxation time, then we were going to split in half where one gropu would run a VBS for the young kids, and the other half would go on a hike with the high schoolers. I love working with high schoolers, so I jumped at the chance to go on the hike. My group was getting excited to go on the hike and do trail maintance, where we would clip back branches, clear the path, and pick up trash so other people could enjoy hiking as well.

As 3pm rolled around and all the kids got out of school, the young kids began to show up for VBS, but there were no high schoolers in sight. We waited around for a little, then had to finally leave because it was getting late, and we waned to be back in time for dinner. We still cleaned the trail, but it wasn't as fun or rewarding as it would have been had there been high schoolers there.

Later that night, at 7pm, is when we would have our community get togethers, where we would go to one of the many local beaches, have a bonfire, play some sports, and then just sit and chat with the town. This night, we went to Sandy Beach, one of the beaches that is on the Bay instead of the Pacific ocean, so there aren't any waves. We got there, made a great fire, set up the volleyball and got some games going, but no one showed up.

Currently, for my job as a Red Shirt with GroupMission Trips, my crew doesn't start our own camp until next week, so in the mean time we are helping another crew set up and volunteer at their camp until it's time for us to go to our own. It's tough because while I am here and helping them do little jobs here and there to make the camp run smoothly, I keep feeling like I'm not doing very much, which kills me since I am a person who loves to always be active, always helping, and always doing, but here for the last two days, I'm not feeling myself, I'm not feeling like much help. Then on top of all that, I found out this morning that I have an eye infection in my right eye, so I can't really open mine up all the way. THEN.....on top of all of that while the school has Wifi, I can't access all my photos from my Alaska trip to post on here.....

I'm sorry if all this is coming across as complaining, but it really isn't me complaining. This is all something that just didn't go according to plan, whether in Alaska or at work. It's good to plan, in fact we should make plans to do things otherwise not much would get done, but the key is to be open to God's plan, because God has a plan for each and every one of us, and while we don't know what it is right now, or we may never know what it is, His plan is
better for us, because He truly knows us, and knows what we need, and when we need it. I didn't get to go on that hike with high schoolers, but I got to know people on my mission better. We didn't have people a lot of people come to our community event, but the three people who came ended up coming back many more times. I may not have much to do here at this camp, but this isn't about me, and I let that slip my mind for a while.

God has a beautiful plan for each and every one of us, each one unique. We need to embrace His plan, embrace that there will be moments where we can't plan out what will happen, or how things will happen, so we put our full faith and trust in God.

"Not my will but yours be done" Luke 22:42

Learning to be Fluid

What a crazy past two weeks! I have been out in Loveland, Colorado staying in Lucile Erwin Middle School where I was basically back in school again for job training. We spent all day in a classroom setting learning our different positions, going through driving school, and so on. Now we are finally starting up camp and I am back on the East Coast!!! We spent the last three days driving almost 2,000 miles to come to Lexington, North Carolina where we are helping another crew set up and run their first camp until next week when we will continue our journey down to Greenwood, South Carolina to begin our first camp. In those three days of traveling we have been through 8 different states: Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Let me tell you, our country is truly beautiful! If you ever get the chance to go and travel across the states, do it!! (But more on that later)

So Alaska (sorry folks I promise I'm getting all my stories up more now that I don't have to be in the classroom all day long). Sunday May 17th was our first full day and man did we really experience Alaska! We began the day with Holy Hour and Mass, which if you have the access and ability to do so, I highly recommend it, always begin your day by giving it to God. We also went down to the harbor to do a blessing of the fleet, which was amazing! Yakutat is very much a fishing village, where that is the main income for most people, so for Father Steve to go down and bless the boats was so cool. Then our group went on a hike through a part of the Tongass rainforest, with plenty of views of the mountains and the water. After the hike we went down to one of the many beaches in Yakutat called Graveyard beach. This beach is beautiful, and looks straight out to the mountains, espeically Mount St. Elias, the second largest mountain in the world, since it starts directly at sea level. Not only was the day beautiful with all the nature, but we had some great time to talk with each other as well. One of the things that Devon, our leader, told us was to "be fluid" on this trip, meaning that plans could change at any moment, things will come up, and we have to be able to be flexible and go with whatever changes. I'm not going to lie, I really do struggle with this because I am a very organized person who likes to have lists and schedules. Don't get me wrong, I do "go with the flow" from time to time, but I do like to have somewhat of a plan. It's the control that I like, something huge that keeps me from giving everything to God.

So we hung out at the beach for a while, then it was time go back to dinner at the church. We loaded up our two rental vans, and began to drive out down the sandy road to get back. As we were driving, our first van ended up getting really stuck in the sand. We got out to try and push, pull, anything to get out, but nothing was working, we were only going deeper and deeper into the sand, making it harder and harder to get out. With no cell service, well no technology at all since we were on a technology fast for the entire mission, and dinner waiting for us back at the church, you can probably tell that this was very much not planned at all. As a few of us were looking around the area to find big pieces of drift wood to use to get the van out of the sand, I thought back to what Devon had said eariler in the day to be fluid. Obviously we hadn't planned to get stuck, and we had planned to be back at a certain time, but instead of getting frustrated and start blamming people for things we could have done better, I took this as a time to not only enjoy outside, but also to get to know and talk to my group more. We had laughs, jokes, and worked as a team, till we finally got the van out of the sand and back on the road. I had only known these people for about 24 hours, and yet coming together to overcome that challenge, I felt like I had known them for a lifetime. If we hadn't gotten stuck, I may not have had those moments of bonding with my group. Praise God for vans stuck in the sand!

As I go into my job, planning, setting up, and running 3 different camps with almost 400 campers each, I have many different lists and things that need to get done, but I have to remember that I need to be fluid. Things are not going to go 100% right all the time, and instead of getting hung up on what went wrong, I need to remember why I am here, and I am here to serve my God who graciously gave me this opportunity to serve Him by serving others.

Be Fluid

Yakutat Harbor

Hiking along the coast

Graveyard Beach 

Moving the van 

Two Beginnings, One Encounter

So now that I'm as you could say, back on the grid, I have so much to update everyone on. I finished my two weeks in Alaska and now I'm onto about 9 weeks serving across the country with Group Mission Trips as a red shirt. So I figured the best way to catch everyone up on my adventures would be to go one day at a time for both experiences. We shall see how this works, but here goes nothing.

On May 16 I traveled for about a total of 12 hours, in 4 airports, and 4 time zones to get to Yakutat, Alaska. There I met 21 other people from FOCUS campuses all across the United States; Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Maine, California, Florida, and many states inbetween.
Yakutat is a small fishing village that has about 600 people in the summer months. They have a post office, school, police station, and a couple of stores, and that's about it. The parish is called Saint Annes and the priest who is stationed there is Father Steve Gallagher, a missionary priest who travels all through out southeast Alaska to serve the small villages in the Diosease of Juneau. Father Steve is such a blessing, and my first encounter with him was when he picked us up from the small airport and drove is around the village, telling us stories of how he used to be a cop, then proceeded to get pulled over for speeding!

Our first night we had Mass, dinner, and got to know our team. We had four FOCUS missionaries, 15 students, a full time missionary and his intern. My team is below:
FOCUS
Devon: Colorado
Dain: Texas
Sean: Texas
Matt: Colorado

Students
Melanie: Indiana
Shannon: Texas
Jeanette: Arizona
Justine: South Dakota
Magggie: Colorado
Emily: Colorado
Jannae: Texas
Maddie: Minnesota
Lelia: Maine
Michael: Florida
Ryan: Texas
Kelly: Arizona
Jaime: Colorado
Aaron: Maine
Alex: Michigan

Full time Missionaries
Craig: Mexico City
John (intern): Massachusetts

These people were in my life for two weeks and each and every person has brought me closer to Christ.

So day one for Alaska, keep looking for day two!!!

As for my training: I'm an Office Manager, or the mom of the workcamps. I help set up and run Jesus based service experiences for high schoolers across the country. It's a lot of work, but so much fun!!!

We'll that's it for me and the first day!

Peace and Blessings!

1 John 3:18

Drum Roll Please

Back in the continental United States! Being in Yakutat for the last two weeks was truly humbling and life changing. I'm so excited to share with you all my stories and photos! Photos are gradually being put on Facebook but stories to go with them will follow soon! Sorry for the lag in blog posts, there was not service and I was on a media fast and now I'm in Loveland, Colorado to jump into training for my job with Group Mission Trips for the summer. Speaking of which I got my destinations tonight for my camps this summer. ...drum roll please

June 29-July 4: Greenwood, South Carolina
July 12-18: Seth, West Virginia
July 26- Aug 1: Charolette, New York

I'll be posting my address for people to send me mail soon as well as my travel plans for all those who want to see me!

I'll be posting more now that I have Internet again, but this was mainly to share where I will be this summer. Please continue praying for me as I encounter Christ this summer through mission

Peace and Blessings

To the Last Frontier and Beyond!

I'm addicted to charity.

Yup you read me right. I went on my very first mission trip, or workcamp as it was called back in 2008 when I was 14 years old.Since then I have been on 3 other workcamps and 2 international mission trips (Jamaica and the Dominican Republic) and each trip has blessed me with different opportunities and experiences.

6 mission trips in 6 years.

In two days I will begin my journey on my 7th mission trip as I journey up to the remote island of Yakutat, Alaska. I will be spending two weeks missioning to the community by repairing homes, picking up tsunami debris, organizing a bible camp for the kids after school, leading the community in prayer, and embracing their culture.

But wait....there's more!

After two weeks in Alaska I will then be flying straight to Denver, Colorado to begin my two week training for my job this summer. What will I be doing? I will be serving as a Red Shirt summer staff for GroupMission Trips, an organization which creates workcamps for high school students to serve over the summer with their church youth groups. Yes, it is the exact same organization which my youth group went on workcamps with when I was in high school! So what will I be doing for them? I am an office manager where I will be working at three different workcamps across the country. I receive my assignments the night we get to Colorado which will be three different destinations across the country. After my two weeks of training, my team and I will pack up and drive to our first destination, set up and run the camp, then break it down, pack up, and drive to our next destination. I then will be returning home back in August.

That may dear friends is just shy of 12 weeks, or 3 months on which I will be out across the United States, literally journeying from the West to the East coast to share God's love and mission to every person whom I meet this summer, which is why I have started this blog! I will be updating everyone where I am, what I have been doing, as well as some stories and pictures from where I have been. If you want to get updates on when I have posted a new entry, enter your email in the email box on the upper right corner of the blog.

Please keep me and all my team members and those whom I will encounter across the United States in your prayers this summer, and I will keep you all in mine.

Peace and Blessings Y'all

Where You Lead Me

For those of you who know me, I'm a sucker for a good quote; song, saint, bible verse, inspirational, you name it, I will most likely love it. When thinking of my next blog post to write, which has been a very long time due to being incredibly busy college student during finals week, I was actually praying in the chapel the other week when the song "Where You Lead Me" by MercyMe popped into my head. Now I know what you all are probably thinking, she was just listening to that song prior to going into the chapel to pray, so as a form of distraction she is now singing those random songs in her head. Well my fellow companions, that is not the case. The last time I really listened to that song was years ago, so long ago that in fact I actually can't remember when I last listened to it. So now you would probably be saying, well it' just random that the song just happened to pop into your head then. Wrong again my friends, wrong again. Let me take you back a couple of weeks to get you all updated, then it will all make sense of why this song happened to come into my head while I was praying.

April is a very busy/crazy time of year for college students; there are many last minute assignments that professors want to get in, research papers are due within the last few days of classes, finals are quickly approaching, which can't be studied for since all the other assignments need to get done first. Basically, it's a month full of crazy. In addition to that, we were preparing for next years council elections at the Catholic Campus Minisry, or the CCM as I will refer it to. People were getting nominated, accpeting/declining nominations, and preparing to see who would fill the positions for the upcoming year. While usually very excited during this time, thinking of where I will be elected to, I was quite sad this year. This year was my last year on my CCM council, because next fall I will be graduating early, and since the council positions require a full year of service, I was not able to fulfill those requirements. So elections happened, and the new council was elected for next year.

The following Monday we then will have a joint council meeting, where both the outgoing and incoming council will have our bi-weekly meeting together. As soon as all of the meetings of the day were finished, our term was done, or as Katie, our president put it, "It is finished". It realy started to hit me then; while I wasn't going to be graduating this year, I only had one semester left. Even then, the current semester is almost over and now the summer is quickly upon us. What is going to happen?

What will happen? I think that question is asked so often of our society every single day. We yearn so much to be in constant control of our lives; what we eat, how we dress, where we live, who we are friends with, that we hate the thought that we have no idea what the  future holds for us. I know for a fact that I struggle with this quite often, espeically now with everyone constantly asking me what I plan on doing once I graduate next semester. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? After our day of meetings, I then sat in the chapel and just thought about it all, what was going to happen in my life. Then, the MercyMe song "Where You Lead Me" came into my head. Now this isn't the first time this has happened where a song that I haven't listened to in years suddenly comes into my head, so because of that, I just sat and listened to the lyrics play in my head. My favorite part is the chorus

Where you lead me, I will follow. Where you lead me, I give my life away. Where you lead me, I will follow forever and a day.

How beautiful are these words, I thought. I may not know what all this summer will bring, nor what next semester will bring, nor what the next year will bring after I graduate, and I was really starting to realize all this when my time on CCM council was done. But, while this part of my life is finished, more chapters will begin to be written, and while I don't know what the storyline will be, wherever God will lead me, I will follow.

Listen to Where You Lead Me by MercyMe here

Faith, Trust, and Intimacy

Good Friday is always full of reflection, liturgy, and prayer. My day began with Stations of the Cross at 12pm, where we did reflection at each of the fourteen stations. We then had what is known as Tre Ore, which is translated 'Three Hours'. It traditionally goes from 12-3pm, and is a reflection on the last seven phrases of Jesus while He was on the cross. The four Gospels (Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke) all have different accounts of what was said while Jesus was on the cross, which is why we reflect on seven total phrases. At my Catholic Campus Ministry, we have seven different students each pick a phrase, then each one will reach the Gospel passage, give a brief reflection, read a prayer on the passage, then snuff one of the candles (there are seven in all, one for each of the phrases that was said). There is then a song that is sung, and then time for silent reflection before the next phrase.

This year I was asked to do a reflection for Tre Ore, and I have to say, it was such a tough decision to decide which one I wanted to choose. After much prayer, I finally decided, or well God decided for me, and I wanted to share with everyone.

Luke 23: 44-46
  "It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!' And having said this he breathed his last."

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice; He endured various forms of torture, ridicule, and pain, He carried a cross on His back to the top of a hill, had to greet His mother through all this pain, was nailed to a cross, and then He died. Despite all the pain and suffering, He still managed to have complete trust in God.
When you look at the agony in the garden (Luke 22: 42) Jesus said, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done"
He was terrified, for He knew exactly what was going to happen, and even with this knowledge, He still put all His trust in God He could have backed out, said no, and just walked away from it all, but He didn't. Instead, He had trust in His Father, a trust that was there even at that final moment when He finally said, "Into your hands I commit my spirit." At that moment, Jesus truly gave God everything; mind, body, soul, and spirit. A trust beautiful beyond compare, one that we all must strive to have with our Father.
Not only was there trust, but intimacy. With both the prayers Jesus said; in the garden and on the cross, they began with 'Father' for Jesus was addressing Him personally, something that we all must do every single day with in both our prayer and when we speak of God. When we talk about Jesus we need to use the present tense, that Jesus IS not Jesus was.
Trust and intimacy; two things that we NEED to have with our Father.
During liturgy of the hours, night prayer ends each night with the prayer, "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." In the Divine Image of Jesus Christ, the words "Jesus, I trust in you" are written below the image. We have all these ways to express our trust with God, but do we really trust in Him?
It's hard to trust God when the path on which we walk is rocky and we have many crosses to bear. It's hard to have an intimate relationship with God when there is so much pain and suffering in the world. Why is it so hard to trust?
To trust someone, they have to merit it by actions, by love. We as humans have to gain trust. We can trust family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and all those who are close to us because they have gained our trust with their love for us, with their self service and dedication to us. We see this through small actions that they do for us. In order for us to trust God, we first need to fully understand what He did for us, that He gave us His only Son who died on the cross for us.
How much does He truly love us? Look up at the cross at the front of any Catholic Church and you will see Jesus with His head bowed. Why is it bowed? More importantly, who is He bowing His head to? He is bowing His head to us, to you, because He died on the cross for you. Kings are bowed to by their servants, but this King of heaven and earth is bowing to us, to show us just how much He truly loves us. Mother Teresea even said, "When we look at the cross, we know how much he loved us then. When we look at the tabernacle, we see how much he loves us now."
Next time you look at that cross, stop and think of what He did for you, thank him, and then, bow your head in return. He loves us so much that He would die for us, the greatest act of love known to man, so why shouldn't we trust in Him? Bow your head back to Him, show Him how you want that intimate relationship, how you trust in Him and what He has in store for you. Then say with all your heart and with meaning,
Jesus, I trust in you.