on good friends, community, and contentment

I got to see my friend Kira tonight. She was gone for the past 10 days at World Race training camp in Georgia. If you haven't heard of the World Race you have missed out. It's basically an 11 month mission trip around the world. Go to the website for more info. Kira is my discipler here at school and is such a great role model and friend. She is one of those people I could just talk to for hours. When I am around her I am reminded of the power of the gospel and how God wants to use someone like me.
I was talking to Rooms (Rebecca) the other day about how Kira is one of those people I could be around all the time and never get sick of because she truly is so caring.
So Kira leaves in July for the World Race. And I am so excited for her, honestly I am.
But I am also bummed.
Very bummed.
I don't want to say goodbye to such a great friend.
And our Discipleship times are sweet and I can't imagine not having that. Last year another great, godly girl discipled me and now she is on the mission field as well. Why do they all keep leaving me?
No, I really know that God is going to use Kira in some awesome ways and that maybe he'll even teach me a thing or to as I try to vicariously live my life through her for the next year.



I'm in a phase right now where it is very hard to see a lot of my friends "going". This time last year I was getting ready for India and was so excited (ok very nervous as well) about going there. And now I am depressed that it's not my turn now to "go". It's my turn to stay and to be poured into and to grow and to really enjoy time with family and friends. But it's hard.

I think back to last year on June 3 when I met my team and was wondering if I would ever click with any of those people. Now I can't help but cry when I think of how much I miss that odd group of 17 people. Sure we didn't all get along and there were days when I wanted to scream if I didn't even get 5 minutes of alone time. But community was goood. Real goooood. Community grew me and stretched me in ways I never knew before. I learned how to relate to others that came from completely different lifestyles. I was challenged to grow spiritually by them and I was able to hopefully encourage them as well.

Like the first time I got sick. I woke up on our first day of ministry very nauseous. I somehow made it downstairs and layed there on the floor during prayer. I thought I would be okay so I grabbed my backpack and got into the jeep. Bad idea. A nauseous stomach and Indian roads do not go very well together at all. Riding down a road in India is like a rollercoaster, you never know what is going to happen. So needless to say when we finally got home that night I was very happy to run upstairs to my bed and crash. I didn't get out of that bed till the next day. During that time my team really loved on me. Someone always made sure that I had a cool washcloth (which means pretty frequently because of the heat) and that the fan was blowing on me. Jennifer Nelson was like my mom trying to make me drink Gatorade or eat bread (sorry Jen but I wasn't too successful). And then the next day when I realized getting out of bed was not going to happen my leader Carly stayed home with me. I ended up sleeping the whole morning and felt so much better that I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. We were going to the market that afternoon to get fabric for our punjabi's (Indian women's clothing) and I really though I was feeling better so off I went. Bad idea #2. The heat and sun were too much for me and I began to feel sick again. I have never felt so weak in my life. Jen helped me pick some fabric (which I actually love now) when making a decision was not an easy thing. Then as we walked around a little more I started to get woozy. (This was probably actually pretty funny to watch but it was not fun at the moment). Ted grabbed a chair from somewhere and made me sit and Laura stayed with me, singing some songs to me (she has a beautiful voice). Needless to say it wasn't my favorite day there but now it really speaks volumes of love.

I can see how my team was there for me and how in the midst of this strange, scary, odd place full of stinky people and cows I had people who were going to back me up. We had so many hard times, yes. But they are always overshadowed by the times where we couldn't stop laughing or worshiping our Saviour.

Right now I am praying that I will live by the motto "bloom where you're planted". For now, I am planted in Boone and then Raleigh in less than 6 months (it's crazy!). I find that in life I am always waiting for the next thing. Last year this time it was India. Then when I was over there it was home. And now I'm not always sure where it's for, which I think is the hardest yet. Friends often ask me if I will go back to India and my answer is always yes. If God shows me an opportunity to go I will jump on it. The thing is He hasn't shown me yet. So here I wait. Praying, thinking, and wondering when the time will come.

God has taught me that waiting shouldn't be full of doing nothing, that I should be living a full life HERE and that my ministry and reach is for NOW.

Until then, here are some pictures I am going to re-share.

my roomies and I enjoying a girls night complete with face masks

when you have no TV or normal forms of entertainment you come up with interesting ways to entertain yourself. apparently hanging a teammate's bear is a great idea.

5 girls, one Red fort, one silly picture
after which all these asian boys ran up and asked if they could take pictures with us
one of them even took a picture like he was proposing to Jen (far right) oh dear

pizza hut lunch! what an amazing and hilarious day.

swimming in a river in which the current was way too strong and we busted our legs multiple times. and we heard noises from behind a bush and ran. hahaha

happy april

it's April. sun is shining. birds singing. warm air beating down on my pale skin. right?
NOT
spring may be here but Boone has not acknowledged that lately. it has been cold. and I have been unhappy about it

-went to Grandfather mountain last weekend with Megan, Dawn and our friend Shannon who came up to visit from State. Shannon, Megan, and myself all went to high school together. It was really cloudy and drizzling but it's only $1 so we went and had lots of fun anyways. My favorite part is always seeing the animals. this time the cougar was up in a tree on the highest branch. we questioned whether the sign that said he could jump up to 30 ft was accurate. ha.

me, dawn, megan, and shannon on the mile high swinging bridge

mr. cougar
very cool picture, courtesy of Shannon

the eagle has an injured wing because he was shot in the wild out west. so he came to north carolina to be safe

the otter is my favorite. he was such a ham, posing it all up for us. how cute!

climbing on the rocks

so we all filled out these books with information at the museum to become junior rangers. you had to put all this information you learned and then take it to the entrance gate to get your button. we decided to be kids and do it. I got an otter button. and they gave us posters. I think the park rangers got a good laugh out of us.

a tip

"When you only have two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other."
- Chinese Proverb

*But if you forget to water your lily and take her home over spring break next time get a pet rock and put the other penny in savings.
- Julie's Proverb

4 things

because lately all of the craziness in life takes away all my great blogging ideas, I'm stealing and re-doing this from lauren

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. Babysitter

2. Summer Nanny (trust me it's diff from babysitting)

3. Elf/Santa's Helper (the latter is the real PC term)

4. Child Development Center Teacher Assistant

Four movies I have watched more than once:

1. A Walk to Remember

2. Serendipity

3. Minority Report

4. Failure to Launch

Four places I have lived:

1. Raleigh

2. Germany

3. Dorm at ASU

4. Turquoise Room/Apartment

Four TV shows I watch:

1. American Idol

2. The Office

3. Greys Anatomy

4. Jeopardy

Four places I have been:

1. Germany

2. Belize

3. Carribean

4. India

Four people who email me regularly:

1. Facebook

2. My Mom

3. People who want me to sub for them at work

4. Professors

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Coconut

2. Olives

3. Steak

4. Fettuchine Alfredo

Four places I would like to visit:

1. South Africa

2. New Zealand

3. Thailand

4. Europe

Four things I am looking forward to in the coming year:

1. Turning 21

2. Hopefully seeing India girls!

3. Spending a summer at home

4. Impact!

please please please read!

more India lovin time.

maybe my blog bores you to death or tears. sorry about that.
but please please PLEASE go read the updates from the current india team

they will change your life. I am so serious.

a friend from my team, Laura is currently on this team and some of the blogs she has written are beautiful. she puts into words so many of the thoughts that I cannot.

also, there is a big post that was put up recently all about asha house and because I really want everyone to read it, I am copying it here:

Asha House

Posted in Administrative Stuff by Robin Cotton on 3/12/2008

As you've been learning about the team, and the ministries they're a part of in India, I'm sure you've heard of Asha House. In Hindi, Asha means HOPE - and that's exactly what you find when you walk in the door. This is one of the three orphanages our team ministers to in India, and the one we've partnered with financially. We hope to help them care for these beautiful children in practical ways - by helping them pay the bills each month so the orphans are clothed, fed, and taken care of. If Asha House stays open, then these 23 orphans will continue to stay in a place where they see the love of Jesus everyday!

The staff at Asha House helps our team out so much - from the women serving as translators in the leper colonies, to Victor helping with transportation, plans, and anything else the team needs (and all while they run an orphanage and take care of a "family" of 23 children and 7 adults!)

---

ASHA HOUSE

Our children come from poverty stricken slums, outcast leper colonies, and homes of prostitution. Many of them are orphaned or abandoned. They have not been cared for, provided for, and held no hope of an education. By God's power each of our children were brought to the doors of the Asha House.

Once admitted, the children are provided with clothing, soap, toothbrushes, and lots of love! They are assigned to a small family group which is cared for by a staff member. Our children range in age from two years to sixteen years; we are committed to caring for each of them until they can support themselves in the plans the Lord has for their future. The Asha House is not really an orphanage; we consider it a family. We love our children, care for our children and discipline our children in order to be an example of the family of God.

The Staff: Victor and Simini

Victor and Simini each received the Lord's calling to provide a home for the hopeless and forgotten children of India long before they were united in marriage.

Victor started his ministry as a worship leader to a music group that brought songs of praise into unreached villages. While he was a fulltime manager of Emmanuel Children's Home in Delhi, he was a student of Emmanuel Bible Institute.

At the age of sixteen, Simini attended Emmanuel Bible Institute and started her ministry work by living in a leper colony. She has worked in many leper colonies and slums, as well as ministered to prostitutes and street children. The Lord brought she and Victor together when he called her to work at Emmanuel Children's Home. Together they sought God's plan and direction to fulfill their calling. In January 2007, the Lord's timing had come for the Asha House to begin.

The Vision

Beyond being a children's home, Victor and Simini understand God's purpose to use the Asha House as a ministry to reach out to the unreached villages of Hariyana, India.

Already our temporary dwelling has reached its maximum capacity as home to twenty-three children and 7 staff members! We hope to be able to move the Asha House into the midst of unreached villages where more children of labor and exploitation can be reached. This area will also provide the opportunity to reach out to the mothers and fathers of the villages.

We have a dream of starting Asha Children's Village - home to an orphanage, school, Bible college, rescue house, and elderly home. We have great faith that the Lord will provide land for the new home of the Asha House in His own time and way.

The children and staff lift up this prayer request every day!

Testimonies from the children

"My name is Bharat. I am eight years old. I have one brother. I am from a Hindu family. My mother and father are divorced and now my mother works as a prostitute. I was brought to the House of Hope by one of the leaders from my mother's prostitution area. I am in the first grade at Ebenezer Missions School. At the Asha House I take love to help out with my little brothers and sisters. I just learned how to throw a frisbee and put together a puzzle; now I love to do them both!

My name is Flora. I am six years old. I am from a very poor Christian family. I have three sisters and one brother. We lived in a large, Delhi slum. My mother is a house servant and my father is a laborer, so they could not provide for our family.

They decided to send me and my little sister, Sweetie, to the House of Hope. I am very happy in my new home. I am in kindergarten at Ebenezer Missions School. I love to play with my new friends and take care of my baby sister.

My name is Nazma. I am five years old. I have one brother and two sisters. I am from a Muslim family. My father is a drunkard, who beat us and did not provide for our family. My mother could not care for us, so she brought me and my little brother, Shanawaz, to the House of Hope. I am very happy in my new home. I go to Ebenezer Missions School. I am a little quiet, but I love to smile and jump rope.

My name is Shanawaz "Shanu". I am four years old. I have three sisters. I am from a Muslim family. We lived in a large, Delhi slum. My father is a drunkard, who beat us and did not provide for our family. My mother could not care for us, so she brought me and my older sister, Nazma, to the House of Hope. I am very happy in my new home, and I have just been enrolled in Ebenezer Missions School. My older sister is very good at taking care of me. I was very malnourished when I came to the House of Hope, but now my belly is shrinking and my body is gaining weight. Praise the Lord!

My name is Shivam. I am five years old. I have two sisters. I am from a Hindu family living in a large, Delhi slum. My mother has health problems and my father is a laborer. They sent me and my sister, Suman, to the House of Hope because they could not provide for us. When I first came to my new home, I was afraid to do anything for myself. I would not go to the potty, get dressed, take a bath, or even ask for a second helping of food. Now, I am so comfortable in my new home, and I am a big help to my staff leader, Brother Brij.

My name is Suman. I am four years old. I have one brother and one sister. I am from a Hindu family living in a large, Delhi slum. My mother has health problems and my father is a laborer. They sent me and my brother, Shivam, to the House of Hope because they could not provide for us. I go to nursery school at Ebenezer Missions School. I am so happy at the House of Hope. I love to eat and play with my new friend Sweetie.

Support and Contact Information:
* The Asha house is funded by financial gifts and gifts of provision (i.e. rice, meat, fruits, clothing, soap). * We greatly appreciate volunteers of service and time to our children. * This orphanage does NOT do adoptions. We can't help you adopt orphans. * The Asha House is located in Hariyana, India, 45 minutes from Dwarka and 45 minutes from Gurguon.
* For questions please contact: Wilson Bunn
wjbunn@gmail.com U.S. mobile: 828-320-0268 India (Delhi mobile): 9911724476 To dial India from U.S.: 011-91-number To dial U.S. from India: 001-number


To GIVE to Asha House online, click here:
http://www.adventures.org/give/donate.asp?giveto=orphans
and choose "India Orphanage" from the drop down list.

for your viewing pleasure

I have been a bit (understatement of the century) India sick lately and just have been thinking lots about it. I was browsing around on good ol' Google and found these pictures and thought I would share. Most of them are of Dwarka - the sub section of Delhi that we lived in.

very blurry but this is the dwarka "skyline" it's hard to describe what it looks like to people so I thought a picture might do some better justice

a better picture that also shows the metro which was wonderful and air-conditioned :)

costa coffe (also an ac haven) where we had regular breaks and where my d-group would go lots

the inside of pizza hut in Dwarka

random, i know but I needed to get some thoughts out in a productive way

it's spring break!

spring break has oficially begun!

- I am at home and my friend Angel came with me b/c she is doing the same TF internship this week (we're trying to be semi-excited)

-My new room is wonderful! I came home not having a clue what it was gonna look like and I mus say I was a bit nervous but mom did a great job! The walls are a cool green that I love and the bedspread goes nicely with it all. I'll post pictures sometime when I find my camera amongst all my stuff.

-we're going to see a movie today - I think Enchanted and I am so excited!

a bit of perspective

phew, what a day!

it started off like any old monday. i was exhausted as usual since I normally mess up my sleep schedule on the weekends by staying up late. Went to my first class where we were supposed to editing our videos based on children's books. We upload our footage then UH-OH, realize that we had completely taped over the first scene with the second scene. Somehow during our filming on friday, I accidentally rewound the tape to the beginning and we taped over the first filming session.
yeah that was a bummer. So we had to go BACK to the Laundromat and shoot all over again.

finally the class day goes on and is as boring as ever. get to math and eat my chicken tortilla wrap from the library cafe - yum! we go through math class and then have our break before reading. reading is 2 hours long and comes at just the point in the day where you are about to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. today was no exception.

at about 20 minutes till the end of class my friend Nathan got a text from the new safety update text messaging system that we now have after VT and NIU. he goes to check his e-mail to get more details and comes in and whispers to our table that there was a masked gunman at app south apartments and that he was now possibly on campus. talk about a distraction! nathan raised his hand to tell our professor and did and our prof basically didn't give it much attention.

yeah no one could focus for that last 20 minutes. I mean really now, we had no clue what was really going on. so we finally get out and I start to wonder if I should go home or not. the area of campus they were telling us to stay away from is exactly where the bus goes to take me home.

I found my friends angel and heather in the ed building and we discuss what we know. heather is supposed to be getting in a van at 5 to go to a class thing and is trying to talk to her professor about if they are still doing it or not. angel had class at 6 but was going to wait in the ed building until she knew what was going on. So angel and I stayed in the mac lab and waited. it was so confusing because they were telling us to be safe and stay away from that area of campus but we weren't under an official "lockdown". so we waited.

finally at 5:10 we went into official lockdown mode. the girl working in the media lab had me go ask downstairs in the c&i office about what we should do. a lady found me in the stairwell and said that they were locking all of the outside doors and that we should stay in the computer lab and lock that door as well. the man in charge of that media lab came by and said to stay there and to not let anyone in.

so for almost 2 hours we sat in there. really it was a pretty good place to be stuck because there were plenty of computers and we were watching the news on TV. the only bad thing was that my phone was dead and i couldn't get service out on angel's cell. we think that all of the towers were busy.

I did realize that I should probably try to let my parents and people know that I was ok so I remembered the power of facebook. I messaged my friend Laura and had her call the parents to pass on the message which was a big help! And then I was able to message and/or IM my roommate and other people to make sure that friends were ok and in safe places.

Overall nothing awful happened which is a blessing. No one was hurt or injured and really it was just a guy trying to rob some places and make money. The thing was he did have a gun so we may never know what he was planning on doing to get said money or whatever.

When I finally made it home I was hungry and exhausted. But after thinking about it I realized how much I tend to dwell on the small things and lose sight of what matters most: God, family, and friends. I started to talk to my heavenly Father about this, praising Him that everyone was ok. I realized that worrying about our project earlier and stressing over some other school stuff really doesn't matter in the end. It was a bit of a scary/nerve-wracking couple of hours and God really reminded me tonight that I need to constantly look to Him for safety and security and trust that He has a plan.

Happy Belated Valentines Day!

Valentines day is over I know, but I wanted to share the love.
On V-day I had class as usual. But, I had some good fun and felt the love.
I got tons of Valentines from the kids at work - I really did good this year since I work in 3 classrooms. My favorite Valentine wasn't even a written one. It was out on the playground in the afternoon when one of the girls comes running up to me. "Miss Julie HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!" followed by a hug. How precious!

All the cards that I got! Along with a rose from Rebecca!!

Becca got me this awesome dancing Napoleon Dynamite card along with a mug full of Ferro Rocher's (my favorite candy ever!), the rose, and the movie Failure to Launch. It was so sweeeet of her!! I love my rooms!!

Grandddpa sent me this card with a special collective inside! It's always nice to get mail and a Valentine was extra special!

mug from rooms!!

After I got off work I picked up Amanda and Rachel and we went to Panera for some yummy dinner and then back to my apartment to watch Becoming Jane. A good chick flick with some great girls - yay!


Then Rachel and I went to Crusade which really was the best. After all, Jesus is the best Valentine a girl could ask for.