Off Again!

Lecture phase has ended and I'm on to the next part of the adventure. :) Oh how I wanted to summarize all that I've learned in detail... but alas, I depart from this house in 6 hours... and there are other ends to tie up...

But here are some of the things God taught me here.

*God IS love. He loves me more than I can imagine (and YOU TOO!), and I can only love others more when I understand more of how He loves us.

*I'm 24 years old, no older and no younger. My youth, experience, childlike spirit, and wisdom are all gifts, and they don't have to fight with each other. 

*God lets us participate in brining His kingdom to earth. The Gospel Jesus taught was not only a gospel of salvation, but the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. This world is not how it was meant to be, but it's restoration is not a lost or hopeless cause. One day all will be right again. 

*The Holy Spirit is not confined by our prayer meetings or worship services. 

*The "natural" and "supernatural" are really not different things. Each human being is a powerful spiritual being.

*I am most at peace when creating something.

*Shalom is not the kind of peace we often think of in my culture, but everything functioning as it was intended. For example, consider a car. By a western definition of peace, one might think of the car washed, waxed, vacuumed, parked, and sitting in the garage with the engine turned off. However, the same car would experience true shalom when started and driving down the street. It's so true. I have peace - nay, shalom - when functioning as I was intended.

Thank you, friends who read my blog! 

I won't be updating this in the coming weeks (probably until the end of April)... and it will be a little more difficult (but NOT by any means impossible) to contact me until I return to the UK. If you'd like to get ahold of me, send me an email and be patient please. :) 

Shalom!!! 

Stop the Traffik!

Last week a couple of ladies came to speak to our school about human trafficking. I've heard about human trafficking before, and it's always outraged my heart. People on this modern-day earth are still bought and sold! Human beings - women, men, and children - are purchased... some into forced labor, many into prostitution, and still many more into other forms of exploitation. It's gut-wrenching and sickening and so many other things... I don't really have words to describe how I feel/what I think about it. 

It seems so ludicrous that it's difficult even to believe that it still happens. And even if one does believe it, then what? When we see a problem of this proportion it's easy to feel hopeless or disconnected, assuming "I can't do anything about it." This presentation may have been the first about human trafficking that gave me hope to fuel the fight against this injustice. We have to become outraged collectively. We MUST. 

I've often heard that the easiest way to begin combatting human trafficking is to raise awareness. It has taken me until now to understand how that is helpful. (It seems like we should be doing so much more.) For me, the key to understanding the usefulness of awareness is the realization that human trafficking happens HERE. It happens in Northern Ireland. It happens in the United States. It doesn't look like "Civil War Slavery," but it HAPPENS! We need to learn what it looks like, and when we do, we need to tell each other. When we see it, we need to speak up. We need to stand up for others, and stand up for what is right. We need to make the world an unsafe place for traffickers. This is how it will be stopped. 

Further, we need to be aware of how our consumerism affects the rest of the world. Every time we make a purchase, we vote for the business practices of the organizations that produce our goods. We as consumers must INSIST on the ethical treatment of our fellow human beings. We need to be willing to pay enough for the things we want, so that those producing them can receive fair wages. We don't need all of the things we want. "Live simply, so others can simply live." 

Ahhhhh I don't feel like I'm articulating this point clearly... but I'm going to learn how... I really am. 

http://stopthetraffik.org

Awaiting the visitors...

My parents are coming to visit! I met them in Dublin over the weekend, and we traveled to Galway and back together. It was really nice seeing them, but a whole lot of riding in busses.

Now, today though, they're coming HERE to see my little life I've been living. :) I think they should be arriving any minute... I'm growing a little impatient.

Onions make me cry.

I've noticed lately that if I ever rub my eyes, they burn... This confuses me sometimes, because in my life, I'm accustomed to being able to touch my eyes (in moderation, of course) pain free.

Why does this happen??? Why can I touch my eyes in the US but not in Northern Ireland???

Some wise women have pointed out to me that I cut onions A LOT. This is truth. I would say that I chop onions or garlic nearly every day... or at least 3-4 times a week. We cook with SO MANY ONIONS and SO MUCH GARLIC! In truth, I LOVE it. I've grown accustomed to my clothes and self smelling like food (because I help cook dinner for ~30 4 days/week and sometimes on weekends), and I'm over the fact that my hands usually smell like garlic/onions. In fact, I forgot that my hands always smell that way until just now... But it's a new revelation that the onion juice sticks around enough to burn my eyeballs when I'm not even cooking.

That's my story. I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Peace!

God is SO GOOD!

Today I am thankful for the following...

1) This morning some friends from the base and I got to help scrape old paint off a brick wall on a community center (so it can be repainted all pretty-like). It was really fun. Here's the best part: at one point I realized that I'd been bending over and scraping paint that was about foot/shin-level for probably about 15 minutes, and my back didn't hurt at all!!! This is especially wonderful because I've been praying for my back a lot lately, and this week I had muscle spasms for about 3 days (the awful kind that have tended to happen about once a year or so when I'm too stressed). God is good! "I believe that you're my Healer. I believe you're more than enough for me..." :)

2) My taxes are filed! Woohoo!!! It's always such a relief. Also, since I'll be traveling again soon (ask me where if I've neglected to tell you.), I'm really glad to have some extra money coming. (I was foolishly worried about that this week too...)

Christmas in Northern Ireland

I realize that it's now February so it seems a little silly to talk about Christmas... but since I didn't describe it before, here's a brief description.

One of the students on our DTS comes from a big family (with lots of wee ones and teenagers) in a nearby town. She and her family graciously invited our WHOLE SCHOOL to their home for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. So, all 17 students and 3 of the staff went to their home to experience a real family Christmas. :)

Our friends' home is a historic, thatched-roof "National Trust" house. We had a lovely supper of curry-beef with rice, and then played games and watched a movie and enjoyed each other's company. Then we had a giant sleep-over. (You should have seen the girls' room! It was about 14 girls in sleeping bags all in a row in a big room. Lovely.)

On Christmas morning, we had a "proper fry" for breakfast. If you'd like to know what that is, check Wikipedia for "Ulster Fry." It included eggs, beans, black and white pudding (sausage), bacon, tomatoes... and I can't remember what else... Then we watched the kiddos open their presents, and we opened our stockings!!! (And presents that we all got to unwrap too - Play Doh!) We all hung socks from the mantle on Christmas Eve and they were stuffed with candies, glow sticks, party noise makers, and the like while we slept.

We came back to the base around 1:00 on Christmas afternoon, just in time to catch the end of the yearly plunge into the Lough. (It's a Rostrevor tradition for townspeople to jump into the water on Christmas Day.) Some of our own from the base participated. :) I think we arrived just as they were jumping in, but we were in time to greet the cold and wet friends.

In the afternoon I joined a few other girls to open gifts that families had sent us and to read the Christmas story from the Bible.

Later in the evening, I prayed and worshipped the Lord with some friends.

All-in-all, a lovely day.

Returning Soon to a Blog Near You! (Or maybe nearer to me...?)

Dear Friends,

Thank you to all of you lovely people who noticed my lack of updates and got on my case about it! As you can see, for your viewing pleasure, I've changed the background! This is a view of the Republic of Ireland (from Northern Ireland) taken from a mountain behind my house.

I will post more about my life REALLY soon. (Hopefully tomorrow?) So, stay tuned for more news of this adventure... :) If you get my blog posts emailed to you, I will apologize in advance for the clogging of your inbox that might ensue. I'll probably break up the updates from the last month and a half into a few posts.

Also, I realize that with changing the background picture some of my text has become difficult to read. If I don't fix that soon, please bug me about it until it's fixed. Thanks!

Thanks!
Love, Erika

P.S. If you're sad because you sent me an email weeks ago and I haven't replied, I sincerely apologize, and hope/intend to make it up to you very soon. I was without my computer for... I think it was nearly 2 weeks, because I fried my power chord. Thanks to a wonderful long-time Apple-loving friend, I can now use my laptop again, but I've not caught up on emails since then, and they've been a-piling! The plan is/was to catch up on those tomorrow.