answered prayers

If you've been following me on Facebook, you know that I've been traveling a lot this summer.  I've been to Guatemala, Honduras, and to Florida twice.  The entire family will be flying out to Colorado at the end of this month for my cousin's wedding.  Traveling can be relaxing, at least it is for me, but it can also lead to a lot of extra thinking time, which for me, can lead to worry and stress.  So something I've been trying to do lately is pray about things instead of worry about them.  I'm very glad I did because God has shown up in two amazing ways.

1. Money for College
I graduated at the end of May, but I still need to do an internship in order to officially complete my degree.  This isn't an ordinary internship, but rather an internship that I get 12 hours of college credit for, as well as an internship that I have to pay full tuition for.  So, far, with help from both parents and grandparents, I have been able to pay cash for every semester of college thus far.  So this fall is the last semester of college that I will have to pay for, and if I can do it without taking out a loan, I will graduate completely debt free.  However, with my dad planting a new church in East Athens (livinghopeathens.org) and both my college fund and the one my parents and grandparents set up for me completely drained, there's not too much money for the almost $3,000 that this fall of tuition will cost (and that's after HOPE scholarship and many fees have been waved).  Rather than panic or worry or completely stress out about finances, I decided to pray.  I prayed for God to provide with no idea what that would look like.  So...to make a long story short, when I got home from my trip to Honduras, my parents told me that a family member recently sold a very valuable painting to a museum, leaving $3,000 to each of us grandchildren who've graduated high school to use for further education purposes.  This is the exact amount that I will need to finish out college debt free.  God is so good.

2. Rosetta Stone, the language learning program
Future plans indicate that I will most likely spend some extended time in a Spanish-speaking country.  I would really like to be close to fluent before moving there.  I took four years of Spanish in high school, but 5 years of college have kind of made me forget.  I want to learn it all over again, and Rosetta Stone started to seem like the best way to do so.  However, $500 is the cost of all the levels, and as I mentioned before, I don't have that kind of money.  So, again, I prayed.  I prayed specifically for the product as I might be tempted to use $500 for something else if I was just given the money.  So again, when I got back from Honduras, I come down the stairs and my mom so non-nonchalantly says to me, "hey, did I tell you that I bought Rosetta Stone!?"  I was shocked.  She said there was a sale so she bought it.  She had no idea I was praying for it.  God is so good.

Post-Missions' Trip Update

I sit down to write this blog and it’s always hard to decide how to begin.  I know exactly what I want to say, but it’s hard to formulate it into language that will be understandable for everyone, rather than me just rambling on in Catherine-words.  There’s so much to tell about the past 3 weeks, but yet I don’t want to bore you with unnecessary details.  So I guess I’ll just start writing and trust that what comes out is what needs to be said.

First of all, a big, ginormous THANK YOU to any and all of you who supported me financially.  I have barely any money to my name so going on two international missions’ trips this summer could’ve been a big drain on my already empty bank account.  I physically could not have done them without you and for that I am extremely thankful.  Another huge THANK YOU to all of you who prayed for me during the past 3 weeks.  Both trips were physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually challenging and draining; thus, I needed an extra dose of Jesus to get me through.  Probably the cutest and most encouraging thing I experienced before I even left was getting to see my 3 littlest cousins (ages 4, 3 and 2).  I had dinner with them and they told me that they had been praying for me every night for the past week prior to my trip because they knew I was “going to Guatemala to tell people about God because they didn’t know God.”  My mom spend even more time with these boys while I was in Guatemala, and she said they continued to pray for me every night while I was gone.  What an encouragement that even the littlest in the Kingdom are praying for the missionaries.

Guatemala (June 9-15)

My heart was captured by this country on the trip last year, and I feel deeper in love during this year’s trip.  We spent most of the week preparing a road to be paved (which a team down there this week is actually pouring the concrete for).  This road leads into the property of Engadi Ministries where the boys’ homes will one day be built.  We were also able to go into a school in Zone 18 in Guatemala (one of the poorest, most dangerous areas of Guatemala).  In this school, we were able to paint a few of the classrooms.  The children that went to school there were so excited and encouraged that we were there.  Most of these children live in one room houses made from scrap metal.  Seeing paint on their school room walls make the rooms so bright and happy that they children are even more excited to be going to school.  As we left the school, all the students were lined up by their classrooms shouting “thank you, thank you” to us as we passed by.

 Painting in the schools...I guess I had a supervisor. 

 

Our team after the last day of work.  We widened this road by 2 feet on both sides.

Honduras (June 22-29)

Orphanage Emmanuel is not what you’d first expect an orphanage to be.  First of all, most of the kids have parents, but they have been taken away from them by the country because of abuse or neglect.  So it’s not technically an orphanage, and you can’t adopt out of it.  You can however sponsor children from the orphanage, which is how Emmanuel gets the majority of its funds.  The children go to school during the day and while they did, we would do some tasks around the property.  These included harvesting fish from their tilapia farm, working in the greenhouse, butchering pigs, and pouring concrete.  I personally only participated in the first two.  The last three days we were there, I spent a great deal of time around the toddler and infant house, playing with the children on the playground.  During the afternoon, after the kids came home from school, we would do a Bible story, crafts and play games with the “small boys” group (the ages being  around 4-9).  These children loved us and only wanted to play and cuddle with us.  You’ll see a few pictures of the children who touched my heart the most.

 Santos

 Josue

 Oscar

Manuel (braiding my hair) and Richard (sitting in my lap)

People have asked me which trip was my favorite. I can’t answer that because the trips were both so different.  My heart has been gripped by Guatemala and Engadi Ministries, but the children worked their way into my heart when I was at Orphanage Emmanual.  The real test for me is “would I go back?”…and the answer is yes for both trips.

  Isaac and me in Antigua, Guatemala (volcano in the background).

 

Isaac and me at Orphanage Emmanuel