2013

The rain stopped! Thank you Jesus! All of our stuff is finally drying out; though I’m sure my shoes are forever ruined. L

I’m doing a New Year’s celebration blog. I’m beginning this entry December 31, 2012 – and it’s slowly been getting crazier and crazier as the day drags on. There was a wet t-shirt contest this afternoon – for 16-18 year olds. They’re just babies! Drunken girls ended up completely topless on stage, stripping down for attention. You could hear the cheers from miles away. Is that even legal? Not that anything going on here is legal – nearly every kid here is underage, there are drugs everywhere, and it’s really eye-opening. I was never involved in the party scene in high school, so I was never exposed to the stuff that goes on here. And I swear, if I hear the f bomb one more time, I’m gonna smack some kids upside the head with a bible. In a totally loving way of course. I’m actually so sick of the word. I hear it about 25 times a minute. And they have this chant they do every 5 minutes “Let’s get rowdy, let’s get f*****g rowdy…” and you’d think that they would get sick of it and find a new chant, but nope.

In the meantime, our entire team has been feeling pretty sick. Dave was out last night with a fever and vomiting, we’re all getting cold symptoms with achiness, drainage, and we’re all incredibly tired. I feel dead. It’s probably mostly due to the intense climate change, but I think it’s totally a spiritual thing. We got to have some incredible conversations last night and Satan is feeling totally threatened. I spent all afternoon in my sleeping bag, unable to breathe properly and I have the most intense headache I’ve had in a really long time. I took some pills, but now I’m just tired again.

During dinner, instead of eating, I sat in my tent and began praying. I felt so defeated for so many different reasons – I was believing so many lies that I was a failure to my team, a failure in the ministry I am doing here, and that I was weak. I sat in the tent and cried and prayed and sang and asked God a lot of questions and cried some more and opened my bible. First, I read Psalm 23 and then God took me to Psalm 42 and I began to feel so much better. He answers so many questions, and in case you were wondering, you should know that prayer ACTUALLY WORKS. Sometimes, I forget that God is faithful and that talking to Him is for my benefit. Though I still felt sick, I went to devos with a more refreshed spirit and some crazy things happened. Darius, a kid we’ve been talking to recently decided to join us to see what we did. And as we were worshipping, his drunk friends got curious and came over in the middle of our singing and asked him “What the f**k are you doing man?” and he said “These guys are cool, I’m singing, come sing with us!” and they did. And before I could blink my eyes, we were surrounded by enthusiastic, extremely tone-deaf drunk kids. They were all reading the song sheets and singing along; some were dancing and clapping, others playing the drum we had. One girl popped in and said “I know this song! I used to sing it when I went to church!” and drunk kids began gathering around and watching. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so funny. Imagine being surrounded by tons of drunk kids dancing and singing worship songs. And though I know it wasn’t genuine worship, it was just some kids trying something they would never do sober and having fun, it was so funny. I think it was kind of a slap in Satan’s face, like he brought them here to do bad things unconsciously, but instead; they began the most innocent and pure kind of singing and dancing. God is so funny.

Then I was on karaoke. That was a nightmare. If you’ve ever volunteered to help with karaoke with around 900 drunk teenagers, you’ll know exactly what I mean. It was nice to get finished with it. And then I got prophesied over by this prophet guy that came to encourage us. It definitely worked. I spent the last moments of 2012 and first moments of 2013 with God alone in my tent, drowning out the ruckus outside with some worship music and prayer and it was so incredible. Then I went outside. And all hell was breaking loose. There were so many fights; people were running around like chicken with their heads cut off. I saw girls getting into it, yanking hair, scratching, screaming and hitting the ground hard. It made me wonder if the moms that paid for them to come here and had knowingly dropped them off, if they had seen their daughters getting dragged around in the gravel, would they have let them come? These crazy girls destroyed our tents! People crashed right into them without reserve. We girls weren’t allowed to leave the OJ tent. And then New Year’s celebrations continued until well into the morning, people screaming and partying until dawn.

I am happy for the New Year – it sure is weird to not experience it in the company of home friends and there was no countdown, no sleepovers or fun games. It is odd, indeed to think that we’re in 2013, and I’m in it before anyone back home – 2012 was an incredible year. Filled with amazing highs and terrible lows, I can certainly categorize it as the most roller-coaster year of my entire life. But I think it goes to show that God is so good – He’s turned my world upside down and made me someone incredibly and so perfectly whole in Him. I’m going to miss 2012, it was a year of change, but I think it marked me leaving behind a lot of stuff. I won’t ever forget them, I’m looking forward into the years that God is laying out in front of me. I have so much peace about following His plan for me, and the unknown is so exciting. It’s been an adventure, and I am so thrilled to continue it.

Peace out Girl Scout!