Pictures!

512 at sunset
Isn't it beautiful?

I especially love the colors here.

I took those pictures awhile back but I didn't have a way to upload them to my computer till this week...so voila!

And now here's a picture of my hairy legs! Be prepared. If you don't think you can handle see a woman's legs be hairy then you better just stop now and don't scroll down! It's only one picture but more will come. I'm pretty proud of them my self, but I think the hair is probably going to go in the next week. I actually really do love the feel of smooth legs. But no worries, the hair will come back next Winter. And knowing me the hair will probably reappear throughout summer time when I get lazy and remember these last 4 months in which I never touched a razor and never spent time in the shower lathering up my legs and attacking them with a blade.

Here's my thigh

Here's me on Ash Wednesday. It was really exciting. I got to celebrate Ash Wednesday for the first time this year. I've been observing Lent now for 3 years or so but this was the first time I'd been part of a Ash Wed. service, ash cross and all! And I took the whole house since it was supposed to be our house meeting, so that was cool too. We all went to an Anglican church down town. The service was cool. I've never gone to a church who does liturgy and afterwards I realized that I really enjoy that. I think others just think of the Catholic Church and all their ups and downs and reciting Haily Marys but I think it's more than that. Funny enough I've even ended up reading several things about liturgy and how important it is after that service so I'm planning on going back there for Palm Sunday, the end of the 40 days of Lent.

But anyways, I just wanted to get these pictures up before I got busy again. I'll write more later.

Read more!

10 years...

Okay, so this update has been a long time coming! Seriously, I'm such a crazy procrastinator.

It's an issue.

I don't like it.

Anyways, Since January 1st I've been wanting to write an update on the end of a decade, so here goes:

2000: I graduated the 7th grade and entered into High School! I stepped into 9th grade with my best friend Candy and we spent 4 years there together, experiencing it together. I can't say we did anything crazy. I don't even think we went to any school dances or functions. We did fall in love with our science teacher, Mr. Moyer and thought up of a crazy love triangle between him and 2 other teachers. I fell in love with my math teacher, Mr. Smith and actually enjoyed math for a little while there. I endured my first encounter with a school yard fight, with none other than my best friend's cousin. That was crazy.
During those 4 years I really didn't do anything worth writing about in long detail. Did well in my classes, spent some time on the Modesto Area eXpress until Candy got her first car, went to church a lot, took care of my grandma, had my cousin live with us on and off, spent a whole lotta time at Candy's house making dinner with her and staying up till all hours of the night talking about everything from the mundane issues in life to seriously crazy subjects. That brings us to graduation from highschool in 2004

2004: Enter COLLEGE. I got accepted to Fresno State along with Candy (yes, she's very evident in the past decade of my life). I went into college with 2 slipped discs that appeared in my senior year of highschool. Thankfully it didn't affect me too badly, except for random pain. Very quickly I declared my major as a Deaf Education major. Candy and I lived in the dorms for 4 years. That was some fun times. We spent many a night, Candy on the top bunk, me on the bottom, talking into the wee hours of the night and eventually getting up to get a late night snack of yummy nachos at Roberto's.

2005/2006: I joined InterVarsity and Jesus seriously rocked my world. I learned of a God who cared about the world and He wasn't just blessing America. And I encountered a Jesus who was subversive, resisting the status quo of our culture. I started going to a bible study in the dorm and quickly became part of leadership, eventually leading my own bible study in my junior year

2006: I was adopted into another family; the folks up north at Liberty Hill Christian Church. I met Paul, the pastor who has become my papa and his wife Shelley and soo many other amazing people. They sent me off to Guatemala with an extra $700 after having just met them. I spent 3 weeks in Guatemala with my friends from IV. It was an amazing experience and just solidified my desire to love and care for the poor in our world.

2007: I headed into my junior year of college and that summer I went to Bulgaria in Eastern Europe with Free Will Baptist young people. We spent 2 weeks at an English camp for Bulgarian students. I also turned 21 this year and had my first boyfriend. I met him up North. It was a short relationship, maybe 3 or 4 months and most of that was spent on the phone because of the distance between us. Don't really want to get into the details of this tragic relationship. But then later that year I began a new relationship with my estranged father. I had actually sent him a letter the year before after finding my uncle and my dad called on Father's Day of 2007, ironically enough while I was celebrating with my Papa Paul. That began the process of getting to know one another again since we hadn't seen each other since I was 3.

2008: Still in school. My buddy left me this year to go to Japan for a semester. It was hard but I enjoyed being able to fully give myself to IV and the friends I had there. I also had some roommate issues but thankfully it ended out that I got my very own room for most of a semester in the suites. That was really sweet! I also got rejected as an intern with InterVarsity after going through a length application process, but instead got accepted into the Pink House Program in the inner-city of Fresno! Which was really cool because in the beginning of the school year (while Candy was gone) I had read Irresistible Revolution and fell in love with Shane Claiborne and caught on to his vision of the Kingdom of God. In August of 2008 I moved into a big pink house with 10 other folks, serving at the Pregnancy Care Center, meeting amazing folks doing God's work with the poor and marginalized, beginning awesome relationships with people with the same heart beat as mine and falling in love with Fresno's inner city.

2009: Started the second half of my stay at the Pink House. I was very very sad to move out as I was called back into Modesto, where I moved into Modesto's inner city; The West Side. I moved into a house with 3 other girls at the time of my move in and a desire to see the house(s) move into more of a ministry program. I met Kevin who lived in the guy's house and became good friends with him as we began to dream of what the houses could look like. Two of the girls moved out and 2 new girls took their places as 2 guys (including Kevin, which was hard) moved out, leaving Cole and Gilbert alone in the guy's house. Spent the rest of the year figuring out what my place was in the house and dealing with being back in a place that was soo very different from Fresno in every way.

2010: And that leads us to our present year. I can't believe how fast these past 10 years has gone by and despite the fact that a lot of that time was merely spent "living, " I have done a lot. I am now officially directing these ministry houses and still trying (and probably will for awhile) figuring out what God desires here and what He wants done. I am also still figuring out what it means to live in a city where not everyone has the same vision of relationships and stewardship. But I'm just trying to allow God to work in my heart, continue to change me and mold me into what He would have me to be. And I'm still just as tight (probably more so) with my best buddy as I was 10 years ago.

Hope you enjoyed the walk through the last 10 years of my life. Read more!