Truly Loved + Wholly Surrendered

As promised, this post will be about my adventures of New Zealand before I started the missions work. So, I woke up that first morning in Christchurch (the largest city in South Island) at 7 a.m. and my roommate/friend (Brianna) was still sleeping so I took the time to mentally settle in and that's when I realized that I was in a different country, away  from home. Like, far away. And the time difference came as a shock because it was Monday morning for me, but Saturday for my family and friends back home. Eventually, I got used to the time difference, and was able to stay connected with my family at certain times of the day. However, Brianna was right that I was to stay up until it was time to go to bed, New Zealand  time, otherwise, I probably would have woken up earlier, with nothing to do. So, on that Monday, the jet lag wasn't too horrible. I still needed time to adjust though. Brianna woke up shortly after I had a few minutes of peace and quiet in the morning before ...

You'd think that after 2 years of being home from my mission trip I'd be done talking about it. Nope. Haven't really talked about it in the last couple of years, for multiple reasons: I found out my grandmother got sick and stayed sick when I was in New Zealand and it messed with my head more than I thought it would. I was convinced that she'd get better, but she passed shortly after I came home. Dealing with the loss of my grandma and family relationships took a toll on me, not to mention that I had quit my job just before I left. So I was home all the time, which wasn't good for my health and healing. Because I was home all the time after I got back from New Zealand, I had to start looking for a job, one that could use my degree: English. Where could I find such job? To be honest, I didn't really care about looking. But, God provided and I ended up at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as an intern that summer. When I started my internship, the pre...