Dear Readers

Dear Readers,


This is not a blog about knowing Christ better; in fact, it is nothing like any of my blogs. I wanted you all to know about what I am doing with my summer and what God has done to make the events of the summer even possible. 
I am going to be gone for all of July and most of August. Starting on Monday I will be at  Camp Eden in Golden, Colorado for two weeks. The first week I will be helping out as a counselor in training working with 4th through 6th grade girls. Like all little people, they are high energy and can be a very big handful. In the end though, I always miss them when they go. 
Second week of camp is for teens. I will be attending, not helping, for this week, but just because it is no longer my responsibility to be pouring everything that I am into the campers does not mean that I should take a vacation from being a blessing. My prayer is that I would come back from my two weeks at camp completely empty; that I will have poured myself out 100% to everyone that came in contact with me. 
After camp is all done I will be home for a day and half to do laundry before I go to Cheyenne, Wyoming where I will be living with the Tim and Sue Smith family to learn how to cook under Mrs. Smith and to drink from her fountain of knowledge. I am looking forward to this so much because they are a couple that when you have had one simple conversation with them you walk away knowing that God lives in every corner of their lives.    
I am sorry but this blog is all about me, the writer, but as it came time for me to write a blog before I leave, I was having the hardest time coming up with something to write about until a good friend of mine told me to write about myself and the summer I am going to have. My next blog is going to be about me too, just because God has blessed me so much already by the summer he planned for me. I knew before school even ended that I was called and wanted to go back to Camp Eden, so I committed myself for two back-to-back weeks of camp that would cost me $400 that I did not have. I will tell you that at the beginning I was positive that God would bring the money in, but as I got closer and closer to when I would leave for camp, I became a lot less bold in these thoughts of confidence. But God came through and he has grown my faith in the process. 
He has given random jobs and opportunities to get what was needed. I will tell you this though, there were times that I gave up on Him and tried my own way to get the money that was needed, but those never worked. I praise God for the gifts He has given me; I know that he has great things for me this summer. I still would crave your prayers, though, for I am every much a human and prone  to sin, and I will be away from my family for a very long time so they won’t be around to tell me that I am in a bad mood and stuff like that.




Project: There is no project for this one. My only prayer for you, my reader, and for myself is to walk with the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.


Follow-up: I must say that there were very few days that I got around to telling God thank you 24 times in a day. I did try and tell him thank you for all the things that came to mind when as I would be laying in bed, but  most times I would fall asleep before I reached 24. My best friend told me something that she had heard, “ What if tomorrow all you had was what you thanked God for today?” For me, I know that most tomorrows would not hold very much if that was the case. Thanks is something that I still need to work very hard on.

Something Worth Talking About

As this month came and the time for me to write another blog came upon me, I found myself grappling for an idea of what I should write about. Last night I spent some time outside while there was the most amazing thunderstorm that I had ever seen. It was more brilliant than a display of fireworks, more vibrating than a sonic boom sound system. I sat there, and all the while, all I could think about was ‘why’. Why did God do all of this for us? He did not have to. Just think that if we never had thunder, we would never know what we were missing out on. 
I know that I have written a blog about being thankful in the past, but I wanted to write on it again. Last night it was like God was saying, “Look at all I have made for you. Look at all the detail I have put into everything. I did not have to, but I did, and I did it because I love you and I want you to appreciate it.” 
Time seems to go so very fast, and we always have a million things to do in a day.  I know that I always get mad when I cannot get everything done that I wanted to in a day. Sometimes if I want to get the stuff done in my day and talk to people, I have to multitask. It just came to me that I can multitask in giving God praise and thanks. How long does it take to say thank you? Maybe two seconds max, and yet we are not able to find time to say it to God every day. If you are a polite person you say it to a lot of the people around you; whenever someone brings you a drink or hands you something, it is natural for you to say thank you, even for the small things that they give you. If they give you something big, most people take the time to write a thank you note. Have you ever written a thank you note to God? I do not mean saying something in your journal or something like that. Have you sat down and hand written a note that starts, “Dear God, Thank you”? Thinking back, I am not sure that I ever have.
Why is it so very hard to tell God thank you? Most people pray for their meals and stuff like that, but do you do that out of habit and because you know it is the right thing to do or do you do it because you really are truly grateful for the food God has given you? Thinking about all that God has given me, it just blows my mind. I know that if I thanked Him all day and all night I would still not be able to thank Him enough for all that He has done for me. But just because I know I could never say it enough does not give me the liberty to just stop saying it all together.
Or I am guilty of the crime of just saying, “Oh, I know how much God knows I am blessed by all that He gives me.”  Even if you know someone really likes the gift that you gave them, it is still nice to get a thank you. This is something that is dying among us as a society. People think they have a right to what they get, so they think that they do not have to be grateful for it. 
We have a right to a life time in hell and that is it; that is not a right that I want to claim. Everything that God has given us is a gift, and I am amazed at all that He has given and put into the creation of this world that we do not need. And yet with all that He has given us, we still manage to forget all about Him and His gifts. 


Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above...
James 1:17

Project: To tell God “thank you” 24 times a day; that is once for every hour. We have a practice in our family of being thankful whenever we have devotions together. And sometimes we are so lame that all we can find to be thankful for is polar bears in the North Pole (or wherever they live). But we still have to be thankful for something. I’m sure you can do better than we do sometimes.




Follow up: Well, I know for sure that I will be working on this project some more because just today I was griping about the fact that I was really underpaid for a baby sitting job, but if I had done it out of love and not for the money I should not even care. So I will still be working on this one.