So in the past few years God has really been putting community on my heart.  Prior to these years I found myself xtremely independent and somewhat proud of that.  I felt I could do it all on my own.  A lot of that came to a crashing halt when I moved to Cincinnati and suddenly found myself very, very lonely and not knowing anyone.  Suddenly being independent wasn't such a good thing, and it kind of held me back because instead of reaching out I would hold back.  Because I again I didn't need others, I could do it all on my own.  I then stumbled onto the community that I find myself in now at Crossroads, which I have been truelly grateful for I believe I see a community that tries to mirror exactly what we should be to our own communities.  However I have struggled with really showing that community to my own neighborhood.  Then this weekend I had the joy of receiving from my neighbors.  While I was out on my walk with Midnight Saturday, Lindsey (my roommate, not me obviously)  left the condo and locked it up as would I if I were leaving however I didn't take my keys with me and we don't have a spare hidden anywhere.  I tried breaking in to my place, but well unfortunately in this situation mywindows are burglar proof.  It was around this time that I had my dog tied up and she chewed through her leash and started running around the condo complex.  So when a neighbor who was walking her dog came around Midnight started running straight for her dog.  By this time I was besides myself really not knowing what to do.  I explained to my neighbor what happened and she asked if my back porch door was open which it was, but its up two stories to reach it.  But now we had reasoned that there was a way in.  While she went inside for a second another neighbor came out and I told him the situation and he started brainstorming places to get a ladder.  After raoming around the complex a little asking around for a ladder, the first neighbor came out saying she had called her roofer friend and he was just getting done for the day and he was down the street.  Just a few minutes later he came up and was able to climb up into my porch and walk through and let me in.  After all this I realized thats exactly why we have community because we are stupid sometimes and we need people to help get us out of trouble and we can't alwaysdo it on our own.  I also was amazed at how my neighbors came through for me, I've been thinking for a while that I need to be more of a blessing to them and here they are being a blessing to me. 

We were asked to write a blog about how we felt before leaving on this mission trip. Here is what I'm expecting...

 I'm having a hard time coming up with what exactly to write for this blog. On the one hand, I don't want to have too many expectations because I'm really excited to just see how God shows up and provides. But on the other hand I do have certain expectations that I don't seem to be able to put them together cohesively in a nice little list. I do expect to come back from this trip completely changed and having seen God move in powerful ways. I do expect to fall completely in love with him and see that love grow. I expect to experience community in a way I have never before considering I have never spent this much time with this many people in this type of way. I expect to be uncomfortable and have days where I get selfish and want my own way, a warm bed, my own space, and I start to miss all the comforts of my life here, but I also expect to be used to spread God's love and give hope to people in ways I never thought possible. And I also expect to see a multitude of different places, experiencing different cultures, and different ways of worshipping God.

We were asked to write a blog about how we were called to the mission field. Here is my story...

 I was raised in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Denomination so I grew up being fed missions over and over. Right before my senior year of high school I received a call to missions at Life 2001, a youth conference for the CMA. In the years that followed I struggled to understand exactly what that calling meant. Then during this past fall as I was growing deeper in my walk with God, I started sensing my calling back towards missions and in service to God. It started out slowly with a girl's retreat weekend I put hosted for my friends (we go to a rather large church that doesn't put things like that together for us), then I decided to go to New Orleans with my church to help rebuild houses with Habitat for Humanity and work with kids through VBS. Then one day as I was reading an article on Relevant Magazines website, someone had made a comment about how they had gone on the World Race and put a link to the site. My first initial thought was, I wish I could do something like this. Then I realized I could do something like this. After consulting my parents, some close friends, and praying about it I decided to apply and the rest is history......