A Different Adventure

          One year ago yesterday I was the most scared/ nervous/ anxious I have ever been in my life. I was also about to embark upon a life changing experience that I could never forget and would always yearn for. If circumstances had worked out, right now I would be at RAMP preparing for another YouthWorks summer. I find myself craving the YW life and wishing I had been able to make it fit into my summer. I know I most likely wouldn't have been placed back in WV & the mountains, but I sure do miss those mountains and the culture there that is so vastly different from anything I've ever experienced in the US. I will miss the nervousness, the excitement, the heartbreak, the friendships made and strengthened, the learning, the growing, the spiritual overflow, the daily miracles and answered prayers, a community of fellow believers in the same age group as me with their own ways of loving, worshiping, and serving God.

         Instead, this summer I will have the pleasure of becoming acquainted and hopefully become friends with a great staff on campus to man the dorms as week long camps come in for various functions. I am also enrolled in two online classes which I definitely wouldn't have been able to do on a YouthWorks summer. Instead of working for YouthWorks this summer, I have the opportunity to work through YW! On our site in WV last year, we were blessed with a really awesome, gracious group for our first week of participant groups. They were all really close to our ages and we hit it off with them like crazy. I don't want to call favorites, but if I had to choose one group, one week of participants, week 1 definitely got me in the heart. I cried when they left. This group is so awesome they invited Maggie (the other girl staff member on my site last year who became one of my best friends, I love her to death) and I to go on their mission trip this summer to Bayou La Batre, AL on July 1-5. So Maggie and I talked it over, we were both really interested, and it turns out we were both able to go. So after a year of only phone chatting with Maggie about once a month, I will get to see my sister-in-Christ from NC for 5 whole days! I couldn't be happier about that. And I will be getting to serve God and others, while spending that time with people I already know that I love!

              Despite my immense excitement for that trip, the thing I am most looking forward to, and really the whole reason why I didn't apply for YW again this summer, is that most of July I will be able to spend 24/7 (with the exception of when I'm working) with my wonderful, loving boyfriend, Ben. Ben is deployed to Afghanistan right now, but has a full time stationed base at Grafenwohr, Germany. He has been deployed since the end of July last year. In a matter of just over a week, he will be beginning his journey out of Afghanistan and back into Germany. I cannot wait even for that step. It's hard to understand unless you have experienced it yourself, but worrying about the one you love almost every second of every day, whether they will live till the next sunrise, is an extremely trying burden to endure. I pray every day to God for his safety. As soon as he is back in Germany it'll be as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. No matter how much I worry about him though, I cannot overlook how thankful I am to be blessed with such an amazing man. I'm guessing anyone who actually reads this blog has probably never actually met Ben. I hope to change that in July. He can't wait to visit UABC and meet all my church family because he knows how important you all have been in my life. It won't take you long to recognize how special he is and how crazy I am about him and vise versa. I've never met anyone so accepting, loving, and caring of other people..and that definitely carries over into how he treats me. I have never been treated with more respect and acceptance of who I have been, who I am, and who I want to be. He dotes on me, he spoils me, he treats me like a beautiful princess that deserves all the effort in the world. It's impossible to describe just how he understands me and accepts me more than anyone ever has. We connect on so many different levels that are really important to me. We have so much fun together and I can't wait for all the adventures to come. I know we'll make some really great memories this summer :)