my phone

things i did with my phone this weekend: threw it away.

some people just lose their phones, or maybe even get really mad and smash it against a wall, or i have even seen phones ripped in half and thrown across a field. All of these things seem pretty silly, but i think i might be the first person i know of to have thrown away their phone. i wasnt even mad at it or anything. its been treating me pretty well lately (except for that big texting bill last month... oops) and how do i repay it? i leave it on my tray at lunch and send it back the conveyor belt to the dish room. and then i dont even realize its missing until dinner time, at which point i am already heading out the door for dinner with friends at not the dining hall. my poor phone spent an entire day in the dining hall... i can just imagine it sitting there, all lonely and forlorn, wondering when or if i would ever realize it was missing and come pick it up...

...and suddenly i have a much greater appreciation for my phone and its feelings...

cleaning out the eaves...

in my head, that is set to music. oh wait, thats 'bringing in the sheaves'... close but no cigar.

my family is moving. its pretty close to being official. that means we still dont have a date or a place to move, but we're getting closer. this weekend, (along with being my birthday today and easter tomorrow) also marks another historic and monumental landmark in Havener history: the eaves are empty. to an outsider this may not seem like a big deal, but to anyone closely connected, who has seen the eaves or even just heard stories about the eaves, this is huge. it is amazing some of the things we thought were important enough to store for the past 9 years, and really fun to find old treasures that we had forgotten, and things we didnt even know we had... like this:this is one in a set of three: i also have a Yield right of way sign, and a big red Exit sign... apparantly they came with the house, and mom said i could keep them!! **crazy excited smiling face**

Life is Good.

please just take a good look at the kid on that sign and try and tell me thats not the slowest looking child youve ever seen. makes me smile every time :)

maladjusted

that may or may not actually be the word i am looking for, but it seems to fit.

i dont think that my body likes America. i have felt sick and nasty ever since coming back from Costa Rica. it is cold here (i saw snowflakes today) and the food is awful. its actually kind of impressive that after only 10 days of Peruvian (aka really good) food my body has just rejected the twenty previous years in which ive trained it to stomach pretty much anything i feed it from stale peeps and massive amounts of chocolate to cold pizza and root beer. how on earth can i be a successful college student if my stomach has all of a sudden become a picky eater?

also, its pretty intense to try and get my schedule back. suddenly it is so much harder to do my devos every day and spend time talking to God. and when i do take time to just be quiet, my brain gets flooded with all kinds of serious thoughts and i go into overload mode where i break down and cry. and then i feel like a dumb whiny girl who cant handle her own life which is not the truth i am strong and i have God on my side and he loves me and really all in all life is good.

'cause really, how can you not just be in awe of the Creator of something this beautiful?

really random.

Have you ever seen your heart-beat in your stomach? its pretty wierd. intriguing to be sure, but mostly wierd.
apparently i spell wierd incorrectly cause theres a little red squiggly line under it every time i write it.
ooh! Tetris. each of the shapes in that game is made up of four blocks. the prefix Tetra- means four. why did i never pick up on this before i was told at lunch today?

ok, thats enough rambling when i should be working on that ten page paper that was apparently due yesterday. oops.

Bittersweet...emphasis on the sa-weet!

Today is spring break. By that i do not mean that it is the first official day of spring break, i mean that it is ALL of spring break. My one day of true relaxation and time to chillax. and you know what? I do not regret that one bit. I would not trade my 10 days in Costa Rica for anything...

Three Words: A. Maze. Ing.

That mostly sums it up, but in case you worry about me a little more than that, i'll give a quick update on what went down.
We spent most all of our time working very closely with the C&MA church in Horquetas.
Sunday was our first real day at the church. We attended the morning service, and spent the afternoon swimming in the river and hanging out with the youth group.
Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all work days. Our group of ten girls, with the help of Rodrigo and Joaquin. was doing the very beginning work on the new church building (as in they got the plans from the architect the day we got there). We cleared a lot of brush, took down a couple old barbed wire fences, but mostly we were playing in the dirt. Digging ditches and leveling the ground. The first day we dug a ditch in the morning, then in the afternoon found out it was in the wrong place! So we ended up filling that one in and finishing a total of two and a half of the four ditches that will be the beginning of the foundation. (there was concrete where we were supposed to dig the last ditch and a half, so we couldnt do that)
Tuesday morning was English class where we were conversation partners with the students. Some of them were from the church, and others were not, so this is a great outreach tool that the church has. In the afternoon we trekked to the nearby village of Montero (across a river in a basket) to do an afternoon of VBS with the kids there. That was probably my favorite time - seeing how many kids showed up, playing soccer with them (yeah, my mad skillz probably got complimented by a CostaRican) laughing together, and even meeting their most basic needs like water to drink. It was such a powerful time.
Thursday night came a challenge: one of our hotel rooms was broken into and robbed, and one girl's passport was taken. Luckily, we had come back early from dinner that night, the manager was still there, and people were still awake in the States so the girls could call home, and everything got taken care of. It was really neat to see how that even in the midst of such a crazy trial for us, God was there too helping us.
Friday we left bright and early to spend some time in the Caribbean. (which is absolutely gorgeous) It was a lot of driving, but a nice relaxing treat after spending so much time in the ditches.
Saturday was packed full, because it was our last full day at the church and they wanted to make sure we got as much in as we could. We visited a butterfly garden, spent time in people's homes for lunch, went ziplining through the rainforest canopy(it bit me), had a movie night with the youth, AND went out to dinner.
Sunday was church again, and then goodbyes as we headed to San Jose for an evening with the missionaries before our early Monday flight.

There are so many stories i could tell, but maybe i'll save them for another day when you're not already so tired of reading my ramblings. Just know that we all made it back to the states; happy, healthy, knowing that we have been encouraged and changed, and really hoping that we brought some of that sunshine back with us.