Thursday nights

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Thursday nights at our church in the summer.

I love the preaching and the prayer time.

Different staff and faculty men preach during the summer.  We have had some incredible sermons this summer.  In fact, my Dad just mentioned this tonight at dinner.

So, this past Thursday night, the staff man who preached challenged us towards missions, souls, our Christian testimony.  He used an illustration that I have heard/read before but it was still as poignant.  The illustration compared the brand of Coke vs. Jesus.  Most of the world has heard of Coke.  A large percentage of the world has tasted Coke.  Ten times as much money is spent on Coke than on world missions.  Ten times!!

When I got home on Thursday night, I thought, "What if....for each Coke {or Pepsi -- for me} that I {we} wanted to buy, I {we} saved the money for one month, put it into a jar and gave this money to the mission fund at church." 

It's not a ginormous sacrifice.  

But what am I willing to "sacrifice" for missions?

bliss in a package

So....one of the places we {my Mom and I} wanted to see in London was the Liberty of London store.  I had never heard of Liberty until I went into Target one fine day and saw the endcaps filled with beautiful, floral things.  From garden trowels to rain boots, notebooks to teapots, I was intrigued and smitten.  When I got home that day, I mentioned to Mom my new discovery.  The name rang a bell because the store was right around the corner from the hotel where they had just stayed at.  A-mazing!

Well, it just-so-happened that we stayed at the exact same hotel in June.  And...the Liberty store was right around the corner.  Monday night, we were so tired from flying through the night and jet lag but my parents and brother and I decided to do a little shopping/sight-seeing in the district where we were staying.

I am simply in love with the Liberty store.  I found the most amazing bright, floral dishes.  But I decided it was a little early in the trip to buy something that heavy.  [Post edit: I didn't mean I wanted to buy a whole set of dishes.  :/  NO.  I wanted to buy one bowl, that's it!!]  I settled on the most blissful smelling soap.

Do you want bliss in a package?

Try this soap.

{travel worn and weary}

{look at those flowers!!!}

what a day!

It is currently Thursday {early in the} morning.  I've finally finished my day of work and what a day it has been.

Tonight, I received my slightly altered button so that I can ship that html code off to the blogger that I would like to advertise with.  Suh-weetness prevails.  I mean, I just emailed my awesome designer less than 24 hours ago {I'm milking the possessiveness of that term - ha!}.  Within the past 24 hours, not only do I have my altered 125x125 button, I ALSO have a new Etsy banner.   The Etsy banner will be up shortly; it just needed a few loving tweaks.

OH.  I sent out an email tonight.  Check your inboxes.  I haven't sent out an email in almost four months.  Wow-zers.  I'm super excited about a few changes that I've made here and there.

Let me know what you think.

Later, ya'll!

Rebecca

PUH-review:

rock, paper, scissors

This is where I am working today.  I visited a new {to me}scrapbook store yesterday and bought lots of new paper.  TONIGHT, I will send out an email for my etsy shop.  If you do not currently receive my newsletter and would like it, please find the subscribe button on the right sidebar underneath my shop's button.  I will be running a special and only those who receive my newsletter will be eligible for this awesome deal. 

happy people

If I were to let my feelings dictate where I lived, I would currently be a missionary to the Indonesian people.  There are thousands of islands in that country and they are 4th in population in the world and that is right behind the United States.  All of our servers in the restaurants on the boat were Indonesian. 

We sat at the same table every night for dinner and got to know our servers.  The assistant dining manager ws Pipit.  In the video, he is in the white suit jacket.  He has been working for this particular cruise line for 12 years.  He will only renew his contract one or two more times.  He is Muslim...and needs the Lord.

Our main server was Beni.  He was all business but very nice.  His English was limited but he did an excellent job serving.  He has a wife and little baby back home and will not go back until the beginning of next year.  He said he will renew his contract with the boat because it's the best job to be had in their country.  I could see him being a faithful member of a church if he was a Christian.

Beni's helper was Yasir.  Hilarious!!  His English was good because he's so friendly, he talks to a lot of people.  I think he's living the high life working on this boat.  He just bought a new car back home and I'm sure he's got the gadgets.  :)  We saw him a lot besides in the dining room at dinner.  He was very happy all the time.

My Opa celebrated his birthday on the boat.  He had three different occasions of dessert in celebration {all courtesy of the restaurant we were eating in at the time}.  Here are our servers singing to him.  Beni is on the far left, Yasir is on the far right and Pipit has on the white jacket.



Beni and Yasir on our last night:

Geoff and Yasir in Helsinki--Yasir was one of the greeters as we were returning to the boat:

I'm home-sweet-home

My heart is so full and I do not know where to begin. At the beginning of the trip, I just knew there was NO WAY that I would be ready to come home. And then at the end of the trip, I was SO READY to come home. Now that I'm home, I miss the ship and Europe. Yes, I'm a girl. And yes, I can be indecisive. :)

All I have to say is that my life was free of DRAMA for 12 WHOLE DAYS. Bliss, people. Can we all say bliss together? BLISS. And now I'm back to my real world.

I will share some of my favorite moments later. Favorite moments include: 

• visiting the actual Liberty of London store in London.  {Remember their new line @ Target?  Yep.}
• the Indonesian servers singing Happy Birthday to my Opa in their native tongue
• Europe 
• and, Europe again
• architecture and flowers

It was great to spend time with my family. My Opa turned 83 on the cruise. Eighty-three. I'm getting very sentimental here. Boy do I love my grandparents. And this afternoon after church canvassing, I'm going to zoom over to give my sweet little Granny a big hug. I've missed her so much.

Later, ya'll!

xxhugsxx

::REpost::19January2009::

life

So my Mom and I just got done watching the incredible movie, The Ultimate Gift.  Definitely a tear-jerker, especially because it involved a little girl with leukemia.

I don't know if this has come up much in the last year of blogging but in 2003, I started going to school to be a nurse.  My specific goal in mind was to be a pediatric oncology nurse.  I quit after a year.  It was rough, real rough.  Lots of spiritual challenges to overcome plus the fact that I'd never had A&P before and I was at square one in everything I learned.  For example, a lot of the students had already been in advanced A&P in high school and knew their bones and muscles.  On the other hand, I was clueless.  And cells?  Yikes!  Brand-spankin new for me.

I know I went through that year for a purpose.  I learned  A LOT!  Both spiritually, mentally, and socially.  I got to interact with peers who were not Christians.  I had to stand on my own two feet and stick out in a skirt (gasp!) imagine that!  And it was GOOD for me.  I also had to ummm...(low, whisper voice inserted here) study.  School + study had never = normal for me.  I don't conisder myself an A+ student but I definitely skated by in school.

All this to say that I came back to FBC and re-enrolled but switched my major to Elementary Education.  An incredible decision.  You see, my passion was (and still IS) for kids and compassion, not necessarily nursing.  Do I wish that I was a nurse?  Sometimes, overwhelmingly, YES!  Especially after watching a movie like that.

After the movie finished, I'm asking my Mom if it was smart what I did.  I've come to the conclusion that nursing is an emotion for me.  It is a feel good thing.  Nursing = compassion for me.  I have a big heart wanting to help hurting people.  And because Mom had leukemia and my Dad works at a medical school, nursing seemed the feasible option.  But I don't think that nursing is-was the path for me.  If I could be a nurse on compassion alone, I would be a good one.  But the fact is, I cannot be a nurse on compassion alone.  There are tons of other factors involved.

Simply, I'm in the place where God wants me.  I want to impact people with my life.  And what I do is definitely not glamorous; no one is signing up to fill my shoes.  Let's face the facts, do you want to still live at home when you're almost 26, no hope for a husband in sight, no hope for moving out on your own because you don't make enough money, etc....? Nope!  But that's ok.   Because this is the life God has for me. And I can impact people in it.  I get to impact 30+ kids on a given Sunday on a bus route and give them the Truth from God's Word that will stick with them for eternity.  I get to help in a Sunday school class.  I was able to give the Gospel to a girl that is in 4th grade girl's's Sunday school and is on my bus a few weeks ago.  I truly believe she understood and became a child of the King!  Praise the Lord!  I get to be the leader for the Primary Girls' class for Master's Club and impact those girls.  I get to work for some totally incredible people that I pray will someday be saved.  I do impact people  Whether or not it's in the form that I had wanted or dreamed of several years ago.

So there you have it.  I was glancing over my blog earlier tonight (pre-movie) and thinking that I needed to post something more worthwhile.  And there you have it.  I just posted my heart.  Hopefully it wasn't too rambly-like.  But to sum it up, I want to impact people.  and that is what I plan on continuing.

Post-edit:  Wow! Lots of run-on sentences.  :)