princesses and hearts...

Last week was Spring Break... ah, blessedness! :-) So amazing to be at home, even though "home" is on a ministry campus. I decided that I wanted to throw a party for the young girls on campus, and amazingly I planned, shopped, prepared, and pulled it all off in less than 3 days, all by myself. :-) It was so fun to hear little girl giggles, laugh over little girl stories, and listen to little girl talk. I guess I missed that by not having a little sister. Here are some of the pictures I took...

On another note... this Spring Break I really started to feel God pulling on my heart in the area of international missions. Particularly working with physical therapists in sub-Saharan Africa. For the last few weeks we have been studying that region in my global geography class, and I am coming to love those people that I have never even seen. Africa is the one continent (besides Anarctica!) that I have never been to, and I feel a compeling pull to serve there. My ultimate dream would be to work with MercyShips next summer and serve on the Africa Mercy. Seeing dozens of needy patients, hundreds of international staff, thousands of African people... being on the forefront of life-changing surgeries while sharing with them about The Ultimate Lifechanger! Living on a 499' boat with other staff who have committed to serve with MercyShips for years! Doctors who conduct the surgeries, culinary artists who feed the entire ship, mechanics who keep everything running, teachers who run the missionary kid K-12 school, ICU nurses, housekeeping staff who keep things "shipshape." I would be on board for 2 months, probably shadowing a physical therapist and filling in wherever needed elsewhere.
This is more than helping a highschool football player recover from a knee injury so that he can help him team win the district championship. This is beyond helping a person get used to a prostetic limb after a car wreck that forced his leg to be amputated. This is more out there than helping seniors recover from strokes and maintain their range of motion as they age. Yes! Those things are important, but who cares about being a specialist in an area of physical therapy that makes a lot of money when there are people who are dying! When I can come after a surgery and show someone a few excerises they can do back home so they can get back to work and support their family. This is about giving someone their livelihood back. This is about helping people with a birth defect not be an outcast anymore in their village. This is about providing hope! This is about making a difference in someone's life--someone who will remember not my name or my face, but who will remember the love of Christ shown to them through a team of people devoted to serving God in medical missions.
Yeah, so I have the possibility of getting some fluke disease. And I am terrified of getting my vaccines before I go... strangely enough, I hate nurses' offices and getting shots! But there are 800 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa who encounter these diseases daily. It is so hard to sit in my comfortable dorm room here in College Station with three Bibles and a perfectly healthy body when my heart is yearning to be 7,000 miles away!
And so, I wait and pray. Who knows where I will actually spend the summer of 2010. Only God! But I am so excited that I can't wait!!!