The Next Step in Life

I have been home from Thailand for exactly two weeks now and I still talk about my experiences there everyday. I look at pictures and remember different things that we did there, and I can't help but get excited about going back someday. But for right now, I have another job ahead of me that has to be tackled with Great Love.

Tomorrow, the 9th of August, I will be leaving with my mom, sister Kayla, and brother Bradley to move back to Dordt. I'm leaving Dad and Joel home because of soccer and work. It's going to be so hard to say goodbye to them and then make sure I lead my Mom safely out to Iowa on our long drive tomorrow.

Thursday I begin RA training for the second year. I will be living by myself in the dorm building and I have a wing full of incoming freshman. It's my job to make these girls all feel at home and make it an easy transition into college life. I get to plan different wing events for every week – something fun we can do together as a wing and a way we can grow closer as friends and classmates and especially closer to God.

Thailand was all about working at the school with great love for the children and great love for God, and this is the same, but in some ways I feel like this is going to be harder. I have hardly had time to think of themes for my wing, or even begin to think about wing events. I'm excited about meeting everyone and going through training with a bunch of friends, but for some reason, I feel like nothing about this next step in life will be as exciting as visiting Thailand for 2 weeks.

This is where I need to spend more time with God, ask him to show me how this can be just as fun as Thailand and how this next step will be a challenge as well as a way to grow in faith and strength for God.

I know this is has been a lot of rambling, but i needed to talk myself through some things in order to make this next step be something as great as Thailand. I don't think I'll see how great being an RA will actually be until I step into the role and spend more time talking with God. I'm excited about this step but also a little apprehensive, because of Thailand. But I can't measure everything next to Thailand – this has to be something I measure next to last year and on a whole different scale. It's something I know that God has called me to do again and its something I have to spend doing knowing that while it may seem like something small compared to traveling around the world, its still something I have to do out of Great Love for others and for God!