new ephesus

Isaac's excited about all the pizza boxes in our dining room.
The whole family's been helping making an insane amount of pizza dough and cookies since this morning.
Thanks to everyone who ordered pizza! We'll see you soon.

Afternote: We're all extremely exhausted but we managed to raise over $500 for missions trips! Thank you so much to everyone who ordered and donated and lent us your pizza screens. You guys are great!

Gah! I feel terrible whenever I fund raise!
But I guess it's necessary and people want to help or whatever. But why is it so hard?

For those of you who don't live on my block, please know that my mother is an amazing woman. She's helping me to make a whole bunch of pizzas for our neighborhood so I can raise money for Mexico.

It's a pretty sweet idea, and we now have pizza boxes and order forms all over our dining room table and four pots of sauce on the stove, which is fine. Going door to door is the thing that kills me. Thank God that my neighbors are such wonderful people. Sometimes I wonder, if I lived next to a hunter who triple locks the door and answers with a rifle, would fundraising look a little different.

Last night was one of those youth group nights where a bunch of kids meet at a pastor's house and go snow tubing. It was great.
Around the fire, I was talking about how I felt like a drug addict when I fund-raise for missions trips. Because last year I sold my kiln and pottery wheel to make the last $500 I needed to go to Mexico.
It was sort of a joke. I have no doubt that I can raise the money this year (even though the price went up). But this morning at church Luke gave me some money that he made. He told me to put it toward my trip so I wouldn't have to sell anything else. Luke is great.
The other day a friend asked me if I wanted to run for Haiti H2O. I would have to raise a hundred bucks. At first I said no, because I'm already giving up buying good coffee to save money for Mexico, what more did God want?
But if Luke can trust God to pay for his trip and help out other people at the same time, why can't I?

God is bigger than the money it takes to go to Mexico. And he gives us the strength to do more than we ever thought possible.

It's hard when raising money for a trip to trust God and not take all the responsibility upon ourselves, but that's exactly what God wants from us. It's like that movie about the nuns and the guy who's car breaks down. They actually trusted God for everything. And God provided.
It's a really good old movie, "Lilies of the Field". You should watch it.
Also I'm running for Haiti H2O. So it would be cool if you could pray and stuff.

Last summer, I met a girl named Nubia (I'll write more on her later) and I really want to see her again before it's too late. Also, last year, God did amazing work with the group that I went down with. This year, that group is going to Quito, Equador. And I wanted to see what God was going to do with a new group.