Off to Romania...

Happy Easter!! Just wanted to say that I am leaving for Romania for the week...we are doing a missions trip in Beius, Transylvania. We are taking 16 kids!! We will be doing various community service works. I will be back Sunday April 3rd. Pray for us please...pray for safety, unity, and humility. Thanks and God Bless!

I love Wales!

I went to Wales last weekend...left early Friday morning and returned to London Sunday evening. It was absolutely wonderful in every way! The weather all weekend was pretty much perfect, sunny and low to mid 70's. We were exceedingly lucky because it rains so much there. I made a new friend, Rosie, who is from Delaware, but is currently living in Germany and teaching English. She is 22 and she's super fun! So we hung out all weekend and funnily enough she came down to my house in Surrey on Sunday after the trip and stayed over night, because the next morning she was meeting her parents at the airport before they headed off to travel around England and Poland for a few days. Anyway, the tour went all over Wales-southern, central, and northern. We started off on the first day and went to Tintern Abbey, which is a massive abbey that was built in 1131 and dissolved in 1536 during the dissolution of the church under King Henry's reign in the 16th century. We spent the day covering different places in the Wye valley as well as Brecon Beacon National Park. We travelled to a town called Caerphilly, which boasts the second largest castle in Britain. Nice little town...had lunch on the grass in the bright sunshine! Then we drove a bit more and stopped for a great walk up a massive hill in Brecon Beacon, which enabled us to have some amazing views of the area. Then we went on to Abergavenny where we had dinner and stayed overnight at a hostel. Saturday morning we headed out toward Snowdonia National Park (north Wales). The drive through the country was just fantastic. So incredibly beautiful with the massive hills, baby lambs, and some small lakes and rivers. We stopped at the ruins of Castell-y-Bere, where we had a nice picnic lunch in the ruins (not much remains). Once again, amazing views. Sometime after that we made a stop in a town called Beddgelert (Bedd means grave of-and Gelert was Prince Llywelyn's dog). There's a really cool story behind the name of the town, and Gelert's grave is actually there for anyone to go and visit. The story is on the town's website. It's a precious little town with a gorgeous river running right through it. Then on to a very interesting village called Portmeiron, which is very colorful and actually reminded me a bit of Spanish architecture, in some ways. My new friend Rosie and I took a great walk along the coast. We travelled up through Snowdonia park, which is more rugged and mountainous than south Wales. Then we ended up in Caernarfon, where there is another fantastic castle! This was a really neat town and the hostel we stayed at was awesome. Four of us girls went to the grocery store and got some food for dinner and then went back and made dinner at the hostel. Then Rosie and I played a mean game of Scrabble-which I believe was my first time to ever play! I don't remember every playing before, but that is such a fun game! Sunday we got an early start and made the drive to the Isle of Angelsey, which is home of the longest name place in Britain, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which translates into "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave." There are actually 2 places with longer names, one in New Zealand (92 letters) and one in Thailand (163 letters!!). After crossing over into England we made our final stop at Stratford-Upon-Avon, which is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Stratford is a beautiful little town and I would like to go back there when I have more time! That pretty much covers my Wales weekend tour. I sooooooo love Wales and hope to return again in the future!

The Taco of God

Well last night at Ignite we had a big Fiesta night. Taco Tuesday if you will. Megen's theme for the night was "The Taco of God," which was inspired by Colossians 3:12-14. It says: Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." So you see, love is the tortilla around all of the wonderful taco fillings that a follower of Christ should exhibit, such as compassion and kindness. Forgiveness is kind of the meat, we decided. So I made tacos!! We usually have pizza, but instead we had some awesome soft tacos. The kids were actually really excited about the tacos, so I was happy! It's always nice when people enjoy the food you make. We played Spanish trivia, Spanish pictionary, and extreme pin the tail on the donkey. It was a wonderful night!

I haven't posted in a while....I think about it often, but never find the time. Plus I haven't really done anything super exciting lately I guess. But life is good. In fact, it's great. What's been going on in my life lately? Well, last week was great. Tuesday night for Ignite we had a coffeehouse night at Starbucks, with a guest musician. PW Gopal was our musician and he is from Ohio, but originally Sri Lanka. He has an incredibly powerful voice, which sounded to me like a mix between Bebo Norman and Jeremy Camp. Awesome. You can check him out at www.pwgopal.com. He's also a Young Life guy. Wednesday the Mellgard's left town (went to Geneve for Rugby ISST's), so I had the house to myself until Saturday night. It was pretty cool. The house is massive, and it was kind of weird to be there all alone, but I wasn't there much. On Wed. night I had my Wed. night group over. Wednesday night group is a mix of people from St. Mary's church in Walton, Walton Baptist, Esher Baptist, and myself from ICC. There are about 10-12 of us usually. Right now we are going through a book about spiritual warfare. Anyway, I invited all of them over for a dinner party because I soooo love to cook for people and host. So 9 friends were able to come over and I made poppy seed chicken with rice. That is one fantastic meal. I also made a great dessert, Chocolate pudding cake, which interestingly enough does not have any chocolate pudding in it! It's great. Then Thurdsay and Friday I watched A LOT of basketball! It was ISST time, which is International Schools Sports Tournament. So our school held the basketball tournament. IT was awesome. We got 6th out of 12 teams. But rugby got 2nd out of 10 in Geneva!
The last couple of days have been great, I was able to get to bed early both nights and then get up at 6 and 6:30 the next mornings. This gave me time to spend a little while in The Word, get some good exercise, and enjoy a nice breakfast. I loved the last two mornings. Yesterday was really a nice day and I was able to open my sunroof on Darla!! I was so happy! I've never had a sun roof before, but now that I am in sunny England I do.
Today the staff had a big lunch together at our pastor Greg's house. It was all the staff, plus Greg and Chris's wives, and Dustin's friend Bill (who is in town visiting from Iowa). Anyway, we had salmon, burgers, hot dogs, soup, chips and dips, an amazing salad, chicken, shrimp, chocolate cheesecake, lemon tart, and the famous chocolate pudding cake. Too much food! Everything was fantastic though. We got to all hang out for a couple of hours. Great bonding time for the team! So I've had a great week. And things to look forward to...Megen and I are going to see Mary Poppins Thurdsay and then Friday I am off to Wales for the weekend!! Then the next Monday we go to Romania for a missions trip, and the following Friday Megen and I are headed to Paris and EuroDisney!!! Wow, I have a busy month ahead of me!