la di da

Out reach.
My thoughts...
Just a few:
God was speaking to me about being secure in Him, being completely devoted to pursuing Him first. He kept saying He wants intimacy with me, to be okay with being away from 'home', and to be pushing in, to learn what 'closer than close' is with Jesus. He revealed bitterness that I got rid of, He also revealed more insecurities and how to dig up the last few roots and get rid of them. He confirmed my worth, my ability to be content at home with him alone no matter who I'm with or which country I'm in. I learned that being a 'missionary'  is really just communing with God every morning and letting Him infiltrate and overflow into activities and conversations throughout everyday.

The purpose for my life: TO LOVE GOD AND LOVE PEOPLE.

God's purpose for my life: To grow in maturity in loving Jesus.

Also going through the amazingly wonderful Identity Project with Sarahmae. Have you seen the margins in that thing? AMAZING - I can doodle my heart out.

ALSO...I have some thoughts from Clive... He's so wonderful and I feel like I'm conversing with him every time I read his writing. I kinda feel like we're around the fire place late at night and he's imparting wisdom to me as he props his feet on his ottoman in his slippers and robe.

So in this chapter called "Affection" in The Four Loves I identified with his thoughts, especially in relation to YWAM, out reach teams, and mission work in general. It applies to many parts of life...but for me it strikes me that God is so creative when placing His children together. Believers who have the same heart for Him, for a country, for a purpose, and yet they would never naturally coexist and be friends if not for His call, and our obedience. Ha, funny how He brings us even better friends for ourselves than we would've "naturally" chosen. Love it! Anyway here's what Lewis says:

'Dogs and cats should always be brought up together,' said someone, 'it broadens their minds so.' Affection broadens ours; of all natural loves it is the most catholic, the least finical, the broadest. The people with whom you are thrown together in the family, the college, the mess, the ship, the religious house, are from this point of view a wider circle than the friends, however numerous, whom you have made for yourself in the outer world. By having a great many friends I do not prove that I have a wider appreciation of human excellence. You might as well say I prove the width of my literary taste by being able to enjoy all the books in my own study. The answer is the same in both cases -'You chose those books. You chose those friends. Of course they suit you.' The truly wide taste in reading is that which enable a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who 'happen to be there.' Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

Yup, that about sums it up for me. My life has been enriched by people, now friends, who I didn't 'choose,' yet they are "worth far more than (I) guessed." Yay! yay God!:)

Confession #17:

#17: I sometimes wish I was a food network star when I'm cooking... My show would be 'Ruby's Really Rad Recipes' (hahahahahahaha!)

Well, my Cupcake experiment today was a success!! YAY. yay cupcakes.

I got inspired to do this cool two flavors thing and make them look really neat. I ended up referring to them as my diversity cupcakes.

Yummo!

I then remembered it was St.Patrick's Day! So I used our green sprinkles and said 'Kiss me I'm Irish!" No, not really, no one but my dad and the dogs where around. And I'm not totally sure if I have Irish in me...

He's so cute when he smiles!

My Dad's response to me bringing him one was "What are you doin' eatin' sweet things?" "ha, what are you doing?:)"

Anyway they're delicious and I only got pinched once today.
Ta ta for now.

Story Time!

I feel like telling a story this afternoon...
I'm going to title it "Cookies."

      Do do do, riding along on the bus through the country side, our little outreach family were traveling from the Southern coast of Morocco to the desert, about halfway through outreach. Fun stuff - bus rides. Especially when the bus you're on stops for every tiny town just in case some little old man might want to hop on or off. I think at one point I had a panic moment to myself bc we were definitely in the middle of no where. Surrounded by desert landscape, and a handful of Moroccans in the seats in front of...if they had wanted to kidnap and take us far into the depths of the desert...no one would have known! ahh! Haha, but that was a passing thought and reality was Nate, Kent and Chris already liked practicing kung fo/wrestling/punching so we would've been fine (and Jesus would've helped for sure too.)

     Anyway! We finally stop for more than a minuet to get some food and use the bathroom. The line for the squatty potties was long so I knew my food decision would have to be snappy! A little fun fact: Moroccans LOVE yogurt. Every single tiny corner shop selling any type of food will have half a dozen choices at least. That was a no brainer, course I got some drinkable strawberry yogurt. I also wanted some crackers. Just a little package of maybe a dozen. Ok, so the cute little shop owner and I did not speak each others language. Typical. So smiling as much as I could I pointed to the crackers on the top of his shops shelves. It required him pulling over his ladder to climb to the very top for me. I thought I was clearly pointing to the SMALL packages...part of this was my fault, but secretly I think he wanted to get rid of this "Party Size" BOX of crackers. I just didnt have the heart to tell him to climb all the way back to the top shelf as, grinning nicely, he gave me, the naive white tourist girl, his biggest box of "Gourmet Biscuits." I laughed, slightly annoyed, all the way back to the bus...and felt completely ridiculous, and braced myself for the grief I was gonna get, esp from the boys, about the gigantic box of cookies! Of course for the rest of the bus ride, I think about 3 hours, I was the butt of all jokes, and we also made more friends because any Moroccan willing, I tried to give them at least 10 cookies! ahhaha. Oh yes, love language barriers. Now I kind of miss those cookies, even though they aren't really that tasty. THE END.

SO MANY COOKIES!! Ridiculous. haha