It's amazing how YOU can speak right to my heart...<3

Gosh you guys, honestly, this trip has blown my expectations out of the water. I was expecting to come here and share the Gospel with all of the people I run into and really just help create a ministry. I wanted to come an form a deeper relationship with God and break some of the bonds that have been holding me back in my walk with the Lord...While I feel like I have been doing all of those things, I feel like I'm not just sharing the Gospel, I'm giving people the opportunity to get a quick snapshot into my heart, and hopefully into the heart of Jesus Himself. We're not just helping to create a ministry, we are navigating and piolating the entire process on my campus. When I said that I hoped I would be able to form a deeper relationship with God, I would have never expected that I would truly get to learn of His heart and actually feel Him grip my life. He has broken the bonds I had hoped He would and He has been helping me wrestle with struggles I wasn't even aware of having. I thought I was on good terms with Jesus before I left--I was trying my hardest to be obedient, I was reading Christian novels, and I was just trying to walk through my life the way I hoped He would have intended me to. But since being here, I have learned so much from the people here...more than I ever knew I needed to learn. I have fallen head-over-heels in love with the creator of the Universe, and it's the greatest feeling in the world because I know that while I've fallen, He will NEVER let me fall...He will only continue to pursue me and romance me. Some friends told me that I would fall in love while in New Zealand...and I have...a greater love than I could have ever imagined. PRAISE GOD!

This week was incredible. I have met some amazing people of peace on the campus I have been placed at and I have had the opportunity to speak truth into their lives and help them understand what it means to have a relationship with God. I said a couple of posts ago that it is spirutaally dead here, and I truly believe that it's true, BUT there are so many people here who are warriors too, for God's Kingdom. There are people here fighting through the lack of spirituality, and I have such respect for them! I can't wait to tell you the specifics of each heart that I feel like the Lord has let me see into, but just rest in knowing that they are absolutely, without a doubt awesome people and I love them.

To those of you who know that I have an artistic side, God has really been pointing me towards art and yesterday I stumbled across an incredibly cheap art store and it was TOTALLY 100% of the Lord that I went there. I believe that He is going to use that either to know my heart more or to reach the hearts of others...GET EXCITED! :) haha

Time has flown since being here. I miss everyone a lot, but I haven't had time to think about being sad! I have just been rejoicing in the Lord. I hope you are all growing and changing and discovering yourselves. If you have accepted Christ as your savior, then the Lord is delighting in you wherever you are in your walk with Him and if we continually seek Christ, we will continutally be renewed for our wrongdoings. [Colossians 3:10]

I'm not sure what I'm leaving out, honestly, but God is so good, and the relatinoships that I've formed on this trip are ones I know will last a lifetime. <3 God bless all of you...I'll be home before you know it!