ALOHA, I'm finally here!!!

Im officially in Hawaii!!!!!!!
Its been a crazy 24 hours, but Im finally here and all settled in. I landed yesterday around 3:30 and was picked up by one of the girls in the college ministry with the church I will be interning with. Her name is Nikki and she and her younger brother Chris were basically my tour guides yesterday. First we came to my new home for the next 4 months. ITS AMAZING! Its this cute little townhouse up on this hill that overlooks Pearl Harbor and downtown, how cool is that?!?! Then we went to the mall and just looked around and got something to eat before heading to their Friday night youth service. I was soooooooo exhausted... i don't know what I was thinking keeping myself so busy when I could have just slept but I just wanted to see everything. It was totally worth it. The youth service was amazing. The kids had just gotten back from camp and some had gotten back from this world conference in the Philippines and it was really neat seeing everyone extremely excited and on fire! I met a few of the people that I will be working with as well and everyone was just super friendly. I basically have the next couple of days to myself cause the internship doesn't officially start till Tuesday. Soooo, Ill try and update this as much as I can and post pictures as well. I took a few pictures this morning, they aren't that great but it was just basically around the house. Hopefully the next couple of days I can take some around town. For some reason its not letting me upload them here but Im gonna also be putting up pictures on Flickr so you can see them on there.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/costarican_15/
Thanks for your continued prayer and support. I love you guys so much!

Blind Man's Walk

So, I shared part of this tonight at youth group but I thought I would post it here.

This past weekend marked exactly one year of God bringing me to L.A. Its really crazy to see how far I've come. I literally came to L.A. on complete blind faith that God was gonna provide everything... and he DID! I came with no job, enough money to get by 2 months or so, no church family, no security in anything really. But it allowed me to completely trust and rely in Him... and Im so glad he did. I have grown so much in the past year and have been blessed by God on countless occasions. From the people I have met, to my job, to finding an amazing church, it just blows my mind.

I remember right before moving down here, God gave me this image of my relationship with him being like a blind man's walk and I was reminded of it the other night. I grew up in Northern CA and up there we had some awesome redwood trees. One thing you can do in the redwood forest in take this one path that has a guided rope. You can choose to close your eyes and follow the rope through the forest. I remember when I was young, I would always open my eyes and peak to make sure I wasn't gonna trip over anything. Sometimes we go on these journeys with God that requires complete faith and most times its so much easier to just open your eyes and try and take control ourselves. Sometimes, we may have bumps along the way and might fell like we are never gonna reach the end, but when you make it to your destination knowing that it was completely God who guided you along the way is the greatest feeling ever!

So here I am, 3 days and counting to my departure and once again am going on this blind path, but this time, instead of being completely blind to my destination... he has given me some light to help make my path more clear. Im sooo thankful for everything that he has done for me in the past year and Im just even more excited for Hawaii. I just love Jesus so much!!!!!!!!!

Ill end with this... In jeremiah 29:11 God said "for I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future." I love that he know the plans he has for me. Even when I can't see them completely or they seem impossible or scary, I can trust that they are plans to prosper me and not harm me... to give me a hope and a future.

Aloha!

Hey everyone!

Well about 2 weeks left till I leave for Hawaii. Im pretty excited! Thank you all who have been supporting me in prayer and financially. You have no idea how much it means to me knowing that I have so many people in support of what God is having me do.

My goal is to update this blog once a week with updates on everything and maybe Ill surprise you with pictures and videos.

Also Im hoping that the more I explore this blog thingy I can add fun gadgets and stuff, you know, make it look spiffy.

Just a few updates...

-God has provided about $4,000 so far!

-My host home is all set and ready to go!

-God totally provided a way for me to go home briefly before leaving to Hawaii, it was cheaper to fly out of Portland than LAX.

Also for those of you interested who may not have seen the link for Every Nations Ministries, here is the link for both Every Nations Ministry and the actual church that I will be interning with in Hawaii.

http://everynation.org/

http://gbchawaii.org/ministry1.php