Meet Caleb

Let me introduce you to the cutest little kid ever- my nephew Caleb Barry Bouchillon. Caleb was born last night on my mom's birthday- I hope he doesn't mind sharing his name with his grandpa and his birthday with his grandma!

Caleb and I had our first Skype call late last night. He was about 2 hours old, but he was already a pro. He knows you have to yell really loud sometimes on Skype.

Really, Caleb is the most perfect little baby I've ever seen. I am so happy for Mark and Katie and pray that this little kid grows up to love and follow Jesus just like his dad and granddad!

Budapest

A few weekends ago I met my college roommate Cari in Budapest to cheer her on as she raced in the triathlon World Championship. Or something like that. Somehow that actually doesn't seem crazy random at all. If you know Cari at all, I'm sure you understand. It was so fun to get out of town and hang out with an old friend for a few days!

Early on race day- we left the apartment around 4:45! This whole

triathlon thing is pretty intense.

The finish line!

A gross sweaty hug. At this point I was yelling,

"Cari, you smell sooo bad!"

So fun to see her though!

Too bad I can't join her for the next one in Hawaii.

Ninjas

My ministry is going to look a little different this year. During my STINT year, I worked mostly with college students in medical school. Then yesterday I found myself playing the Ninja Game with a bunch of high school freshmen. They were so fun! I'm really looking forward to getting to know these students more this year. The Lord provided an incredible open door into this school, and we were able to speak to both classes of freshmen about our ministry and pass out notebooks that talked about our activities and our "Knowing God Personally" books. In the second class we even got to show a short film and have discussion groups. Each person on my team led a group and we were all able to share our own testimonies with the students. Pretty incredible!

Last week we passed out the same notebooks to freshmen in the education department at Presov University. Almost all of the 80ish students brought back the filled-out spiritual interest surveys after their meetings. Classes haven't even started yet, but we are already having such encouraging days on campus!

Ahoy (or Ahoj)!

St. Joseph Catholic Church here in Fort Collins

I've had a full day of church visits. My roommate and I went this morning to Summitview, a church that we really like here in town. They were finishing up a week of VBS, so the kids led some of the service. Because they did the "High Seas Expedition" theme, they had everyone in the church pump their fist and shout, "Ahoy!" every time they said one of the truths about God's Word that they had learned. Now, "ahoj" (pronounced the same way) means hello in Slovak. So it was fun to hear everyone shouting it over and over. My Slovak friends would have felt right at home.

This evening we headed over to St. Joseph for mass. As part of our cross-cultural ministry training we had to attend a service at a type of church we had never been to before. The Catholic church seemed like my best bet because Slovakia is so culturally Catholic and I'd never been to a Catholic service in a language I could actually understand. It was strange and pretty sad to go from such a joyful church to one where the majority looked like they might rather be anywhere else on earth. Some parts of the service seemed so reverent and worshipful, but much of it appeared very empty. One of the saddest things in the world to me is to see this view of God that most Slovaks hold- that He is far away, that He is just part of a big, empty tradition, that He is irrelevant to their lives. Slovakia has some of the most beautiful churches that I have ever seen, and I pray that they will be filled again someday with people adoring Jesus with their whole hearts.

Potluck & Pies

I have the greatest roommates at Xtrack! Halle and Kristin and I decided last weekend we wanted to "have a few people over" to our apartment. So we planned a potluck and tried to come up with something that started with "P" for a cutesy name. We came up with "Potluck & Pies" although none of us had much experience making pies. We put it on the announcement board, and plans starting getting a little crazy. We realized that "Potluck & Pies" would need to be moved out to the courtyard and that we would need more pies. By potluck time, we had 8 pies ready. I'm not sure if I've ever made a pie before, but I've now made 5 in a 48 hour period. But it was such a fun time!

About 60 people at my last count- so fun!

Sydney asking Patrick, "Why?... Why?.... Why?"

Showing off a few of our pies

Key Lime, Lemon Meringue, Banoffee, and more

The aftermath

Olivia really just wanted to eat rocks.

I am so thankful for this time at Xtrack and for such fun fellowship. It's a weird feeling to be getting ready to move away from America, so it's incredibly encouraging to be here with 100ish people who "get me." And now I've got lots of new friends to visit all over the world!

Across the Lands

This summer my church is doing a children's program called "Across the Lands" to teach the kids about world missions. The kids will "visit" countries all over the world and learn more about other cultures and about how they can be praying for the world. It's pretty amazing how many people we have in our church who have lived in or are from different countries. The whole thing is so cute- the kids have passports and get stamps with the names of each country. And each week they'll get a bookmark with prayer requests for the country they visited that night.

So tonight I took about 30 5-7 year olds to Slovakia. So fun! It was so cute to hear them speak words in Slovak, and I was so impressed with the questions they asked. They were very concerned about how long it takes to get to Slovakia. I found a recipe online for medovniky- traditional Slovak honey cookies- and made icing for the kids to decorate the cookies. They loved it-

So how do the kids' cookies compare with the real thing?

I hope this summer is the beginning of lots of little Clemson Pres kids going to take the gospel to the world!

Welcome to Amerika

My parents have a student from the ministry in Slovakia on project with them in Gatlinburg this summer. I met Jakub a few times during the spring semester but really got to know him on the trip to Serbia last summer. Friday night I picked him up at the airport in Atlanta, and he spent the weekend here in Clemson before I took him to Gatlinburg. Aaron (my SK teammate) and Meredith spent the weekend here too, and we had so much fun showing Jakub around Clemson!
After he slept til noon the first day, we took him straight to Cracker Barrel. Aaron got him some sweet tea and macaroni and cheese- I don't think he'll be ordering any more sweet tea while he's here!


Before we left for Cracker Barrel he discovered the rocking chairs on my front porch. He also tapped on the vinyl siding and said, "It's not wood?" Haha- how do you explain vinyl siding?

After lunch we went to Wal-Mart to look at guns and get some "cosmetics." Also known as toiletries. We made him use the self-checkout and he said, "Wow- you don't have to talk to anyone."

Then we went on a tour of the greatest place on earth- Clemson, South Carolina. Complete with Death Valley and Howard's Rock and hanging out in the dugout at the baseball field.

Jakub was so amazed by the queen size bed in Kevin's room that we gave him the king size in Gatlinburg. I think this was the first thing he really wanted a picture of.

It was pretty interesting looking at America from a non-American's perspective. I also have a new understanding of how Slovaks see us when we are in their culture. And why they talk about so much us in Slovak so that we can't understand. It's a funny thing to learn a new culture.

One last Jakub story- we were standing in Corky's BBQ and looking into one of the side rooms. Jakub said, "A picture of Elvis, baseball on tv, and people stuffing their faces with fried chicken. I need a picture." Welcome to Amerika.

Northside

I spent a few hours this morning back at Northside Elementary School. I can't believe it's been 2 years since my student teaching there. My teacher found me on Facebook last week and invited me back for a visit. It was so fun to go back and see some of my kids and the 4 ladies I worked with (yep, there were 5 adults for 12 children and we could have used more!). One of the boys was especially hard to connect with that year and was really distant and unaffectionate (he's the one not looking at the camera in the picture. oh wait, that's all of them. he's the one walking right out the side of the picture), but as soon as I walked in the door today, he ran up and gave me a hug. It was so sweet to walk down the hall holding hands with him and hear him say, "Hi Miss B, I missed you." (He also almost never talked during my student teaching!) Another one of my boys that I got to see is now in a regular ed 1st grade class! And another who was in a wheelchair is walking now! How fun to see how much they have all progressed!

Being at Northside today really made me miss being in the classroom. I'm really thankful for where God has me now, and I don't know if He'll ever call me to teach. But if He does, I know I will love it!

We also had our last meeting today for the Revelation Bible study. We did an Anne Graham Lotz study, and it wasn't an in-depth study of the symbolism of the book and we didn't get deep into eschatology, but we studied who Jesus is and the hope He offers. I learned so much. But what sticks in my mind the most is something she said just in passing during the teaching-
"No matter how wonderful I think God is now, He is more."

"He who testifies to these things says, 'Surely I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"
Revelation 22:20

My To-Do List

This support raising process has been hard. Not necessarily the trusting God with the money part. But the what do I do with my day part. I struggled for most of this year with feeling lazy, with wanting to work on support but not have enough to do to fill a day, with waking up in the morning wondering what I would do all day (not a problem most Americans tend to have). Probably sounds nice to some people, but 8 months of it is just too long. So I got a little addicted to the Today show, to Fox News, to the Amazing Race (I could go on). And going to the mailbox was the highlight of my day.

Until about a month ago. I was asking my support coach what I could do when I didn't know what to do, and he suggested taking a day with the Lord. So the next Monday I spent the whole day with the Lord- without seeing anyone else, talking to anyone else, turning on the tv, making support phone calls. And it was wonderful. Nothing about my circumstances had changed, but I had joy that I hadn't had in months. I realized that the tv was not adding anything to my life. In fact, hearing about America's terrible economy all day was causing me to struggle with trusting God to raise my support. And I realized what a blessing that I had so much free time that I could spend with the Lord. I didn't have to settle for a quick quiet time in the morning then go on with a busy day. And I realized I didn't have to feel guilty about spending those hours studying God's word just because it wasn't directly involving support raising. I may not ever have another season of life like this, where I can spend so many hours a day in God's word, so I'll take it and enjoy it while I can.

So for the past month I have enjoyed the quiet of not having the tv on and have been studying Daniel and Revelation. Daniel I'm studying on my own, but the Revelation study is with a sweet group of ladies from my church. I didn't think much at first about studying them at the same time but how incredible! They go together hand-in-hand in such a neat way. And God's writing in Daniel put the writers of LOST to shame (didn't give up that one but glad it's over!). How incredible to read prophecy and study some of it now as history and see how God keeps his promises.

And while I haven't been spending any more time on support than before, I have seen more come in over the past few weeks than the rest of this semester combined. Amazing. The Lord didn't have to do that for me; I didn't earn more support by spending more time with Him. But how great is His grace!

P.S. Maybe my lack of exciting, fun-filled days explains my lack of blog updates. Or maybe I was just never good at this to begin with :-)

Pray Europe

There's a neat prayer movement going on right now on prayeurope.com. They are inviting people to pray each day during Lent for a different country in Europe. Obviously I love this part of the world, and it's been so fun to pray each day for these countries. The website has specific prayer requests and a little spiritual background for each country. I've learned a lot already- I don't think I even knew that Andorra is a country! They are also recording the numbers as people click that they have prayed. How exciting to be a part of a worldwide movement of prayer for revival in Europe! It's my dream for God to fill the big, beautiful, empty churches of Europe with people who love Him! Go check out the website and pray for Europe!