First of all… I need to apologize.
I realized earlier this week that I still hadn't finished the post about the leper colony and I feel badly for it. For those of you who were waiting for it… please forgive me.
Second, life has been insane since returning from India. We flew into the country on September 2, had Labor Day weekend to recover from jet lag, and then life just went nuts. Summer is the busy season at AIM… we work all year for the summer and then blast through those three months, all the while with fall in sight–a time to relax. However, since returning from India and officially entering the fall season, the Short Term Missions Department where I work has been in transition, laying the groundwork for next year.
In the rush of closing up the India trip with last minute details, catching up on all the work I missed, and starting my new role in STM (more details to come after I return from Thailand!)…I just got in the rhythm of sleep, eat, go to work, rest, sleep, repeat… scratching things off the list as I was able to.
So, here we are in October–OCTOBER, I can't believe it!– and I haven't finished the India series. And mostly, I feel bad for that because I can't begin to describe just how thankful I am for all of you, how you are so often in my mind, heart, and prayers, and how I want to communicate better, more effectively, and more often, and how badly I feel when weeks get by me like this. So please forgive me. The final India blog will be posted next week.
But first, I have some news!
I'm published again! YAY!!!!!!! My story, "Living Water", is appearing in Chicken Soup's Book of Answered Prayer, available in stores October 18. YAY!!! I'm pretty excited! This is a story from one of the awesome trips to Jamaica I took as a teen, when I worked at a deaf camp in the mountains one summer. I was pretty excited when I found out they were going to publish it! So please go check it out!
Last week I celebrated two years with AIM, 5 years of being with the organization. I am so blessed to be able to live as a missionary and am so thankful for the incredible community I have in my life!
And… I leave in 2 weeks for Thailand! We have two STM teams of women going there to do ministry in anti-trafficking. I am going to be trained the first week on the specifics of that type of ministry and then will co-lead the second team with Connie Rock. In all, we will be there October 19-November 7. I'm pretty excited… cannot wait to go out and see what God will do!
Finally, I want to end this post with a little laughter. Below is a video of Tabatha, the three-year-old at AH who, when I knew her two years ago, was afraid of white people and wouldn't let us touch her. Now she is animated, full of laughter, with bright eyes, a huge smile, and a love for music, dance, and anything that lets her perform in front of people. Our last day in India, our team went into the chapel and Tabatha was there, standing in front of all of the children, singing in Hindi. The chorus had a part that sounded like–to the Americans– "la la la". Don, Connie's husband, said, "We should all sing 'la la la'" back at her. So we did… and she wasn't expecting it. She laughed so hard… threw her head back, held her stomach, and laughed from her belly. Which means we couldn't stop laughing… and it continued for a while. I keep this video to watch for… basically every time I want to laugh!
**video by Ana Kempner**
