I know it’s daylight savings time, but does it really have to get dark at 5:00 p.m.?! As a morning person (they do exist, you know) the night time is hard for me. I feel like my day is finished when the sun goes down, and there are no more opportunities for fun!

Obligatory rant on how early it gets dark in the winter in Maine over.

I promise I won’t exclusively write about Sundays all the time, but honestly, the rest of my week was kind of boring compared to today. Just LOADS of studying for chemistry and environmental planning midterms that I finally took Thursday and Friday. I even had to stay in during Halloween and continue to study! Not that I wanted to go out and party or trick-or-treat, but it would have been nice to have the option instead of being up to my eyeballs in stereochemistry.

Today was awesome. I got to talk to all of these girls in succession.

1. Rikki!

Rikki is such a living, breathing, walking testimony. I loved getting to sit down with her today for lunch after church and literally hearing the oodles of things that God has done in her life and is continuing to do. We get to talk so openly to each other. I think once our friendship started to really develop after she accepted Christ at Navs Winter Conference last year (a story for another day) we went off the assumption that there was going to be no BS. And I love that, because every time I get the chance to talk to her, I get to be real. That’s something I wish I could do with everybody-I’m working on it.

 

2. Allison!

Allison and I’s first impression of each other was a way-too-intense, over-the-top, game of racquetball together at the Sports Center of Estes Park, CO during staff training week at Wind River Ranch. She is someone who pushed and challenged me all throughout this summer. She is such a strong, on fire follower of Jesus that I was kind of taken aback by her at first. Allison is fluent in Spanish, studying Spanish education, and hopes to do missions one day. But I think the thing that really showed me her heart was when she taught a bunch of us white girls at the ranch a salsa routine she learned from her time abroad in South America.

I think our dancing must have been so offensive to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, I can’t imagine what it was like to watch us. But she laughed with us the whole way through, had incredible patience, and organized the whole thing herself.

 

3. Gabrielle!

This one was a chance meeting, actually! I got locked out of my room while doing my laundry, and on my way down with the RA, I ran into my good friend Gabrielle who likes to hang out in my building and study. She usually has a couch that she sits on, but they moved all of them out of the common areas on the floors, so I invited her to my couch, and we got to hang out and catch up as well. She is such a sweet spirit and a joy. Her laugh is contagious and you cannot help but smile when you talk to Gabrielle.

…

I was bemoaning earlier this year how a lot, if not all, of my good christian girl friends had moved off campus and were no longer around. Today, God showed me different in 3 unique encounters with some very beautiful friends.

Go tell someone they matter to you this week, and why. You never know the impact it can have. You know me-I’m a words-of-affirmation kind of girl.

~J