3 weeks!

A good friend mentioned to me today that I hadn't written a blog in a while. I didn't think I had much to say, but now that I actually sit and think about it I have more to say than I realized.

It's been a crazy month or so with school wrapping up and graduation. I took a two week hiatus from doing anything productive and caught up on all the sleep I lost this past semester. I very much enjoyed it. Between final projects and final exams and those weeks of not doing much of anything, everything with Ecuador has started to sneak up on me.

I leave for training in Miami three weeks from today. I'm home in Wisconsin for a few days, but once I get back to the Twin Cities, I work full days all but two of the days leading up to my trip. I'm looking forward to spending my days outside at the pool and hanging out with friends. But in the meantime, I need to be focused on preparing to teach a seminar while we're in Ecuador.

In mid-April, I got an email from the kind folks at Big World Venture asking if I (or any other leaders or LITs) would be interested in teaching a 45 minute seminar/class for the students on one of the nights. My initial reaction was to dismiss the email - that I didn't have anything worth while to talk about, especially for 45 minutes. But then I got another email clarifying something from the previous email - once again, I dismissed the idea. After the third email with more clarification, I stopped and thought that maybe I should consult God about it before completely dismissing the idea. Before I even had time to sit down and pray via my prayer journal, the idea of Song of Solomon popped into my head. This made sense because I took two classes this past semester that studied Song of Solomon and my church is currently in a series on Song of Solomon. So I prayed about it and began to consider teaching a seminar on Song of Solomon, but I still didn't know what the focus of the seminar would be and what "description" I could come up with to send in for the workbook/journals all the students get. So I continued to pray about it. And as I was driving back to MN after being home for Easter, God brought an idea to mind. When I got home, I typed it up and sent it on in, but asked if there would be another adult leader who would be willing to help me prepare and/or be available for the question and answer time.

I was recently contacted by one of the leaders who is willing to help me out. Her offer to help has been a wonderful encouragement and motivation to organize my thoughts in advance and really prepare this seminar to the best of my ability.

While I'm still real nervous about teaching on Song of Solomon and Purity, I'm excited to see how it's coming along. I love how God reveals the necessity of Jesus' death on the Cross in everything. I love that I can bring a talk on purity and relationships full circle to our relationship with God and how He comes first. I love that God has given me the opportunity to attend Hope Community Church, where each week our pastors bring whatever we're talking about and point it all back to the Cross and what Christ did for us when He came to die. And I love seeing where God has brought me through this whole process and I look forward to seeing how I can bring Him glory in sharing my experiences of being a date-less, boyfriend-less college graduate - I am totally okay with that status, and I look forward to encouraging all the girls on this trip that it is okay to NOT have a boyfriend, that there's nothing wrong with them, but that God is preserving and preparing them for their futures.

Please be in prayer for me as I continue to prepare this seminar - there are some topics within the broad idea that I'm not quite sure how to address/approach/work in to everything else, but I know that this is what God wants me to be doing and that He will help me as I work through everything.

Amy Lynn