I can’t even begin to tell you how sad it is to lose my best friend at such a relatively young age of 65. I’ve known Carole-Marie since we were seniors in high school. We met online through a website that our university had set up and decided to become room mates. She has been one of my best friends ever since. Carole-Marie was always an adventure and thrill seeker – she jumped out of her first airplane the day after she completed her sophomore year in college and continued to do so for the rest of her life, climbed mountains so that she could experience the joy of reaching the summit and then rappelling back down, traveled as much as she could and embraced the cultures that she was in. She loved to dance and did so as often as she could. During her life she not only did blues and swing dancing which we learned together, but she also took classes for all styles of ballroom dancing. She loved life. One of the best ways that I can think of to describe Carole-Marie is free spirited.

She also loved her family – From the time I have known her, she and her mom were always extremely close. They were a joy to each other and talked about everything together. She would tell me about when she was younger and all she wanted was to be the Gilmore Girls with her mom, but they hadn’t reached that point yet. From the time that I knew her though, they were. They had one of the closest mother/daughter relationships that I have ever seen…except for the one that Carole-Marie shared with her little girl.

She was crazy about her husband, who she liked to say grounded her free spirit just enough so that she wouldn’t fly away. Carole-Marie always dreamed about the man that she was going to marry and when she introduced him to me I knew that this was the guy that she would spend the rest of her life with. They really were quite a pair. In so many ways they complemented each other with their goals in life. Carole-Marie knew that she could get carried away easily once she got an idea into her head but he encouraged her to rein in at times and in return she encouraged him to try new ideas that she came up with. Together, they saw most of the world and completed one of Carole-Marie’s goals of seeing all 50 states. She confided in me though, that even through the big adventures that they had, her favorite moments were the simpler ones such as dancing in the kitchen, cooking together, the game nights that they had with their kids and the nights that they were able to get rid of their kids.

Carole-Marie loved her two kids dearly and was so proud to see them grow up into the young man and woman that they became. She supported them as they grew, showing up to countless dance recitals, baseball games and swim meets. She encouraged them and supported them through the challenges of childhood and even managed to survive the dreaded teenage years with only a few battle scars. She learned through them the real meaning of patience and began to develop patience of her own while learning to be a mother. She also gave them a bit of her own quirkiness and need for adventure – at the drop of a hat, their entire family could be packed up and going somewhere for the weekend to explore and have fun together.

Carole-Marie was also loved by her friends. Since I have known her, she has been a true and wonderful friend. Always there for me when I needed her and would go over the top for a good time. My birthday is on Christmas and one time she organized a surprise party a few MONTHS early, because at that time we never saw each other on my actual birthday and she wanted it to be special. I can recall countless nights that we spent laughing and dancing the night away with friends. She always had a smile on her face – it gave her joy to laugh and have a good time. Throughout her life, she was always the one that I knew I could count on to be there.

Carole-Marie was also loved by her community. Though she worked in advertising for several years, after the birth of her first child, she decided to go back to a long time passion of hers; photography. She was admired by many for her photography skills and she loved the stories that came with each photoshoot that she did. Her goal was to capture a part of each story into a picture. It was her own personal kind of writing.

There is no question in my mind that Carole-Marie is now in heaven with the Lord. Throughout her life, church wasn’t the most important thing. She went to church, however, she was much more of a relationship person. When asked about her relationship with the Lord she would gladly tell of the ways He was working in her life and what she was learning about Him. When it came to choosing a church home, it didn’t matter to her what denomination of church she went to as long as she felt the Lord was present and helping her to grow while she was there. She also served for most of her life working with youth groups and as a result her house was also a popular hangout house with plenty of activity happening, especially on Friday nights when there would always be a large meal cooked so that family and friends alike could relax, play games, and enjoy time spent together. Her door was always open.

To say that she will be missed is an understatement. Her smile, her love for her family and friends and love for her life are all memories that we each share and will remember for the rest of our lives.

So here we go:

1. I want to be more invested in relationships. It was brought to my attention last year that I am a rather self-centered person and I went to work right away on trying to fix that with my closest friends. Now I want to make a conscious effort to do this with other friends.
2. I want to do better in my school work. I slack off so easily and so this year starting with my course in January, I will get all my assignments in on time and start studying before the night before.
3. I want to expand my cooking. I have a few go-to recipes and I want to branch out with several more, so I am going to try at least one new recipe every week. Also, I’m going to be adding in lots more veggies to my cooking. It’s getting a lot easier to throw in some mushrooms or onions or spinach to my dishes.
4. Save more. Spend on meaningful and memorable things.
5. ….blog.

Well there we go! My goals for the new year that I do believe I can achieve! Now it’s time to go to half price books to get the rest of the books that I need for my January Short Course.

I am now in my last week in Thailand and it is crazy to me how quickly the time has passed while I have been here. God has revealed so much to me this summer and I have grown both in my faith and in my person this summer. Leaving the country I was excited and was certain that the summer was going to be amazing. While I did have my worries, the excitement of the trip was more than enough to drown the fears out. When I was leaving I knew that this summer would be a stretch for me, but at the time I did not know in how many ways it would cause me to grow and how much it would reveal to me.

This summer has confirmed to me what mission God would have me do. Campus ministry, at least for the time being, is not it. We spent almost every day at the campus and nights getting to know the students we had met. We taught English classes and cooking classes, sang karaoke, took trips to the mall and the zoo, but I did not feel comfortable – both because of the language difference and the difference in cultures – being a mentor towards them and anything that I could have said, would have to be explained or translated the majority of the time.

I did have several times though when the Lord placed me directly into my comfort zone and I found joy in leading and serving. We spent time teaching kids English at a mountain village, Bokaew. We played games and did skits for kids at a deaf school in Chiang Mai. I chose to spend the Sunday school hour with a youth group consisting of teens from two different congregations. I taught some challenge course games and activities that I had learned last summer working at a ropes course to the younger members of the congregation, challenging each of them to step up and be leaders, and teaching the current leaders to step down to raise more strong leaders up and how to listen to each other. I know now more than ever that working with youth is where the Lord is currently calling me to serve. This is not to say that this will be the same for the rest of my life, but that is where I currently can relate and where I can pour out my talents, where I can truly invest myself.

Thank you so much for helping me to come to this point in my life and for supporting me while I have been serving the Lord. The Lord has instructed us to “Go and make disciples.” Several other interns and I have discussed this passage and how it relates to us serving on the mission field. Having been here for 10 weeks, I have come to understand what a scary verse this one is. It is a verse that requires us to trust in the Lord. It is a verse that challenges our values. We have to be willing to give up our close ties to our earthly family and our friends to follow what Jesus has said. I have met missionaries this week at the Asian Mission Forum who had never been out of the country before, yet God called them to places like Japan and Cambodia, telling them to move there and not come back. They have been there for over 10 years now and God is doing amazing things with their ministries.
After this summer, I do not take that verse with the same light heart that I used to. I’m currently praying that God does not have 10 years in a foreign country in my future. A year somewhere? Maybe. If He calls me to His people though, I know though that I will “Go and make disciples” until He chooses to call me home, whether that be back to America, or to eternity with my Savior.

Lets find out what has been going on though shall we? The last time you heard from me I was in tears with the end of Harry Potter. Don’t worry though, I am much better now and becoming increasingly excited for the new movies from books that I love that will be coming out in the near future. Reading is such a wonderful thing!

Since you last heard from me, I have taken a trip to Bokaew which is a mountain village where we have an English camp every year. Something really cool is that since we began doing these day camps for their school, the English testing scores for their school have beat out all the rest of the schools in their district, even the schools that are closer to the city. Though we don’t do that much during the day that we are there, we do manage to make learning fun and they return the next day to their teachers refreshed and ready to learn some more! I was working with a guy named Jared who came in to Chiang Mai this past week with Aggies for Christ. They have been such a breath of fresh air for me as they are all so much fun and full of life. I have even become their “honorary Aggie” (Sorry Longhorns). Anyway, we were teaching them action words and movements to go with them, after they had learned the words we played Simon Says and the winners received candy. Following a round or two of the game, all were given the opportunity to earn a piece of candy by choosing whatever action they wanted, performing the action, and saying it in English. While so many of them understand what we are saying, they are VERY hesitant to speak as they don’t want to be made fun of, so any speaking we could get them to do was a great thing.

We are down to our final week in Thailand. I sent out the last few post cards about two weeks ago, but considering there are some that haven’t gotten there from the FIRST week that I was here, cross your fingers and pray that yours gets to you!!! Everything here is very corrupt from the banks to the post office and the military and police workers. I was told that if I had anything coming in the mail that it would be better to cancel it, especially if it was important because it more than likely would never get to me.

As it is our final week, we are at one of the highlights of the summer, the Asian Mission Forum. Over 250 people from all over Asia are here this week to celebrate the Lord and hear from other missionaries as well as to encourage each other! The people I have met so far have been incredible and its so cool to find out that you have a mutual friend or are connected in some way. We are also staying in THE nicest hotel in Chiang Mai as one of the Thai Christians is an amazing negotiator and managed to drop the price for the conference significantly!

It is currently day 2 of the conference and I have gotten to meet some awesome people as well as heard from speakers from all over Asia and the USA. There are so many different groups here. So many missions. Yet the greatest mission that we are all striving towards, is sharing the Good News.

I had been enchanted by this world and for my 10th birthday my Mimi gave my brother and me hardcover copies of the four books that had been released up till that point. Even though we were having to share the books, we read through everything that was published within a week. (Not that impressive though, I finished the 7th book in 4 hours…)

In 2001, the first book was made into a movie. I remember being so disappointed when August 16th came around and I did not receive my letter to Hogwarts. I also remember telling people that I was considered for the role of Hermione Granger….we all know that’s not true. :/ Anywho….When the movie came out it brought to life this world that I had been dreaming of. There were faces to go with the names. Voices for the characters. It was wonderful.

The following years were filled with midnight releases for both the books and the movies, parties to celebrate Wizarding Independence Day, the reading of fanfiction when the books were being released too slowly, dressing up as various characters including Luna Lovegood and a member of the Holyhead Harpies. I’ve taken numerous surveys to find out my Patronous, what house I would be in, and what wand I would have. I’m in love with Bertie Botts Everyflavored Beans and can’t wait till I can go to the Harry Potter themepark.

With this final installment of the movie, I feel like a chapter of my life has come to a close. I truely was a member of the Potter Generation. As we watched the actors growing up, I also grew up. They were my age. I will admit to crying several times during the movie (Nothing like when I closed the 7th book though). How could I not, when so much of my life has been filled with Harry Potter? That’s one of the wonderful things about reading, a story can become a part of you, a part that you never want to let go. Maybe 19 years from now I will be sharing these books with my own children. I plan on them loving reading as much as I do.

This past weekend our visas were set to expire so we had to make a border trip to Burma. I was very excited to visit another country and get to see some of Burma, but it ended up being a big disappointment as the only thing that we had time to see was the border town which is filled with knock off products, illegal DVDs, prostitution and tons of people willing to give you a tour. In the first five minutes I was offered cigarettes, porn, and Viagra. Others were even offered to be taken to prostitutes. After walking around for a little while, Maggie, Taylor and I decided to head back to Thailand where we could get food that passes a higher level of inspection.

About to cross the border

Goofing off at the wooden house

Friday evening was spent at a very colorful wooden house in chiang rai and it was so nice to spend time just hanging out with all the ACU interns and the let’s start talking group. We had a delicious Italian dinner and went to look around the night bazaar.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early to have breakfast and take a boat to the elephant camp. I have been excited about riding the elephants since we got here! My elephants name was scham-poo which I was told means pink.

I got to ride on the neck!!! SO COOL

Some fun elephant facts that I found out. Elephants, especially scham-poo, hate dogs and will stop, stiffen up, and twist their tail until it sticks out. Elephants are also scared of snakes which we found out when our guide jumped off the neck with crazy speed and an elephant pick and was chasing something into the forest. Scham-poo proceeded to whimper like a dog and it took her a little while to stop.

Sunday we finally made it to the deaf school which we had planned on doing last week, but we were not able to due to the election that was happening.

I was able to learn lots from going to the deaf school. I took American sign language for two years and while I was not expecting it to BE what I know, I was thinking that it would be a bit more similar as they are similar dialects of sign language. Some things were similar, but so much was different. There were around 90 kids there that all wanted our attention and they were all trying to sign to us. We played lots of games with them, performed a skit, gave them coloring pages and gave them lots of sugar right before we left. Yeah, we are great people, I’m certain that the teachers loved us.

We also took a trip up the mountain to the temple on doi suthep. Here are some pictures from that and I’ll upload other pictures  from the deaf school once I have them.

ACU Interns halfway up the mountain

There were SOOO many steps we had to go up!

I tried my hand at taking some macro photos this weekend. This was the result. Comments? Critiques? Favorites?