It never ceases to amaze me how fast time seems to go by, but then when reflecting back it is as if a lifetime has passed. Looking back over the past month, I feel exactly this way. Yet again, so much has happened, and I don’t know where to begin.

My last letter ended with my experience at House of Grace. After returning back to the whole Discover group, we broke into our ‘teams’ (there are two different Discover teams this year, Team Rhombi, and Los Ochos, which is the team I am a part of). My team was sent to the town of Hollister to work with a small church within the community. We spent the first night there painting the inside of the building, then having a large dinner with the members of the church. The next days were spent doing ministry activities the church had planned for us, one of them going down to a river on the outskirts of the town where many illegal immigrant workers had made their homes in the bushes at the edge of the river. One woman brought us down to see her home, which resembled to me something that my sisters and I would have created in the forest as kids as a fort to play in. A tarp was hung in the trees to offer slight shelter, steps down to the river had been shaped into the dirt, and shopping carts filled with whatever small possessions she owned were concealed in the trees. There were beer bottles, and other pieces of garbage scattered around the clearing and waters edge. I remember looking around, amazed that someone actually lived like this just outside a seemingly nice, Californian city, right in North America. Although my life may have been slightly sheltered, I have spent time in larger cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver doing urban ministry before, and have witnessed many instances of homelessness. However this experience still blew me away. It was one thing to see a man begging for money on the side of a crowded street corner, or sleeping in a park, but it was a completely different blow witnessing this situation. After eating lunch with these workers, we began traveling to Camp MayMac to spend our final week in California in classes. The camp is located just outside Santa Cruz, and we ended up spending our day off at the beach, which was a really nice surprise.

After our final week in California, we were back in the airport heading for Montana. During our last ten days at Camp Big Horn, we were busy with classes, assignments, and reuniting with friends in the Explore program, while drinking as much hot chocolate as we could before heading back to Prairie. One night my friend Julie and I got one of the Camp instructors that we were also close to, Nikki, to take us out kayaking and teach us how to do a roll, which is basically learning to flip your boat back over once you have already flipped underwater. It was dark by the time we got out, and the water was freezing cold… I have never had such a bad brain freeze as I experienced that night, but it was such a learning experience for me too. Trusting and living with blind faith have been something that I have been learning over and over so far this year. Just like when I flip over into the piercingly painful cold water, and must trust that what I was taught has the ability to flip me back out, and if I can’t seem to manage it, Nikki would be there to help me flip back over, my trust in God is similar. When He asks of me to go out and follow His will, I must trust that he as equipped me with the tools I need to do whatever it is He is asking to my best ability, and when I stumble, He’ll be there to tend to the broken bones and bruises that may result. Over and over, God has been asking me to walk with blind faith, and step into things without knowing or understanding what the end result may be. At first this was extremely terrifying, and still is very much so, but I have grown in faith through it, as well as my confidence in His plan for my life has grown. I would encourage all of you to seek out where it is your heart is being lead, and then question why you may be ignoring or pushing away those callings. For me, I was afraid of being vulnerable, with the possibility of being hurt somehow… what is it that may frighten you which is holding you back?