I have four more weeks here in Portland and I'll admit that I've been terrible at keeping a blog. It seems crazy to me that there is so little time left here, or that I've been here so long. It honestly doesn't feel that way. I'm learning so much, but none of it is exactly what I thought. I thought that I would be learning to love the people around me better, and I have been. But more than that, I've been learning to love myself. To really appreciate myself. To realize that Jesus Christ, the God who create me, is in love with me and to trust and be completely content with that without question. I've realized that I'm not very trusting of those closest to me. I haven't believed that their love for me was sincere or genuine, until recently. I guess I always thought it was out of obligation, rather than free-will, that I was loved. When I made that discovery about myself (because I didn't think I had trust issues) I had to ask myself a deeper question, "Why did I feel that way about my relationships? and was that issue present in my most important relationship with Christ? Bingo. Since I was able to make that discovery (and not on my own, either) I have been able to learn more about His love. Serving people isn't the problem for me. But how effectively am I loving people if I don't even have a sense on the passionate love Christ has for me? What exactly did I think I was sharing with people?

The next few weeks will be crazy, as teams begin to pour in for B-Town Adventures (our mission weeks). This weekend is supposed to touch around 100 degrees and Saturday, of course, is B-TOWNKIDZ. AAAhhhhh!!! It's my responsibility to plan and run the games for this weekend, which is awesome (aaannddd....i may get a MEGAPHONE! :D) All the games we've planned out for Saturday include water! It's going to be hot!
Tomorrow is Friday, and we have a team in. So that means service projects and Nightstrike! I'm spending the night with the team tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited about that. It should be fun times! I'm not sure if Toni, who's in charge of the teams, is planning a late night trip to the Shanghi Tunnels under Portland, but I'm crossing my fingers! I am also going to bed now. Goodnight!