que pasa, kielbasa?

I'm back from Florida now. Here's a look back at the highlights...

* 10 days in sunny Florida
* thunderstorms almost every day with SWEET lightning shows over Lake Monroe
* alligators
* relationship/conflict training -- apparently all conflicts *aren't* the other person's fault...
* Allan & Mandy, Dave & Jill -- the two super cool couples who are in charge of us associates and our training time. They've all lived in Africa before (Ivory Coast), so they gave me French lessons, taught me how to wear a pagne, told me how to fend off army ants (kerosene), and reminded me to avoid worms by sticking with shoes (or sandals) at all times.
* hearing the stories of tribal missionaries. WAY cool the way God is using them to teach people about himself, people who would have no other way of hearing. And the patience of these people! Sometimes they work for decades learning the language, teaching literacy, and translating Bible lessons.
* Julia & Jenna, my two MK cohorts. Julia and I spent hours singing songs like the humble higher song (Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord) and Days of Elijah with an octave's worth of key changes. And Jenna, although she prefers purple to orange, managed to make me feel like part of the Burgett family.
* church that started with the song "Typical" by MuteMath
* time to sit and just chill with God
* running along the riverwalk at sunset
* hanging out with 13 other people committed to serving God as Associates in Papua New Guinea, Guinea, and Thailand. I loved hearing everyone's testimonies! Sometimes I feel like my own's a little boring, but this group seemed to listen anyway. :)
* chillin' with the great aunts. And they are *great* aunts, too.

I'm sure there are more things that I would consider highlights, but that's all I've got for now, and I've gotta get my laundry from the laundry room before the laundry gremlins take it.

Peace out.

Gator Bait

Saw a couple gators today but not really up close. I mean, I suppose you don't want to get *too* up close to a gator anyway, unless of course you're hunting it or something.

I spent a lot of my afternoon hanging out with a middle schooler and remembering how much energy they have compared to "old folk" like me. She should have been the one giving *me* a piggy-back ride. Speaking of old folk, did I tell you I'm the youngest one at this training? By about 3 years, I think. Kind of interesting, although I'm not really sure why.

Had a boiled peanut today. Also interesting...

Tomorrow training resumes -- pray that my brain can hold more information without leaking out everything I've already learned. :)

Day Two

Here are some thoughts I had after we watched a video about some tribal missionaries and their story from working with a Dao tribe (pronounced like Dow -- someone should minister to *that* tribe!):

"Wow, New Tribes really is a cool organization! Amazing stories of faith and amazing stories of the work God has done in so many tribes because of people who were willing to be obedient to His call.

I am in awe of the "sacrifices" all these people had made yet don't even consider it a sacrifice but a pleasure. And how many times things may have looked grim or hard but the Lord has always provided. So many people with stories to tell of God's providence in their lives or others' lives.

Really want to go through the chronological teaching sometime!

It is work like this, seeing God change lives and draw the tribes of the world to Him, that makes everything else in life dim in comparison. God is great and His reach knows no boundaries -- not distance, language, money, or time.

It has also been neat to see the ways God uses so many people with so many different talents to serve him. The people who teach and translate, the people who know finances and computers and health issues -- all working together to see God's word reach people who have never heard it before.

Why don't we work together with this much passion to reach our neighbors?"

Anyway, those were my thoughts. They probably don't make as much sense to you since you haven't been sitting through training, feeling your heart swell for people in these tribal groups that are hearing about Jesus for the first time, and thinking about how you're going to fit into this whole big picture in a few months. But if it *does* make sense to you, that's cool, and you should consider doing something with NTM.

On a less serious note, every time someone says NTM, I think of "Auntie Em."

I'm sitting at the airport. Airports are good places to sit and write, as long as there's an internet connection. Or even if there's not, I suppose, you just can't post right away.

You can probably already tell that I don't have a great idea of what I want to post about, so this is going to get pretty rambly. When don't I ramble? Probably never.

So I posted some pictures of my apartment in Guinea. Of course I'm not actually there yet, so they were taken by a couple who lives over there already, and they include my apartment and the apartment next door. Here's the link: PICTURES! I'll try to put captions with the pictures, as soon as I can match them up with the order they were sent to me in the email.

Speaking of Guinea, I'm down in Sanford, FL now. (Yeah, I know, I said I was at the airport, but then I had to do crazy things like board a plan and fly for a couple hours while the flight attendants were holding a raffle over the PA system, so now I'm not in the airport anymore). Why am I in Sanford, FL when I could just drive a few feet from Midland to Sanford, MI? Because... Sanford is the prime location of the New Tribes Mission headquarters. Coincidence? I think not. Wait, I know not. That would be really weird if I just decided to come down here, and it happened to be NTM's headquarters... Anyway, I'm actually down here *because* it's the headquarters. And it's PFO time.

PFO = Pre-field Orientation. Basically training for n00bs to the mission field, specifically in the Associate Missionary Program. That's me, eh? Eh. I arrived late (well, on-time for my flight, late for the start of the training), so basically I'm the newest of the group and the youngest (at least of the single girls living in the same room as me). That was determined about 5 minutes after I walked in the door. Not much else has been determined at this point (oh, other than my roommates' names -- Nicky (Wisconsin), Hannah (Washington), Heather (Oregon), and Becky (Michigan)... I like to remember people by locations apparently). I also got to meet Allan & Mandy Caley, the cool people who have been helping me thus far in the process to make my way to Guinea.

Read some of "Friend Raising" on the plane... apparently I hadn't actually read the entire book before, despite thinking I had. I'm a slacker. It's got some good stuff in it -- both encouraging and convicting and pedagogical (teaching, I think... sometimes I use big words and don't know for sure what they mean, so I have to put my intended translation next to it) about raising support. Basically, I need to become a better (and quicker) communicator. UGH. I love to communicate... when it fits in my schedule. But I don't like to carve out time to catch up on emails and right thank you notes and send support letters and all that fun stuff. So, that will be a "fun" challenge. And you can pray for me on that. And pray that I can learn how to personalize my communication with people, because I do actually care about people (most of the time). :)

Peace out for now, kiddos.

Miles

It's funny how we run something called a 5k and all we care about is measuring all of our runs in miles (5k = 3.1 miles by the way).

I thought I was going to have more to say than that, but now I've decided to practice my guitar. Brb.

March 24

"You aren't everyone's answer to prayer."

Joe pulled out some "My utmost for His highest" tonight at TNT. In fact, it was from March 24 (hence the title). I have a copy of the book, but I'll admit -- I haven't yet read a lick of it. That may change soon because it seems like some good stuff.

So what was the topic on March 24? you ask. Thanks for asking. I like when this is interactive like that. The title for the day is "Decreasing into His purpose" and the main verse is John 3:30 "He must increase, but I must decrease." Starts out with a zinger -- "If you become a necessity to a soul, you are out of God's order." Joe said that in general, guys like to be able to fix things. I'd say that in general most people (other than the people who are really good at just listening and saying things like, "... and how does that make you feel?") want to fix things. Well, even the "how does that make you feel?" people want to help you fix things; they just go about it in a slower, warm fuzzy feely type of way, whereas my approach is more brute force... i.e. who cares what you feel, let's get ice cream. Ice cream fixes all, right?

I'm digressing (those red herrings are tricky like that). Where am I going with this? Don't ask questions that I don't have answers to.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like to feel needed. I like to pretend that I'm a lot more important to people than I really am. Andrew could actually get along fine without me being the one to move his keyboard for him. Waffles would be just as happy a cat if someone else was his owner. He'd probably be better behaved, too. TNT would survive (and everyone's ears would smile) if I wasn't there to play guitar every once in a while. Dow Chemical will not fall apart when I take a leave of absence and wind up in Africa. All my friends would rejoice if my camera was no longer in their face. Are we seeing a theme yet? No one really NEEDS Kelsey. No, this is not an "aw, poor Kelsey" moment. This is an aha! moment. I must decrease so that He may increase.

You see, me moving Andrew's keyboard probably isn't getting in the way of God working, but me trying to help people going through a hard time by having them depend on me IS probably getting in the way of God. Not that people can't use some comfort or encouragement. And believe me, God *does* work through people sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time. The key is just that it's gotta be God working, not me working.

Anyone here read "The Search for Significance" by Robert McGee? I'm in the middle of reading it right now. I think it ties in to this little lesson of today and/or March 24. See, there's a chapter in SFS that's called Approval Addict, and it talks about how we want people to approve of us. We forget that our worth actually comes from God, not our coworkers or neighbors or best friends or worst nemeses or pet goldfish. So we walk around searching for significance and approval. And some of us find that "significance" by finding someone who needs us. Except they don't really need us, they need Jesus, and we're just trying to be "amateur providences" as our good friend, Oswald Chambers says. And God probably sits there watching and shaking His head, just like when I sit at my desk watching someone try to fix their own computer by talking about the corrupted thingamajiggy and the misplaced doohickey and not having a clue about what any of it really means or how to really fix it.

So, "instead of putting out a hand to prevent the throes, pray that they grow ten times stronger until there is no power on earth or in hell that can hold that soul away from Jesus Christ."

And pray that I may do the same.

Germs

I think my tolerance for germs has increased. Maybe not in the sense of my body's ability to fight germs -- I don't know if that's changed recently or not, but in the sense of the germs I'm willing to knowingly ingest.

For example, in the olden days of my childhood (well, as far back as I can remember, which happens to be only a few years ago due to my poor memory recall skills), I used to be semi-careful about things. I rarely shared drinks with anyone (ew, who wants their saliva?) or double-dipped or anything like that. Then I had roommates and good friends and, hey, when you're thirsty, you're thirsty, and if it just so happens that Sue is the only one who brought water, well then, Sue, thanks for the drink.

Then I got Waffles and things went further down hill from there. You see, Waffles likes to monger my food while I'm not looking. He's kind of particular about things, so he won't eat just anything, but something like watermelon? He loves it! Yeah, that's right, he's weird. Anyway, you can't expect me to give up a whole bowl of freshly cut watermelon just because Wafs licked a piece or two or 7. So I eat it.

This weekend opened up my eyes to further germ collection. Mostly because Jeanette brings her dog along to many REAL events. And said dog likes to follow me around eating my food. Again, I'm not going to waste a 3/4-full glass of berry lemonade just because a dog drooled in it. Ok, maybe I should have wasted that, since I had a whole gallon of the stuff. But I was lazy and thirsty, so I drank it. And then I drank my Dr. Faygo after the same darn dog licked the can. I didn't eat the pizza crust that she also nibbled on -- I have to draw the line somewhere, and when it's food that I can have an excuse not to eat (like pizza crusts), I'll concede to the germs and let them win a round.