Happy New Year!

Happy 2013!! I hope you're all starting out the year with gusto :) Any New year's resolutions? I don't think I've ever made any resolutions. So maybe that's my resolution... to not make resolutions.

I went home for 2 weeks for Christmas and New Years. I thought I was going to spend New Years in the plane since my flight was on New Years Eve BUT, I wasn't really emotionally ready to leave my family quite yet on that Sunday night and God blessed me with a few extra days! My airline called me Sunday night saying my flight was cancelled and changed to Wednesday!!! It wasn't 4 hours earlier that I was on the phone with the airline checking how much it would cost to change my flight to the next day. $800 seemed pretty steep to stay an extra day so instead God gave me 2 extra days for free :) I love how He works!

My time at home was incredible!! Spending tons of time with family and friends, playing lots of basketball and eating more than the average human. I always feel refreshed after being with the people I love and not having any other agenda. Just spend time and BE! Nothing else. It was amazing.

I loved my time there but I also love being back here in Puebla! I think it's so cool and super hard to be put in different cultures and situations and try and apply all the things that I've been learning and put them into practice. It's completely different apply different things the Lord teaches in one culture and surrounding than another. I found that out just recently (seems like a pretty obvious revelation but alot of things take me longer to learn. Good thing God is patient). Needless to say, I'm still growing and learning alot in my walk with the Lord and am excited to be back to Mexico to continue to be challenged and to grow and to see all the people I love down here too :)

Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Promises of God

I wanted to give you an update on Alice who I seem to talk about a lot. Recently she shared with me some pretty hard stuff that she's going through. We've been meeting regularly since then and I'm so excited to see what God does through this because she is in a place in her faith where she really wants to do the right thing but above all, she wants to grow closer to the Lord! Regardless of what you're going through, if your heart's desire is to grow closer to God, you're in a good place. I ask you to keep praying for her as her faith and her walk with the Lord becomes her own and becomes REAL! I've been beyond blessed by the conversations I've had with her and have grown in my faith because of a lot of the questions she has asked and by studying Scripture together. Needless to say, it has been awesome.

Philippians 1:6- Be confident that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

God has started something in Alice that has her attention and His promise is to carry it on to completion. Keep praying :)

Love you guys!

Race update

Remember how I asked you to please pray about the half marathon?? Well, I finished it :) My final time was 1:50! I think running is a little bit addicting. My next goal is a full marathon. When? Who knows. Probably a LONG time from now but still, a goal of mine.

Thanks for the prayers! See most of you (the Walla Walla folk) hopefully in a week!

Love you guys!

Answer to prayer... again :)

I can't get over how amazing God is! Similar to the story I told about Fer from the volleyball team, there's another girl on the team that is pretty cold, distant, complains about pretty much everything (I'm not painting a very good picture of her even though I like her a lot). I've been praying for her specifically the last few weeks for the same thing, just that God would give us time to talk and something to talk about just to get to know her. This week especially she's been pretty angry and distant and apathetic about everything. Today, out of "nowhere" she starting asking me about the team talks. This was when she was supposed to be warming up. She said, "I don't know if I've told you but my aunt is doing really bad. She has a brain tumor and has to have surgery today. That's why I've been so distant and not feeling like doing anything." She had absolutely no reason to tell me that, nor has she ever really initiated a conversation with me. I told her I'd be praying and if she needs anything to let me know and to for sure tell me how the surgery turns out. After practice she took off pretty quickly but I ran after her to give her a hug and tell her I'm praying for her and her aunt. God's timing is incredible! Will this turn into anything?? Who knows, but I'm praising Jesus for answered prayer even in the small things!

Prayers being answered

The captain of the volleyball team has been pretty cold and stand-off ish (I don't even know if that's a term or not) ever since I got here. This semester I've been praying for her specifically and asking for open doors just to be able to get to talk to her 1-on-1 and not in a practice setting. I was eating lunch with the girls on Wednesday and there were about 12 of us. Slowly but surely, one by one they started getting up and leaving, going to class or wherever they had to go. I just sat there and waited because the one I've been praying for was still there and I wasn't in a hurry. They continued leaving. In my mind it was like this dramatic scene because I'm still sitting there praying and watching God unfold this whole scene. Finally it's just me, her and one other girl. The other girl says she has class and has to leave, which leave me and her! We sat and talked for about an hour about her past and what she's been through and it gave me a lot of insight to why she responds the way she does and why she thinks the way she does. I also now know how to pray for her better.
  God is pretty clever in His ways of answering prayer. Please be praying for more opportunities to talk to her!!
  There's another cool answer to prayer story... :)
A basketball player who we got to know pretty well last year, is the queen of asking questions and it's AWESOME! She's starting to meet with one of my teammates to do a Bible Study! She's been dealing with somethings in her life for a while now and just recently she wanted to learn what the Bible says about this particular issue. She has an incredibly teachable heart and wants to grow and learn. This makes me so excited because I just love her a lot!!!!
  Two of many encouraging things this week :) Thanks for all your prayers! Love you!

People getting married!!!

Abigail is one of the girls on the volleyball team at UDLAP who I've been meeting with for the past year. She loves Jesus and has told me she has dreams of going overseas to do missions. She's been dating her, now husband, for almost 8 years and they got married this month!! She looked BEAUTIFUL!! It's going to be interesting to see how married life is :) Her coach said, "We've already lost her," before she even got married.
  She has been helping Alice with the group that they started and really wants to see change in her team! Please be praying for Abi's marriage and that she continues to grow in her relationship with the Lord.

Love you guys!!!

PALO VERDE DEL MUNICIPIO TLACOTEPEC DE JUAREZ

Try saying that name 5 times fast. The title is the name of the village that we went to this last weekend with a ministry called Living Water. They've been to this village a couple times before this weekend and have been working on building a well for the people there to have clean water. We took 15 of the track and field members from UDLAP, and Alice, from volleyball, on the trip. Some were going because they really wanted to help and get this experience, some went to get social service credit for school, whatever their motives were, they left impacted. God does that :) The amazing part of this ministry is they really live out what the Bible says about providing people with the basic needs, their tangible needs. James 2:16-17, "If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."
  The water that this village was drinking was the same water that they were bathing in, washing their clothes and food in, and also the same water that the animals around the area drank. While we were there we helped clean a channel that brings rain into a cistern they have. The problem with this channel is that people and animals use it as a bathroom so the rain washes all of that down and eventually, that's what's being consumed. It's a big project that's being done so that there is a natural filtration system being put in place, there's a channel that's relatively clean, a well that will provide them with safe water. I don't know all the details of how the system works but I know this team is working REALLY hard on this project and are passionate about seeing these people have safe water.
  We also did a little extreme home makeover to an 88 year old man's home. They brought him a new matress for his new hut but he couldn't sleep in his house the first night after we left because the cement floors had to dry so they put the matress in the church for him to sleep. He said, "No, I'll be fine sleeping under these trees for the night." It's incredible!!
  There were also classes given about personal hygiene so that the kids and mamas could learn (most of the men were at work). The mamas learned how to wash fruits and vegetables well and their hands to try and prevent sickness.
  Some of the track kids left that day really being impacted. There's going to be follow-up to hear what they learned, how God's heart is for the poor and to ask questions and hear their testimonies. It was an incredible and humbling experience that we're definitely going to do again (some of the tracksters already said they want to keep going :) ).
  There are pictures posted at

http://s1184.photobucket.com/albums/z327/marnieAIA/

Love you guys!