Healed...

hello friends,

wow! this is the first spare moment I have had in quite a while to actually just sit down and share with you all. Hope your summers are off to a great start and I am missing you all VERY much :)

When I got home after spending a month in Texas, I had my whole summer already planned out in my mind of what I was going to do and whatnot. I had planned on taking two summer classes, help plan my sister's wedding, and go on a mission trip to Denver, CO with my church youth group and a variety of other things. God had a different plan for me. The community college that I had planned on attending for classes, messed up and I was only able to take one class (online-government). I making it through but it is REALLY tough taking a class that you know no one in and all your other friends are goofing off while you have to study. Prayers would be greatly appreciated :)

For those of you who do not know, my sister is getting married in August to a wonderful guy. I was really excited to come home and help plan the wedding and doing that on top of school work... REALLY does keep me busy!

BUT... the biggest thing that I have seen this summer of how God has been working, is this mission trip. The youth minister at our church had asked me a while back to go on this mission trip and I didn't know if i was going to be able to go because of summer classes. When one of them backfired, I told him that i was available but he had already found someone else to go in my place. I really was okay with that, but I was really upset because I always got something BIG out of the mission trips that I had been on. I knew that this was part of God's plan for me, but I also felt like I wasn't going to get to experience that "BIG" thing... boy was i wrong! The week while my youth group was on the mission trip, I was asked to hang out with one of my friends in high school. We went to dinner and talked about a variety of different things. After dinner, I just assumed that I was going to take her home and then head home myself, but that isn't exactly what happened. I was driving down a main road that led to her house and I started to get this feeling that I should pull over into a church parking lot... so i did. As I parked the car, my friend starting crying. She began to tell me about all of these awful things that she had done this past year and how awful of a person she was. I began to just feel the presence of God with me and I started to quote scripture and pray. I talked to her about my mistakes that I had made in the past, and HOW much I had learned from them and she said "BUT... Rebecca, what I have done, is AWFUL". I sat there a moment and then said to my friend "It doesn't matter what you did, or how awful it was. A sin is a sin and God is going to forgive of you of that sin... period. You just have to ask him to". Tears started to fill my eyes because I realized right then that you don't have to go halfway across the world (although, there are many people that do need to that and i am sooooo very thankful for them :)) to share the Word of God with someone... it could be the person sitting right beside you and in my case, it was. My friend is starting to attend church and get her life turned back around, but I know that it is because she finally realized that she can't do anything without the help of God. If you could still pray that God continues to heal her in this process :).

My summer plans, didn't turn out the way I wanted them to... so what?? I am still taking a class, i am still helping my sister plan her wedding, and in a way, I still got my mission trip.

I love you guys and gals. :)
Rebecca