[Begun Saturday, June 30th]

My mind is a bit all over the place these days, so forgive me if this entry is a bit hard to follow. Even though I'm not sure who's been reading this blog, it gives me encouragement to know that there are people a world away reading this and being encouraged or moved to pray. I appreciate you all a lot, and I only wish I could be more direct in my communication with you!

Life in Halifax is becoming stressful. Teammates especially are noticing that I'm running on empty these days, and it's starting to get to me. I've been ranting a lot about how much there is to do and how little time there is to do it, and generally being frustrated. There are pinholes of light throughout my week, where I remember that God's got all this in His hand and I really just have to 'show up' with a useable attitude, but as life becomes busier and busier, I find myself becoming, well, cranky.

And it hurts. It hurts the people I'm short with when I haven't had enough sleep, it hurts people who are just trying to show kindness or ask a simple question and I'm impatient with them. And it hurts me, because I don't want to hurt others. In my frustration though, I tend to lash out. Given the option fight or flight, I'm usually all fight. Looking at these words in front of me, however, I don't feel anger. I feel shame and disappointment. It's like staring the same old sin, eyes narrowed and grinning maliciously, right in the face and realizing just how ugly it is. The truth is, Satan is loving that I'm frustrated, loving that I'm starting to resent how busy things are getting, loving that I'm yearning for home more and more by the day! It makes me shudder to have an upclose look at myself like this, to see this area where I struggle, in fact where many struggle. I've had to stare down some awful truths about myself lately. Admittedly, I've grown a lot, but this project, if nothing else, has shown me just how much more room for growth there is, how much of my heart I've really made available to God, and how willing I am to live for His name.

Thinking about it now, I'm amazed at how much I'll be taking away from Halifax when I leave. How much I've learned about leadership, how important it is to delve into God's word for wisdom and spiritual food, how much I've learned about loving people, solving conflict, respecting others and myself... the list could go on. To fill you in, I just took a break from writing this entry to talk with some people back home - mom, my brother, and some good friends and C4Cers - and it's really been blessing to reconnect with people back home. Interesting thing though. As I talked with them and heard about all that's going on back home, I realize this: Stress and problems don't follow you around. They're everywhere. I've fallen into the pattern of thinking that says 'back home' means no stress, no busyness, no conflict or no pain and suffering (or seeing it in others). Really, though, there is no escape from those things. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, I just mean to say that those troubles are found everywhere - we're all human, and as long as we continue to follow our own ways, there are going to be problems. It just makes me that much more thankful that God is King! He rules whether I'm here in Halifax or back home, and I can find solace in him wherever I'm at.

Haha, I hope this is making sense. Anyways, enough about what's been going on in my head. I really wanted to share some of the highlights of this week!

God really orchestrated something cool this week: Katherine, a fellow projectile, met some students from a maritime collage in Maine who had stopped in Halifax on their way back from a trip around the Mediterranean. Once they got talking, one of them, a Christian, was really encouraged by our project and together they made plans to invite some of the students to the dorm for dinner and fun... so Tuesday night about 8 students made it over and we hosted them for an evening. What an encouraging night! Some of them were Chrisitans and were really interested in how we were witnessing to students around us, while others had never heard the gospel and were given a chance to. Plus, they were able to see what a tight-knit bunch we were, and how much we cared for one another here. It was really an amazing night, and I made some new friends too!

Today as well was packed. I didn't realize until I sat down and mentally went over everything we did, that we actually accomplished a lot. This morning was a series of seminars on how to share the gospel with different groups of people - randoms on the street, needy folks, people who resent the church, etc. Afterwards, Myriam and I were able to sit down and encourage Julia, a student at DAL who is trying to reach out to her parents. She doesn't believe they're saved, but because of past judgments from other Christians, she has trouble opening up discussion about it. It's a sensitive issue to be sure, and I wasn't sure what advice to offer, but God provided some on the spot wisdom, I will be praying for Julia and her family. The afternoon was filled with a barbecue, where I talked with a young couple who were looking for some people their own age to hang out with, and so Olga and I gave them our contact info and hopefully they'll be in touch soon. It's so nice to meet people in the community and just show them that we're not just people who meet on sunday mornings and keep to ourselves the rest of the week - it's really encouraged me to share my faith not so much intentionally as... naturally. To show my faith through my actions and words, and not just by going out of my way to approach people to share the gospel.