Blessings & Birthday

Aloha Friends!

Wow so much has happened in my life since my last post! 

Where to begin...

I successfully completed 5 weeks of sailing class! 
The first two weekends I suffered from sea sickness, but by the third weekend I was fine! Praise God, being in YWAM Ships and having seasickness would be a horrible combination!
I don't think that I can ever eat ginger again tho. 
Ginger is supposed to help against seasickness, however, the second weekend I threw up a ginger juice drink, and now cannot even smell or talk about ginger without wanting to barf. It's horrible.
One random thing that helped seasickness: duct tape on the belly button!
Weird, eh?

-Mahina Pua-

-Ginger juice and duct tape bellybutton: fail-

-Miss Nico-

While out on the ocean we saw huge pods of dolphins! 
Whales were coming up around us, talk about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Everyone knows whales are huge, but until you've seen one up close, you don't grasp their power! 
Seeing them move under the water was so, so beautiful! There's a shiny, almost grey color you can see underwater where they are, and then they surface a couple times and dive back under.
Hearing them breathe and the sounds they make on the water is just remarkable.

-Whale-

A friend of mine on campus took a few students and I down to Capt. Cook one morning around 6:00 am to swim with the wild dolphins! It had been a full moon the night before, so the dolphins all come together in this little cove! At least 50 of them where there! 
I LOVE finding great local secrets like this! We took some snorkel gear, got in the water and swam way out to meet them! Another, breath taking, beautiful experience.
We also were able to pick up a hitch hiker on the way and take her to church, that was fun :)

-Judith, Ashley-

-Dolphin spot-

I also celebrated my 25th birthday recently! 

It was so much fun! My dear sweet friend Nico was pretty legit, and gave me a two day celebration since no one knew which day to celebrate on. (I'm a leap year baby, for those wondering). 

I received many small gifts through out those two days (lots of FRUIT and yogurt, praise God!)

-The beautiful flowers Nico scattered on the floor for me!-

My friend MJ asked me if I'd like to stay at a hotel for the weekend with her, so I asked how much and she said FREE! Heck yes, I'm in.

I was assuming it would just be a janky little hotel down in town, and she just wanted to get off campus for the weekend. Boy was I wrong!

Long story short, she met this amazing man hitchhiking one day who loves to bless YWAM'ers! And she has stayed in contact with him and he wanted to bless her and some friends to a FREE weekend at the HILTON! She told me to meet her at the flags at 5:30 Friday, simple enough.

I show up in my baggy jeans and "Do Justice" t-shirt and to our surprise, he sent a limo to pick us up! 

We are standing there and see it pull up and instantly can't help but laugh, like a silly/disbelief/confused laugh. Tim proceeds to load our bags into his limo and take us on our merry way!

-The beginning..-

-Sparkling cider friends- ;)

We enjoyed a laughter filled ride to the hotel. 

He booked two condo suites for us. Seriously!?

We split up into our houses, each with 2 1/2 bathrooms, a full kitchen, living room, dining room, BIG BATH TUBS, NO BUNKBEDS, mattresses that felt like clouds, and a beautiful sliding glass door that over looked the golf course.

Really God, really?

I didn't know how to respond.

What do you do when someone just gives you this for free and receiving gifts is not something you are good at??

-Relaxation.-

-Our place... ya..-

After we settled in for a short while, our friend comes back, picks us up and takes us to this amazing Japanese restaurant.

 I'm riding in the bed of his truck, leaning my head back, gazing at the star filled sky that is outlining his paddle board and I couldn't grasp what was going on. The beauty that was around me, the creation just hanging out before my eyes. Once again, I don't deserve any of this. 

-Amazing women!-

-Singing to me at dinner and AMAZING ice cream!-

Once we arrived at the restaurant, everyone knew our dear friend who was treating us (in fact, everywhere we went with this guy, everyone knew him, it was crazy..)

The head chef comes out and greets our table, many many appetizers were brought to our table 'on the house' and we proceeded to eat the absolute best Japanese food I've ever consumed.

The freshest fish, best vegetables, best sushi ever. Ugh, it was amazing.

Mind you, literally every single thing for this weekend was covered by our friend. 

We then went back to our rooms and relaxed.

Saturday morning he comes back, picks us all up and drove us to the grocery store! He told us to buy what ever we wanted for breakfast, and whatever groceries we wanted for our kitchens for the weekend! Seriously?

MJ and I didn't know how to receive this act of generosity, so we bought english muffins, eggs and bacon and enjoyed breakfast all weekend. 

It was pretty epic.

When you eat porridge every morning, eggs and bacon are divine and cheap :)

-I miss cooking SO much!-

We then go back to our rooms and get blessed yet again! We ran in to some people MJ happened to know from YWAM, who were able to get us into the main pool for free!  It's about $80 to spend the day at this pool... So we spent the day laying out, going down slides, swimming under waterfalls, and relaxing in the hot tub.

Really God!?

We then went back to our rooms and relaxed.

I grabbed my book and headed for the other pool and spent the afternoon reading Bruchko. If you love to read, I totally recommend this book! It's a missionary biography, fast simple read and will radically impact you. 

I then got my run in, ran all around the Hilton and just took in the beauty that was everywhere. 

I'm up to 56 minutes on my runs now by the way, absolutely loving running! Feel great!

On my way back, I was running along the highway running towards the sunset. It was the absolute biggest I've ever seen the sun, and I literally just ran towards it as it set. The most beautiful, natural blessing God has given me. There was just open land full of lava rock and then the palm trees were lined out along the beach and I just saw the sun and Pacific. HA! 

Really God!?

-Birthday runs were the best- :)

That night was truly blessed. My friend MJ is from Germany and our beautiful friend Yein is from South Korea, so we spent the evening chatting it up in the hot tub under the moon.

I love the people I'm surrounded by because we didn't just gossip or talk about meaningless topics, but literally talked about the injustices of this world. The lives in North and South Korea. The lives in Africa. How we can make an impact. Our goals. What it's like to live in Korea and Germany. Talking about geography, history. Such God guided conversations. 

I think that was prolly the best part of the weekend, was the true genuine, deep conversations. How we just prayed together! How many times do you hang out with some friends and end up in deep prayer? I LOVE IT! I love the godly women in my life! I love the true, genuine, legit, women I am around that just love people and want to see love spread everywhere! Where I am in life, is extraordinary. I sometimes feel like I'm dreaming, how did I end up in this life!? A missionary? Ha :) 

Once again, SO happy I'm not running the show, praise you Lord!

The next morning I woke up early, made a pot of a coffee, grabbed my book and blanket and sat outside to watch the sunrise over the golf course and spent some amazing, amazing quiet time with Jesus. I learned a lot, but I'll share that in my next post :)

-Windy windy golf course!-

-Good morning God.-

Then we just hung by the pool until the limo came and brought us back to campus.

Mind you, I spent a weekend for free at the Hilton, was blessed in more ways than I can describe, came back with $20 more in my pocket than I left with, and now have amazing, deep friendships.

Once again, really God!?

-MJ & Yein-

<3

That pretty much sums up my birthday and just a couple fun things I've been blessed with this past month! 

The craziest thing, all of those stories sound epic and expensive and I didn't spend a dime.

God is faithful and wants to bless His children.

I do work very hard here in Kona and relaxing was actually difficult for me!

I planned on doing outreach prep all weekend at the Hilton, but the Lord calmed my spirit and allowed me much needed rest. 

Thanks to all of you that can enjoy this experience with me! 

All I can say is, I don't deserve any of this, however, I keep being obedient to the Lord and continue overcoming obstacles and challenges, but just press into God with everything. And needless to say, my life has changed dramatically from 6 years ago when I left drugs and alcohol to chase God.

Ha, I can't help but laugh at my life.

I love it :)

I hope you all get to a place to of loving every second of your life!

God is worth everything and more.

Much love my friends.

XO

-And these are just flowers I love!-