its the legacy that lasts...

My great grandmother was a woman who loved the Lord. From the time I was little I remember every year getting books about missionaries! She was a woman of prayer and a deep commitment to her family. She went to Moody Bible Institute long before I was even born and she created a legacy that would greatly impact me. She was blazing the trail for women at Moody long before I did. Her health as been on the decline for quite a while and as Alzheimer’s set in she would forget things but never forgot who she was in Christ. Even a few months ago, when we saw her last, she remembered her time at Moody, although she didn't remember that she was well into her 90's. When I told her that I had also gone to MBI she said that it must be from her time at Moody that she remembered me :). She died this morning, and I know that she is with Jesus and loving it! She can now remember everything and her body works perfectly. Death is a hard thing to deal with for those of us who are still here, but knowing that she was someone who lived for the Lord in everything she did gives me hope and I'm glad she gets to spend this time and into eternity with her heavenly father.

Cause you're my best friend....

Why is it that i have to be having a significant life event like a wedding in order to have all of my best friends near me at one time? lame. Just because my closest friends span about 5 states and 3 countries doesn't mean i should never get to see them. I was talking to Bethany about what i would do with $260 million. I'd travel... a lot. I miss my friends a lot today.

My Ideals....

ok, not really my ideals, but my dad was making fun of the fact that i was going to blog while watching tv and he said very tongue in cheek "are you going to blog about your ideals?" i replied "yes, i'm going to blog about my distaste for the socialization of heathcare in the obamacare" haha. he said "REALLY?!" to which i responded "NO" haha
My blog will not be that deep today. why? mostly because America's Got Tallent is on and... well.... its a little bit lame, and not just because nick cannon is wearing a black smokers jacket with white stripes.....
what was i saying? oh. yea. my blog tonight. "things on television i'm excited about" in no particular order, i'm excited about Dancing with the Stars, Chicago football, Biggest Looser, and Heroes. I'm sure there's other things i'm excited about, but those are the few that come to mind.
ah, headache. bed.

Ode to Best Buy

Please let me come back to work. I promise I'll be a good Geek. I even got new glasses, maybe I'll add tape.

The Communication Age...

I know what you're thinking, that's the name of one of the Urbanies songs from their first EP! which is found free on their site www.urbanitesmusic.com. And i would say to you, YOU ARE CORRECT!
However, not the reason for my post. No no, rather it has to do with my reflections of communication that youth have today. I was telling someone recently that after my first Royal Servants trip i had to wait about a week to get my 12 rolls of film developed and my parents changed our long distance plan so i could call my friend in canada once a week. Also, we wrote letters to eachother to stay in touch. i know foreign right? NOT really that long ago, it was in 2001! but when i was telling a student that they looked at me like i'd just gotten finished riding in my wagon on the Oregon trail!
Now we have facebook, texting, cell phones, digital cameras and status updates! its crazy really. when we're wrestling to apply what God did in our lives over the course of the summer and need a listening ear from someone who understands, we don't write a 12 page letter and send it off, we call a friend and instantly have someone there! its really strange... in a good way i think most of the time. It helps hold us accountable, it helps give support, but do we really continue to know one another by writing "i love you" on their facebook wall once a day for 6 months after the trip? i'm going to go out on a limb and say yes. HERE'S why. Erin Bidwell, Kristy Swanson, Suzanne Bailey, i could go on. These people i could not talk to at all for 6 months or a year even and if i saw them or talked to them, things bounce right back. WHY? you ask? well because something is accomplished on a Royal Servants trip that isn't many other places, TRUE COMMUNITY. and because of that, even if it's just a quick, hey i love you on a semi-regular basis.... it just reminds us that there's someone else out there who gets it, someone else out there who cares.

i wasn't dead... just missing. but i'm back.

So I’ve been watching the TV show “Heroes” recently. It’s really not a bad show; I didn’t want to drink the Kool-Aid of “Lost” like the rest of my family, unlike them, I’m saying NO to Ben. But anyway, in Hero’s there’s a guy who’s Japanese who’s name is Hiro who can bend the time space continuum and travel or manipulate time. I know I know, “real convincing LB” but I feel like I just stepped out of a time warp! May happened, then June, then July and now it’s mid August! Woah. I know part of the reason I have this blog is so that people can keep up with my life, especially when it’s interesting, like when I’m in the United Kingdom. I FAILED. I apologize to those of you who do follow this. I realize that I should have kept this up better, but all I can do is start over now right? Here goes.
The last two months were devoted to Royal Servants. If you know anything about me, this is the very thing that makes my heart leap and embodies pretty much everything that is my passion for ministry. I’m not going to write a whole book (because I could) but I’m going to give you a few key glimpses of it. I got to training camp completely empty. I was SO tired after a physically whirlwind May and a dry year spiritually. But God once again made himself known on that hot sticky hay field in Illinois. Day after day I asked the Lord for the strength physically, spiritually, emotionally to finish that day strong in him. And when I woke up, after not enough sleep, feeling like I’d just walked through an atomic bomb, I’d walk towards where our team was and found that a few steps outside of my tent God provided. He met me there on my walk and filled me up. I have literally never physically experienced God in this way. Was I still tired sometimes? OF COURSE! But God gave me just what I needed to do His work and not my own.
Overseas part of my responsibilities included semi-regular teachings. I was intimately aware before each time I stood up to talk that if God did not empower my words and allow them to land, then they were just words as meaningless and powerless as a 90’s pop song. So I prayed, and I asked them to pray. I had a pastor in MN who would ask for a few people to be praying for his sermon every time he stood up to preach, I liked that idea and each talk I did, I asked two students or staff to be in prayer through my talk. God doesn’t have to show us how he’s using us, but I sure love it when he does. I had the students give me a few sentence “what I’m learning” update for our team blog, and one of the girls had that loving and forgiving in faith was some of the biggest things God was teaching her. Both How to Love by Faith, and Forgiveness were teachings I had just finished the week before. On a bus ride to our culture and heritage day, I overheard some girls in a deep conversation and so I joined. They were wrestling with a talk I had given the day before and all of them told me that God had rocked them to the core of who they were with my words. I can’t tell you how this feels, I only know that it was God himself. I am humbled and honored that God would choose to use me in the lives of these students.
My favorite part of the summer was my nightly rounds. I would walk around the room that the girls slept in and hugged and tucked each girl in before they went to sleep. I often ended up laying on the floor hearing or telling stories and laughing before moving on to the next person. I then gave them a “thought to think about” as they were falling asleep. I don’t know how God used me completely, but I hope that the Lord used me in the lives of our students and staff in profound ways. And for those of you who held me up in prayer, He used YOU just as powerfully, if not more than he used me. Like Greg Speck always says, “Prayer is not preparation for the greater work, it IS the greater work.”
Thanks.