Knoxville :)

Hi everyone!

I just got back from spending an amazing week in Knoxville for Spring Break. I went on a trip through Campus Ministries. A group of fourteen beautiful women went to Knoxville and served at the Florence Crittenton Agency there. The Center houses 28 teenage girls who have been in some sort of trouble with the law. It was a fabulous experience for me. I formed connections with 13 other wonderful women of God and they made the trip a blast!!! Working with the girls who live at Crittenton was a really special experience and I hope that our being there left an impact on them and that God was able to work through us.

It was fantastic to see what the girls who lived there taught us. I was having a conversation with a girl I met there, who I ate pretty much every meal with, and she said, "We're not bad people." Of course I immediately said that we knew that and didn't think that they were. And it was true. Meeting these girls and getting to know them and form connections really helped me to see that. Not that I went there thinking that everyone who breaks the law or does drugs or drinks alcohol is a bad person, but I certainly had stereotypes going into the trip. But meeting these girls, I saw that these were great girls who came from tough, often broken, families, who had made some bad choices, but who, for the most part, wanted to change their lives. We Michiganders talked about this one night and how we judge people so quickly based on what we've heard about them or how they look or act on first glance. But I think that this trip helped open our eyes and helped us to see that we need to hold off on judging people and get to know them. It helped us to see that we are not that different from the girls at FCA and that with a couple of different choices in our lives we could have been in their shoes.

Another really wonderful thing this trip made us all think about was how lucky we are to have the childhoods and the families that we do. I am so thankful to my amazingly supportive and loving family who has always been their for me. And my fantastic friends as well. A lot of the girls we were working with didn't grow up in those types of environments and don't have that kind of support. Those of us that do should thank God every day for the blessings he has given us of family and friends.

It was awesome to see God working while on this trip. He brought 14 fabulous women on the trip and helped us to bond and share to together and laugh and laugh and laugh :) He also worked through us to help the girls at FCA. All week I was eating with on particular girl. We always had conversation and were laughing and getting along, but I am shy and I was worried that I wasn't doing enough to, I guess, help her, make a difference, be a good role model. I'm not really sure was I was expecting, but whatever it was I didn't think it was happening. I kept thinking if I had been less shy that I would have made a deeper connection with her and had more of an impact on her. Well, God must have known I was feeling that way because the last night we were there, we had a movie night with the girls. We gave them all a bag of candy and a card, in which we had written a note. While we were watching the movie, the girl I had been eating with tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a note she had written to me. It said thank you for coming and helping out. It said she wished that the week had lasted longer and wished us a safe trip home. It wasn't long or overly profound, but it showed me that I had an some sort of impact on her. Hopefully I planted a seed in her and God will continue to work to grow that seed and help her turn her life around. Thank you to all who were praying for us while we were there! Now it is back to real life and school and I am already missing my fellow Knoxies, but we had a fantastic trip!!

That's it for now I guess. If you want to hear more about the trip, I would love to tell you, so give me a call!!