Eight years, and You've brought me here.

Almost eight years ago to the week, I was prepped to venture out of the states for my very first time, donning a missions jersey and braids, with limited language skills-and a heightened sense of a wary traveler leaving all I knew with my family and home.

And here we are, I am sitting at the gate awaiting my solo international flight, to the country that I came to love those eight years ago. Not with a group of people, but just me and my Maker. Not for a week, but for three months-the first of many, many extended stays.

God has grown me since that first trip. The wary traveler is now quite comfortable in her own skin, and finds something about traveling solo awakens her spirit and enlivens her. The girl donning braids is now okay with accepting the natural curls, the girl who used to keep to herself and latch onto others is learning, surely learning to speak up and use her own voice.

These past eight years have been spent loving, loving the people of Mexico. Falling in love with the language, the culture, the very country. These past years God has taken every carefully figured out moment-and turned it upside down. The times when I have been stretched, have been the most freeing, joyful, beautiful times of my life.

It is in those times when my heart has made a home in more place than one, met some of the people that I carry closely to my heart-it is in those times when I have seen the abundant life God created for me.

Those of you reading this have been with me through and through…you have helped me take hold of the call God has given me, you have believed in me-when I thought surely there was nothing left of me to believe in, you have encouraged me to look up and cling to my Maker, in the midst of uncertainties. And I thank you, yes all of me, thanks you. You are very much a part of my story.