the one with gen 1

So the bible study of junior girls that my friend Talley (seriously go stalk her blog) and I get to lead is studying the book of Genesis this year.  Yeah, to say talley and I were slightly overwhelmed and hesitant would be a huge understatement.  I’m not super familiar with OT stories, and shoot, even the ones I do know can be hard to figure out what they’re supposed to mean.  But after our first bible study this week, I could not be more convinced that this book of the Bible might tell us more about the character of God and who we are as humans than any other!  We read through the creation story and discussed what creation tells us about God and some of the things the girls brought up were just too good not to share.  So here it is, 2 things we learn about God from Genesis 1:

God is sovereign.  Ok, I’m a logical person and this is so logical I just love it!  We can believe God is completely in control, because he’s the Creator.  Since he made it, since he spoke it into existence, then we can know that he’s the one to turn to when we can’t figure out what the heck is going on.   God’s always going to be more equipped to handle our lives than friends, family, doctors, counselors, churches, pastors, etc.  Of course all of these people are good to turn to, but God’s the only one that can actually do something about it.  Because he created everything, nothing is outside of his control.  This leads me to not just go to him for forgiveness, but to also make him the Lord of every area of my life.

God is GOOD.  God didn’t have to create things the way he did.  He could have left it “formless and void” like it was in verse 1, he could have just given us a dried up desert with what we barely need to survive.  But no, he gave us bright colors, sounds, emotions, feelings.  He gave us things to enjoy on earth, to bless us and care for us.  He’s good and everything he created is perfect.  This points to a God that is perfectly holy and intolerant of even a drop of sin.  Love Scripture pointing to Christ from the very first chapter, written over a thousand years before Christ was born.

My favorite part of studying Gen 1 is the fact that since the creation story starts with a beginning, it points to the end.  You can’t have a beginning without an end somewhere down the road.  The fact that this world is not in the same condition as it was when it was created is pretty obvious, even if you aren’t a Christian.  But I love that the Bible offers a solution.  Where most religions think of salvation as just forgiveness and some kind of inner peace, the Bible tells us that the goal of salvation is all of creation restored.  Jesus was so committed to this that he was “un-created” on the cross, so that we could each be re-created and restored in him.  His goal is the entire rehabilitation of the beauty of all creation – visible and invisible.  And that, my friends, is what I’m committed to, what Campus Crusade at UNC is committed to, and what the sweet 20 junior girls in my bible study are giving their lives for.

a few of the girls in our bible study with talley the bride.

the one with the NEW APARTMENT!

i lived in a dorm on campus for the past 4 years.  i LOVED almost every second of it and the latest reason i loved living in a dorm is how much it has made me appreciate living in an apartment!  the first time i got to do laundry and didn’t have to drag my huge basket outside and then up 3 flights of stairs was AWESOME.  and keeping all my shower stuff IN the shower.  incredible.  those are my 2 favorite parts of apartment living so far 🙂

along with just graduating and starting a new job, living in an apartment has given me lots of chances to try new things!  so there’s been some fails, but we’re going to talk about the wins for now.

1.  painting furniture!

lisa and i had so much fun the week before we moved in tackling some furniture painting.  we had lots of old furniture from her parents and some that friends of mine gave us and we liked it but wanted to try painting it.

before:

after, in place in the apt!  (you win if you can name that friends episode!)

lots of sanding, priming, painting, re-painting, and sealing in between those 2 pictures.  but we had a great time doing it and now we have a pretty pink dresser!  everyone needs one of those, right?

2.  cooking!

this has been an adventure for sure. the first dinner we cooked was about 2 weeks after we moved in, so it was a slow start but we’re really on a roll now!  this was us, starting out with a drink recipe.  it was a great success and made us lots more confident!

so we got started!  on the menu was chicken & pineapple kabobs with a homemade bbq sauce and roasted parmesan broccoli on the side.  we ended up going offroading a little bit and just cooked all the chicken and pineapp together because it wasn’t really cooking on the skewers.  and i am deathly afraid of raw/undercooked meat.  here’s a pic of chef lisa in action, but i promise i helped!

so it’s really convenient at this time in life that i love burnt things!  haha most people probably don’t write blogs about burnt dinners, but hey, this is real life.  and only some of it burned, so i just ate that part and loved it!  but it is slightly embarrassing that we set the fire alarm off on the opening dinner haha.

we cooked the brocc, and here’s a pic of the final feast!  it was soooooooooo good, me and lisa laughed after we realized all we talked about the entire dinner was how good it was.  we talked about our favorite part of the meal, how it was the perfect portion, the broccoli was perfectly crunchy, the sauce was so flavorful, and the drink the perfect compliment.  hahah it’s a good thing we crack ourselves up.

moses (the apartment mascot pictured here on the right) was even a fan!

that pic might go down as the worst roomate pic ever taken, but you do what you got to do when it’s only the 2 of you.  haha this picture had us laughing for a good 2 hours.

3.  being on our own!

we both get somewhat easily freaked out about someone breaking into our apartment and this may or may not have ended up with me in lisa’s bed at 4am after i woke up in the middle of a nightmare of a man breaking into our apartment with a steel toed boot.  luckily lisa’s awesome and thought it was funny.  and we decided to look into getting a security system 🙂

i have been super busy the past 2 weeks with campus starting up again so lots more ministry updates coming soon!

 

 

 

the one with some boasting :)

I move all of my life (contained in hot pink storage bins) to my new home, in Chapel Hill on August 10^th.  To say I’m ecstatic is a huge understatement.  But like I shared last post, it hasn’t been an easy road to Chapel Hill.  This summer I faced the enormous task of raising all of my financial support for the year.  I met with probably 80 or 90 different friends, family members, and church groups.   And after about 13 weeks of phone calls, meetings, follow up calls (which i abbreved F/U calls for awhile until I said it outloud), double and triple follow up calls, thank you notes, a million trips to the bank and post office, and tons of Starbucks and snoballs, God has introduced me to the team of people that have partnered with me to reach students.

Ignore the cheesy piknik-ness of this picture, but this girl has walked with me every step of the way this summer. And we have consumed more snoballs than any human should. Could not be more thankful for her.

My team consists of about 112 people that all have very unique stories of how the Lord has worked in their own life to bring them to where they’re at now and how God uniquely called each of them to be a part of my team.  It would be impossible to overemphasize this, but these stories have nothing to do with me as an awesome support raiser, or even these individual people.  I’m sharing some of them to boast in CHRIST and the work that he’s done.  The unique stories of how Christ has been so real to these people has encouraged me so much and so I wanted them to encourage all of you out there too.  Here are just a few of the stories of people on my support team that captured my heart and have changed who I am.

• Multiple friends of mine that have joined my team before they even have jobs!  Seriously, unemployed college grads.  A few that are going back to school as grad students that won’t have a job for years, but wanted to be on my team.  WHAT?!  Giving money away to the Kingdom of God before they even earn their first paycheck, these people seriously understand what it means to trust God with their finances and have completely challenged how I view giving away my own money.
• A sweet young couple that spent their college years drifting from God and want to do everything they can to make sure other college students have a chance to walk with God in a time of life that they didn’t.
• A friend that came to Christ for the first time through the bible study I helped lead through Campus Crusade and hasn’t even graduated yet, but told me she has been given so much that she wanted to give back some.
• A friend from high school that struggled to walk with God in college and so now wants to use her resources to invest in something that is teaching college students how to follow Christ in college.
• Multiple different groups at my home church that aren’t necessarily super involved in college ministry, but caught onto the vision of changing the world through reaching college students for Christ and wanted to be a church that invests in that mission.
• A family that has kids that have walked away from God in college and so sees the need for an organization equipping students to do life for Christ and really teaching them how to do that.
• A family that has gotten the chance to meet lots of my friends from Campus Crusade at UNC and was so eager to be a part of my team just because of how they’ve witnessed my friends care for each other and invite others in.
• A family that has kids in school at Carolina and so told me they feel burdened to be invested in ministry at UNC.
• So many friends that are still IN COLLEGE.  Friends from Campus Crusade at Carolina, friends from other colleges, from the bible study I’ve been a part of at UNC.  Friends that are about as broke as you can be and lots of them that asked me how they could be a part of my ministry.  True story.
• Tons of these friends that raised my support for me by encouraging their parents to join my team.  So many friends that went to bat for me and basically did my job by sharing about ministry at UNC.
• A Sunday School class that heard how difficult it can be just to be a Christian at UNC and emptied their account to be on my team of partners.  And is going to have a fundraiser in January so they have even more to contribute.
• A friend from college that just started a new job and told me she wasn’t sure how much she loved it or if it was exactly where she wanted to be, and she was still figuring out how to serve God through her job, but that if nothing else, she could serve God by giving her paycheck away.
• A family that wanted to join my team just from talking to one of my friends in Campus Crusade at Carolina.  Never met me before, didn’t know much about me, but saw the impact that Crusade had in this friends life and wanted to be a part of something that God used so much in her life.
• An old bible study leader that spent her years at Carolina (when she could have been hanging out with her friends) pouring into little freshman Kelly and impacted my life so significantly that I stayed involved with Campus Crusade and am now working for it!
• Lots of NC State fans.  If you’re not from North Carolina, that’s a big deal, ya’ll.
• A friend that joyfully joined my team after her husband nailed a job.  She told me the first thing she told him when they realized he was not unemployed anymore was “YAY, now we can support Kelly!”  That’s a cheerful giver.
• A couple that I never even talked to that gave a check to some friends of mine from church.  I still don’t know what my friends told this couple, but it’s pretty easy to see these kinds of stories have NOTHING to do with how great of a support raiser I am.  No way I can believe that when I get support from someone I’ve never met.
• My doctor that when we sat down after an appointment I had one day, asked me “So, what made you want to work for us?” I was a little confused, because, well he’s a doctor and we all know the medical field is not for me.  But turns out, he already supports a few other people on staff with Campus Crusade and so he rightly considers himself a partner in ministry with these people.  Love it.

Basically, the whole point of me sharing these peoples stories is that these people realize that their money is not theirs.  It’s all the Lord’s and so each of these people were SO willing to give it back to God.  Not just 10% of their income, or giving grudgingly because they feel like they have to.  But giving with JOY and excitement.  These people have encouraged me to keep going and are my heroes, not because they’re awesome (even though they are), but because they have pointed me towards Jesus and have made me more thankful of and dependent on Him.

the one with a step of faith

After a looooong summer (emphasis on the long) God has finally put together my team of supporters for my year of working with Campus Crusade for Christ to reach students for Christ.  It has been a whirlwind, but I’ve learned such an important lesson.  I’ve learned that doing this Christian life means taking steps of faith.  There is no way on earth I’m a good enough speaker or vision caster to have compelled these 112 people to give generously.  There’s no way these people like me enough or are big enough UNC fans or have some other random reason to want to give so sacrificially.  There’s no explanation other than the Holy Spirit enabling me to take a risky step of faith and God compelling each of these families to join my team.

Was it difficult?  Yes.  Out of my comfort zone?  SO far outta my zone.  Confusing and chaotic?  YES.  Were there times I wanted to stop, times that nothing in me wanted to pick up the phone and call yet another family friend to ask to meet with me?  Oh yeah.  If you think that I did this perfectly and beautifully, always believing it would happen, just ask any of my close friends.  They can confirm that was definitely not the case.  But I’ve learned that it was so worth it.  Taking steps of faith and leveraging my life on the FACT that I know God will come through and provide is always going to be worth it.  I want to live the rest of my life doing this.  It won’t always be trusting God to provide financially, but whatever it is I’m doing throughout different life stages, I don’t ever want to put a cap on God.  I don’t ever want to limit him and so I’m going to continue to step out in faith and believe that he’s going to work in ways that might seem crazy to an unbelieving world.

One pretty group of girls that were my laptop background all summer that helped encourage me to keep going 🙂

So, for now that means trusting God with this next year.  I have a feeling that I have no idea what I’ve signed up for.  I’m working in an area of campus that is pretty dark.  I’m working with the leaders of 5 small groups across 3 different communities of dorms where there is typically very few freshman, and so typically very small bible studies.  But after this summer, I have a feeling that God really just wants to UNLEASH his power over this area of campus and I seriously could not be more excited.  I’m believing that God’s going to use this ministry to grow the leaders and to bring people to Himself.

I’m also working to help plan our campus wide socials throughout the year.  We really believe that God uses relationships in the midst of community to radically change lives and so me and the rest of the team are responsible for creating environments at events that draw people together, allow them to connect on a deeper level, and also be a place where newcomers are welcomed and encouraged.  We’ve already started working to plan our square-dancing country hoedown the first week of classes.  Next semester we’ll throw the annual semi-formal (me, the girl that didn’t go to a single one my first three years of college and was DRAGGED to it my senior year.  Funny how I’m the staff in charge of it now).  So for these events and a few others throughout the year, we’re praying that as students begin to see God rightly, the barriers that stand in the way of true community will fall and people will be able to relate rightly and God will use this sense of community across campus powerfully to change lives.

some girls i love looking our finest at the hoedown a few years ago

So that’s what I’m praying for as I get ready to move to Chapel Hill and start on campus and I would love for you to join me!

Next post:  more info about my support team.  I want to share a few stories about the people that are my heroes from the summer!

the one with the rainbow cake

Pretty much all of my family and friends know that I am no chef.  The first 18 years of my life my sweet mama & dad cooked pretty much every meal and the last 4 years, the oh so lovely Lenoir has cooked the at least 880 meals for me.  So, not great at cooking.  Which always makes it an adventure when I get inspired enough to make something.

Like when somehow out of a group of 16 girls at the beach after graduation, I was one of the 3 put in charge of cooking dinner one night.  I was responsible for the mac&cheese, the easy kind, and somehow the cardboard box it came in ended up in the pot, boiling right along with the water.  There was some screaming, but everything turned out ok.

Or the time a few weeks ago where I was forcefully pushed into dealing with the raw pork chops.  Ok, not a fan of any kind of raw meat.  I don’t know why, it just grosses me out, I get worried it’s going to slide out of my hand, and it makes me think about what I’m eating.  Just don’t like it.  So I was the one that had to touch it.  I was logically trying to minimize the amount of time I would have to actually be holding it, so as soon as I picked it up, I kinda tossed/dropped it into the pan on the stove that was already hot and ended up with scalding grease drops all over me.

So, an adventure it always is.  Today we celebrated Mimi’s 75^th birthday.  I thought it was time to try out something fun, so of course I hopped on pinterest and started searching.  That’s when I found this lovely gem. Ahhh, come to mama!

((site:  http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake This girl gives lots of good tips, so go to her site if you’re going to make it.  But beware, her recipe is a diet cake recipe, so don’t make that mistake!  I made mine the normal, non-diet way.))

Even though I know in my head that the color of cake doesn’t change the flavor, this just looks so much better than regular white cake, right?

So, I got all my stuff together.  Heck yes I used a boxed cake.  Like the instructions I was following say, Betty Crocker’s been doing it a whole lot longer than I have and I figure she’s pretty much got it figured out.

I don’t really know why I felt compelled to arrange the ingredients for a boxed cake and include a pic, but hey this is what they show in all the cooking blogs I follow.  And by that, I mainly mean the one cooking blog I follow, PW.  So it makes me feel legit to do it too 🙂

You just make the cake batter like normal, and then divide it up evenly (I just eyeballed it, I’m risky like that) and go to town with food coloring.  I was skeptical the colors would turn out as bright as I wanted them, but they did!  This is about the point in time that Erin walked in the kitch, doubted me HARD, and then just laughed her head off while watching.

Ahh, I totally do not mind cleaning dishes this pretty.

Then you just scoop out color by color and dump it into 2 pans.  Again, I was super skeptical mine would work out as well as the one on the blog I was reading, but it actually did!  It wasn’t too difficult at all.

And then they come out looking like this!  Voila!!

Remember what we talked about, that I’m not the worlds best cook.  In honor of being open and honest, I’ll be real.  I got the 2 separate cakes out of the oven and then could not figure out for the life of me how to somehow get them out of the pan (in one piece, preferably), onto the cake stand, and then sitting on top of each other and somehow iced in the middle and then all over.  So, I watched a video.  It actually wasn’t too difficult, although I did have to use almost 2 cans of frosting in order to cover up the holes & mistakes, but hey.  It didn’t cave in or crack open, so I was thankful for that.

So that was the final product.  And here’s a pic I got with the birthday girl.  Happy 75th, Mimi, I still believe you when you tell me you’re turning 16!

And here’s the inside!  Sorry the pics not too pretty, but you get the picture.  Not sure what Mimi thought of it, she was a little hesitant of a cake not being a normal cake color, but we all ate it and enjoyed it.

So overall, not too difficult, it only took this beginner baker about 2 hours total, and you get something so pretty!  This beats funfetti by FAR for me.  I’ll definitely be making it again!

the one all about my hojoloves :)

HoJoLo (HoJoLoves) is the group that originally met as a Campus Crusade bible study of wide-eyed, giggly, and hyper freshman girls living in a freshman dorm at UNC, Hinton James (HoJo).  After going to a Campus Crusade freshman pizza picnic with a friend from high school, I met this group of girls and before I had even thought about getting plugged into a bible study or anything I fell in love with this group and became good friends with them.

Then I went to bible study for the first time.   I met people like Caitlin, who, on her first night when asked what her career aspirations were, she replied “I’m going to be a golddigger.”  I met Lydia, who says the word “baller” more than anyone I’ve ever met.  And I met about 25 others who I’m going to tell you all about over the weeks to come!  Seriously, you’re probably going to get tired of hearing me talk about them.

We ended up meeting every week from our freshman year to our senior year and while some of us have been in it all 4 years, one thing I’ve loved about these ladies is that new girls were always joining us.  Our leaders changed over the years, and lots of girls started coming after freshman year and I love each and every one of them!

This group is one of the ways in my life that I have most seen the Lord’s faithfulness and one of the factors God used to call me into joining staff.  From the very first bible study, I have seen how in love with the Lord these girls are.  None of them try to be perfect, but all of them point to the work that Christ has done in their life.

I could probably write a novel on what I’ve learned from this group, from studying the Word together, from living with them, eating with them, taking trips together and leading others together.  When I think about these girls I’m seriously humbled to be a part of this group.  I did not deserve the kind of friends that God gave me in them, but literally every single one of them is evidence of the Lord’s grace in my life.

These girls were the ones that were always there for me.  I can’t tell you how many times they have picked me up, comforted, encouraged, challenged, and affirmed me.  I can’t tell you how many times they have picked up the phone or answered the door or ran to meet me at the dining hall and been willing to just listen.  They are THE most encouraging people you’ll ever meet.  But they’ve also been the ones that have been willing to speak truth into my life even when I refused to listen.  This is not a fun job ya’ll, I can be stubborn and hard headed and I’m a pretty solid arguer and these girls have time and time again sacrificed their own desire to not rock the boat, and rocked the boat hard.  They are wholeheartedly committed to the truth of the Gospel.

Lately, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with these ladies, but God is still using this group MIGHTILY in my life and in the lives of others.  Just a couple weeks ago, I was meeting with a family that is familiar with this group of girls and they were SO eager to be on my team of partners simply because of how they’ve observed this group interacting.  They told me that the way they observed these girls caring for each other, serving the Lord together, and constantly inviting others in compelled them to be a part of my ministry in a big way.

Cheers to HoJoLo!  A group of lots of screwed up girls that have been brought from death to life and now live to make the name of Christ famous all around the world!

the one where i broke the rules

I like to break the rules.  Walking across the grass when there you’re not supposed to, sneaking into lazy rivers that I did not pay for(see picture from family vacay 2010), if there’s a sign saying “don’t do it” it just makes me want to do it even more.  So once again I’m about to break the rules.  Everyone says in order to blog successfully you have to blog about something really narrow and specific.  But a) I’m not really blogging in order for people to read it.  I’m ok with having like 3 readers.  And b) I’m a rule breaker.  So I’m blogging about everything!  Really though, I’m hoping this blog will serve lots of different purposes.

First, I want to remember my life.  I have a terrible memory and am already starting to forget lots of things about high school (high school!!  Like 4 years ago!).  I’m especially good at forgetting the ways the lord has been so faithful to me over the years.  My brain tends to focus on the things in my life I’m not satisfied with, so I’m hoping that blogging about real parts of my life that the lord has been faithful in will help cultivate a heart of gratefulness.

In Joshua 4, the Lord commands his people to put up a memorial so that they and their children would remember God faithfulness; that He brought them into the land that was promised to them over the dried out Jordan River.  I love this idea.  To remember what God has done, people that God used to grow and challenge me, places that will always bring back memories of God’s work, memories of things He has taught me.  So I’m hoping to use this blog as a collection of memorials of God’s faithfulness throughout my life.  I want to write so that I remember; like the Washington Memorial was built to celebrate and remember George Washington, except this one’s to honor the Lord.

I also am hoping this will be a place where my ministry partners can get a feel for how I’m doing and the kinds of things that are going on back on campus.  So I’ll be posting stories of people involved with Campus Crusade at UNC, updates on events that we are planning, and students’ experiences from conferences and retreats that we have.

And finally, I can be pretty random and weird and so there will definitely be posts reflecting that 🙂  I’m hoping that won’t come off as unprofessional and inappropro, so bear with me if they do!

I’ll be honest, the biggest stumbling block for me about starting a blog was coming up with a title.  Lame, I know, but I wanted something that was relevant to what the blog was going to be about.  “he remains faithful” comes from 2 Timothy 2:13 which says “if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.”  I love this, God’s faithfulness in my life to what he has promised me is completely independent of me.  I have nothing to do with it, I’m not even in the equation.  God can’t deny himself, he is innately faithful and he can never NOT be that.

In a time of my life where I’m being forced to rely on the Lord to literally provide, it’s encouraging to me to read verses like (my new fav) Hebrews 10:23 “let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”  God’s faithfulness (which 2tim tell us is a sure bet) is the entire basis for me to have hope in the chaos, confusion, and uncertainness of my life right now.

the one with the happy list

I’m going to start this blog off with my happy list.  mainly because my dear friend caitlin clement and i made a promise to each other that we would start a blog and this would be our first post.  i need motivation like that 🙂 my friend Sarah Toney has a list hanging in her dorm room of things that make her happy and it got me thinking of my own list.  I’ve loved thinking through it because it gives me ideas for ways to de-stress when that’s what I need and also helps me focus my heart on things that bring me lots of joy.

So here it is, in no particular order 🙂

Summit choir songs.  and not singing them normally, but I’m talking loud, obnoxious, off-key, window rolled down worship.  think “We Will Remember,” “Lord, You’re Holy,” and “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.”  many, many times going down in my car.

FRIENDS episodes.  season 2 and 6 more specifically.  Joey & Chandler even more specifically.

People magazines and Nicholas Sparks books.  and, yep I’ll admit it, I like The Bachelorette too 🙂

snuggling anywhere with PowerHAUS girls.  or even just a text, tweet, or chat with any one of them.  these girls seriously make my life and are guaranteed to make me laugh nonstop.

grilled asparagus with parmesan cheese.

a nice, long walk around Chapel Hill

especially with this guy 🙂

my seester.  because she’s the funniest person i know.

camping out in a coffee shop for hours on end.  starbs is my fav, I know it’s a big bad chain, but still my fav.

doing ANYTHING with HoJoLoves. a phone call, road trip, or dinner date with any of these girls is sure to make my week.  these girls even taught me to love sleepovers (still not enough to make it on my happy list though). this is our final last ever end of the year fancy celebration at the Carolina Inn.

pranks.  I think I love getting pranked as much as I love doing the pranking.  this is one of the boys’ last pranks on us during our 2.5 year prank war and it got me good.

a JD sermon podcast.

a country music jam out sesh.  think:  God Bless the USA.  all-time favorite song.  and it’s basically a requirement for this girl to be there (us at a kenny concert).

peanut butter m&ms.  been hooked on these since I bought them at the Wildcat Den at Millbrook 🙂

CFA tshirts, the best ones coming from grand openings.

vietnamese iced lattes from the Guglhupf (thank you Jeanette for this one!)  I seriously dream about those lattes.

crazy bright colors.  like one of my favorite tshirts

my sweet cousins, preferably all in christmas present PJs on christmas eve.

monogrammed things.  you knew it had to make the list.  this is my new apron!

 water.  pools, lakes, the ocean, a bathtub… haha i love blobs (below), tubing, jet skiis, water slides, laying out at the beach, love it all!

anybody have any similar things on their happy list?  people that know me, what’d i miss?

coming up on the next post:  the reason i started blogging, why the title, and what i plan on blogging about