LIONHEARTED LANDLOPER

    On Monday, my team will head to South Dakota to spend a week on the Pine Ridge reservation. We will be serving at a church there and doing all sorts of things -- from children's ministry to a short drama. This will be our first official mission trip, and I am getting so excited as we prepare and pack. It's approaching so quickly. Please join us in prayer this week.

84th Street     The 15th of this month was an event called Serve Our City. All classes were canceled, and the day was to be spent working on projects to help people and businesses all around Ellendale.     Three of us girls were given the opportunity to serve a woman named Margie by pulling weeds and doing yard work. We were handed a small piece of paper with a brief description of the job and the address we were to go to: A trailer on 84th Street North.     Now, 84 is a lot of Streets for a small town, and we soon discovered that walking was not going to work, and hopped in the car. Before     -- I don't know if we were suspicious of the reality of this address since the first time we typed it into the GPS, or if it was when we had to go through a different town to get there -- but I do know that our curiosity was affirmed when the robotic "in 100 feet, turn left onto 84th Street North" took us to some grass-covered tire tracks al...

Photo Taken by Selah Kramer     To start off the month we were able to spend a four-day weekend playing games, getting to know each other, and looking at cacti in Canada.     Oh, there was also an exciting two-day adventure involving a high ropes course and zip line. But that's beside the point.     Just kidding, it was basically the whole point.     We had a lot of fun, learned how to work together, and built up a lot of excitement for the trips we will be able to go on as a team in the future.   ***     The weekend (for me) was filled with one constant reminder from God: these people are the ones He chose for me to spend this year with -- traveling the world and all -- ever since before He told me to come here two years ago. And I need to realize that.  They aren't for me to criticize, they aren't for me to hide from, they aren't for me to impress. They are what God wants to use to build real relations...