LIONHEARTED LANDLOPER

    Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me this year. Thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog. Thank you to everyone who helped me come to this school and see what I have seen. Because of you, I have had my worldview widened. I have figured out a little bit more of who I am as an individual. I have traveled the world. Also, I have gotten a huge rash on my face and hands in South Africa -- but I won't blame you for that one.     Thank you for giving what you felt led to give (resources, prayer, encouragement) and joining with me while God took me on this great adventure. He always does things better than I would have known how to if I were in charge. Fortunately, I'm not. Blessings, Beccca B.

   It feels like I just set foot on campus -- but now I am leaving. Pack Your Bags has been an incredible adventure. I have been to so many places, made so many friends, and bought so many cases of bottled water. I have lived with Maddie this whole school year and have taken all kinds of classes. I don't want to say goodbye. I have spent so much time right here in Ellendale as well as overseas...         And now I find myself slowly packing. It feels weird to have hardly any homework and be spending my time quietly boxing up my belongings. This place has been my temporary home, and now the season leaves as quickly as it came.     There's something sad about it. I don't want to leave the friends I feel like I just made. I don't want to lose the input and advice of professors I have come to look up to. But at the same time, there's something exciting about it. Pack Your Bags was not my only adventure -- it was the kickoff. God is holding my hand and leading me f

view of Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives     Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Israel. I was there for almost two weeks and saw amazing things -- from the Sea of Galilee to the Weeping Wall. this trip changed my life and I don't know how to even talk about it. It's so difficult to try and explain amazing experiences to people who weren't there.     Basically, I went to the country I have always heard stories about. I went to the land and the area that God promised to His chosen people in the Old Testament.  I saw ruins of things that may have been around when my Savior walked the earth. I went in the Jordan river. I saw and learned so many things that have to do with the whole entire reason I am saved. The whole story that led to my salvation happened in areas I was able to walk around.     I experienced a culture that felt more foreign than any I had experienced prior. I rode a camel. I talked to God and I saw people who were lost. I went to cities

    Once upon a time, we decided to venture into Paris. We had a twenty-hour overnight layover, so why not? We took the train from the airport and found ourselves in a world speaking only François. We found a charming restaurant and all sat down to a three-course meal! And for the first time in my life... I had real, genuine, french fries. Actually French fries. Wow. I also got calamari and this desert that was cheese and honey. French people are so fancy. I looked to my right and watched a woman use her knife and fork to cut a piece of lettuce from her salad. Nobody cuts their lettuce.     Dinner took awhile, but we finally got out into Paris after the sun went down and started to walk around. We saw Notre-Dame and eventually found the Eiffel Tower -- but it kept being farther away than we thought. We walked, walked, and walked -- and somehow the tower was always behind a building and never around the corner we thought it was. But eventually, after walking across Paris, we found it.

    I stood in line, waited, went through security, and found myself at the Temple Mount looking at the Dome of The Rock. We weren't allowed to wear crosses or bring Bibles and our clothes had to be very modest.      Looking at the giant mosque did not feel how I expected it would. It wasn't scary. It was just... empty, I guess. There were kids outside playing soccer and women sitting in groups talking. There were older men in going places and people visiting the site from different countries. I was walking around observing when the sweetest group of young Muslim girls came up to me and said, “you take selfie?”     “Sure,” I said.       I started getting in picture after picture with these sweet girls with their joyful smiles and white head scarves.      It was so strange. I can hardly explain it. From the moment those girls spoke to me I felt like I loved them so much  — It just came over me. It was something I had never experienced before. I was simply standing t

I always wondered what it felt like to travel the world... now I know.     I woke up today and realized my life is moving incredibly fast. In fact, I  hardly know what to do about it. So much stuff has happened that I never anticipated, and it's all in the past. It feels like a couple of weeks ago I was putting together my photos for graduation -- but that was a couple years ago.      In just 80 days, I won't be a teenager anymore. Things are going by so fast and I still feel like the girl who ran around town in a cape on her sixteenth birthday. But then again, I think I simply neglect to realize how much has changed. When I look back on how I felt and the things I worried about, I don't even feel like the same person. I have grown and learned so much, and I have become more of who I was created to be. I have made more memories than I knew was possible in such little time. I always wondered what it felt like to be comfortable in who I am. Now I know. I always w

    A couple weeks ago, I woke up randomly around 5:30 AM and had to use the restroom. I got up, went to the bathroom, and crawled back in bed ready to get a couple more hours of sleep before my day needed to start. As I lay there half asleep with my eyes shut, something odd happened. I could not tell if I was dreaming or thinking. I did not feel asleep, but I equally did not feel like I was making up any of the things in my head as they happened.     It felt like an imaginary place I would invent. It had the sorts of things I would have definitely made up... but it felt like the place had been made up without me knowing, and I was only now being introduced to it all.     I was somewhere. The place had a warehouse or an abandoned-Costco feel to it. The lights above the area where I was were the only ones on, and as I looked around I could not see an end anywhere to the building I was in. I knew the place was large, but in every direction, it eventually got too dark to see if the