Bonnette Acres

Today I got to go to Big kid church and act like an adult, which is sometimes hard after constantly hanging out with the coolest kids around. But it was a wonderful service. It amazes me how much I enjoy worshiping with the Lake Houston community. Pastor preached on change today. His first question was "do any of you actually like change?", my hand immediately went up and then immediately went back down when I realized I was the only one. He then had 3 different guys read verses about listening to God and changing there lives because of him. As soon as each verse was read I felt the emotion build up inside of me. All that was going through my head was "Why? Why God are you telling me this? Why now?" I am always ready for change, I love those verses they push me on and remind me of my passion. But I finally in the last two weeks have realized my reason of being here right now. I have realized my mission is volunteering at the church. The new kids department has been...

Well lets see in the last two months I have.... Left Albania and said goodbye to my adventurous year in a foreign land. Finally traveled back home to Nashville and could not believe how many Starbucks there are. When you spend all day in Germany trying to find the ONE Starbucks they have, it really makes you laugh when you see how many we have. Had two lovely weeks of re-entering back into the way Americans do things. Like remembering to buckle my seat belt and actually flushing down my toilet paper not throwing it away. Funny how I was so grossed out by that one at first but man it is now hard to stop. Then I spent two weeks with my very pregnant sister in law and brother in Texas. Flew back home....again. Got to see my other brother and his wife and there 15 kids. It was great to see the amazing ministry they are doing with the "Children of the world choir". If you are ever interested in World Help or wanting to help with clean water around the world, this is the organizat...

My last day in Lushnje is now halfway over. All my goodbyes seem to have gone so quickly, and now I am two coffee visits away from leaving Lushnje for good. Last night Jess and the OM team gave me a going away party that was so kind and re-announcing who my true family was in Albania. The leader of OM said that when they heard a Nazarene missionary was moving to Lushnje on her own, they were unsure what kind of girl would do that. Ha, but he went on to say that he was so glad that I became apart of the family and that OM would accept me anytime and would miss me greatly. This morning at church our small room where we meet was full of people, and I could not be more over joyed to see so many faces I had seen through out the year. At the end elke had me come up front and gave me a present. She gave me a coffee cup, and said to everyone "You have never seen someone like coffee as much as Emily!". They also gave me a beautiful book all about Albania with great pictures. Everyone ...

This week deep inside my head I have been in a constant battle of love and hate. I have been digesting my time here. Have I loved it fully or could I not get over the hard parts? All I can fathom to say is there was miraculous moments and horribly hard situations. So much of my heart will always stay with the kids at the kindergarten, and the teen girls who became my best friends. But is that enough for me to say I have a passion for this land? A passion for all the people? A passion to leave my lovely life again and live here longer? Right now I can not answer that question. Honestly if I have any inkling to the future I don't see that happening. But after talking to some amazing Nazarene missionaries my thoughts have been re- open. Not necessarily to coming back to Albania, but once again living in a foreign land. Pretty much all summer long I had decided that doing volunteer missions again all by myself was not a good idea. My head was filled with thousands of situations where I...

I have one more full day left in Lushnje before I head to Tirane for a week with all my things. I will be coming back for two days right before I leave for a nice goodbye to my year of interesting adventure in Albania. Right now I am thinking how fast just this past month has been and how this week has lasted a second. One by one I have been packing my things but I have been amazed of how hard it has been. Not necessarily like "O my goodness this is so tough getting all of this in these tiny bags". No it was more like I just didnt want to pack. Which is very strange for me. Usually I love packing, it means a new adventure is before me. But this one is different. I am full of such mixed emotions. This week I am doing a VBS at my church. The first two days were just the pastors kids, but today randomly we had 4 brand new kids. That might not seem a lot to all of the mega church's out there but here that is amazing! I was so excited. It was a huge MM (Miraculous Moment) for ...

The night before camp I found myself working like crazy to get all the things done. Yes I had the whole week before to slowly and nicely work on the lessons for camp, but SOMEHOW that just did not happen. So like always I did not find motivation until hours before. In these moments of my life is when I wonder why God would use me, the procrastinator. But amazingly and only in God's way it was all done AND I had time to clean my apartment. Yep, miracles do happen. To be honest I was not looking forward to camp. I had already missed out at not being at Texas kids camp, and I knew that another culture family camp would not be the same. I also was not up for talking in Albanian all the time, since after summer started my little Albanian that I knew amazingly disappeared. It is interesting how you can live in another country and still never have to speak the language. This is not so at camp. Ryan and Kaci gave me a ride in there nicely air conditioned car, and it was evening when we arr...

For a while now I have been searching for the perfect back drop for my blog. I have gone through hundreds of blog sites looking for the one. But what I kept running into was each one I liked only described half of me or a third of me. When I looked at it I didn't see myself. For some odd reason this has turned into a big deal for me. Like many things in my life I have made it out to be huge when in the grand scheme of things what I am looking for is only a odd code that computer geniuses understand. These thoughts have intertwined with others that I have been having a lot lately. Thoughts about the person I am today. Just typing that sentence makes me think of countless country songs and self help books that show you the "true you". I have taken personality quizzes real ones scientist use and fake ones bored people on facebook have made. All these things tell me "Who I am" or who I am suppose to be. They don't know me. There are so many different things goin...