it's been a while....

Sorry for the delay in writting something new. Singapore updates and stories will come soon. For now, there are things on my heart that I simply need to express, despite my lack of knowledge as to who reads this blog.

I feel like I have lost a friend, for the second time. It began years ago, it was shattered years ago, resurfaced and grew into something more genuine only to have it be shattered again. And the second shattering was all in hopes that the newly established friendship could be preserved. So the question that I have is simply this: What is our friendship based on? Yes, we were kids when we first met, but things in life change and people change. Our cores stay the same, but the people and situations around us can change and alter how we react to situations and influence the chages that occur from within us. The hardest part that I am experiencing is that I know that I should continue to love on this friend, which I will do, but it will still be hard. I never really could tell if the old wounds had completely healed before they were opened again. A scar will remain; and while I will try everything within my power to help heal those wounds, which will not be easy, but quite necessary.

If, by chance, this friend is reading this, I love you and I always will. Clearly God has some purpose of bringing you into my life, not just once, but twice - once as kids, and once as adults. I have no idea what His plan is for our friendship, but I will always be there for you. An ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, a friendly face to smile back at you. For now, that's all I can do and hopefully, with time, more will come. I love you, my friend, and I simply want the best for you.

Good gravy - we leave for the airport in 21 hours...

So the past few days have been very busy indeed. I did not think that this internship would require so much out of me, let's just say. I have put soooo much work into this trip and while I am incredibly excited that we are leaving tomorrow, I also realize just how much responsibility I have - I mean, I am partly in charge of 8 other people OVERSEAS! Granted, they are all over the age of 18, but still. Brett and I are the only ones that have been on a mission trip before, out of all 9of us. Oh my goodness.

I am kind of nervous about school - since I am interning for the church, and technically taking the "internship class," our final papers are due on the 8th of August - and I am still in Singapore then. I sent an e-mail to my professor a month ago, asking for an extension on the paper, and I STILL have not received a response. So, I just e-mailed her again, along with one of my favorite professors, BJ, who is a major aspect of the department, stating that since I did not receive a response in a month, that I will turn in my paper late and will be needing an extension. I told her that since I did not hear back from her, I assumed that it would be Ok, especially since we will be overseas FOR the intrnship, for heaven's sake. Please be praying that things work out with the internship and San Jose State...even if, for some reason, SJSU does not count this current summer and the internship I am currently working for and in, I will still be able to walk this May, although they might require me to re-do my internship; and in which case, I will fight tooth and nail to keep it. SJSU admissions sucks....seriously.

Please be praying for our team - Alexandria, Caitlyn, Carissa, Brett, Gircelda, Joey, Chris, Danny, and myself, and we open up doors to future missions in Asia. By the way, check out my Singapore GO Team link to our blog that we will be trying to update regularly. Enjoy it!

God, I pray that you keep us safe as we travel. I pray that you open our eyes and our hearts to what you have to teach us. I pray that we can be living personifications of your love and grace while in Singapore and Malaysia. I pray that you use us, in whatever way, to Your glory, Father. And God, I pray that you remind us of your faithfulness and love daily while serving others in Your name. Amen.

3 MORE DAYS!

I officially have three more days until we leave for Singapore! I hve SO many praises right now! One of them is finances for the trip. A month ago, we still needed $4,000+ left as a team to raise. So, we got our butts in gear, had a car wash and raised $600, teamed up with Haley Montgomery and Andy Gridley for a promotional/benefit concert and received a little over $200, worked a marathon and was given $250, and had continual donations still coming into the church office for us. Unfortanately, Akalina was having too many issues with her passport and two weeks ago, her father was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his espohogus; he needs to go through surgery, radiation, and chemo. Please pray for his strength to fight this battle, and for it to be exterminated from his body. With that, our financial need dropped. Chris was just given a $1250 donation from his old church "The Journey" and we are simply floored! We now have a balance of $25.75 as a team, and even that is going to be covered! God is amazing and the ways that He works things out are mind-boggling and simply amazing!

I've had family - Raquelle, Janessa, Tamara, McKinley, and Mom here in Cali over the past 1 1/2 weeks. It hasn't been all bad - it's interesting to see how we have all changed. Raquelle is almost my height, McKinley is almost her height and the three of us all have the same sized feet.....Mickey is about 4 1/2 feet tall! Woa! Raquelle is a typical 14-year-old, Janessa and Tamara have definitly matured more since I last saw them, which is awesome to see the progress they have been making over the past few years. Mom is defintly more mellow of a Mom than when I was a child, but it's nice to have a different relationship with her. It's kind of estranged and apparently "mature" but it works, I guess. What interesting to note is that since the move to NC, my Dad has become more and more affectionate and my Mom has stayed the same. It's difficult for her to tell me that she loves me or that she misses me, or that she's proud of me. Usually, the only way to get her to tell her that she loves you is if you say it first and she responds with "I love you too, honey." SOmetimes, I wish she was more open with her emotions....ironic, huh?

I am over 2/3 way packed...all in 2 hours, while my brother has been sleeping right next to me and my packing. He's over, spending the night - crazy little 8-almost-9year-old! I picked him up from my Mom and Grandma, I got some Singapore work done whie he watched The Incredibles, we ate dinner, went for a walk and picked wild blackberries, came back home, he got ready for bed, I turned on my soothing mix of bedtime songs, and he fell asleep within 10 minutes! Yea! Tomorrow (technically today....), we are making a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, blackberries, and cinnamon rolls. Then, we are making our lunches and heading up to EA in Redwood City and taking McKinley on a tour of the company. McKinley even prepared a surprise for Chris - it's cute!

Please continue to pray for the team as we prep to leave and are in the field from July 31-August 10. Love you guys!

Terry, fears, Singapore, prayers - life right now

Terry's memorial service was on Sunday. I cried like a baby. I can't imagine how the McElhatton family is holding up. I can't imagine loosing my Dad right now. And what makes it worse is that I am in charge of his estate when he passes (hopefully it won't be for a LONG time). I can't fathom loosing my Dad - it's such a foreign and unwanted concept to me.

And this kind of ties back to my fear of separation - I fear being separated emotionally and physically from the poeople that I love. Going through my family moving to NC and me staying in Cali was a huge separation for me. I was 18 and on my own - financially, apart from my family that I had lived with my entire life, and experiencing life in a total new fashion that, believe you me, took a little bit of time to get used to. I remember crying myself to sleep for the first 6 months after the move. It was painful. And while other family members (like my crazy great-aunt) were convinced that my family had "abandoned" me, I knew that it was a choice that had made for myself and to a certain degree, I was okay with that fact.

This is not to say that I have to have all of my loved ones surrounding me 24/7 - God knows I would go crazy within a week! I have no idea what I am trying to say....I guess what I am trying to get at is the the fear is simply that - a fear. I know that I can experience separation - I am at the point where I have been there, done that, and will continue facing that. What I need to keep remembering is that no matter who comes and goes in my life, I have God as my one constant and He's all I really need.

Regarding Singapore, we leave in 16 days! Oh my goodness! I am SO excited! This is the first mission trip I will lead and while I may not be perfect for the role, I have faith that things will work out. I pray that we can effectively help our missionaries in Singapore and that God can use us in amazing ways to expand His kingdom. We have a little over $3,000 to raise for the entire team and finances are still pouring in. Please continue to pray for our team - for finances, passports, bonding, and an impact to be made when we take off.

Please continue to pray for Akalina - this summer has been difficult for her and has some decisions to make in the next few days. Also, her dad, John was just diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his esophogus. He is going through blood tests and CAT scans to make sure it did not spread to other parts of his body. Soon, he will go under the knife to get the tumor removed and then start chemo. Please pray for John, his healing, and for strength to battle this cancer.

My sisters, brother, and Mom are flying out for the next two weeks! Janessa and Tamara arrive Thursday morning in an ungodly hour of the morning and everyone else flies in 6 days later. I can't wait to see them! It will have been almost 8 months since I have last seen them and apparently McKinley has grown even more. Oh my goodness - that kid grows faster than a weed! Things should be fun with Chris meeting my family for the first time and although he keeps in touch with Tamara over Facebook Chat, it'll be a nex experience to meet her face-to-face. And while I am a bit nervous about it, I am super excited at the same time! This next 16 days until Singapore will be crazy - and then there's another 10 days of Singapore to work with - here's to the next 26 days of craziness!

Spiritual Warfare, Fears, and Such

Right now, I am loving this whole blogging-website. I am finding it very useful to inform you of things have have recently happened. One of which is on spiritual warfare.

Yesterday, for the 4th of July, Chris and I went to Tracy to visit his high school youth pastor Harley, his wife Abbey, and their 10 month-old daughter Grace. The trip was nice and relaxing and I got to play with little Gracie quite a bit (she's sooooo cute). And since Abbey's parents were in town at the same time, they got the guest bedroom, which left Chris and I in the living room. I was given the couch to sleep on and Chris took the floor. Everything was fine until I fell into a deep sleep and ended up having the biggest nightmare of my life. Since I did not have a pen and paper handy right after I woke up, I can recall the main parts as I type this out - here it goes.

Chris and I were searching for a new church to attend - you now, just testing the waters out. We arrived at this one church that resembled the little chapel in Disney's Robin Hood (the animated movie). Since it was small and cute, and I tend to gravitate towards both those features, we went inside. Inside the church, the small congregation was nice and courteous and welcomed us with open arms. We decided to stay at that church and get connected. None of our other friends and family were there, it was just us that found the church and decided to attend it. There was a little town connected to the church and it was enclosed by an old concerte wall that was approximately 4.5 - 5 feet tall. There were nice houses and a grocery store and everything else that we would need within those walls. Part of the church's beliefs were that we all needed to live together - that we would be mocked by outsiders and that in order to stay strong in the faith, we needed to stay among believers. AND once we set up home within the concrete walls, we were to stay there, in order to stay safe. At the time, all of this made sense. As more time went on, I realized that the church was brainwashing us into believing certain things. I fought as hard as I could to not fall into their trap. They would pin me to the ground and try to torture me, trying to get me to understand and believe what they were telling me was the truth. Again and again, I fought back. Chris came up to me and told me that he remembered that he was given three weeks of vacation from work, and that he didn't want me to accompany him, instead, some other girl whose name I can't remember would be. He then added that he wanted to break up.

I remember not saying anything after that, turning around, and running away with my face burried in my hands and sobbing. But, I had to keep it together. The other townspeople were very concerned with other people's business and "keeping each other accountable" so they said. I got a note passed to me on a post-it note saying that "You don't need him anyway." I hadn't even told anyone and nobody was there when it happened, either! Creepy! And I never saw Chris again.

That's when I found Andrew Hartman within the concrete walls. He said that he had also joined the church and then asked me how I was doing. I told him I was fine. He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that Chris had told him everything and that I can take my walls down. I started to sob again. And Andrew whisped in my ear about there being a way out of the "village" and that Brett Best was there waiting for us on the other side. At this point I noticed other people around us and I motioned to Andrew to keep things quiet. A few minutes later, another post-it note arrived at my door. Someone was listening to our conversation fairly close and was able to pick up the words Brett - waiting - other side, which were noted on the post-it and it also contained a message stating that they knew what the plans were and they wouldn't let me go. I felt so incredibly alone and helpless and hopeless. I was surrounded by fear, and fear was starting to get the best of me.

The next thing I remember is sitting nex to our "priest" on a concrete bench; he held a "Bible" in his hands and was trying to "cast the deamons out" of me while at the same time, trying to hypnotize me that when my children (apparently I had some, who knows?) are disobeying me, they deserved to die. Again, I started to fight him and sobbed the entire time. Andrew was then led down a path that led to myself and the "pastor". He was bound by rope and the priest then told me that if I wanted Andrew to live, then I would have to profess his doctorine as truth. I told him no and the pastor then lit a match and held it to Andrew's face and I saw him slowly burn in the flames.

I woke up from this sobbing. After a few minutes of non-stop tears flowing down my cheeks, I stopped and realized that there was no way that my mind could have imagined all of that. It was so real to me! In my dream, I was living my worst fear - separation. In my dream, I was separated from my friends, my family, my church, my boyfriend, my real home, and they were trying to separate me from my faith, my (future???) children, my one friend, everything. And I started to panic. But the one thing that they could not take away from me was my God and my faith. It's what got me through the nightmare and back to "reality." I started to pray, over and over again for God to remind me that I am not alone, that I am not separated from the one thing in this world that matters the most - Him. I got up to the bathrom to wipe my tears away and I got back into my sleeping bag. I was still shook up from the nightmare, and was crying a bit. AND THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME - EVER! I have never been so shaken by a dream before. I looked down and Chris was asleep 3 feet away from me. I knew that Satan was behind my nightmare and I wanted so badly to wake him up and tell him. But something in my mind was telling me not to because it's not nice to wake people up in the middle of the night and interrupt their sleep. I was feeding into this lie for about 10-15 minutes, as I sat there in bed, wondering - should I or shouldn't I.

Eventually, I got up and went to the bathroom again to wipe my tears away and came back to the living room where I woke Chris up and told him a short version of the nightmare. There was so much going through my mind and I couldn't remember every detail about the dream, so it probably sounded all jumbled up. He just listened, held me in his arms and prayed over me. My breathing came back to its normal speed and eventually I went back to my own bed. But I was still being plagued by this nightmare and how Satan used by worst fear against me in so many different levels. I sang worship songs in my head to fall back alseep which took about 45 minutes to happen. What a crazy night! I think for the next few weeks, I will only be listening to worship songs in my car.

And I thought by letting you know about this attack, it will not only unite us as friends, loved ones, and family, but also help keep you aware of the spiritual warfare that rages all around us. I pray that you are never attacked (especially like I was) and your faith and strength simply multiplies exponentially.

As I have been reminded, you will never be alone; never truly alone. God is always here and he will never leave you, nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5).