“The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands.”- Psalm 138:8

Wow. I don’t even know how to sum up the past few days. There are literally no words to describe the absolute peace that I feel and the sense of purpose that has completely overwhelmed me. Don’t tell me God doesn’t answer prayer, because my life is most certainly a living testimony to that. So, to all of you who are continually throwin’ my name up to God…once again, rest assured that your prayers are being heard and answered.

So, Saturday was parent orientation at BCC. Yeah…I had to work from 9 to 4 on a Saturday. Awesome. It was utterly terrifying having to get up and speak in front of all those parents, and let me just tell you how fun it was to be drilled with question after question about their precious baby boys. {shudder} But, one amazing thing came out of it. I told the parents that I was open to constructive criticism (which I am), so one mother raised her hand and said, “Teacher Christin, maybe if you smile more and laugh more in class, your students will have fun and learn more.” Ok…I think I’m a pretty fun person, and I felt like saying, “Well if your sons would behave themselves and not act like demons then I might be happy enough to smile!” but upon reflection…this woman was exactly right! I took the “no smiling til Christmas” rule to the extreme, and I’ve been nothing short of a Nazi b*tch to my kids since school started. Granted, they obey my rules now, but at that moment, I made myself a promise that I would lighten up. I’ve been here 2 months; the homesickness has temporarily subsided; life is good; why not start enjoying my job? So…fast forward to this week…

I rolled into work on Monday with a smile on my face and a vow to laugh a little more and smile a little brighter in class. And lo and behold…I had the most amazing day ever! I walked in to each of my classes and erased all the point boards clean and announced that it was a brand new week. I’ve done art activities, PE labs, English integration, and so much stuff already this week to break up the monotony of practice math problems and it’s only Tuesday! MY KIDS LOVE ME! (And I guess I’ll have to admit that I kinda think they’re cool, too.) Crap…I can’t start liking the whole teaching thing or I’ll prove myself wrong about everything I’ve said over the last year. Haha.

So anyway, I gotta talk about last night! I took a taxi to the airport to meet up with my wonderful Epsilon tap sister Jennifer Mitchell. Now, this girl is my hero. She just finished a year-long trip around the world doing ministry in 11 (or 12?) different countries…one a month! She did this thing called the World Race, and it’s absolutely amazing. Seeing her smiling face at the airport made my life! And hearing some of her stories about seeing people come to know the Lord…fighting battles of spiritual warfare…seeing people HEALED!!! Like, we’re talkin’…this girl saw people’s legs grow back and witnessed blind people gaining their sight! How unreal is that?! It’s absolutely the coolest stuff I’ve ever heard…and YOU should check out her blog here >>> www.jenniferlmitchell.com . Seeing Jenn was exactly what I needed. She’s the ultimate encourager, and being able to talk to her about everything in life from God to guys to teaching to world travels was perfect, and it’s so easy to just pick up from where we left off a year ago! I love friendships like that. Before I left the airport, she prayed for me…and I wish I could describe the way it made me feel. Well, the way it made my spirit feel rather. Like I was on fire…I felt like I could take on the world! It’s like my purpose was confirmed and just made more real to me with every word that came out of her mouth. I’m tellin’ ya…that girl is anointed.

So…I’ve said before that God’s just thrown opportunities at me to share my faith, and today he did it again. Last night on the way home from the airport, I was contemplating how I’m supposed to share with different people (i.e. my students, my co-workers, random taxi drivers, monks, etc.) and came to the conclusion that I need to learn a little bit of Thai. I talked to Jenn about all of that, too, and confessed that I want so bad to be able to just bust out speaking Thai and not even know it. Maybe that’s what speaking in tongues is…I don’t really even know about all that and I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on those kind of gifts. But anyway, I was just stumped on how to go about witnessing to people, and Jenn was like, “You just gotta rely on the Holy Spirit and live your life. People will know you’re different by the way you love them and how you act.” So, which brings me to today’s story…

I’m just sitting in my after school class yelling at the boys to sit down and do their homework or something, and this student comes up to my desk. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you his name. How awful is that? He’s not one of the discipline problems and he’s not one of the smart kids so he falls in the blind middle. So anyway, this kid just walks up to me and says, “Teacha Christin, are you a Christian?” DO WHAT!? Never in my life would I have expected that. I mean, divine appointment? I think so. So I said, “Yeah, I am…are you?” And that led into this long conversation that eventually involved 4 or 5 other students and lasted up until it was time to go home at 4. Turns out, all the students who were asking me questions about my faith were Buddhist, but their curiosity about my beliefs was adorable. We talked about what each of us believed about Jesus and who he is and how he lived his life. The boys told me what they believed about Him as Buddhists, and it was just an all-around amazing conversation. The one boy kept asking me “Why” questions, so that opened up so many doors for me, too. I told him I was a Christian because I could see how God worked in my life, especially though prayer. He then said, “You know Teacha, I pray to Jesus sometimes when I forget to do my homework. I pray that you won’t take it up the next day…and sometimes you don’t, so that makes me believe.” Awww…..too cute. Some of the other boys agreed that they pray to Jesus sometimes, too, so that’s interesting to me. When it was time to go home, I told them that they were gonna have to talk to me more about Buddhism so I could understand better…so I put the responsibility on them to teach me, so I will have more opportunities to indirectly teach them about Christ. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?! God is SO amazing…I can’t even tell you about the spiritual high I’m on right now. There’s nothing like it. And it’s not like I even did anything…I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit just took over and spoke through me because if it was just Christin talking, I would have failed miserably. So praise God for real!

Keep up the prayers, friends. I swear they’re being answered on a daily basis. Life is good…God is good…the end.

I’m out. //Cwalk.