Buffalo, N.Y. Update (Part 1 of who knows how many!)

Well....I'm back, part of me anyways. It seems like everytime I go somewhere part of me stays. I remember watching the sunset as we drove to the airport leaving the Dominican Republic, promising myself that if God wanted me to come back I would. I can still see children in my mind as I left Vietnam, would I go back? YES!
Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo...NOT A MEMORY SOON TO BE FORGOTTEN.
One the way up, I will never forget! It was Cow Appreciation day!!! So if you dressed up like a cow you got free food!!! What a money saver!

What fun! Some boys in our van made up a rap about Chick-Fil-A and actually rapped it at our Lunch stop Chick-Fil-A! What a hoot!
The trip up there was long, very long. But I learned a couple of things:
1)OHIO IS ONE OF THE LONGEST STATES EVER!!!!! AUGH!
2) Pennsylvannia is a hard name to spell!
3) Tennessee is STILL my favorite place to be. :)

We arrived shortly after midnight exhausted and weary, all we needed though was a good few hours of sleep and that's what we did. We woke up the next morning ate breakfast and headed off to Orientation with John Tashe & his wife Ms. Shirley. While there we met the interns for Lunch. People from everywhere!!!!! Abbey from Ohio! Elizabeth from Massachuests(another hard one to spell ;)) and Victoria, Sean, & Desmond from BU-FF-AL-O! haha
Seeing people from everywhere was so neat! That we had come together for one cause, one vision.

That night we had our very first ministy opportunities, we helped a lady named ms. Joanna, who started a ministry called, the Mary Magdelene Project, it is aimed towards women, a lot of them are prostitutes. So we had a event called The Rose Cafe and we cooked for many women and ministeried to them. It was great! I enjoyed hearing the kids on my team younger than I, tell their stories.
I ministeried in my own way that night...in the kitchen. But I had a blast regardless!
I realized something that night...
*I'm the kind of person who will volunteer to do anything noone else wants to do. Most people want to be out and about praying for people and ministring(Nothing against that I am like that too) but when it comes to backstage jobs, not many people are ampt to do so. So I decided I would do it. As much as I wanted to be out there, I wasn't.
That night, I had peace as I piled out of the van to head to the hotel. Peace and Contentment laying in bed falling asleep. :) How nice!

Sunday, wow! We got to go to the Dream Center(the main church we worked with) church service. It was amazing! The Pastor(Eric Johns) talked about that when you have a passion for Christ, it shows in Compassion towards others! His passion & zeal showed in everything he said, in every step he took. It was great getting to know him & his wife, Michelle and their family.

That night we had the opportunity to go to Niagara Falls. What a beautiful place. As I watched the water with so much power fall over the falls, I wondered if this was what God's love was like...constant flowing, with enough force to cause some damage!
What kind of damage am I talking about?
I mean the damage that brings us to our knees!
The damage that brings peace, not destruction/stress.
The love damage that casts out ALL fear!!!!!

^But than again, I saw pictures of Niagara Falls at Winter Time and it looked frozen-I don't know if it really was or if water was flowing under the ice, but God's love is greater than ALL that water! Wow!
What an tremendous thought...
Perfect Love Casts Out All Fear.
Soon, I would be realizing how much I would be grateful that I knew this verse.