My "summer break" is over...

My third semester of nursing school started today. But before I start talking about my first day of classes, maybe I should give you a run down of my two week break. It was really nice, lots of relaxing, hanging with friends, activities with my home church, and time with my family. My favorite part about it though, was that I was really able to stop my life and look to God more clearly then I've been able to in a while. I had already posted earlier about my break and my times with God, but I never really said what God has been showing me.

I graduate in a year, which has really gotten me thinking about what I want to do in the few years after college. Since high school, when God started putting a passion for missions in my heart, I've wanted to do something called the Journeyman program (http://going.imb.org/shorterm.asp). It is a program with the International Mission Board for single college graduates in their twenties. When I went to Niger in December, I stayed with two Journeyman, and really saw the amazing way that God uses them. Since getting back from Niger, God has been building more and more of a desire within me to serve him overseas for a couple years as a single woman.

When I look at all my thoughts about what I could possibly do after graduation, it kind of reminds me of snow cones... When I was in high school the snow cone man always showed up during the hotter months right at 2:40 when school let out. A lot of times I would want to try a new flavor or one that I had had a while back and liked. But I always had to go back to the dreamsicle eventually, because I mean... it's the best and usually what I wanted most. The past few years I have had tons of ideas about what I might want to do. Ideas from studying public health or becoming a nurse practitioner to joining the peace corp to working in NICU. But, no matter what new interests pop up in my head, I always come back to missions... to Journeyman, it's my dreamsicle!

I think I finally understood that, and came to terms with that during the break. And it's funny, because last time that I really got close to God was while I was in Niger and during the weeks that I returned, and during that time I also really felt led to plan on applying for journeyman. It just always seems that different things, including nursing, sometimes gets me off course. But I know that God will use my love for nursing with my passion for missions. In fact the first night in high school that it really became clear to me, was when I heard the story about a journeyman who was a nurse in a closed country... could get into the country because she was a nurse...

Anyways, I didn't mean to write a whole post on that... but my first day of school... I had community nursing today. My other classes this semester are psych and older adult. I'm really excited about community because a lot of it will involve working with poorer communities, minorities, and refugees. I'm also excited about learning more about community nursing, because weirdly enough it's kind of like a mix of politics and nursing. It should be a good semester though. I'm excited about my classes, but more excited about the relationships that I'm going to form this semester, getting involved in a new church in bham, and just seeing what God has planned!!