So giving credit where credit is due here, I'll start at the beginning of the Honduras journey. I am sure my love for Honduras was being planted several years ago when by a turn of events I had decided instead of going to West Liberty with my best friends from high school, I was going to head to Nashville TN to go to Lipscomb. It was the end of July and my cousin, Eric, had called and we talked and he said "Jen I really think you should come and visit before you make a final decision on where you're going to school." To which I almost in gest replied, "well I'll come look, it'll be fun to come to Nashville, but I can almost guarantee you I'm not going to go there." Never say never, why did I say that so adamantly??!! Guess where I ended up, YEP Lipscomb. I've not regretted God's decision about that for a single second, while I missed my friends from high school, and still do, I knew this was the path I was supposed to take. As a matter of fact when I think back over my life those were two of the best years of my life for sure. It was one fun time after another. My roommate ended up being from Columbus, Ohio how weird is that that we ended up rooming together in Tennessee and were both from Ohio. Doesn't happen too often. As God would have it, she had turned in her housing application late also we found out later and so the latecomers were stuck together in a little room on the second floor of Fanning Hall. God knew what he was doing because to this day she is one of my dearest friends. We were two peas in a pod and it was scary. I'll share just one crazy story of how stupid we were together...We got to be the fire marshalls of our hall, which is a tremendously prestigious position to hold. Basically it means when the fire alarm sounds you run down the hall like a crazy woman telling all the other gals to get out of the building so as not to get burned up. Well that couldn't be all there was to it for us. We had gone to the toy store and bought red firemen hats and whistles. We were ready!! So one night we'd found out we were going to have a fire drill and we slept with our hats in hand our whistles around our necks and our shoes on so when the fire alarm sounded we were poised and ready. Oh dear I could go on and on we did some crazy stuff and laughed oh my goodness we laughed so hard all the time!! I was so blessed. You hear horrible roommate stories, I never had that. I can only remember one time getting upset with each other, I have no idea what about but like five minutes later all was well. Good times. Dawn was our RA and soon became one of my favorite people. I still remember a time when I'd had to go home and have some tests run because I wasn't feeling well and I came back and had a Calvin and Hobbes drawing on my wall with Hobbes hugging Calvin and she'd written her name beside Hobbes and my name beside Calvin. It was a sisterhood moment. My favorite Dawn moment however was when we were talking one night in her room and I was just sharing with her some things I'd done that I wasn't proud of and that hurt my heart and I looked over and she had tears running down her cheeks. Still to this day it reminds me that sometimes people don't need your words nearly as much as they need your heart. She just sat and helped me cry that day and I learned something about compassion for people there that I don't think I'll ever forget. Good friendships formed there, and they became my family while I was so far away from my own. We really were sisters. It wasn't long until Sumer and I were hanging out with the RA's and just as a sidenote there were all kinds of perks to go along with that. (late privileges when we weren't supposed to have any because we were peon freshman, etc.) Enter Judy Louise Mitchell a.k.a. "Weeze". Although there were several people who significantly impacted my life at Lipscomb if I had to pick one who most significantly impacted my heart for Honduras she's the girl. Let me just tell you this first. Judy is a Canadian...which we always had a lot of fun with... I always wanted to sing O Canada to the tune of O Christmas Tree and it never worked out well. Because Judy was Canadian she didn't get government financial aid and so in order to come to Lipscomb to get a Christian education before she came she got most of her stuff together and had a yard sale to pay to get there. I don't know why but that still gets me. I never wanted it that bad and I saw few others that did either. We watched her over and over again work odd jobs babysitting or nannying for the summers, or whatever so that she could be there at a Christian university. She's good stuff. She started going to Honduras when she was at Lipscomb in the summers and she'd come back from her trips and let me read her journal that she wrote in while she was there about all the things she'd seen and felt while being among those people. You couldn't help but be touched. She was a Paul who couldn't stop speaking about what she'd seen and heard. It was evident that there was something tremendously special there.
I'll close this one there for now and finish the next part of the story in another blog soon. It's been a journey a beautiful journey that God has taken me on and as I look back now I can't doubt a single part of God's divine wisdom in it. Perhaps I share this part of the story today to remind you and myself to be thankful for the people who helped to begin the seeds of your "grown up" faith. For me it was my gals at Lipscomb and those times. They will always be precious to me because of that. I was with a friend this weekend who was sharing about a leadership conference she'd just attended where she was asked to list on a sheet of paper the people who had most significantly influenced her life up to this point and the quality that had most impacted her from their life. I think I began my list today. I pray it's not finished until I draw my last breath and I'm always able to appreciate those people God sends to my life and I notice the impact that they've made.
Thanks gals. You were the beginning of the change to a for real faith and although it took a while to ever get there and your hearts hurt along the way God used you and you'll always be names on my list of people who've most significantly impacted my life. Continue to be blessed and be a blessing!!
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