Parents, New York, and the LAST Week

Hard to believe it’s been nearly a month since I last posted on here! Lots has happened J

The first weekend this month Dad and Mom came up to see me! They “kidnapped” me for the weekend, and we went camping outside of Asheville, NC. We did a lot of hiking that weekend, mostly to see waterfalls along the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are definitely some gorgeous ones!!!

It was really good to get to spend some time with my parents, and fun to get out and see some of the beauty of western North Carolina! On Friday before we headed out of Boone, I also got to introduce them to some of my co-workers and show them around the department a bit, so that was good too.

I’m not nearly doing that weekend justice….you can look at my Facebook photo album to see my pictures from it, and they have more description of what we did.

The next week (Aug. 5-10) was another adventure. The first two days I was at work, like normal. That Monday night the church small group that my hosts are part of went out together to do miniature golf. It was definitely the craziest putt putt course I’ve ever seen, up a steep hill! I somehow managed to win in our group of four.

On Wednesday, I headed out for my reporting trip to New York. Driving down to Charlotte I experienced thick fog for at least 30 minutes, which made for some tense driving. Then when I got to New York, I picked up my rental car and headed out to find my hotel. Which was also a driving adventure, because my directions were wrong, since the hotel was in an odd place. And it was NY driving, so that made it interesting in and of itself!

A few things I noticed: They evidently don’t believe in turn lanes or having an arrow in the light signal. People definitely use their horns a lot more. And there are just way too many people and cars. But I survived three days of driving there, so I consider that a success!

On Thursday morning I had breakfast with the SP staff and volunteers at their church headquarters. It was fun because the site managers were the same people who had been in Joplin, and the same videographer came out to cover the dedication.

I spent the day interviewing a few volunteers and watching them work on the two houses that were in process there. That evening, the owners of the house that would be dedicated the next day came to the church to be interviewed. It was really neat to get to hear their story, and so good to get to know them.

The next morning, they took the videographer and me out to show us around their little town. They had lots of stories to tell, since the house that Hurricane Sandy destroyed had been owned by their family all their lives.

That afternoon, around 100 people flooded their large yard to celebrate with them the dedication of the first house rebuilt by Samaritan’s Purse since the storm nine months ago. To read more about that, you can check out the article I wrote posted on the SP website!

As in Joplin, I was so blessed by everyone I interacted with. Since it is still early in the rebuild process in New York, I didn’t talk to as many homeowners. But the staff and volunteers again provided wonderful testimony to the work God is doing in and through them.

That Friday evening, after I had fellowshipped with the people at the church for a while, I went down to the beach to go wading in the ocean a bit. I had quite an adventure, as you can read in my previous blog post! God certainly provided J

The next day I guess I felt like I hadn’t had enough adventures, so I decided to drive up into Manhattan a bit to see more of NYC before I left, since I had been away from the main part of the city for most of my trip. Traffic was worse than I expected on a Saturday morning, and before long I was ready to leave the big city behind for a while. Barely made it to the airport in time, but again everything worked out.

Thankfully I had a day and a half to “recover” from my trip before heading back to work again. I was pretty apprehensive about how that Monday would go, because the Monday after my Joplin trip was tough and because the two days before my trip had been rough too. But on Sunday, God did some needed work on my heart, and He really turned my attitude around. You can read more about it on my spiritual blog, starting here.

So thanks to that, instead of being hard Monday was one of the best days. For the first time, I felt completely at peace with where I was. It was a huge blessing and an answer to many people’s prayers!

The next day came a conversation I had been expecting for a while. My supervisors informed me that they had an open position in the communications department, and asked if I would be interested in applying. Long story short, God continued working in my heart that week and the next to give me an increasing sense of peace with pursuing staying on at SP.

The job opening was posted on Friday, and I submitted my application on my last Monday. On my last day (Aug. 23), I had an “interview” with my supervisors. They let me know that they’ve got a couple other candidates they’re looking at, and I let them know that I would definitely love to join the team, if that’s what they think would be a good fit.

Since nothing was finalized yet, I said all my farewells and packed up all my stuff to fly back home the next day. And now I’m kind of just playing the waiting game….waiting to see whether God will open that door, or whether He has something else in store for me. While I’m not excited to just be waiting again, I’m glad to have some time at home. And I know God will continue faithfully leading J

(To read what I wrote for SP about the Joplin trip last month, check out the article here and my blog post for them here.)

Angels in Disguise

So.......visiting the Long Island Beach tonight nearly cost me what I'm guessing would have been about $500..............

Let me back up. I came to Island Park, New York for the weekend to cover the dedication of the first home rebuilt by Samaritan's Purse after Hurricane Sandy, which was today. {Warning - long story coming up}

I bid farewell to the SP folks at the church, and they had told me where I could go to be on an ocean beach. It wasn't far away, so I decided to go. I got there at about 8:40, so it was definitely past dusk. Tried to take some pictures, and started getting my feet wet wading. Then I decided to put my camera, my phone, my flip flops, and my rental car keys together in a pile so that I could wade without worrying about my stuff getting wet.

That was shortly after 8:50. I quickly realized that the waves were going further in than I expected, so I grabbed my pile of stuff and moved it to a different place. I debated moving it further inland, but as I had walked onto the beach a beach police patrol vehicle had driven by. I could see his lights down the beach, and didn't want to take the chance that he would run over my stuff! So I put it down in a new place, but still rather uncomfortably close to the water.

A tiny bit later, I went to move it again or something, and in picking up my stuff I realized that my car keys were not right there with the other stuff. I knew I was in trouble. I turned up my phone screen brightness to use as a flashlight and started looking for the keys. Thankfully there was a pile of rocks that created a boundary marking point on one side of the area. I knew my keys had to be between where I first put my stuff and where the rocks were, a distance of maybe 20 yards. Unless the waves had already carried them away....................

The phone did no good. I got on my hands and knees and crawled along the track I had thought I walked between the two places. No luck. About that time, the police car came back toward where I was. I walked over to him and flagged him down. He had someone in the back, I think a kid who was breaking curfew or something. He didn't have a flashlight, but he turned his floodlight on and drove between the two points where I thought it was three times as I walked alongside looking. Nothing. He had to take the kid home, and said I should call a tow truck if I couldn't find them.

Long before that point, I had been praying asking God to please help me find my keys. I knew He knew where they are, and I sure would like to have them!!! I had noticed that the keys said on them "average replacement cost is $225." And if I followed the policemen's suggestion, I'd have to pay a good bit to have it towed, most likely plus a chunk more for a locksmith to get me into the car so I could get my stuff out. After the police man left, I walked back and forth I don't know how many times between the two points, shuffling my feet in the sand, just hoping that I would run into the keys with my feet. "Please guide my steps," I prayed. A knot was forming in my stomach as I thought about how much this would cost. And yes, I was definitely worried.

By 9:08, I realized I probably was not going to find the keys. And that I needed to call someone from SP to come pick me up before it got too much later. I didn't have anyone's number who was at the church (about 15 minutes away) - at least not on my phone. It was in my notebook in my car, which I couldn't get into. I did have the videographer's number in my phone, but he was at his hotel, 30 minutes away. I called him and asked him to send me the site manager's number. When I got off the phone with him and waited for the text message, I noticed I only had one bar of battery left on my phone. That made me honestly scared for the first time. "God help me," I said, knowing I was fixing to really be in a mess.

A lady and two gentlemen, one with a little kid on his shoulders walked over to me and asked if I had lost something. I questioned for a moment how wise it was to tell complete strangers that I was locked out of my car and pretty much stranded. But it was obvious that I was looking for something, and I didn't have much choice. I told them I had lost my car keys, and where I thought they ought to be, but that I was just calling a friend to get me. It was 9:13, and the text message came as I was talking to them. I called the SP site manager's number. It rang maybe four or five times, no answer. But then I hung up, because those three angels in disguise had called out to me that they found my keys. Yep, I had been looking for those silly things for 15-20 minutes, and they found them in about three minutes.

They handed me the keys, and I asked them if they would come with me to my car so that I could give them some money as a thank you. But they didn't want anything. I told them how very grateful I was. I can't even express how relieved I was about it! Oh my....God certainly provided!!!!

They walked away down the beach, and I went back to enjoying wading a bit, since I had barely had time to do so yet. But this time, I kept all of my stuff with me, you'd better believe it. Standing there, the waves crashing against my legs, I recovered a little bit from the nervous tension I had been under for the past several minutes. And just thanked God. It was definitely a reminder that He will take care of me, even when I'm not so smart and even in the "little" things.

God is so very amazingly good! And yes, God would be just as amazingly good if I hadn't ever found my keys, or if the ocean had swept them away. But I give Him lots of thanks for the fact that in this case He decided to protect and bless me, despite my smidgen of stupidity. :)