3 months (almost) til OC!

In approximately 3ish months (2 months and 3 weeks, to be exact...), I will be officially done with my freshman year at Northwestern and on a plane to Ocean City NJ! It seems like such a long way off, but I know it will come quicker than I expect.

Some background on how I came to decide to take this leap of faith and spend my summer serving God in OC. I applied for OC in December 2009, mostly under pressure from the OC alums at Northwestern who can't seem to stop talking about how awesome it is. I really wasn't sure about going when I talked to my parents over break, and I came back to school really torn between OC and another mission trip I had heard about through my church. I got officially accepted to OC on January 30, but it took me until February 16 for me to make my decision. It took multiple conversations, a forced pro/con list, a failed coffee date, phone calls/Skype sessions and prayer for me to work through what I felt like God was leading me to do this summer. I love service and mission work, and the trip I was considering is so close to my heart. But evangelism, the focus of Summer Project, is something I've never been confident in, mainly because the concept really scares me. But being at college, I have started experiencing awesome growth in my faith, and felt like God kept putting me in places to talk about my faith, and I wanted to be able to talk about it with confidence. So I saw that spending the summer growing these two aspects of my faith was really where I would be most challenged and able to come back ready to impact my campus.

So, I chose Summer Project and am 100% confident that is where God wants me this summer. What He plans to do with me and how I will be challenged, I have no idea. And that's scary. But, at the same time, I'm really excited and have found amazing support from my friends and family. I'm praying that this support continues to come in (spiritually, emotionally, financially).

This blog is meant to be for anyone who is supporting me in any way, so that you can see what your support is going towards (and hopefully, you like what you see!), people considering supporting me (so you can see what you would be getting youself into) and people who are just interested in why I'm spending my first summer after college away from home for 2 months. It's also just for myself, because I know this is a summer I will want to remember, and blogging seemed like a good way to complete both tasks :)