Eve of my trip

The last time I went to the continent of Africa I ate at Pei Wei a few days before my flight. I don't remember what I ordered but I do remember my fortune cookies. I thought they were quite fitting for the start of a new adventure in Tchad. It's funny that I again ate at Pei Wei and found my fortune cookies to be again fitting for my short adventure in Tanzania.

A visit to a strange place will bring you renewed perspective.

What will I learn over the next few days? Will my perspective really change? What exactly is my perspective on life/my future?!

New and rewarding opportunities will soon develop for you.

Duh.

No need to worry! You will always have everything that you need.

This last one is from God. I've been scared recently. Not that I would run out of money (which is always a small fear) but that I wouldn't have the things of my heart. The things that I don't tell others about, the things that are deep down inside. I've been afraid.

No fear though, God's got me covered as usual.

Thank God for that.

Africa, I'm coming.

Africa I'm coming.

I hope that you are ready for me.

I am prepared to go anywhere, provide it be forward.

~ David Livingstone, missionary to Africa

Love

I love to love.

I love most things.

I love to travel.

I love to meet new people.

I love the colour purple, green, blue and yellow.

I love camp.

I love my family.

I love to touch people.

I love nature.

I love love.

I took the Myers-Briggs personality test and it said that I am an ENFP and that I love to love.

I've always loved the idea for a great job would be to simply work at a coffee shop, like Starbucks, and simply love the people who came in to get coffee. What a difference it might make if my sole job was to love people. To love my coworkers and the customers. To give them their coffee and pour out love to them. That idea always gets me excited and I'm glad I have a back up plan.

I also really love 1 Corinthians 13:13;

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I especially love the chapter in 1 Corintians 13.

Doesn't that just move you! The greatest of everything is LOVE!

The LOVE chapter, ahh, so beautiful.

I've heard the connection being made between 1 John 4:7,8

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

It's even a song that children sing. So with that verse you know that God is love and I could then say:

God is patient and kind. God is not jealous or boastful or proud . . . and so on. How wonderful!

Then this last year as I was struggling with who Jesus was I went back to the basics and started reading the Gospels. In those I realized that Jesus is so kind and patient and I realized how well He loved people. It's the kind of Love I wanted to have coming from me too, after all no one loves love like an ENFP.

So I decided I needed to love like God and I put my name in where the word love is.

Sonya is patient and kind.

Sonya is not jealous or boastful or proud. . . Wait a minute! Am I? Am I those things? Oh how I want to be! I want to LOVE better than I do.

I pray that God will help me to love the way He LOVES. To remind myself of what I need aim for I put my name in and read through it.

Sonya is patient and kind.

Sonya is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.

She does not demand her own way.

She is not irritable, and keeps no record of being wronged.

Sonya does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Sonya never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

It's not always spot on in my life. But God lives in me and we are working together on this, (actually I am not doing anything but allowing Him to love through me). I am a work in progress.

You should try the same thing, can you put your name in it and say that you love like God? Cause that's what we should aim for. To love like He loves us is the greatest thing we can do.

Try putting your name in it and see how it effects today and tomorrow.

My brother, Christopher Reaves.

This afternoon I was able to see my brother perform. It was the first time in something like, 10 years. He was great. He was Dromio from A Comedy of Errors and he was also Haemon in Antigone.

I liked both parts because he played two drastically different characters. The first was a funny comedic role that he has always been good at in my eyes. It's a family thing to get those kind of roles. They just come easy to us. He had wit and great timing. He played well off of the other characters. His character was also a physically abused character! They were always throwing around those servants and he came home with bruises, cuts and damaged appendages.

The second character however was great. He delivered some strong words to the King of Creon, his father. I followed that monologue the whole way with ease and sympathy. He had conviction and passion. I could see the turmoil that his character had. Normally I think to myself that it would be strange to watch my brother play a serious character, but now I know he can and I enjoyed watching it.

While I'm no newspaper review, I give it two thumbs up.

If perhaps you want a to read the real review you can.

Heat.

I am currently living on the face of the sun. Yup, it's that hot here. I can't believe I survived this as a child. I don't remember the temperatures ever being this hot. They should have a label on the state sign saying if you leave Texas for extended periods of time to be cautious of when you return because it could be fatal if it is in August.

While I am here, in Texas, my dad is graciously letting me use his extra car, the reason it is his extra is because it doesn't have a/c and it is almost usless in the summer without a/c. It does however have a convertible top which makes up for the lack of cool air flow. I'm a girl and of course enjoy driving around in it, however I foolishly decided to run some errands today between the hours of 12 noon and 5pm. Not the 'coolest' choice I've ever made.

I'm just glad I didn't die of heat stroke.

You Northerners might think I'm exagerating, I only wish I was.

Travel.

I just flew to Texas from Fresno, Ca. It was a nice flight. Mainly what made it nice was the fact that in Pheonix, AZ I was one of the few people who volunteered to take a different airlines flight to get to Texas plus 225$ in US Airways credit :) So I would say it was a productive flight.

Now if I could only get my lost suitcase that has my clothes in it . . .

Cell Phone Service

So how is it that they could talk to the astronauts on Apollo 13 while they were floating a gagillion miles in outer space yet AT&T can't give me cell phone service in Yosemite National Park??

It's like I'm on the dark side of the moon out here.

One summer day about 19 years ago a little girl was introduced to camp for the first time. She had been waiting a whole summer and a winter for her parents to let her go.

She was in cabin 15b, her counselors name was Cynthia and there was a co-counselor and a pet raccoon named Oreo. For this little girl it was the best week of her life. The stories lasted all winter long and were then replaced by her second summer at camp. After that first summer she knew that the greatest thing in the world to do was to be a counselor. Counselors were the luckiest people on earth. The little girl continued to go to camp for several years, one year when her mom was going through check in with her, she remembers over hearing her mom talk to a former student of hers. She was asking her how she was and then asked her a question about the pay scale for staff. It was one of those moments when time stops, the camera zooms in on the main character and their eyes grow wide, they got paid?! How could this not be the best job in the world? It was at that moment that the little girl KNEW that she was going to be a staff member because it WAS the best job in all the world. People got paid to hang out at camp ALL SUMMER LONG.

For seven years that little girl went to camp. She made friends, learned how to make leather crafts, candles, sing camp songs, and so much more. She felt loved and accepted by the staff, and wanted to follow in their steps. While in high school she applied to work at camp but wasn't accepted. So she did other things during those years never forgetting her dream.

The year she graduated from high school she was accepted to work at a camp on the east coast, a camp in Florida. The morning after graduation she loaded in a van and drove with other people from her town to camp for her first summer of camp. It was a hard summer but the first of many fun summers to come. Three summers went by while she worked at the camp in Florida. She made friends that lasted through university, she learned how to accept herself, how to make friends, and how to work at camp.

For 10 years she has been living the dream every summer. From counseling to running a day camp she has worked at camp. In her second or third year of working she met a staff member who had been at camp for 10 years and she thought a) he's lucky and b) he's old. This summer that little girl who at the age of seven fell in love with working at camp is LIVING THE DREAM. She has finished her 10th year at camp and is staying on to work at camp year round.

For 19 years it has been a dream, a love, an unimaginable goal but God in His infinite love and mercy has given the little girl a chance to live out her passions.

If someone would have taken that little girl aside and told her that her life could hold this much excitement and joy she still couldn't have believed this much could happen.

That little girl is one lucky kid.

Day 1 of Year Round Staff.

I’ve crossed over. I am now a year round staff member (practically almost, the ‘year’ starts this weekend but I’m getting an early start). It all started Saturday night when Anthony told me to use the mule (4wd golf cart type thing) to go get something, even though as a summer camp staff member I wasn’t on the approved list to drive. He said I was close enough to starting as year round staff and could drive. As I was driving down the hill I knew that things were going to be different and that the changes were starting soon.

Here I am on Monday morning heading into the kitchen to work at 7:30 AM. Not to early of a start J Katie, a 2^nd year kitchen camp staff member, has been helping me get the hang of working in the kitchen. One thing is for sure I don’t get as excited about eating as I used to!

I anticipate a lot of flash backs to when I was in high school and I worked in the kitchen of a retirement center or my first year of college when I worked in the cafeteria. It’s nice because some things are familiar and yet they are still new. Perhaps as I come across some exceptional recipes I’ll even share them on here with you.

For now I’m going to take a nap because this year round work is exhausting.