Sometime in the near future

i have been meaning to blog for quite some time now. its crazy to me that today is the last day of January. time is literally flying by and i can barely keep up with it.

In the past few days my world has been flipped upside down by a God that has much bigger plans than mine. My heart was set on Appalachain State. I felt like i just needed to be there for the next step in life. i have gone down there multiple times to visit and fell in love with the campus, the area, everything. Deep down i was just like this is where i need to be. I was looking for schools that had photography degrees and out of the six non private school on the east coast App was one. It was only three hours away and my grandparents lived as an exact midway point from Boone to Blacksburg. It was perfect. So last friday as i looked at my application tracker thing my dreams had came to a hault when i looked onto the screen to see the words denied next to my application status.

Let me take you back a month or so to the last week in November, as the deadlines for many early addmission college apps came closer and closer i could not shake this feeling that i needed to apply to ODU. i kept resisting and resisting because i was so determined that i was going to be at App the next year, i really thought it was the Lord's plan and i just wanted to follow that whole heartedly. But ODU kept popping up. So the day before the application was due and after many long conversations with close friends i made the decision to apply. After about three weeks my best friend and i got our acceptance letters, and my mom and i danced around the kitchen in celebration of i was going to college somewhere. We hung the letter onto the refridgerator and continued our wait to hear back from the school my heart desprately wanted to go to.

This whole semester two consistant prayers that i have been praying was that i would be accepted of denied from App. i didnt really want the whole deffered thing and i really just wanted His plan to be so blatenly obvious to me. and the other thing i kept praying was that where ever i go that i would be following His plans and not mine. So after i had my realization that i wasnt going to App. which consisted of me signing off and then back on again to make sure i hadnt gone crazy or something (lolz) but after some time had gone by i started to realized that the Lord had answered my prayers in such huge ways. that His plan is for me to be at ODU next year, that his plan was for me to be five hours away instead of three.

ironically my little sister had a volleyball tourney in Hampton, which is only a short ways away from ODU, so we packed our bags planned our little tour ODU campus and was on our way. Saturday morning came alot quicker than our 8 hour bumper to bumper traffic filled, blizzard like conditions road trip to hampton hahaha but that morning the rents and me piled in the car and headed to ODU. My parents were not fond of the idea of me going to ODU, from many friends they had heard how it wasnt in a good area, and that super freaked them out. But as we drove up to the campus i think all of our hearts were taken aback at how wrong our impressions were. The whole tour was fantastic my parents, and i fell in love with this place that we had no intentions in loving. we not only found that this is where the Lord's plan are for me, but a beginning of a great adventure for our whole family.

I fell in love with ODU just as i did with App. State. I feel the Lord so much in both places but now i know that his plan is for me to be along the shoreline instead of in the mountains. I have seen in the past few days that the Lord DOES answer our prayers. He DOES show up consistantly in our lives to show us the way. My prayers were answered in a completely different way than i expected. Its taken me off guard and placed me way out of my comfort zone, but i know i am in the Lord's hands. i know that He is going to walk me through this and show me why he has called me to ODU. Sometimes i dont see the Lord answer my prayers and blatenly as He has answered this one. But i know that He is a mighty God and He loves us more than anything in the world, and if he is calling me there my only answer is to follow Him, because i know that i am following a mighty God that created my plan and there is no other place i would rather be.

ODU here i come!

why i blog.

this morning i was reading a blog post from one of my friends Matt. Matt was from my work crew and he posted his testimony to his blog and honestly it was just such a reminder of how far Christ is willing to go for us, and this amazing story of  Christ's redemption. it also shows us how much Christ uses the people we are close to and even strangers to bring his people home to Him.

Matt's testimony reminded me so much of why i started blogging in the first place. A while back one of my dear friends Casey knew i had a heart for overseas mission. My heart was literally dying to go over there. at the time i hated school and so i probably would have quit and just gone over there if i would have had the opportunity haha. but like i said i hated school so i was def going on about it in the wrong way. but in the end i still wanted to go over so serve people and share Jesus with them. so casey showed me a blog by a girl named Katie Davis. Katie Davis is an amazing girl who honestly is changing the world and most of us dont even know who she is. if you have some time this is a little video of who she is. I started reading Katie's blog and it just opened up this world of how following the Lord wont just impact our own eternity but others as well.

You can read Katie Davis blog here.

A little bit further down the road in my sophomore year i had stopped believing in Jesus all together, high school was really hard for me.i just didnt fit in. and i was made fun of alot for my faith and it was hard. So my solution was to just stop following Jesus and attempt to be a normal kid. This was until two campaigner girls stepped into my life. Eva and Kara. To this day i have no idea how lucky i was that they walked into my life. They kept showing up in my life and loving my for who i was and gently just kept pushing me closer to Christ. During this time the girls had gotten a hold of this blog from a Younglife leader named Libby. Libby was diagnosed with cancer and started a blog of how she would glorify God through this. after i read it for the first time i started reading it religiously. i remember reading what she wrote and it made the Lord so real to me. I remember wanting the life she had. Not the cancer but the spark. She had a drive like no one else i had ever met and i wanted that. I knew it was Jesus, i knew that following the Lord was not just a choice but a lifestyle. Slowly but surely because of the time that Libby took to write, she changed the way i would live my life forever. Suprisingly my younglife leaders, leader was Libby so i have had the amazing opportunity to meet her, and honestly she is the same person that i read on her blog, she is so real, and so loving, which is so assuring because i know sometimes esp on here, but its so easy to just say things people want to hear. Kind of like when someone asks how were doing and we automatically say "oh yeah im fine," when in reality were falling apart on the inside. you know what i mean? but Libby is the exact opposite. She puts herself out there and because of the the Lord is using her in huge ways. Libby will probably never know the impact she had on my life. But if it wasnt for her blog there is a fat chance i would still be that lost, insecure, faithless girl i was my sophomore year.

You can read Libby's blog here.

The Lord speaks to me in HUGE ways through blogs. I dont know why, me and my friends think its actually kind of halarious. But i started blogging because maybe theres someone like me who needs a little encouragement. Maybe there's someone out there that just needs to feel like theres something worth living for. or maybe you just need something to do. But the Lord uses words. he uses them in huge ways just like our actions. people are listening and maybe just maybe if we took the chance to be real with them our world would change in big ways.


If you want to read more blogs if you scroll down a little to the left side of the page under good reads there are blogs that i read and i find them incredible. and i'll list most of them right below this.


http://mattweatherly.wordpress.com/
http://www.younglifeleaders.org/
http://libbyryder.blogspot.com/
http://icarlymission.blogspot.com/
http://francoyounglife.blogspot.com/
http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/
http://kylielynngalyen.blogspot.com/
http://zacharywinman.blogspot.com/
http://hiimhannahlou.wordpress.com/

i read alot of blogs, lolz but each of these blogs have incredible writeres behind them, if you have some time take a look at them hope ya'll have a great rest of a week. We go back to school tomorrow wohooo. syke. lol pray for us please!

a new year

Happy New Year Everyone! As for the Porth House hold we are starting this new year off right.... Were all sick. lolz. #welcometothegoodlife. This winter break for me has been so so good. its a nice long break and when i go back to school i will be a second semester senior!! heres to doing no work for the rest of the year! jk jk jk (mom i'm seriously just kidding... maybe)

Since my last blog post i have really seen the Lord working in the people around me. Which has been so so cool. Last Friday i got the amazing opportunity to go to Fieldstone's Food Pantry. Im sure alot of you have helped out with food drives, and many other things to help those in need. but how many times do we walk away from those things with out hearts truly changed? yes, of course were going to feel good about what we've done but can we say that our hearts are truly changed from the experience?  after going friday night my heart was thoroughly changed. The Food Pantry at Fieldstone is not just a place where people can get the needs for their bodies, but they will also recieve the needs of their hearts. The people that are there to serve are radiating with the love of Christ and its hard not to be effected by that. I seriously just had an amazing time getting to sit and talk with these people that have stories that will break you heart. These people have such hope and courage that will just leave you awestruck. I am so blessed that i got to witness such an amazing ministry that the Lord is doing huge things through. (if you want to get involved with this ministry im going to put a little plug down at the bottom! the pantry is ALWAYS in need of food and volunteers)

Another amazing spontaneous adventure i got to embark on is going up to Snowshoe with one of my best friends family. This family truly loves the Lord, and is constantly giving everything to follow Him. Through my high school experience this family has without fail always been there to hold bible study at their house, sit and listen to my struggles, or my highs. They have all had such a huge impact on me and getting to spend the past few days with them was just so fulfilling. Katie, who is one of my best friends lives life in such a way that we are all just jealous of. she is halarious, kind, and competitive. the Lord has used her to keep me accountable on multiple occasions and i am so blessed to have her. one day she is going to be an amazing younglife leader and she's going to change so many peoples lives.

one thing i wanted to end with, i started a new devotional called Disciplines by Upper Room Books lolz its by a ton of people my dear friend Mrs. Judy gave to me. ive only done two days but so far its really great, the passage ive been reading for it is Isaiah 60:1-6 which says:

“Arise, Jerusalem! Let your light shine for all to see.
For the glory of the Lord rises to shine on you.
² Darkness as black as night covers all the nations of the earth,
but the glory of the Lord rises and appears over you.
³ All nations will come to your light;
mighty kings will come to see your radiance.

⁴ “Look and see, for everyone is coming home!
Your sons are coming from distant lands;
your little daughters will be carried home.
⁵ Your eyes will shine,
and your heart will thrill with joy,for merchants from around the world will come to you.
They will bring you the wealth of many lands.
⁶ Vast caravans of camels will converge on you,
the camels of Midian and Ephah.
The people of Sheba will bring gold and frankincense
and will come worshiping the Lord.

 

 

this gives me chills everytime i read it. its just such a picture of how i want this year to look for me. i want my friends so badly to come home. I want them to feel this unspeakable Joy i get from following the Lord. reading this passage gives me hope to be a light for my friends, the people around me, strangers. a light that only God can give me, so that they might have the opportunity to come home.

 

as promised:

Fieldstone Food Pantry is ran by an incredible woman named Kim Schwenk you can email her kschwenk09@gmail.com and she can give you all the inforamation you need to help out.