Hurricane warning...

My dad always teases me that I am a "hurricane", going wherever the wind takes me type thing, sweeping up everything around me, never staying in one place. On an honest note, I really haven't been in one single place for even a full year, since I was in high school. Now, that definitely has a negative connotation, but at the same time, I think it got me to some pretty amazing places, and now, with the wind propelling the "hurricane" being the Holy Spirit, I feel like it's a great thing. There are minor side effects that include frazzledness, sometimes flaky, and easily influenced.

Last semester, the hurricane took me through a new environment, trying to adapt to ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic, rule abiding Steubenville, and also into a beautiful step in my relationship; engagement. It brought me to new friends, odd people, lost people and a deep sense in deeply appreciating my friends at home. It brought me back over break, caught up in wedding-talk, drowning (in a good way) in family and friends, and also waiting for the next obstacle to devour.

What's next? So I'm getting married...but that is not until July, and regardless of other opinion, I really feel like the bones and muscles of it are in place, just waiting for time to pass for the rest of "the body". It was extremely heart warming to come back to roommates in Ohio and to be with Pittsburgh friends and football players. Cameron and I already went on a retreat through one of his bible study groups called Athletes in Action; which was so filling and overflowing with new thoughts and friends. The focus was on discipleship and what it truly means to be a disciple.

Two simpler things that really shook me up, was one, the Lost Boys of Sudan documentary, and two, this movie called The Whistleblower (a new movie) about sex trafficking  in Bosnia. It may seem silly that it was two movies that have had the most influence thus far in the semester, but they completely have. It awakened my napping-library-going heart to what gave me so much passion in the past year. Not like I had forgotten, but it woke me up like a freezing bucket of water with a great sense of urgency. I have known that I was going to school to help others, but its like this feeling of yearning to have a hand or foot still involved.

WELL.....
This guy named Joe, who was one of Cam's professors last semester, was very involved in several missionary-based organizations over the past 15 years. He heard about my interest as a missionary and a social worker and came up with a handful of opportunities that matched exactly what I had been aiming to do. Did you know that Pittsburgh is the most highly diverse city of refugee immigrants in the US? There are currently 150 Haitian children at a church that Joe had worked with, there is a program for training and uniting teen and young adult refugees with bigger companies to hire them, there is the same type of program that outreaches to Honduras. Joe and his wife are very close with MY favorite professor here last year, and also friends with the parents of one of Cameron's closest Christian friends out here. We were finding so many connections, it is undeniable that the Spirit is working here somehow. I'm not sure what, but I know He is. Another suggestion Joe threw out was that Dusquense University has an awesome social work program and has very close missionary ties with Africa. The University is run by an congregation called the Spiritans (of the Catholic church).

The Spiritan Charism 

Drawing on the original intuitions and inspiration of its founders and on its lived tradition over the past 300 years, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit expresses its charism in its current Rule of Life:

The evangelization of the “poor” (cf. Lk 4:18) is our purpose.

In faithfulness to the intuitions of our Founders, to their experiences and to the living tradition of our Congregation, we give preference to an apostolate that takes us to:

• those who have not yet heard the Gospel message or those who have scarcely heard it;
• those oppressed and most disadvantaged, as a group or as individuals;
• places where the Church has difficulty in finding workers.

We are dedicated to the Holy Spirit, author of all holiness and “source of the apostolic spirit”. We place ourselves under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who was filled beyond measure by the same Spirit “with the fullness of holiness and apostolic zeal."

How cool is that?....Just saying. 

Definitely what I'm praying about...just asking for all of your prayers as well, as God continues to let this hurricane sweep through His kingdom and down the path He's made for me...

Dearest heavenly Father, 

You have put me on this amazing journey, only amazing because You have made it that way, and I am so thankful. You have made my life so full, abundant in love and grace. Father, I feel like You are trying to tell me something. I can feel You tugging at my heart again. What is it? How can I serve You Father? I pray that You would take away my selfishness and take the scales off my eyes so that I may see Your holy vision, not my imperfect human vision. Lord, make clear Your path, open the doors You intend for me and close the ones that You do not. Father send me Your spirit to guide and guard me, I depend on You Father to keep me alive; to keep me constantly growing. My deepest desire is to serve You, like Mary's fiat, Lord, let it be done according to Your word. I love you Lord, i give you all of me. Thank you for my amazing family, for my amazing future husband and all of those that you have networked and woven into my life. In Jesus' holy name, Amen. 

And for all of those across the world, may Your angels guard them against evil...